Hey, I'm back!
Jul. 31st, 2010 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaAm now enjoying the comforts of civilization again: hot water from a tap! cellphone coverage! Internet!
I had a great time. This year, I was alone up there most of the time, which was interesting. I've never been alone such a long period of time before, but I didn't mind it at all--there wasn't a single moment that I felt lonely, and I was mostly quite happy and content. There was always something to do: besides work, I had housework, cooking, reading, writing, exploring the valley, recording podfic, catching and examining hoverflies and other insects, listening to podfic and audiobooks, collecting moss samples to examine when I get home, climbing a nearby peak to get cellphone coverage, sewing myself new mittens, etc, etc.
This year I did fieldwork for a project on the phenology of plants in so-called open-top chambers, which are designed to mimic the greenhouse effect, and in control plots. In practise, this meant looking at various species and determining how many flowers there were in different stages (buds, newly opened, in full bloom, in late bloom, unripe fruits, ripe fruits). There was also another similar study that examined plant phenology below cliffs and on flat ground, plus a project where I followed the melting rates of patches of snow. Also I did weather reports in the morning and evening, and various other tasks.
I had one unpleasant episode when my fridge broke. Like the stove, it runs on gas (we call it "gasol"--it's a mixture of butane and propane), and I was a bit paranoid about gas leaks. That wasn't what happened, though. There was a sharp, burnt, chemical smell coming from the fridge, which was definitely not a gas leak, because the gas smells kind of like fart. This was at night, so I slept through it. I have a fear of chemicals that approaches the irrational (I even find powder for clothes-washing machines unpleasant), so this was definitely /o\. I shut off the fridge in the morning and aired the cabin out, and luckily I didn't get anything worse than a headache from it. I moved to another cabin for a few days, though, because there was still some smell. And there was a new fridge sent up two weeks later.
This one's proof of me bathing in the ice-cold water. Of course, what you can't see in the photo is that there's a hot sauna right behind me. *g*
Photographing purple flowers seems to be almost impossible, at least with my camera—the color always comes out more blue and washed-out than it is. Someone told me that this is due to the components of UV light in the plant's color. Anyway, this is purple saxifrage Saxifraga oppositifolia, which is circumpolar, and is one of the earliest-blooming flowers in the north.
A lemming. They're kind of like hamsters, but with more black around the face. There were lots of them this year, which usually means a lot of birds of prey. I didn't see that many, though, except for the long-tailed skua Stercorarius longicaudus, which there was a lot of. They are beautiful birds, but aggressive--they tend to dive toward you when you get close to their nest.
Me, on a hike up the valley.
A really big garnet.
The sporophytes of some liverwort.
The stream that runs out of the lake.
Our little greenhouse garden, with radishes, dill and sweet peas.
Some harvest from the garden. The little roots to the lower right are from the wild plant Bistorta vivipara. They were eaten like potatoes by some of the Inuit tribes, according to Amundsen's book on the Northwest Passage. Our species is a much smaller, but closely related, one. I tried eating a little, both raw and cooked--it's okay, but not particularly tasty. Sort of mealy and slightly sharp. (Of course, I spent the next day with a little paranoid voice in the back of my mind, telling me that there had been a mistake and I would die a slow and horrible death by poisoning.)
Reindeer. This may look like a wilderness, but in reality almost all of the Swedish mountains are used as a pasture-ground for reindeer (which are like caribou, but smaller and domesticated) by the indigenous Sami people.
Salix polaris, one of the tiny willow species of the north, with my finger for size comparison.
We actually had a snowstorm on July 22! Talk about unexpected. None of the plants and animals seemed to take any harm from it, though--the snow just melted with no ill effects that I could see.
Two mountain burnets (Zygaena exulans) mating on the leaf of a Carex vaginata.
I love these little cliff communities. If you zoom in you can see, to the lower left, the leaves of the purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia); in the lower center with a blue flower, an insect-eating Pinguicula vulgaris (you can see a mosquito caught in one of the leaves); in the middle, the orchid Chamorchis alpina; above the orchid, with round leaves, one of the tiny willows (Salix reticulata); sticking up in front of the white rock, Bistorta vivipara; and finally, the grass-like tufts are actually a sedge, probably Carex capillaris. Oh yeah, and the orange lichen on the white rock is Xanthoria elegans.
This is Encalypta alpina. The Encalyptas are sort of the orchids of the bryophytes, IMO. They have fancy hats that cover their sporophytes (zoom in to see them closer).
A viviparous Poa alpina--a form of non-sexual reproduction, where new little plants start growing while they're still on the parent plant. It's an adaptation to a short growing season.
