My Last Field Season

My first field season was when I was turned loose to poke around outdoors when I was about 3 years old, so I suspect that my last field season will be when I die. However, this is my final formal field season as an academic and my “field work” will mostly involve cleaning up the last of the leftover research equipment from the storeroom at the Barrier Lake Field Station in the Kananaskis Valley of the Canadian Rockies in southwestern Alberta. I didn't have a research crew on site in 2012, but it takes a long time to throw out many years worth of discarded equipment. So far the earliest “archeological treasure” is a storage box belonging to Les who graduated in 1979. Les didn't even work at the Barrier Lake Field Station and I have no idea how his box got there. While reflecting on field research over five decades, it is easy to conjure up lists of publications, research grants, and graduate students, but the logistics of working in the field keep coming to mind. The recollections of former graduate students similarly focus on stories about accommodations and transportation. Once upon a time field studies were done under much more rustic conditions than today. There were very few field stations and people working in the bush just stayed in the bush. In my case, my first formal field seasons were during my M.Sc. program at UBC under the supervision of J. Mary Taylor in 1966–1968. Her very first graduate student, I studied red squirrels on Vancouver Island and in the interior of BC. My transportation, accommodation, and field lab consisted of a Volkswagen Beetle. Anyone familiar with the Beetle might wonder how accommodation and a lab might fit, but space can be freed up if the passenger and back seats are removed and replaced with a plywood floor cut to fit. That provides enough space to put a sleeping bag length-ways on the passenger side, with room behind the driver's seat for a one-burner Optimus stove and a cooler for food. Research equipment was also rustic, consisting of a shotgun and 0.22-caliber rifle for collecting specimens and a jug of formaldehyde in the trunk for preserving samples until I got back to campus to process them (Fig. 1). Field-work conditions improved considerably when I started my Ph.D. research on pikas with Fred Zwickel at the University of Alberta (U of A) in 1968. At the time, the U of A had money. They had a university fleet of vehicles and every year I could sign out a new pick-up truck, at no cost to me, complete with a credit card for gas. However, they were basic two-wheel drive trucks and tended to get stuck in mud and slide off the road (Fig. 2). When things got really bad, I used my Volkswagen Beetle because it had relatively big wheels with the engine in the back for ballast. It could be driven anywhere. Typically, the pick-up truck was no longer “new” when returned at the end of the summer, but there was always another one available the next year. Accommodation was potentially better too. The Gorge Creek Biological Station (now R. B. Miller Station) had rustic but permanent bunk houses and a kitchen cabin, hydro, and running water but, unfortunately, we were not permitted to stay there because the station had a “no-wives” policy. There had been problems with wives in the past. With husbands in the field all day wives in camp were bored and tended to squabble among themselves, causing tensions among the other residents of the station. The station was off-limits to us, but we could still visit for a hot shower and store equipment there. Our real accommodation was a summer tent site west of Gibraltar Mountain, near the headwaters of the Sheep River. Our camp had a tent with a wooden floor and a Mighty Midget wood stove with a three-inch stove pipe for heat. We had a storage tent and a covered kitchen area for cooking on a Coleman stove. We also had a garbage can in the ground as a “refrigerator” for fresh food, but our water came from the river and the bathroom was a hole in the ground (Figs. 3, 4). Moving to the University of Western Ontario in London in 1971, research could only be done locally because my first research grant was only $2,000 (about $11,000 today) and graduate students had to live at home. By the mid-1970s, we had sufficient funds to work elsewhere and, from then on, research was done at field stations. The first external locations in the 1970s included the AECL Nuclear Research Station at Pinawa, Manitoba, where they had an environmental monitoring program and dormitory rooms for visiting scientists. The second location was at Heart Lake, NWT, where Bill Fuller had permanent buildings for his boreal forest studies on small mammals. Everybody at the U of A had a private research station in those days. Finally, we set up shop at the University of Calgary (U of C) Field Station at Kananaskis where dorm rooms, duplexes, and three bedroom trailers were available, along with a permanent kitchen and kitchen staff. Duncan was the first to work at Kananaskis in 1978 and he was able to hire a summer assistant, lease a vehicle for the summer, stay in the dorm, and eat in the dining room because he had a substantial research grant from the Canadian Sportsman Show. His grant was for only 2 years and the Sportsman Show research program was canceled in favor of more boat shows, never to return. Things got tighter for Duncan after that and he had to buy his own truck. Every year since, the Kananaskis research crew has stayed in rental accommodation where they did their own cooking. For most years, one of the trailers served as Mousecrew Headquarters. There was hydro and running water (heat, fridge, stove, and bathroom), but no phone, no TV, and sparse radio reception. Even after the invention of cell phones, there was no cell phone reception. The trailers were condemned as unfit for human habitation in 2008, after which a two-bedroom duplex served that same purpose. Invading mice, squirrels, and woodrats were always a problem in the trailer, and the last time I looked the woodrats had made it their personal turf, complete with piles of droppings. Woodrat studies could be done on-site today, instead of hiking up to bluffs in the dark. Daily life consisted of checking live-traps at daybreak, time in the afternoon