Back from the mountains

[luzula]

Hi, I'm back from doing fieldwork in the mountains. It was sometimes interesting and fun, and sometimes strenuous and boring, but most of all it felt good to live a completely different life for a while. It was actually quite restful to have no internet or phone. (But it was really good to have a hot shower when I came back.)

This year, I worked on a project called GLORIA, which tracks climate change by looking at the changes in vegetation on mountain peaks. More concretely, this is what we did:



Yeah, lots of time sitting bent over in front of little squares, counting in how many squares every species occurs.

(By the way, I am totally in love with the jacket I'm wearing in that picture. I got it recently from a small Scottish company called Firemore that sews up garments to measure. All the little details are very functional, and the construction of the hood especially is awesome. The jacket is made out of a cotton fabric called Ventile, which is very tightly woven. When it gets wet, the fibers swell and it kind of stiffens and keeps out the rain. It won't withstand heavy rain for a longer period of time, but it does very well for light rain or showers, and breathes much better than membrane fabrics like Gore-Tex. Uh, this was today's product endorsement, I guess.)

There were two other women working with me, and we shared a small cabin together. And when I say small, I mean small. Basically, it was a strange mix of isolation and having no privacy at all. It's funny how you have to do more cleaning when you live in a small space—it ought to be the other way around, but it's not. Plus, there's all the water-carrying and stuff. This is the view from our door:



I got along well with the others, though, so it was no problem. One of them I knew from before, and I'm totally going to get her to read fan fiction. She's queer, likes well-written smut, and is into comics, sf and fantasy, so I don't know why she doesn't already read fan fiction. *ponders what to give her to read*

There were a few other people at the station, among them the senior scientist, who had problems with alcohol. Precisely because of that, the station has a no-alcohol policy, but he had lots and lots of wine with him anyway. *sigh* The guy who shared a cabin with him (who was also the supervisor of our project) kept drinking with him every night. I asked him about it, and it turned out he knew the guy had serious problems, but he just shrugged and said nobody could stop him from drinking if he wanted to drink. And god forbid the no-alcohol policy should apply to him, too. I did not like supervisor-guy much (but I don't know, maybe he had his own problems).

I do like senior-scientist-guy when he's not drunk, though. For example, he found a population of Phippsia algida (ice grass) for me, because he knew I'd been wanting to see it.



This is Gorsačohkka, the highest peak that we did inventories on (see the cool glacier on it?). It's about 1550 meters high (5200 feet), which may not sound very high, but since we were so far north, only three species of vascular plants commonly grow there. The first is Ranunculus glacialis, and the others are Luzula arcuata and Huperzia selago.





We got to fly up on that peak with a helicopter, which was cool (as opposed to the second-highest peak, which we had to climb 300 meters [1000 feet] to reach. That got old after a few days.) Here's a picture from the ride. Note the little splotch of blood from a squashed mosquito on the inside of the helicopter window. Hee.



I've really enjoyed having time to read and write. I've been working my way through the Big Bang stories and other stuff that's been on my to-read list, and also reading lots of Patrick O'Brian. I've been writing, too, but not what I planned. I had a fic I was planning to do a post-beta rewrite of, but alas, I didn't work much on that. But I did write 10.000 words of Benton at Depot, and I'm pretty happy with that.

I'll go back through ds_weekly and c6d_weekly to check out the fic I've missed, but I won't even try to go back and read my whole flist. So if there's anything in particular I've missed that you want to tell me about, just comment or drop me a line.

For now, please comment at the LJ entry.

Comments

[china_shop]

I think people are fairly adaptable most of the time?

I guess? I live alone and I love it. Even overnight guests make me twitch, even if I love them.

(Heh. I wonder how much more productive we'd all be if the internets went down for a week. /o\)