Fiera

Well, it’s been a wild week in the jungle. Felt bad about not posting all week, but on the other hand it was nice to free myself of the commitment. Now, with all things on the up and up I can afford a nice entertaining post for y’all. Just for the record, I’ll begin it off with some summarization so my experiences are not lost for all eternity (we have double negatives, would that be called a double infinite?).

With the team back on Sunday, I decided to join them on seedling mapping on Monday. A beautiful day in the forest, a trend that persisted all week. Felt great to get back out there and to eating field lunches. Left the plot with only five 10x10m plots for the girls to finish on Tuesday. I spent my Tuesday emailing and pondering various things.

Dr. Chazdon decided to have one of the Bosques project assistants help me finish up the fieldwork in Tinny’s absence. Set that up on Wednesday with Jeanette. Thursday and Friday were easily the most productive days I’ve had all summer. Besides hitting an unparalleled pace of 24 trees an hour, Bernal (the assistant working with me to finish) is a walking encyclopedia on the trees out there.

Instead of looking around for tree tags, Bernal notes the species of the next tree, looks straight up and walks right over to the tree. Do realize that this is no New England forest with the simple suite of a dozen or so species per stand. There are over 80 species represented in the 464 I’m measuring for the current plot.

At one point on Friday Bernal couldn’t find one of the trees listed for a moment. Of course the species was marked wrong and he proceeded to take a leaf down from the tree for identification by chucking big sticks up there. Later that afternoon he stopped by the office with all the good info. It’s also a very worthwhile Spanish boot camp out there every day, especially when we run into a problem.

When my first two days back in the field in two weeks were said and done, we had finished 192 trees in nine hours of work. Just above my ideal (ideal, hence, never before reached) pace of 20/hour. Also measured the tallest tree of the summer at 44m, it was a whopper. To sum up the fieldwork end of things, PG (an undergrad from BSC) (she’s actually rated PG-13) volunteered to help me out for a couple hours tomorrow. That worked out perfect because Amanda decided to cancel our outing today due to a sore throat.

Aiming to do about 60 tomorrow in 3+ hours and then have 200 remaining for two more super productive days with Bernal on Wednesday & Thursday. Dr. Chazdon gets in on Wednesday, and I’m tentatively scheduled to bounce a week from then, but plans could and are likely to change.

In other news, Karen left this morning. I now have to endure my last week and a half without someone to talk on and on endlessly about sports and other cool stuff. Also made me realize how much I want to get home and start having a classic summertime experience. Had my favorite lunch for lunch today.

I’ll try to be good and keep on posting through the next week as my excitement builds for being finished and being home. People who complain about the food they eat really rub me the wrong way. It seems to me that when you don’t have an option you ought to attempt to enjoy it; just an observation from tonight’s dinner.

I’m really excited to develop a project this fall for next summer that won’t rely on having an assistant in the field. Excited for this fall in general, excited to get back to the family, excited to return my car, ipod & cell. Ten or fewer days tomorrow, oh boy.

BP