and weekends for lab work and recreational activities, and setting live-traps at sunset. Recreational activities were in-house. Some of us mousers thought the trailer needed a bit more curb appeal. I can't remember who actually ponied up the cash, but we were soon in possession of a fine pair of plastic pink flamingos from the Canmore Canadian Tire Store. These enjoyed a brief tenure outside the front of the trailer, where they clearly were the envy of the entire station. Sadly, this envy brought out the baser instincts among the less-evolved denizens (rumour has it, the birders from the University of Calgary), who staged a brazen abduction of the female of the pair. We were bereft and distraught. We posted LOST notices throughout the camp—“Have You Seen Me?” notices even appeared on the milk cartons in the cafeteria, but to no avail. Soon after, we started receiving mysterious, anonymous envelopes in the mail (remember this was when snail mail still ruled the world) with photographs of our beloved Bernice in various locations around Canmore apparently “enjoying her freedom”—hanging out at the top of Barrier Mountain; posing in the parking lots of various seedy drinking establishments, etc. We never saw her again. Her mate, Leroy pined away, developed a drinking problem and eventually disappeared (we think into a field equipment storage locker behind some mousetraps). I'd like to believe she went on to live a happy life, but it's hard to have closure over an event like this. Godspeed, Bernice, wherever you are (Figs. 5, 6). Having research vehicles at Kananaskis was always an important part of any field season because trapping sites were mostly remote. In the early days, there was a lot of freedom as to where study sites could be located and when they could be accessed, but vehicle availability severely restricted our work. Funds from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC) could not be used to purchase vehicles on the philosophy that such vehicles might be used for personal travel. That meant that students had to own their own vehicles to work there. Many students owned vehicles in those days, mostly clunkers, but sound enough to be driven from Ontario to Alberta in the spring, access study sites all summer, and return to Ontario in the fall. And students knew how to fix and maintain them because they were personal vehicles. Still, some didn't survive the summer. Jim knew how to keep a vehicle operational, but even he couldn't do miracles. Val remembers riding in his car when the floor boards were so rusted out that there was nowhere to plant her feet. His car died in the summer of 1982 and even he, being mechanically inclined, couldn't fix it. We towed it to the Canmore dump where he rescued all the parts worth salvaging. I have no idea how he got the spare parts back to Ontario (Fig. 7). Other personal research vehicles met sad fates without even being on site. Graham had his own ratmobile on site in 1985 and it gave him a lot of trouble, including a leaky radiator that required a 5 gallon can of water for outgoing trips to study sites so the radiator had enough coolant for the return trip. Sometimes it was a close call (Fig. 8). The next year Graham decided to give his vehicle a rest for the summer so he could get a trip to the Maritimes out of it before moving home overseas. He left it in the parking lot of his apartment block for the summer and used our “regular” vehicles for his research in Alberta. Unfortunately, folks in his apartment block in London assumed his car was abandoned and stripped it of all useable parts before his return in September. I recall taking him to Denzel, my used car salesman at the time. Graham spotted one with a list price of $2,500.00. Denzel asked him how much money he had, maybe $2,300.00. As I recall, Denzel gave it to him for $2,000.00. There is value added in knowing mechanics and used car salesmen and I trusted them over new car salesmen every time. Graham made his holiday trip to the Maritimes safely in his newly purchased clunker. Over time, fewer and fewer students could afford their own vehicles, but the cost of buying air fares to Alberta and leasing vehicles for the summer would have killed whatever salary and food budget I could provide for the summer. To alleviate the problem, I personally bought a used nine-passenger van from Denzel, and paid it off by charging mileage to my research grant (claiming mileage was OK with NSERC). Every spring we packed up the van and drove to Alberta. By alternating drivers the trip could be done with two to three nights on the road, depending on head-winds or tail-winds on the prairies. It was a bonding experience for all involved. I participated in those drives for several years until we had a grant large enough for me to send the students off on the road trip, after which I would fly out to meet them upon their arrival (Figs. 9, 10). In the late 1980s, NSERC decided that a research vehicle was a valid piece of field research equipment, opening the chance to apply for one through an equipment grant. It took me four tries to receive funds for our first NSERC vehicle, and only after I tried to meet every single one of their criteria. Eventually I met all their preferred criteria (made in Canada, economical, to be used in Canada, no bells and whistles) and we got our very first research-funded vehicle. It was a basic Jeep Cherokee with enough space for four passengers and some storage, but hardly suitable as a field vehicle. It lasted only a few years. After a while, most students did not own personal vehicles and many who had never owned a vehicle had never maintained one. Some had never driven more than a few hundred km on any trip and the crew always had someone who had never driven on a gravel road. From the early 1990s, we always two mousecrew vehicles, a primary one being relatively new and sound and the secondary one bought used. Secondary vehicles were often nicknamed “Boogermobiles” so, after the first (Booger I), we had many others. Secondary vehicles especially required frequent maintenance and, prior to spring departure to Alberta, I would have all vehicles fully serviced by Bill, my mechanic at the time, with instructions to fix anything that might break down during 