A Day Away - Part II

The last post I wrote was about escaping from my life as a wedding planner. Today, I got to escape my desk job. I love my job. It's the greatest thing ever and I work with some amazing people. But the downside is that I spend most of my time sitting behind a desk. I suppose it's hard to make maps any other way, but to be honest, I never thought I'd end up sitting behind a computer screen all day long. Most anyone who really knows me knows that I can't sit still for any extended period of time. I just have too much energy itching to get out and something about the din of an air conditioner and the artificial brightness of florescent lighting just makes me scream for some outdoor relief come closing time.

Lucky for me, at times my job does afford me the opportunity to get outside. Some of our research projects in the past have required collecting field data - information about the conditions at a particular study area. As a map maker (I could get technical on you but I'll leave it at this) it's my job to bring along a GPS unit in order to precisely identify the location where field data is collected. Later, I'll bring that data into a mapping program (this is where the computer and the desk come in) and make pretty maps of where we went and what we found. Beyond just mapping the location of objects/places/things, it's possible to use the software to do very sophisticated analysis of the objects/places/things to better understand their geographic distribution, compare populations/trends and make predictions, etc, etc, etc. So today was one of those lucky days where I got to get out of the office to actually map something in the real world!

A colleague of mine and happy ecologist, Nels, was tasked to inventory the population of a rare plant, Limosella subulata in the lower Eightmile River. L. subulata had been spotted in this area in previous years so Nels needed to go back and look for the plant to be sure it was still around. He asked me to tag along to collect GPS data at any location where we found the plant. So we took the canoe and headed to Lyme (yes, the same Lyme that the tick originated from) to get started. The Eightmile River is a gem. It's federally recognized as a wild and scenic river - not an easy standard to achieve. And the houses along this stretch are just amazing. One of them could quite easily be our dream house, see the picture below. It turns out we didn't find any L. subulata, but we sure did see a lot of other beautiful flowers and even some wildlife as well. Check out the pictures below. Nels thinks that due to the wet and relatively cool (until now!) summer, the plants may be getting a late start. This just means we'll have to go out again - yay!

our ride and the view down the river

"hey, this is one of our wedding colors!" and my dream house on the river

At times Nels looks a little like a mad scientist - here he is pointing out the dead Phragmites australis and mating dragonflies

These are some pictures from a few summers ago when we spent four months sampling plants in a salt marsh - four desk free months!

SP and I collecting data at Ragged Rock Creek Marsh and me identifying Typha angustifolia (cattail)

Me and a praying mantis and the whole group - me, SP, Bill and Nels