Sampling water in the Arctic in the middle of the night....what could POSSIBLY go wrong? (Check out the blooming Arctic cotton in the background - fields and stripes of white this year)
That is not dirt on the lens......
Claire, eating her peanut butter sandwich in the "security zone."

Holy bugs batman!

So, here we are and I have just finished the first round of Golder water sampling. Another rotation of workin' the night shift and filling bottles with water. You'd think this would be boring, but of course it's not. Claire, the girl from Golder that I was working with, is a kindred spirit indeed and we had a LOT of belly laughs.

The bugs are horrendous this year (on nights), ensuring that each of us check the other for "security breaches" as soon as the helicopter downwash has stopped. As we don nitrile gloves and pull drawstrings, we listen in angonized anticipation for the returning buzz that signals ONE BILLION voracious proboscii (sorry, pendants) waiting to annihilate us. The other night, on Spyder lake, it was so buggy that we couldn't fill the bottles without having to empy them to get rid of the bugs. I had to pee REALLY badly and was almost considering going in my waders, when Claire and I hatched a brilliant plan.

"Claire," I said, "I think what we should do is lock the tiller and throttle and pee when we are on plane." "The bugs fly too quickly otherwise and our butts will be hamburger."

Claire looked dubious. Claire hasn't done a lot of work on boats before. As I locked the boat into peeing position I stood up and said, "GO!" Claire looked...."How do I do this?" "Over the side, over side!" I replied frantically. I was madly attempting to get my pants back up while Claire was still leaning over, yelling, "I CAN'T GET IT OUT!"

"Are you talking to your pee or a bug?" I yelled.
"BOTH!" said Claire.

I laughed so hard that I had to blow my nose, which was a problem, because it was on the wrong side of my bug screen. Claire said, "oh, I wouldn't worry about that...I've been blowing through my bug screen all night."

Later that night, as we ate our lunch (inside our bug jackets), Claire remarked, "Heidi, there is a fair amount of peanut butter inside my bug jacket."

"I know," I said. "I can see the grease stain."

Yesterday the bugs left for about 12 hours. Because it was a hurricaine.

Hello again loyal blog readers!

Well, here we are in 2008 (already!) and it's that time of year.....the time when ice is melting, bugs are hatching, and certain psychotic fish biologists are drawn to Arctic adventure! This year, as most of you know, was supposed to be scaled-down, shorter, and less adventurous. And perhaps it will be. Then again, perhaps not. I've learned not to take these things for granted anymore. New challenges have arisen as we are working with a lot of new people at the Miramar site (now taken over by a company named Newmont). The camp is so full that it looks as if we might have to commute every day from Cambridge Bay! Anyway, the usual problems have emerged....unable to find charter pilots, can't camp because of bears, etc etc etc. But there is lots of good news, too. We have been able to get a hold of Mark, our reliable bear monitor, and he will once again accompany us to our site at Nauyuk for a bit. AND, Marilynn will be rejoining me for the Ph.D. sampling. Once again this year, some of my time up north will be spent contracting for Golder (you have to buy the bagels somehow) and part of it will be spent FINISHING UP my Ph.D. sampling (I'm serious this time, Karen......and Erik......and mom......). So, for the first couple of weeks, I'll be working with a Golder crew and then Maril will be joining me at the end of July for three weeks. That crazy girl is using all of her vacation time to borrow her dad's gun and head to the Arctic. WOO-HOO! I'm going to miss her in early July and late August, but thank goodness she's coming!! Who else would I speak to in a British accent? She says that riding a desk chair is getting awfully dull.....and driving to field sites isn't nearly as exciting as walking/boating(swimming)/helicoptering.

So, we leave tomorrow (the Golder crew and I). I'm meeting Neal the scare plane pilot for a drink in Yellowknife (this alone should be worthy of a blog entry) and then heading to Cambridge on Saturday. Apparently, both of our boats, Zippy (extremely leaky) and Whizzy (even leakier) were recently frozen to the bottom of our large storage containers in camp so we'll see how this goes. I am anticipating sinking. And a lot of weather days. The weather has to be AWFULLY good to be able to fly round trip from Cambridge to Windy every day.......

Quote of the week (courtesy of Mike Braeuer) upon hearing my tales of recent shotgun training: "It's always the sweetest girls who are packing heat."

Ta ta for now,
H