4 months of abuse. Every spring Bill would do a thorough tune-up for the season, often a $1,000.00 investment per vehicle to make sure everything was OK. I then instructed new members of the crew about how to keep an eye on things. “Here's how you check tire pressure, here's the spare tire, here's the window-washer fluid tank, here's the radiator tank, here's the oil dipstick,” etc. Unfortunately, some students thought that car maintenance involved taking it through a car wash and all of this was beyond their comprehension, which lead to some hilarious (but potentially fatal!) situations. This required some formal rules for drivers, as indicated by this late-era vehicle-use policy: These instructions were stored in every vehicle, along with insurance and ownership papers. The instructions still look clear to me, but were apparently not clear enough for everybody. This was just a note of warning to encourage students to drive safely and avoid paying fines. After all, an extra night on the road was covered by the summer budget, right? I rarely heard about traffic offenses but I think they occurred regularly. I recall one return trip from Kananaskis in the Mousevan with a summer assistant behind the wheel in northern Ontario. She was driving well over the speed limit entering Dryden and got a We for in and then she got another from the same on the out of That cost her a few I this for sure because I was to in the back seat and the me Many students remember out of their mousecrew around This was on the idea that a is a lot than a vehicle. There were many such but the one is from when we had a in by the at the University of We had a to the trip from Kananaskis to and When the was a car with seats and everything and, it had well over km on the when we bought it in the it was in In was in of the and was her summer day early in the summer, drove back to the field station and the car I asked if anything and she It was for an oil so I took it into them it had been a I came back an and they me the car was a The entire had been really They asked if we had anything and just driven it the was my to up with any that could this. I was able to drive it back to the field station and a look at it for and sure the oil had a in it the of a and the was all to When came back that day she up and that she a have her being a bit of a and this was in the of the road and from a long she the and it around the car for a until it got stuck and she just it for a After they got out and took a look at the at which a came by and them the It is a that they got the car back to the field station. mechanic in Canmore would fix the car because there were no oil available for a vehicle of that in Alberta. one in it and I replaced it most on mechanic but before we could get the the of the road the trailer and the so we had to the car the for most of the field in the summer, the was and we got the and the car made the trip back the The lasted another two field In the spring of our mechanics to work on it because it would cost to fix and they couldn't it would last the summer. So they us a for I think I did a bit of to the OK but have to the for a call the As it had the Jeep off and it was He he was driving only but one he got the and the insurance paid enough for a for the next season (Fig. Sometimes students and all about the policy. was driving home with the mousecrew in when I got a phone call from west of a With of a coming through the I asked if was OK. I asked if the car could be I her to get a and the when she got When she returned to campus she that the at her and to a I went to the parking lot to check it out for It had a other The of driving out west was as with the you a the car would up and down for an of time. I always thought that this was to the of the and but it would stay with you so that when you for the night on the you would still be even when The part about this was when we got back to we were by mechanic that the car was not actually to the at the back and had it not been for the of the field equipment, the back end have spring, a new graduate and a new assistant recall the or the were driving west on the The vehicle had a tune-up and four new prior to departure and I gave them the maintenance in northern Ontario they decided that the looked so they an air and the up and They didn't check the pressure, but it was over when is four were when they in Alberta and the trip have like they were driving on They were to make it all the another I had a new who drove a to Alberta and was a field After km to get there and another 3 months of driving around the she had driven safely for about I in early to how things were and asked about the last oil on the So I to her about oil and and her out to check it. She came back and that everything was OK because there was no oil on the That or near summer for the be the year of about every time we drove on a gravel road we would get a After being in a of we two spare on for all of our on our back from a to for and we decided to drive back than the I can't remember the there was a closure on the or maybe we to check on and thought it would be more We the of but because we were well at and because we had two on we that the the were the of three that day it turned out the were In the NSERC the rules for equipment and the equipment budget for the and and for vehicles were no longer in with for lab equipment, funds for vehicles For decades, our two research vehicles were the only in the parking lot during of a the was paying insurance on vehicles, from to big every owned a truck they really needed one or the are NSERC canceled last and of those trucks will be replaced NSERC we had a with research vehicles, with access to them but over the years. And the last two The and the in the parking lot last summer so I decided to they were and by the university we had to them through The university mechanics them unfit to drive and they went to the sure we could have another of field seasons out of So After all, I still have research and could a more field The is After so many years in the our accommodation has never down and there have been no driving I think it's a idea to with no or I can poke around outdoors any time I

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