Like to Bike and Hike?

Ever biked 260 km while crossing the border between two countries and simultaneously passing through a bald eagle preserve, mountain range and rainforest? Me neither. But I have biked 25 km of that whole experience, and then completely depleted all of my remaining calories obscenely cheering for seven other cyclists for the rest of the way. See below, cheering via the milieu of interpretive dance:

I think that this photo pretty much puts the whole experience into a nice, tidy nutshell. Lol, trail mix in the bottom right corner. Wow. And yup, that’s me on the right, apparently attempting to punch my own knee.

This was the Kluane to Chilkat bike relay that starts in Haines Junction, Yukon and runs across the Alaskan border to Haines, Alaska – incidentally the most normally-named place in Alaska, when you compare it to places like Deadfoot and Chicken – and what place do you think Squirrel Camp achieved? We climb spruce trees as tall as 35 feet daily. We hike for about 6 hours a day. On our free time, we hike more, and sometimes play Ultimate Frisbee just for shits. Out of 65 eight-man teams, we got…DRUM ROLL…61^st place. What the fuck. PEOPLE ARE CRAZY. Biking is an intense sport, that’s what I learned that weekend. Never mind that there are ONE MAN teams who do the whole thing solo. Someone who we know from the Arctic Institute, a research center on the Alaska Highway, biked as a solo team and got 14^th place. Just the quietest, mildest guy (who we’ll say is named Duncan) but then he busts that one out. Whatever.

Anyways, as you can see, I am appalled at the fitness levels of certain people. After the roughly 16 hours that it took to complete the race, we spent the night camping in a field at the center of Haines and playing bad drinking games with a pair of geologists. I say bad not in the way that it’s like “haha yeah, they were so bad, but actually fun haha” – I mean bad like we didn’t have any cards or ideas or energy so we just played Catch the Football and If You Drop It, Drink. A classic of our times.

On that note, I should sign off. I feel like I should leave you with something inspirational from my life-changing bike relay experience. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you think, “no, I can’t do this”, just imagine Squirrel Camp cheering you on:

Because roadside pushups are inspirational. And ridiculous.

Love and Kisses from da Yo-kon,

Sarah

It Ain't Tree-sy. Ha.

Today’s stories are not one of regal squirrely accomplishment, but rather of the silly failures that a squirreler encounters. Sometimes, the nest of the squirrel you are looking for is a couple centimetres out of reach from standing on the ground, but is also located in a skinny, short tree with no branches. This results in you having to “firepole” up the tree, which is physically exhausting and causes you to grunt and sweat and struggle, but you need to cover such a miniscule vertical distance that your fellow squirreler dies laughing at the spectacle. Sometimes you leave the door of the data hut open and later find that the “camp squirrel” has entered and appears to be sabotaging the files on the head technician’s desk. Sometimes you lose your handling bag (intuitively, these are used to handle the squirrels we trap) on grid, come back to camp to get a new handling bag, rush back out into the forest so you don’t get behind on your traps, and find that you’ve lost your second handling bag already.

Of all these stories, the worst and best incident happened this week. The crew was doing a peanut butter add/remove day rather than trapping, meaning that we were adding peanut butter to buckets strung up on the middens of lactating female squirrels and removing peanut butter from the buckets of all the other squirrels. ‘Cause if you don’t got babies, you don’t get PB. That is the way of squirrel camp. So anyways, we were taking care of all those buttery peanuts, when something tragic happened. One of the ropes holding a bucket up broke. Who would handle this insurmountable difficulty? Who would be the one to step up and rise to the challenge? Who in this whole wide world would have the gumption and audacity?! None but I. So I am scampering up that tree like an adept young black bear, like a skilled lumberjack, like Spiderman. As I crest the top of the tree, the crowd below gasps in awe. They turn to one another, jaws dropped, I-can’t-even hand gestures abound. I do a cartwheel IN the tree. Just for yuks. Then I tie the ropes together in a double-hitch-back-whatchamacallit knot, knot for the faint of heart in the knot-tying world, let me tell you. Just as it seems things can’t get any more exciting, I am headed back down the tree.

All eyes are trained on me.

Down I come, like a smooth waterfall running down into only the locations of the least resistance, flowing down the tree.

