Well,
finally the long anticipated (at least by some) fieldwork post. As I am getting
less and less blog-active, or more and more blog-inactive, I decided that
(even) less perfection will have to make do, so neither this post, nor those
following, will be very polished. But maybe you won’t even notice (after all, I'm anything but a perfectionist even under the best of circumstances).
This
fieldwork trip turned out to be super easy. Ian had stressed (…) that it would
take me at least two weeks, but we
did it in 8 days. This earned me more superwoman-points though, because instead
of realizing that he had overstressed, Ian thought that I had done a superjob.
Which I also had, obviously, but not overly so.
I had a
Kiwi-boy with me, 18 years young, who is studying towards a degree in forestry
and works with us to gain experience. Although merely 18, he turned out to be
the best fieldwork help I ever had, including invincible Lenka. It makes a
difference whether you were born and raised in the NZ bush.
He was also
rather shy/quiet/introverted, but in a way that made it easy for us to be
shy, quiet and introverted together and get along fine. Power to the introverts.
So there is
little to say about horrendous rain and associated terrible temper (although we
had that), and even less about fighting with vines and lianas or heaving heavy
equipment over cliffs, because we had light packs, the work was easy and the
bushwacking minimal. I caught myself thinking every day “I’m so glad to be
outside!”.
But to not
deprive you all of my famous grumpy fieldwork mantras, I have disseminated
possibly the worst aspect of fieldwork, and anything: politics.
I’ve been
on fieldwork trips in New Zealand many times now, ranging from just two days
with only 1 night in accommodation (Backpackers, hut, motel, or scary hotel) to
2 weeks isolated from the real world with other grumpy fieldworkers. Many times
I sampled soils (in fact so many times that now, when I board a company car to
go on fieldwork I will instantly get stiff, rough painful hands, even though I
haven’t touched a soil corer and we’re not going to sample soils at all). Also
vegetation. Substrate bags, rocks, and now rainwater. This trip I came to the
realization that it doesn’t matter what you sample, whether soil, water, rocks,
air, fungi, roadkill, it will always
turn into a political statement for others to make.
Similarly I
have also learned through many, uncountable episodes that digging a hole,
installing a wind-speedometer or simply standing in a field and discussing
geology are interpreted by the outer world as pure and vicious acts of despicable
politics. I have grown really wary of the question “hey, what are you guys
doing there?” which really means “bloody tax-money wasters what silly nonsense
are you measuring to make my life harder?!”.
One of our
first excursions in the Netherlands as students included getting chased off a
field because the prof had said “we are from the university of Amsterd…” and
this resulted in the farmer nearly exploding with rage that some lazy
socialists were trashing his field. Memorably last year in a backpackers when I
had barely spoken the words “forest soil” some Americans thought they’d never
heard of a more ridiculous thing to spend government money on.
This time we
weren’t in the backpackers for 3 minutes when we were already engaging in a
raging debate about 1080, a poison used widely in NZ to eradicate exotic pests.
Let me not choose sides here, but merely relate the facts that 1) 1080 is a
poison 2) it breaks down into non toxic compounds before it can kill fish,
fungi or your dog 3) it sometimes also kills the wrong (native, endangered)
species 4) it is the only way to reliably massively kill evil introduced
mammals (except of course humans, but that’s a whoooole other story) 5) there
is no alternative, really. Also, 1080 is definitely not in the rainwater, but
this was not the time to get into the finer details of rainwater versus
groundwater versus soil solution versus stream water as in surface waters …
Moreover, the main problem to the backpackers person seemed to be, as with the
grumpy Americans last year, that the trout was affected. First of all, trout is
an introduced species taking away native fishes habitats, and secondly, I am
pretty sure 1080 can impossibly kill trout in the way it is currently applied.
Either way, I just smiled and said “hmmm, well, ha. We’re just collecting
rainwater for something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT”.
 |
| rain collector, narrowly missed getting destroyed by a falling tree |
It was only
a few moments later really when we met 2 Aussie fishermen who were also
interested in the rainwater, in as much as that they didn’t waste any time
declaring “I worked for the Australian government, but not doing rainwater like
you, no I had a REAL job, you know, I did REAL work”.
 |
| Milk Factory shining in the light in Hokitika. Real work is being done there. |
Moral of
the story: the most astonishing fact of having a PhD is that if anything, people
treat you with less respect. But it also allows you to spend time in the world’s
most beautiful places, have picknicks along gurgling streams and get well paid
for it.
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| Franz Josef Glacier, a nice spot to have lunch |
