Esker Runner, Lake Jumper

August 17
T-4 days left in the field.

I didn't exactly go out into the field yesterday, due to a tailbone injury and a very ungraceful fall down the stairs to the cookhouse on the way to the helicopter. I spent the whole day on my back to make sure nothing got strained, just to be safe. I think my back hurt more from laying on my crappy bed all day than from the initial injury.

A plane was supposed to show up yesterday afternoon carrying the drillers, but apparently they didn't show up on time so the plane was 5 hours late. This was not so good for Carolyn, who intended to leave on the flight to catch her 7am plane back to Halifax for school. It showed up eventually, and now camp is a much more crowded and potentially interesting place. The drillers kind of remind me of people in High Prairie- a little less academic and a little more blue-collar- kind of refreshing to be honest.

Sometimes I feel a little out of my element with all the PhD and MSc folks kicking around, though they do like my farm stories. It's funny that I come across as having a rather mysterious background, just being a farm girl. The majority of folks out here are from Vancouver or somewhere urban in BC, since that is where the company Aurora is contracted to is based out of. I tell them about rodeos and cutting hay and they all think it's really exotic or something. Who knew I was exotic?

Today I went for a run to try and stretch out my back, along an esker that runs north of camp. For those who don't know, an esker is a long snaking hill that is created as gravel and sediment are deposited by a retreating glacier. As the ice melts this trail of rocks and dirt is left behind that can stretch for many kilometers. It is probably the least trecherous terrain on the tundra, if one wants to get somewhere quickly. The lowlands are covered in humocky bumps from frost boils and frost heave and knee-high shrubs called dwarf birch, not to mention swamps and lakes.

It was really fun running on the esker- it felt like an old abandoned road or something, and I was constantly dodging rocks and having to cross streams and running uphill in gravel. True cross-country running to say the least- it was a very arctic experience. After the run a bunch of us (in other words, the more crazy folks in camp), jumped in the lake, despite the 12 degree temperature and mid-level wind. Shortest swim of my life! It was a good day.

-A.