In Search of Bats: Part II

It's hard to believe, but it has been a MONTH of bridge surveys. I don't know when a month has ever gone by faster.

After a month, the hardest thing about these surveys aren't the day-to-day mechanics of fieldwork, but figuring out what it means, and what sort of questions I should be investigating. I am more efficient in my surveys; I have a system, and I know what I'm looking for. I have volunteer assistants who both help me complete the surveys and keep me from going entirely crazy on my own.

My previous assistants weren't particularly good with pens.

So, what do bridge surveys really look like on the ground, and without romantic notions?

  

 Bridges come in two varieties: too big to survey, or too small. They are hundreds of feet in the air, or six inches from the surface of a gushing stream. They all look about the same from the little colored square on the GPS, so you never really know what to expect until you drive up (or sometimes, hike up) on it. They are also everywhere. You do not even realize how many bridges you drive over in a day, and probably don't care, but I have learned to care.

 I can tell when I'm driving over a bridge because I get this terrible feeling, a disturbance in the force, telling me I just missed a bridge and I've got to fight my way back to it. I am supposed to survey every bridge I encounter (let me say again, EVERY BRIDGE). Any bridge that I miss could potentially be the one to house a whole colony of bats, and I can't bear to skip even the meanest of bridges.

Start swimmin!

Once under the bridge, I have to check every crevice that could possibly house a bat. Some bridges are easy--a blank slab on the bottom, nothing more--but others have a million tiny hiding places. From the few bats I've encountered so far, I have learned the number one rule of bridge searching, Do Not Make Assumptions. Just because the research says a bat won't be in a 1-inch deep crevice 3 feet off the ground, doesn't mean you won't find one there (apparently).

Don't Make Assumptions means that I need to crawl under the nastiest, cobwebbiest bridges you can find, and stick my face directly into spiders that shouldn't exist outside a horror movie.

I've gotten soaking wet, spit cobwebs out by the dozens, rolled around in poop, fallen off precariously piled rocks, and nearly toppled into torrents of water. My volunteers have similar stories. Anyone who says this is not proper field work should go crawl in an irrigation ditch sometime and then decide. However, the bats I have found melted my heart and made me love them all over again, and I'd survey a thousand bridges for the chance to get up close with them as I have (there are adorable pictures, guys).

My workplace is also beautiful. I am unimaginably lucky to be doing this sort of work in the gorgeous Western Montana, a place that I have been taking for granted. I can camp out by beautiful mountain streams with my volunteer partner, wake up and catch the sun rising over our first bridge. I am content out in the woods, taking an evening run or reading around the fire once the work is all done. The field season is flying by, and while it can be occasionally tempting to wish it was over and all the hard decisions were already made, I try to remember to enjoy it too.

Days like these do not come around often. I have the freedom, and the company of a small but good crew, to make the most of it.

Til next time

-Batwoman

On a Good Day

Two weeks out from the finish of spring semester, I've been thinking about how fast college really goes. It seems like only a few months ago I was a timid freshman tiptoeing around campus, clutching my lanyard and school ID.

Two years ago, I wandered around the beautiful UM campus and realized that I wanted nothing more than to have friends to play Frisbee with on the lawn, or take silly trips on the weekends. I ached to have adventures, but they didn't mean much without people to share them.

Sunset over Fish Creek

Somehow in this time, I have managed to stumble into some truly wonderful, quirky people, whose company I do not deserve in the least. People who didn't mind braving rainy, cold, spring conditions to go camping with me, cracking jokes even when we couldn't get to our campsite because the road was snowed in.

We found a new site that was perfect anyway: along the banks of the gorgeous Fish Creek, among blooming trillium and the drumming ruffed grouse.

Use your imagination for the grouse.

Before dinner, eight of us hiked a nearby ridge to gain views of the valley. We stopped every few yards to ahhh over some new view, rock or flower. Our generation gets accused of not being in touch with the outdoors or nature, but none of us were there for any reason except that we wanted to be.

Absolute torture.

That evening, we cooked an enormous amount of food that even ten of us couldn't eat. I clumsily started a fire, and we hung out and played games in the firelight, staying miraculously dry from rain. I was foolishly happy the whole time. Hanging out with some good friends in the outdoors is pretty much all I have ever wanted from life.

Plus cool wildflowers!

I'm probably kind of simple, that way.

Riding Solo

The older I get, the more often I seem to run into a particular barrier with my adventuring. Occasional day trips are one thing, but planning multi-day, complicated trips is quite another. I'm pretty sure there must be a mathematical equation somewhere that calculates the percentage of difficulty as multiplied by number of people coming on the trip.

And it looks something like this.

That's right--14 people is 20,000%. Actually, that doesn't sound too far off. . .

