Heidi’s first night of reflection

It is day 9 of our little sojourn on the tundra and this is the first night that we are not up until stupid o’clock processing fish or painstakingly plucking mysid shrimp from small trays. We only have 2 days left out here and then it’s back to the hustle and bustle of camp to do our water sampling. This makes me sad; it is beautiful and peaceful in our little camp. We are staying in a small weather haven on the north end of Doris Lake. Doris haven is slightly decrepit: the seams of the tent tarp are ripping out and where the poles touch the tarp we have mini skylights. A few repairs with enviro-matting, vapour barrier, and tuck tape have done wonders. It certainly helps that the weather has been absolutely unbelievable. In my time here in 2004 and 2005 (approx 8 weeks in total) I experienced 5-7 days of nice weather (spread out over those 8 weeks). This summer, the weather thus far has been fantastic. Clear, sunny, never-ending skies and 20 degrees make for great working days, especially when the sun sets at midnight and rises again at 12:30.

Our camp is nestled at the bottom of the Doris mesa, a flat-topped red-tinted mountain with many clefts and ridges. On clear nights, the sun sets behind the mesa and the view is ethereal. A few nights ago, we got a view of the ocean with all the islands and mesas just before twilight, when everything becomes very calm and quiet. We still have plans to climb the mesa to watch the sunset over the bay but we’re usually processing samples. Hopefully we’ll make it up before the end of the summer.

Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed by how privileged I am to be here. Our life here is very simple. Gather water, filter water, eat, do dishes, work, check-in with main camp every night, attempt to plan the next day. The sampling has gone slightly slower than I had hoped, but I don’t have a ton of experience collecting benthic invertebrate samples and it takes a LONG TIME to collect 10 g of invertebrates in Arctic lakes. Kathryn bought a book on Arctic plants in the Yellowknife airport and I am slowly learning some of them. The red bearberries and blueberries are ripe right now so sometimes when we are walking through the hummocks we will suddenly collapse to our knees and forage for a few minutes in a particularly good patch. There are also crowberries and lingonberries, but apparently the lingonberries aren’t fully ripe until after the first frost. We also tried eating sorrel the other day. It is packed with vitamin C and, as advertised, tastes like rhubarb! Botany is all about the edibles (you may recall our earlier lichen experiments)! The small plants and animals are always full of surprises, and I will be busy for the foreseeable future trying to sort out the ground-cover plants and keeping the sik-sik from stealing all of our tent insulation.

The landscape here reminds me a bit of the prairies. The sky is limitless; you can almost tell the earth is round when you look at the horizon. The ridges, bedrock outcrops, and mesas are dramatic and imposing but the tussocks and vegetation are subtle in the extreme. Kathryn remarked that everything here feels young, and I agree with her. It feels raw, edgy, and pure. The hot concrete of the city in summer feels a million miles away. This is not to say that we would not enjoy a margarita on a patio right now!
It was strange the other day, though. Lots of time one has to endure field work. It’s often snowing, rainy, cold, excruciatingly windy, or a combination. The other day we were driving to the outflow of the lake and I thought, “What would I like to be doing right now?” I wasn’t tired, so I didn’t want to be sleeping. I wasn’t hungry (this is a miracle). I wasn’t too hot or too cold. I came to the conclusion that where I wanted to be was here, exploring a part of this world that few people get to see and discovering that these lakes have caddisflies, mysids, and tadpole shrimp, not to mention emerald shiners (HELLOOO range extension).

The wind blows through my hair that is currently long enough to be in my eyes and not long enough to be in a ponytail. I tromp around camp in my too-big Columbia pants (they were out of women’s sizes), a dirt-streaked white sun shirt, a ball cap from the Fishin’ Hole, and my rubber boots. There are black flies crawling up under my sunglasses and bouncing off my eyeballs and I am glad to be grounded. Here.

- Heidi