In Search of Bats: The Underside of America

Tonight I am back from my first week of bridging--or batting? Anyway, I have a few reflections after some comic misadventures.

Dash across 4 lanes of traffic without dropping 5 things-ready, set, go!!

1. Octopus arms. As in, I need several pairs. It's incredible how juggling binoculars, GPS, camera, data sheet, and potentially a pole-extended recorder can require inhuman juggling abilities. As soon as I figure out how to hold all these things at once, surveys will go much faster.

I think we need a longer pole to reach that bridge, Captain!

2. Pulling myself together. I recheck my forms about a hundred times before moving on to the next bridge--forgetting something could range from a giant inconvenience to impossible to fix. I know this already from the fieldwork I have done before, but when it is solely my own responsibility, it gains new meaning.

Also, I have learned this: don't leave any personal items where people might happen by and find it--your entire family will assume you are dead in a ditch somewhere (this lesson brought to you The Hard Way).

I know I left the truck lying around here somewhere...

3. Soliloquy. I have already started talking to myself. And my truck, Rocinante, as if it were my noble horsey steed. I don't feel any shame about it, but I wonder what I will be like in 3 months' time. Locals are probably going to start rumors about a crazy lady who haunts bridges and has sticks and poop in her hair.

And spiders.

5. Batsssss. After surveying a few dozen bridges, of which most had bat sign (read:poop) I can pretty well expect to find a ton of signs of use, but I have very little expectation when it comes to seeing bats. I will probably pee myself when I actually find a living bat.

THEY WERE HERE JUST HOURS AGO. Yes, this is a picture of poop. I AM NOT SORRY.

6. Interstate bridges are disgusting, and so are people. That's just a fact.

I don't even care if it's true, I still hate humanity.

7. Fear. I am afraid of failure, still. I am less afraid that the project will be physically impossible, but I am afraid of myself being incapable or insufficient.  Of course, I guess nothing is sure in life, on that note. But there are so many people who have supported me in this, I am terrified of failure. Perhaps abject terror will make me work harder. Who knows?

Step into my office...

So there you are--my first thoughts and some second ones. Back to batting tomorrow!

I remain--Batgirl

Into the Mines!

         The Cave Club has taken me to some interesting places, but this one was truly unique. It was a cave that has not been open to the public in a decade, and getting inside is a feat worthy of Indiana Jones.

We have found the den of the redneck zombies!

     This cave boasted the sketchiest entrance I have ever encountered. The actual cave is accessible only through an old mine adit sunk in the side of a mountain. To get there, we were escorted up the steep, crumbling road on UTVs (while alarming, I might be spoiled for hiking to caves now). When the old mining road became impassable, we walked the remaining few hundred feet to the gate.

With drawings of horrible death like that, who could resist?

 The first group waited outside while the rest of the kids could be shuttled up. It began to rain, driving us to wait inside the entry chamber (into the mines!!) despite the potential zombie attack.

We were warned that the adit was the most dangerous part of our journey, but we would be fine as long as we didn't touch the walls and potentially collapse them, or breathe too much of the funky fungus. Well if that's all...

I SAID NO BREATHING.

We hustled through the tunnel, only sacrificing one or two high school students to appease the fungus. One by one we climbed a thin, slippery metal ladder and poked our heads up into the actual cave. It was time to get to work surveying, though it became apparent that this was going to be a solid task.

The job of the cave club was to catalog the formations within the cave and assess their damage by humans trampling or touching them. The first few rooms we assessed were totally wrecked, and by the time we were done with them, our clothing was too.

All that remains of the last cave photographer...

Everything was coated in several inches of thick, sucking mud. If I stood in one spot to write down notes for too long, my boots threatened to become permanent fixtures. Movement was slow and awkward. My partner and I spent a solid five hours surveying speleothems in four main upper rooms. There were some interesting--and even some fantastic--formations, but overall it wasn't extensively decorated (at least, anymore).

I can't tell if they're giving me the peace sign or flipping me off.

Afternoon had slipped into evening, although I was in a cave trance and didn't think more than an hour or two had gone by. We had one final large hall to survey, and it was the most difficult. The path down was guarded by a narrow crawl lined with perfectly breakable stalactites. I slithered down on my back, desperately avoiding the stalactites hovering centimeters above my face. It was like playing a grueling game of Operation with your whole body.