Anyway, this leads me to something I've been pondering. When it comes to getting out and doing things, I am a social outdoorswoman--I like to have company. However, I greatly prefer getting out and doing something fun by myself than sitting home bored.

That's my Bessie!

I first began to run into this problem with my motorcycling. I can rarely find anyone else to take trips with; therefore I spent a lot of time riding alone last summer. I was fine with it, although my mother probably gained a few new stress lines. When I broke down (once!) I was reliant on total strangers to help me out.

I was assisted by some amazing people in getting her running again, at least enough to limp home.If I had ridden with a partner, at the very least they could have given me a lift somewhere when I broke down, so of course, I was vulnerable riding alone (not to mention safety in numbers/visibility). I know these risks, and have decided to continue riding solo anyway.

Now, as I am slowly becoming a more experienced hiker, I am confronted by the same decision. Where do I draw the line with solo adventures?

I would love to say that my being a young woman has nothing to do with it--and it doesn't very often, but it does make me pause to think on occasion. On a recent camping trip with friends, some random strangers joined our group, got drunk and rowdy and hit on me pretty hard. I was okay with my friends there, but it was an interesting reminder that even out in the woods where you don't expect to run into people, you certainly can.

And then you can always push them into fires!

But no, my mind is less dominated by fears of hillbillies hiding behind trees, and more of twisting an ankle, facing off with a mountain lion/bear, or simply getting lost and facing exposure (most likely option). 

People like Aron Ralston are widely criticized--after the fact at least--for going out alone on their trips. But if they chose not to go alone, and waited for companions to be free to join them, they probably wouldn't be having those adventures at all. Ralston should have left a note then, they say, but I ask you, who would have been able to free him even if they had found him? One way or another that arm was coming off.

They're hungry for your arms. . .

And yet, if I backpack in the wilderness alone, even after informing friends and family (select ones anyway) if something goes wrong, I would be another Aron. Labeled an idiot, maybe even deserving of what I get.

It is a balance of risk versus reward. Is it worth it?

I know my decision about my motorcycle already. But as I tackle bigger things, I do have to remind myself to ask, where do I draw the line?

Have more life in your years than years in your life. . .

. . . is my new life motto!
      Okay, so I've been away a while. Make that a really long while, a whole summer's worth, and boy does life look different from the other side.

It looks. . . higher. . .

       This summer undeniably was a life-changer. Working on the grizzly bear research project is one of the hardest things I've ever done, and yet so valuable. I know what I want my life to be about now. And that's getting the hell out there and just LIVING it. For instance, skydiving is something I always dreamed about and said I'd do growing up, but never thought I'd actually do it.

Walk of triumph

The summer was certainly an experience. I got lost in the woods for hours, every inch of me beaten, bug bitten and bruised from hiking through the underbrush. I shivered at night in my tent, got soaking wet all day long in the springtime, and sweated buckets in the hazy heat of midsummer. I hiked hundreds of miles of beautiful trail, and bushwhacked through territory no human would ever want to go. I went on road trips with people I'd just met, partied with crewmembers, and floated the Clark Fork for the first time.

         It was the first time in my life I've been truly living on my own. And I loved it.
        How can I be afraid of anything in life now, when I've been hurtled out of a plane at 9,000 feet in the air?

       One day you will. . . and I'm beginning to be able to say that I am.
                                       
                        

Cakes and Campouts

Operation dormcake went off. I won't say smoothly. But it did go off. On the other hand, I went to a campout party last night that was ridiculously awesome and hilarious. I hope it becomes a tradition with my friends and me.

     I spent all day agonizing over my attempt to make two cakes, completely fumbled with one cake and ended up with only one to show for it. And it did NOT turn out the way it was supposed to, but it ended up like this.
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Yes, it's sitting on a pine-needle encrusted picnic table. And I must say it was delicious. Everyone said that you couldn't tell at all that it was gluten and dairy free, so it was just universally good.

So. . . in the end it matters more that it's tasty than beautiful (which it was not), and much more important that it was a cake my gluten-and-dairy-free friend could actually have. She figured she had to give up on birthday cakes, so my mission was to prove she could have a normal, lovely cake just like anyone else. And she did, so I will call it a success.

Just like the campout! Because no one else is crazy enough to camp by a lake this early in spring, we had the campground to ourselves and didn't even pay a fee for it. 'Course there was no running water or trash either, but, it was worth the price!

 Once it got dark four of us succumbed to that wild, youthful impulse to go jump in the lake while it was so cold we could see our breaths, and we did. Then we ran back to the campfire and dried off around it, laughing our asses off.

It was a chilly night, to be perfectly honest, and I might've frozen my toes off just a little. But we were young and impulsive and free, and even though I may have pneumonia now, you know what? It was very much needed.

Practically invites a swim. The ducks are doing it.