Day 46: In which Heidi and Kathryn hit the wall

The exhaustion wall, that is. A memorable moment when we both stalled half-way into the boat: beached on the inflated sides, with no juice left to pull ourselves in the rest of the way.

"Heidi?"

"Yes?"

"I am not self-propelled today."

This exhausted state may have been exasperated by today's foolish attempt to kick the cookie habit...

We have spent the past few days gathering lakeshore invertebrates. These are all veeeeery wee creatures and for contaminant analyses, Heidi needs at least 10 g of each species.

Now, most people collect these critters by kicking up the bottom, and then scooping everything up into a net. Using this technique it would, as you can imagine, take a very long time to gather the required weight. Well! We have discovered that it is much more efficient to use an electrofisher. Yes, an electrofisher. As Heidi says, "this has never before been done in the history of the world".

As Kathryn says, "Ha ha! Your advanced nervous system is your downfall! Mwa-ha-ha!". Okay, yeah; we did mention it's day 46, right?

We are mostly collecting 3 different bugs: Gammarus and Mysis, 2 types of freshwater shrimps, and Star Trek-esque marine isopod that has invaded these lake systems. Mysids are tiny, see-through shrimp (see photo) that come up in great clouds as we electroshock. Hence, our latest field song - to the tune of My Girl:

I've got crustaceans, on a cloudy day
When it's cold outside, I've got Mysidacea*

I guess you'd say,
what can make me feel this way?
Mysids... mysids... mysids
talking 'bout, mysids (mysids mysids ooooh)

I've got sooooo many shrimp, the trout envy me
I've got more invertebrates, than the charr out in the sea...

* for entomologists and other pedants: yes, we know that isn't the real family name; give us some poetic licence, here!

Tomorrow, we head out again to our peaceful weather haven, until after the Labour Day weekend. The weather is changing, with a cold north wind chilling us even with the sunny days, and although it still never gets truly dark, we have deep dusk from about 10 o'clock onwards: in fact, we're losing 9 or 10 minutes of light at each end of the day, now. So, we are very pleased that the Windy Camp site super, Glen, put in a new stove out at Doris Lake for us, and put up a tarp to help keep out most of the wind and rain from the haven. The stove is currently stocked with Jet B airplane fuel so it burns like a hot damn; we'll be toasty, indoors anyway.

The bearberry have become a bright red, the blueberry bushes are a deep burgundy, and the willows coat the tundra with gold and amber. The bog cranberries will be ripe soon - morning frosts these days - and the geese are starting to head south in great, honking, staggering flocks. The camp siksik are frantically pulling pink insulation out of the buildings and packing up their burrows to accommodate their increasingly-obese bodies for the winter. We're excited to be back out alone to watch the seasons change and gather the last of the year's blueberries, sorrel, and (hopefully!) fishes for the study. Hope you're all warm and happy heading into fall, and as content to be where you are, as we are to be here.