I am within the last foot of the return downwards, and I am ready to triumphantly land on the ground in a perfect triple backflip, at which point the crowd will climax into applause. As I prepare my dismount, I realize that there is one minor inconvenience preventing me from executing my planned acrobatics: my pant leg is hooked over a mildly intrusive nub on the tree trunk. I attempt to dislodge. There are no branches beneath my feet, I am hugging the trunk like a koala, except a koala that is bizarrely cemented in place with only a foot of vertical distance from the ground. What are you doing koala? How does this benefit you? Time passes. The crowd falters. I attempt to dislodge.

“Why aren’t you coming down?”

A small pause as I try to assemble the words to explain my predicament. And then, I begin to laugh and bumble through the words “I’m stuck” laughterlaughterlaughter “on my right pant leg” gigglegigglegiggle “I can’t get down”

The crowd (which incidentally turns out to be two coworkers who were occupied with a different task as I was climbing and likely did not notice my ascent) begins to laugh as well, and one girl, Gaelle (better known by me using the nickname Kyle), begins to circle me looking for where I’m stuck. The more sarcastic one, Alec, instead of trying to help, begins a diatribe: “Why aren’t you coming down Sarah? It’s one foot off the ground, really, we need to get going. Just come down, jeez louise,” etc, etc, until I am laughing so hard I can barely manage to continue to hold onto the tree, nevermind explain where my leg is caught. All I can say is “no, no” in response because I can’t just come down, and Kyle thinks I mean no not the right pant leg so she is searching on my left side and I repeat “THE RIGHT PANT LEG” and she is dying laughing and finally finds where I’m caught and removes the several wrinkles of pant that were securely tucked inside that goddamn nub and finally I fall to the ground and I am FREE. With an enormous hole in my pants.

And these are the circumstances that lead to shameful patchworking in the evening time at Squirrel Camp.

This smiling and grimacing experience brought to you by:

Sarah “Klondike Kate” Nason

P-P-Professor Sq-Sq-Squirrel

I have become a Jr. Squirreler. I hope one day to get my Acorn Badge and graduate to a Sr. Squirreler, but this is far in the future and will require much training and mental preparation. For now, I wander (AKA trip and generally bumble my way through) the forest wearing my khaki vest equipped with peanut butter and listen for the sweet calls of my scansorial friends with feeble, uneducated ears.

I didn’t just have a strange outdoorsy fever dream – I am a field technician in the Yukon Territory for the summer this year, working for a project that studies squirrels in Kluane National Park. The study, called the Kluane Red Squirrel Project (KRSP), has been running since 1987 and collects pedigree data for a huge population of squirrels. We monitor four grids that are ~1 km² each, amounting to a total of about 5000 squirrels. One of my friends (let’s call him Burt) took a Community Ecology class last year that referred to such a project with the acronym LTER: Long Term Ecological Research. This acronym is so pretentious and unnecessary, and my doubt that it actually gets used in practice is so great, that I will persist in using it throughout this post.

So with this kind of LTER there is a lot of training associated. I started work on May 1^st, and since then I have learned such a huge quantity of information in such a short time period that my brain feels weighted with the authority of this knowledge. I now know how to set tomahawk traps, handle live squirrels, navigate a grid, use radio telemetry equipment, climb spruce trees, tag ears, identify and interpret squirrel behaviour, perform stomach palpations to determine pregnancy status, express nipples of lactating female squirrels (yes, I know how to milk a squirrel), handle all the data generated by these procedures, and most importantly, play with baby squirrels (called pups). Playing with the babies is of critical importance, and all senior staff at KRSP recognizes this.

I have also encountered a few minor hiccups along the way in my squirrel adventures. To start with, an adult squirrel died as I was handling it. This apparently only happens once or twice a year, but it happened to me on my second day of independent work. This is a rare moment in my blogging where I will allow seriousness: it was really sad, and very shocking. We hold the squirrels in handling bags in order to read their ear tags to identify the individual and feel the stomach if it is a female to determine pregnancy status. I was doing a stomach palpation and the female I was handling had been quite stressed, but seemed to be calming down. Little did I know, she was most likely entering cardiac arrest. I finished my palpation and put her down on the ground to record the information quickly, and she seemed suspiciously still. I checked her immediately, and found she was dead. I radioed a senior member who came along and although she comforted me to assure me it probably wasn’t my fault, she also informed me that the squirrel had a litter and those babies would die too.

