Holy cow! There's a strange bright disk in the sky today!

Tundra Grace

I was going to put this entry up at the end, but it seems like I should do it now. Have you ever heard the quote that it takes a village to raise a child? I also think that it takes a village to do a Ph.D. There are many many people out there who have helped this ridiculous adventure come to fruition and I am constantly humbled by your generosity. This year, I have had absolutely amazing in-kind support from Newmont, the company I am working with up here. Also, Marilynn is using ALL of her vacation time from her full-time job AND a leave without pay to come up and help me out for 3 weeks. Good grief!! Erik, my long-suffering partner, is enduring yet another summer of abandonment while Paul and Angela (Golder) and scores of friends in camp help pick bugs/entertain us every night. Tonight we even had live guitar music while bug-picking!! Karen, my supervisor, puts up with a lot of Heidi randomness and all of my friends and family seem to know when to help out and when to let me attempt something marginally insane. Thank you thank you to all of you....I truly hope that I have the opportunity to pass all of your kindness forward and I do not take any of it for granted.

Tonight I would especially like to thank Stephane, one of the helicopter owner/pilots up here (see previous entries). I found out today that Newmont will be supporting Maril's and my travel to Nauyuk this year with helicopters! Woo-hoo!! I didn't know until today, however, and we're supposed to leave on Thursday. I told Steph about this the other night and he had worked out a way to get us over there, with in-kind support from Heli Explore. Once again, Steph was going to save our butts. Thank you SOO much, Stephane. You're amazing!

I have so many entries to catch up on....we have had adventures on the sea (starfish! crabs! skinny dipping!), adventures on land (meeting an Inuit family and eating Klik), and more adventures in peeing (as always!). I'll try to get a few more entries up tomorrow and in the meantime I'll leave you with the most recent song.

If you don't hear from me after this, assume I have died of processed pork poisoning.

(To the tune of "You are My Sunshine")

You are my bug shirt
My only bug shirt
You keep me covered
And bug-bite free
I really love you
My stinky bug shirt
Even though when you're on
I cannot see