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

The Wild Life

The world is an awfully big place. But you don't realize this, really, until you start to study its components. Specifically, until you're paying thousands of dollars to study them. (Welcome to wildlife biology).

There's only one life to live that we know of, so at some point you are going to have to make a choice. There isn't enough time to study them all.

Z

The fishes. . .

The birdies. . .

Or the beasts, and that's just to start. There are further divisions from there, of course.

Do you want to spend much of your time on foot, sweatily hiking through the undergrowth and waiting for a mountain lion to rip your throat out? Would you prefer spending your time on the rivers? Or staring at blurry bird-shapes through binoculars for hours on end?

These are questions that college doesn't really teach you to raise. Nor will your classes teach you the answer. The only answer is in getting your feet on the ground, sweating in the underbrush, and squinting at bird shapes for hours on end. If you hate it, awesome, you can cross that off your list. But if you love it so much that you are hooked forever. . .

Then you're pretty much fucked. Sorry.

Forget about it!!

Because you love the fish, and the birds, and those little green things that you're trampling on. Everything has its own beauty and logic to it, all pieces to that gigantic incredible puzzle that is the world.

You have absolutely no chance of understanding even a tiny corner of it in your lifetime. But it's alright. . . you can die trying.

And this gull will sneer at you for your efforts.

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?

Mooooose! (And boys)

           Okay, I'll start off by disappointing you and saying those two things aren't related. I'm just excited because I had a moosemeat casserole with the siblings yesterday.
                                                        Moose + casserole = awesome.

www.sardinereport.com

www.simplyrecipes.com

                          +            







 Anyways, yeah. I'm writing this from the laundromat as my clothes tumble around in the dryer, just having finished my Stats homework. I'm beginning to (sickly) enjoy this sort of thing. Sitting in coffee shops, laundromats, working on assignments. In particular, I'm beginning to enjoy laundry days, despite the fact that they slowly drain my hard-earned cash, because you feel accomplished just for sitting there while a machine does the hard labor. Oh yeah.
       All right--the dudes. I never figured I'd do a blog post relating to this. But lately I am fighting my womanly guilt for not wanting to find a hand-holding partner with whom to hold hands with forever until we die (that's the way it works right?).
     I know that's entirely ridiculous, but you must admit, growing up watching Sleeping Beauty over and over doesn't exactly instill modern, progressive values in a girl. Although the societal pressures that have led to this guilt of mine is a different rant entirely.
      But the truth? The truth is I want the freedom to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, WITH whoever I want. No matter what anyone says, having a serious partner will change that. Everyone says my attitude is fine because of my age, and yet most everyone that I know (who is roughly my age) proclaims they don't want to date, and then start dating someone a week later.
    I think the answer to all this, as it has been from the start, is: cat lady. I better start buying ugly sweaters and smelling like kitty litter (despite not having a cat). It is, after all, my destiny. 

  :P