Okay, I have tons more pictures, but I'll end here. Possibly there will be a follow-up post with pictures of clouds--apparently my new area of geekery.
I didn't get as much writing done as previous years, but I still did about 7000 words--a respectable amount for me. I did some rewriting on an old WIP (the Martha Fraser story), and wrote a lot of that werewolf story with Bob, Buck and Caroline, and I also started on another re-written fairy tale. This one is basically Sleeping Beauty set in space, and of course the hundred-year sleep is hibernation on board an interstellar space ship. *g* I also recorded many hours of podfic, which I will be posting soon.
To save my sanity, I won't be going back through my flist, except to check![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ds_weekly and similar newsletters. So if there's anything in particular that I've missed, feel free to leave me a link.
I had a great time. This year, I was alone up there most of the time, which was interesting. I've never been alone such a long period of time before, but I didn't mind it at all--there wasn't a single moment that I felt lonely, and I was mostly quite happy and content. There was always something to do: besides work, I had housework, cooking, reading, writing, exploring the valley, recording podfic, catching and examining hoverflies and other insects, listening to podfic and audiobooks, collecting moss samples to examine when I get home, climbing a nearby peak to get cellphone coverage, sewing myself new mittens, etc, etc.
This year I did fieldwork for a project on the phenology of plants in so-called open-top chambers, which are designed to mimic the greenhouse effect, and in control plots. In practise, this meant looking at various species and determining how many flowers there were in different stages (buds, newly opened, in full bloom, in late bloom, unripe fruits, ripe fruits). There was also another similar study that examined plant phenology below cliffs and on flat ground, plus a project where I followed the melting rates of patches of snow. Also I did weather reports in the morning and evening, and various other tasks.
I had one unpleasant episode when my fridge broke. Like the stove, it runs on gas (we call it "gasol"--it's a mixture of butane and propane), and I was a bit paranoid about gas leaks. That wasn't what happened, though. There was a sharp, burnt, chemical smell coming from the fridge, which was definitely not a gas leak, because the gas smells kind of like fart. This was at night, so I slept through it. I have a fear of chemicals that approaches the irrational (I even find powder for clothes-washing machines unpleasant), so this was definitely /o\. I shut off the fridge in the morning and aired the cabin out, and luckily I didn't get anything worse than a headache from it. I moved to another cabin for a few days, though, because there was still some smell. And there was a new fridge sent up two weeks later.
This one's proof of me bathing in the ice-cold water. Of course, what you can't see in the photo is that there's a hot sauna right behind me. *g*
Photographing purple flowers seems to be almost impossible, at least with my camera—the color always comes out more blue and washed-out than it is. Someone told me that this is due to the components of UV light in the plant's color. Anyway, this is purple saxifrage Saxifraga oppositifolia, which is circumpolar, and is one of the earliest-blooming flowers in the north.
A lemming. They're kind of like hamsters, but with more black around the face. There were lots of them this year, which usually means a lot of birds of prey. I didn't see that many, though, except for the long-tailed skua Stercorarius longicaudus, which there was a lot of. They are beautiful birds, but aggressive--they tend to dive toward you when you get close to their nest.
Me, on a hike up the valley.
A really big garnet.
The sporophytes of some liverwort.
The stream that runs out of the lake.
Our little greenhouse garden, with radishes, dill and sweet peas.
Some harvest from the garden. The little roots to the lower right are from the wild plant Bistorta vivipara. They were eaten like potatoes by some of the Inuit tribes, according to Amundsen's book on the Northwest Passage. Our species is a much smaller, but closely related, one. I tried eating a little, both raw and cooked--it's okay, but not particularly tasty. Sort of mealy and slightly sharp. (Of course, I spent the next day with a little paranoid voice in the back of my mind, telling me that there had been a mistake and I would die a slow and horrible death by poisoning.)
Reindeer. This may look like a wilderness, but in reality almost all of the Swedish mountains are used as a pasture-ground for reindeer (which are like caribou, but smaller and domesticated) by the indigenous Sami people.
Salix polaris, one of the tiny willow species of the north, with my finger for size comparison.
We actually had a snowstorm on July 22! Talk about unexpected. None of the plants and animals seemed to take any harm from it, though--the snow just melted with no ill effects that I could see.
Two mountain burnets (Zygaena exulans) mating on the leaf of a Carex vaginata.
I love these little cliff communities. If you zoom in you can see, to the lower left, the leaves of the purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia); in the lower center with a blue flower, an insect-eating Pinguicula vulgaris (you can see a mosquito caught in one of the leaves); in the middle, the orchid Chamorchis alpina; above the orchid, with round leaves, one of the tiny willows (Salix reticulata); sticking up in front of the white rock, Bistorta vivipara; and finally, the grass-like tufts are actually a sedge, probably Carex capillaris. Oh yeah, and the orange lichen on the white rock is Xanthoria elegans.