Four of us finally emerged on the other side, guiding each other through with helpful shouts of "Keep your butt down!" The rest of the cave club party started back out of the cave. For us, just a quick survey to do then--

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven--wait, let me start over--

Or maybe not.

It was some of the most intense cave decoration I've personally seen. My survey notes fizzled into "thousands of stalactites & helictites, size range. . . oh crap" or something similar. I tried to take pictures, but I knew even then that none of them could convey the awe of the towering speleothems and intricate curling helictites that I was seeing. My teenage companions were similarly stunned, although my partner steadfastly attempted to continue recording estimates of what she was seeing. The fearless club leader pressed on ahead to keep us moving, where surely we would have stood frozen for a long time.

There was more cave to see--one more room that would have had impeccable formations, and was supposedly even better than this hall. But our eyes were worn out by the beauty, and were still reeling from our notetaking attempt. We couldn't do it justice today, and anything we did would just impact the cave further. Our leader called it a day, and we began the reverse journey.

So we leaped into an old mining cart and--oh wait, that's Indiana Jones again...

The door sealed shut behind us, closing off the cave once again to the world. It exists in silence except for the drip of water, slowly growing its garden of wonders. 

People should see it again someday--but how they see it needs to be managed (which is where the Club comes in). In the meantime, we have the pictures, we left plenty of muddy footprints, and we killed some serious cave time.

--The Cave Troll

 

Get it.

I definitely should not even be taking the time to blog right now, but I suppose I will count it as "down time." It has been one of the nuttiest final exam weeks I have ever had, and I don't even have any sit-down, fill-in-the-blank finals.

However, I have real-life items that need accomplishing, which is better in some ways and worse in others. I am more motivated to complete projects that aren't just busywork, but failure means more than just a grade, too.

The potential-for-failure list included my senior thesis committee meeting on Monday. As I might have imagined, it involved sitting down with 4 established Phds who grilled me for 1.5 hours about my intended research. It was both terrifying beyond all reason, and fantastic to be sitting down discussing research and being taken seriously by such an admirable group of professionals.

Today, I lobbied as part of a student group (we call ourselves SLUG) for expanding garden space on campus. We pitched our food garden idea to the head of the university dining service--a very intelligent character who appears to pull no punches when it comes to his opinion. Our group evidently withstood his scrutiny, he declared his support for the project, aaaand. . . we still have lots of work to do, and at the very best outlook, a year before any ground is broken on such a garden.

But you know what? I find myself amazed that as a junior undergraduate at the University, I actually do have some power and voice. It is easy to get lost in this institution of ours, to feel like a cow being run through a feedlot until it's your turn to. . . well, join the workforce I guess (that metaphor didn't pan out.)

I think it would have been easy to keep my head down and quietly do my time here. But everywhere I look, I see students who are doing more than that (and much more than me). Attending the University of Montana has changed me considerably--why shouldn't I make a tiny mark on it?

Enough ponderings I suppose--back to slogging through! (The cow pies. Because. . . never mind).

-Batgirl

The sun will come out, tomooooorrroooooowwww!! Eh, whatever.

Urban Wetland

          After studying wildlife for a few seasons, I am still surprised to find that they aren't all just contained by some wilderness somewhere. There are quite a few that live in your own backyard. I routinely see more wildlife walking to class than I typically do on hikes in the wilderness (which I realize has more to do with how habituated they are, but still). 

        Despite having lived at my current place for 9 months, I recently stumbled upon a small wetland near my house for the first time. It is smack in the middle of developed residential neighborhoods, so I was not expecting much from a little duckpond.

      Bancroft Pond is small, but still bigger than I expected. Despite the path running through it, the area is obviously designed for waterfowl rather than people. In the middle of the city, it was surprising and lovely.

Ladiiiies?

      The redwing blackbirds were in an uproar, the males following the females and desperately trying to attract their attention. They obviously gave no craps about humans watching their love affairs. I sat by the pond, amused to watch their antics, when a little family popped out.

Mama eyeballing me despite my stealthy disguise.

I was reminded very much of my time in Alaska. I know it's just a Canada goose, but it is a magical thing anyway. Here in the middle of human residences, a wild little family is also eking out a living.

     On my next visit (in which I failed to bring a camera), a great blue heron peeked out from behind the reeds, and an American Coot swam around pretending it was a duck.

     Fortunately for humans, life is almost unstoppable. There are still a lot of amazing things out there worth protecting.