So THAT was great. But the next day would be better, right? You already know that since I said that, something worse is coming. I need to be a little less cliché here. Ok, let’s try this: the next day was an improvement, because I didn’t kill any squirrels. I myself had a fancy brush with death though, falling out of the next tree I attempted to climb. This has only happened to two other squirrelers in the history of the project. I was completely uninjured, because I was lucky enough that both branches I was supported by broke at the same time. I slid all the way down the tree and landed neatly on my bottom. I then proceeded to shake for the next 20 minutes and ceased climbing trees. I haven’t climbed a tree since, so hopefully this has not become a deep-seeded (ha, ha, ha) fear in my heart. The thing is though, overall, I prefer that my heart continues to beat. Such are the risks of LTER, however, and we simply have to face them.

But there is one thing that makes all of this worthwhile: baby squirrels. 

Nason, S. 2014. A Phenomenon in Higher-Level Academic Staff Previously Undocumented: A Preliminary Analysis.

I would like to speak (read: type) to you today about a strange and beautiful phenomenon I have recently discovered. However, before we get into the revelations, some background information is necessary. I know, it seems like revelations should just happen to you, effort-free. I apparently think they should be difficult.

I am an undergraduate Animal Biology student who has recently entered into the wondrous realm of ~Research~. I capitalize this and surround it with ceremonial squiggles of importance because it is the Holy Grail of accomplishment at the University of Alberta. You might have thought you were going to university to gain practical skills and higher knowledge that would eventually, I don't know, employ you? The University does not understand this idea. The University thinks that you have come here to learn about the fantastic, the wonderful, the epiphany-inducing, panty-dropping art that is: ~*~Research~*~. They would like nothing better than if you never got a job and just stayed happily ensconced in the loving embrace of Mother Research forevermore.

So. I recently began Research. Because of my involvement with Research, I began to interact with these alien organisms called "Professors" and "Graduate Students", who I had always assumed were simply necessary structures at a University and who I had never thought of as being people, per se. But as I got to know Professors and Graduate Students, I realized that they are just like you and I: they have thoughts, they have dreams, they even have beards. Beards that might represent a certain sadness. (But that is a rant for another day. If you are interested in Sadness Beards, I recommend this provisional reading in the meantime.)

Over time, **!Research!**, that capitalized wonder that I had always scoffed at and sort of resented, became...I grit my teeth...enjoyable. Yes! I admit it! The sweet songs of Lady Research had lulled my spirit and soothed my soul. Research is a saucy minx, and she knows just what to warble in your ears, like a cheeky songbird who knows you all too well. We all know what those tweety little bastards can be like. I thought to myself, Sarah, you could be a ~~Researcher~~. So rather than fight the evil urges within me, I embraced them. And how better to embrace your future potential than to find yourself a cozy situation in which you will live in a plywood hut and research squirrels in the Yukon?

So I find myself a cozy situation in which I will live in a plywood hut and research squirrels in the Yukon. This is an example of something that we in the biz call Field Work. You may think that I gratuitously capitalize too many words, but you will soon find that Field Work is worthy of the sarcastic emphasis. Because if Research is the Holy Grail of accomplishment, then Field Work is...the Holier Grail. Of more accomplishment. Charisma, I have it.

Field Work is the life you left behind when you moved the big city. The pastoral landscape you once inhabited, free from the woes of modern society. The simple life, when it was just you and Ma and Pa and Ol' Bessie, the reliable but now aged dairy cow you raised as a young lad. Field Work represents a better time, when people knew what was good and right, and we didn't have a life fraught with Sorrowness Beards. We had Outdoorsy Beards when we did Field Work, Outdoorsy Beards of Joy. We pranced with the wild animals and drank the sweet nectar of Mother Nature. We didn't worry about writing up our research, or doing anything relevant to really progressing our careers, if we're being honest. We just were. We existed in harmony with the universe.

And this. This is the phenomenon I'm about to finally get at. If you ever want to know what someone's face looks like before they enter a cinematic dream sequence, in real life, mention the two magical words to a Professor or Graduate Student: Field Work. When they hear that you are off to find yourself in the fabled land of Field Work, a few key events will unfold right before your eyes.