This is Encalypta alpina. The Encalyptas are sort of the orchids of the bryophytes, IMO. They have fancy hats that cover their sporophytes (zoom in to see them closer).
A viviparous Poa alpina--a form of non-sexual reproduction, where new little plants start growing while they're still on the parent plant. It's an adaptation to a short growing season.
Okay, I have tons more pictures, but I'll end here. Possibly there will be a follow-up post with pictures of clouds--apparently my new area of geekery.
I didn't get as much writing done as previous years, but I still did about 7000 words--a respectable amount for me. I did some rewriting on an old WIP (the Martha Fraser story), and wrote a lot of that werewolf story with Bob, Buck and Caroline, and I also started on another re-written fairy tale. This one is basically Sleeping Beauty set in space, and of course the hundred-year sleep is hibernation on board an interstellar space ship. *g* I also recorded many hours of podfic, which I will be posting soon.
To save my sanity, I won't be going back through my flist, except to check
ds_weekly and similar newsletters. So if there's anything in particular that I've missed, feel free to leave me a link.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 11:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 05:01 am (UTC)I'm so glad you had a good stay -- and the shot of you swimming in the icy stream is seriously impressive, waiting sauna or no, and also a great photograph. And I just enlarged the one of the stream coming out of the lake, and *speechless* We don't have ice here, not like that. And I haven't been near the arctic in 25 years, so I'm just...in awe of nature, I guess.
Also, yay writing! \o/
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 11:06 am (UTC)And yes, in awe of nature. I had that feeling a lot, and I feel lucky to be able to spend a whole month up there.
Yes, I'm glad I could write! I was a little afraid the Big Bang story would leave me tired of writing, but luckily that didn't happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 05:23 pm (UTC)Glad you had a wonderful time, and glad to have you back on my droll.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-02 02:28 pm (UTC)On mining: no, not in this area. Sweden has some sizable iron mines that are hundreds of years old, but they're not actually in the mountains. But I know there's a conflict over mining for uranium in the mountains in Jämtland (a bit south of where I was).
And yes, that's part of why I love those cliff communities. There's so much to see--in between the vascular plants there are mosses and lichens.
Droll, is that the equivalent of flist on DW? What is it short for?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-02 06:32 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing your trips to the outer edges.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-02 10:15 pm (UTC)::applauds::
Thank you very much for sharing!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-03 09:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-03 10:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-04 06:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 05:49 pm (UTC)I love the photos, especially lemming. He's adorable.
I'm dying to know what you recorded.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 09:17 pm (UTC)I'm dying to know what you recorded.
Well, I will say that I've recorded four stories, two of which are due South, with a combined running time of over ten hours. : )
*is a tease*
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 05:51 pm (UTC)\Luz/
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 06:09 pm (UTC)I love the photos, especially the one of the Salix Polaris. Diminutive flora and fauna makes me squee! :D!
Well, not only is this the weekend for the Midsummer Challenge, but also
I look forward to the podfics and more photos! \Luzula/
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 08:02 am (UTC)Me too! Basically everything is diminutive up there.
And thanks for telling me that I was profiled!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 06:28 pm (UTC)*waves* Hi! Welcome back!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 08:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 08:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 09:52 pm (UTC)Yay, you're back! Looking forward to checking out your pics.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-31 10:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 02:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-01 03:52 am (UTC)I have some good photos of an Osprey up at my last post; one shot has a nice overview of the vegetation on a NE facing granite cliff in Eastern Washington.
Julia, very glad you're back
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-02 02:36 pm (UTC)And wow, those osprey photos. You must have been so close. I tried to take bird photos a couple of times up there, but it always ended up with me realizing that the bird would just look like an uninteresting smudge, because it was too far away.
Sending you good wishes for all the surgery-related troubles.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-03 05:30 pm (UTC)I was sitting on that higher deck for the first two photos; the osprey floated over and was at about 25M above me when I took the first shot; it then turned and landed in the tree right in front of the dock.
The second set shows it coming in from the cliff about .5KM away and then diving about 75M up and 50M from the further end of the dock; the fish won, as the osprey interrupted its dive and wheeled off back over the cliff behind us.
Julia, it's a fairy tale place, but like all the best stories, there's reminders of danger and fleeting time; the back yard has two sharp-edged boulders twice the height of a man balanced precariously over the future.
ETA edit for open tag, sorry
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-05 05:18 pm (UTC)Oh, that's just beautiful.