Whew...time flies when you're having fun! Well, I made it back from my soils field course in basically the same condition as when I left. Not including the MASSIVE amount of soils knowledge I gained, all the dust/dirt/foxtails in all my stuff, and a few bruises , blisters, and scrapes. I had soooooooooooo much fun taking that class that it actually surprises me a little. It was a lot of mental work, social work (since I haven't hung out with that many women all at once since middle school), and physical work (digging pits, squatting and standing all day, being outside 24 hours a day, sleeping on the ground).
Here I am with a sweet border collie who works the sheep and cows on a farm where we were able to analyze the soil near Burney.
We got up everyday at 6am to the sweet sound of my Belgian friend, Charlotte's, voice announcing the early hour. Then we packed up our tents and packs, made breakfast on camp stoves, washed dishes in boiled water and bleach, and headed out of whatever camp site we'd been in no later than 7:45am. Often we were forced to take a quiz before we left. Can you imagine answering this question before 8am: explain the difference between an Alfisol and an Ultisol AND what does "skeletal" mean? It was pure madness. Those poor professors learned the hard way how to piss off a group of 12 ladies by making us take quizzes without having had our coffee yet...
We'd drive some distance (the junior professor, Randy, would always say "about an hour away") to a site to dig a pit large enough for a whole person to fit into to make observations. Sometimes we were lucky and the pit from 2 years ago was still there so we just had to freshen up the surface a little. Then we'd all figure out what job we had to do that day (measure the pH, determine our location using maps and GPS UTM coordinates, determine the texture of the soil by playing with it in your hands like playdough, etc.). Before the field work started, Randy told us that there was only 3 rules for the class, in no particular order:
1. Adventure--pedalogic adventure, to be exact
2. No whining
3. Move forward--as in, don't take too much time to figure out the absolute "right" answer...just make a decision and move forward because everyone else's daily tasks always revolve around your answer being written on the chalk board. (Yes, we took 2 giant chalk boards into the field with us. They were carried in the "library" van, complete with book shelves and drawers. This soil science is serious business, man.)
We ususally knocked out two pits before lunch, and since each pit took a minimum of 2 hours (plus all the driving in between), we often didn't eat lunch until 2pm or later. I don't know what we'd have done with out all those cases of Luna bars to tide us over between meals. Lunch supplies were kept in two huge coolers, one with all the cold stuff (meat, mayo, lettuce, hummus melon--we
always had a nice, cool slice of melon with lunch) and one with all the dry goods (breads, chips, and chocolate chip cookies--the senior professor, Dr. Singer, insisted that he could not survive without cookies at lunch and dinner). We set up this little folding table on the side of the road somewhere for our stand-up, no-plate meal. We'd rinse the soil off our hands with some water from the large orange jug, then rinse the lettuce and tomatoes with water as best we could before digging in. My mother would have simply died if she'd have to eat this way--no soap to wash your hands, no way to thoroughly wash the produce, no napkins/utensils/plates, and no place to sit except on the ground. In an effort to "move forward", Randy made sure our lunches lasted no longer than 30 minutes.
After more driving and 1-2 more pits, we would pull into our next campsite around 8-9pm. Then we had to unload everything so we could get dinner started. One person was in charge of dinner each night--we had Thai curry once, Indian chickpeas with spinach another, spaghetti-and-meatballs, grilled salmon and mushrooms, burgers, Chinese food and fajitas. Since I couldn't be in charge every night (I was forced to share that responsibility...), I was usually Sous Chef. Cooking for 20 people without the benefit of electricity (or lights) can be tricky but it always worked out. We had to boil two huge pots of water for washing up afterwards, then dry the dishes as best we could with our not-so-clean-or-dry dish towels. The coffee kettle and a pot were filled with water for boiling the next morning when we'd start the whole process over again.
The night we camped at Randy's vacation cabin in MacArthur we got to use his indoor kitchen (yippee!) and I made a braided loaf of rye bread, complete with sesame seeds on top. I'd forgotten what it is like to made bread without my trusty KitchenAid mixer...it
is possible.
While I was in the kitchen kneading the bread I noticed that all the guys were gathered together shooting beer cans with a pellet gun. As soon as the bread was in the oven to rise, I joined them asking if girls were allowed, too. Only a few of the guys hit the beer can (and we were less than 100' away...) simply because they were holding the gun wrong. They were standing, without their legs apart, and were pulling the trigger until they knew it would fire. That made them shake the gun right when it fired off. Someone had to show them how it's "done." When it was finally my turn I had to have a guy named Stephan show me how to load it. He laughed at me, but I told him "sorry, I'm used to shooting
real guns."
I sat down on ground at a 45 degree to the beer cans, propped my elbows on my knees, aimed, and...missed. Randy had adjusted the sites for his "subangular blocky" head so I couldn't line them up. I tried again and--blam--I knocked that Coors Light can right off them stump. By this time some of the other girls had gathered around and wanted to try. I showed them how to sit on the ground and triangulate their arms with their knees. Some of the guys gave me sideways glances when I gave the whole explanation about sitting properly and evenly
squeezing the trigger so it fires when it fires instead of when you know it will fire (that way your muscles aren't anticipating it and you won't jerk the gun and miss the target). What do you expect from a girl who spent many childhood days "kerplinking" with her dad, who was on his college's varsity rifle team? Too bad Edward wasn't there to really show them how it's done--he can shoot even the smallest and furthest targets.
On our last night I made a marinade for the portabello mushrooms we were going to grill up as a fish-substitute for the group's vegetarians and my hands were covered with herbed oil. With no soap in site, I simply rubbed my hands in the soft soil near the campsite spiggot (
"No washing--drinking water only") and then rinsed off. It worked like a charm! My hands were spotless. Dr. Singer gave me a weird look when I started eating some chips out of my hand. I grinned and told him the soil residue on my fingers was just supplementing my mineral vitamin intake for the day. He laughed and said he wished he had a son to introduce me to.
A few of us girls decided to just relax on our day "off" at Lassen, instead of hiking to the peak. We found the book section of the tourist information office/gift shop--we all ended up buying the same 2 books and just reading for the rest of the afternoon.
I have to go to the library now for some research on the Melanic Index--the topic of my second and final paper for this class. Sigh...