First, if they happen to be a nice person, they will ask a bit about the Research you are about to embark on (this step is optional - they may simply launch themselves into the next step, unable to help themselves). Second, their eyes will glaze over as they break eye contact with you. Their gaze will become hazy as they lose grasp of the physical world around them, a fog falling over their visage. They may lean back in their chair, or clasp their hands in a melancholy way. Third, they will utter a phrase. There is no one specific phrase that always escapes, but it will be something like this: "yeah, Field Work is awesome."

And then you know you've lost them. You may as well slowly rise from your seat, gather your belongings as silently as possible, and tip-toe slowly out of the room. It's the kind thing to do. Let them enjoy the peaceful meditation they have entered. They are revisiting their youth, imagining themselves scaling a great mountain or wrestling a cheetah to the ground (whatever they picture, they probably haven't actually done it). They're saying, "Bessie, I'm home."

Even the hairs? Even the blinks?

So. After a no-holds-barred debate in my head over whether writing stuff on a blog constitutes a desperate plea for attention or a sociable and friendly way of sharing my thoughts with others, here I am. My debate came to no useful conclusions. And hey, maybe I am desperate for attention. I'm not ashamed.
I know everyone gets songs stuck in their heads (we all do, don't we? Now I feel a weird urge to go look up cognitive studies to see if anyone knows what part of the brain causes earworms. And by extension if there are people who are relatively normal but can't remember music. The perils of writing stuff while on the internet are great indeed). But do you ever get phrases stuck in your head? I do. Bits of poetry ("whose woods are these I think I know - his house is in the village though"), which I guess is ok because it's close to music anyway, and proverbs and just general other stuff I've read (A Song of Ice and Fire is terrible for this. "What is dead may never die." How am I supposed to go cheerily about my day with that phrase bouncing around in my head?). Now that I think of it, this could be a great study tool if you could manage to get something you were supposed to memorise stuck in your brain.
Anyway. Last week I had "even the hairs on the head are numbered"  following me around and popping into my brain every couple hours. This falls into the vague proverb-y category of phrases. Vaguely Bibical? And yes. According to a snappy little google moment, this phrase is in the Bible not once but twice (Luke 12:7 and Matthew 10:30, if you're wondering, fun fact). In the religious context the idea, I think, is that God is so omniscient and cares so much about you that He knows the number even of your tiny little hairs. Which is nice.
But the phrase "even the hairs on your head are numbered" got me thinking in kind of a different direction. Because the hairs on your head are numbered whether God knows it or not (and no, I'm not going to wade into debate on that point). There are a finite number of them. Just like there are a finite number of:

•  Mosquitoes in the world
• Times you've eaten bacon for breakfast
• Times you've eaten breakfast at all
• Books you've read while eating stuff
• Books you've read at all
• Words you've read 
•  Times you've blinked
• And so on and on and on. 

Ironically, there are possibly an infinite number of things that can be finitely counted. Or on the other end of the spectrum (or is it the same end of the spectrum viewed in a slightly different way?), there are also apparently mathematical philosophers who advance the argument that nothing is infinite, Cantor and his infinity of infinities be damned.
This is not the first time I've ever thought about this. I have a habit of setting up really trivial math problems to solve in my head on long car trips. I swear this is not as math nerdy as it sounds. I have a lot of weird road trip games to play in my head and the language-based ones are way nerdier. Anyway. Since I am far from a math savant, my problems tend to follow the line of "How many words did I submit in academic writing over the past year?" (Cop-out answer: too many) or "How many books have I read in my life?" And every time I think about how many things theoretically have a number, it amazes me.
There are all these enormous numbers that we'll never know and yet exist and make up the facts of your life. You've read all those words yourself. Those hairs are attached to your head. And you'll never know how many of them there are. For some reason that seems totally mind-blowing to me. It's just...cool. I can't decide if I'm comforted by the idea that there is a number for all these things (or do numbers and math in fact exist without human knowledge of them? I watched a Youtube video about this today...) or if I'm scared of the weird sense of looming mortality that this gives me. Because obviously, if there are a finite number of breaths I've taken so far, then inevitably there are a finite number of breaths I will take ever. Maybe this is why websites like this one exist, so obsessively counting and quantifying types can document their lives in the same way that more literary types use diaries - all in our human attempt to fend off that terrible sense of looming DEATH.
Well, that ended cheerily. Isn't math and thinking about existential dilemmas fun? Maybe I'll be a mathematical philosopher in my next life.
Smiling? Grimacing? Calculating?
Charlotte