Underwater Panther*

So... there's moderate interest in how wetland type is determine by soil type. That's what y'all are here for, right? Ecological ephemera?

There's a fee for destroying wetlands and tributaries to navigable waters in this great country. A large fee. It's enforced by the Army Corps of Engineers- who might be shaky on maintaining levees, but is really... dedicated to managing our water and wetland resources. (Seriously seriously dedicated. Ever since the Clean Water Act was passed, they've been slowly expanding their purview. The Supreme Court has given them jurisdiction over pretty much anything wet expect vernal pools- and they responded by quietly explaining to developers that destruction of vernal pools will lead to court case that will be appealed all the way to the highest court.)

Sometimes, one can't avoid destroying wetlands. Sometimes one is increasing the volume of the state's largest reservoir by 40%, and one can afford to pay for a little mitigation. Then one maps all the sweet ephemeral streams and seep springs in the flood zone- and pays for their destruction. Dearly.

One of the things noted in wetland mapping is soil type- so one has a great bloody soils map that corresponds with the eternal shoreline. When the soil is cracked shale bedrock, the water seeps out of the cracks, forming springs and seeps, not drying out, supporting actual wetland vegetation. When it's granite, the water forms much cheaper intermittent and ephemeral streams. When it's limestone, there are meanders and oxbows and soggy places where someone once wandered through with their bulldozer, etching effigy mounds.*

So yes- same rainfall, similar topography, widely different wetland types. Which means we have to sample all of them.

*This is my actual experience with limestone- I think it was heavily mined and also easy to cut roads through. In addition, effigy mounds are awesome- the title is the new name for the Alligator Mound.

BORING

I've been having trouble thinking of something to post- something besides "I looked for some snails" or "wetland type is highly dependent on soil type". I thought I'd do one of those "what I was doing on the hour" posts as filler. Because I'm that interesting.

6AM Wake up, reassure myself that I did not sleep through my alarm. Return to sleep.

7AM Waiting for kettle to boil. Fixing rain pants with duck tape.

8AM Rocking out to Somali hip hop in the truck.

9AM Still listening to K'naan- Somali hip hop is surprisingly straight edge. Good Muslims don't drink or sleep around, and people in gangs get murdered by pirates.

10AM On a boat, moving my stuff so it doesn't get wet.

11AM Lost somewhere near the lake. Probably.

12PM Still lost.

1PM Eating lunch. Gromph nomph nomph.

2PM Actual productive work.

3PM Actual productive work. Trying to keep up with my significantly fitter co-worker. Failing.

4PM Aha, the lake has become somewhat rougher than it was this morning. Also our boat is basically a wind sock. Fun times! All the things I own are soaked.

5PM Singing along to K'naan.

6PM Watching Doraleous and Associates. Not for Amys.

7PM Dinner.

8PM Prolonged argument with E about the iPad. Useless piece of consumer garbage, or brilliant innovation that will save the print industry? Also, which of us is debating like a little bitch?

9PM Captain Tightpants. Fire. Kitties. Cs.

10PM Bed. Probably.

I have lots of Facebook friends, sure- but like a dozen of them are local farms and farmer's markets.

I should look up my other Ex Boyfriends.

I heard from an ex the other day. Apparently he's building a yurt out of reeds and canvas. He's couch and tent surfing, and he thinks a yurt will make things easier. He's also looking for someone to care for between three and eight rabbits this summer while he's in Belize. He will be taking the yurt to Belize. He does have the rabbits right now, during the surfing. He does not have a car. He also still has a fourteen foot wooden kayak. And he's carving and learning to play traditional Egyptian flutes.

Worst. Houseguest. Ever.

It is important to know the difference between a snail's pace, and snail pace. Snail pace is 10 acres an hour- which is freaking fast. When your work leader tells you to remember you'll be working at a snail pace, make certain of the details.

Salamanders look like chibi lizards.

That is all.

After a week of finding neither salamanders nor any snail that is not a garden snail, I found one of the rare salamanders today. With a snail on its nose.

It was a native snail, but it was not a rare snail. Salamanders have no sense of narrative.

I wouldn't drive Bear Camp Road in a government truck in the summer.

My quasi-uncle occasionally sends me e-mails with links to crazy shit- I thought it was a symptom of his codgerdome, but it's occurred to me that I do pretty much the same thing. My friends frequently receive links which purport to describe how to survive when lost in the woods with my crazy person commentary attached. Damn things are a menace, is all I'm saying. They pull heavily from US Army techniques- if the average joe gets lost in the woods, it's not going to be in hostile Cambodia. Just walk downhill and you'll be fine.*

The one factoid I've never doubted: In a survival situation, the easiest and most energy dense foods are grubs and other invertebrates. Turn over rocks and tear apart rotten logs to find these little packs of protein and fat. Well, hell and high water, I've spent the last few days tearing apart rotten logs and turning over rocks, and I'd say that advice is a crock of fecal matter. I found five scorpions, a half dozen earthworms, a couple of snails, and a metric crapton of cyanide centipedes. (Something about that name makes me reluctant to snack on them.) I've also found maybe a quarter cup of squirming maggots. I'd say a well fed, well rested person might have a slight edge in grub location, so I pity the starving wanderer. Kinda. I am looking for snails and I keep mistaking the blasted acorns for their shells. Giant, carbohydrate filled acorns. Everywhere.

*Or not- there was an unpleasant tragedy in our neck of the woods a few years ago involving a killer snow storm and some city people. C and I were discussing the whole mess and found that we had nearly opposite ideas of what the critical mistakes were. My opinions are the actual critical mistakes, of course. He said that you shouldn't fall in creeks in winter. I say anyone walking next to a mountain creek is eventually going to fall in.

If you get lost around here, try not to stay lost long enough to need to forage. That means letting people know where you're going and when you'll be back, checking the weather, packing extra layers and food and water, and asking people who know about the roads and trails you're going to take. (This applies to car trips as well as hiking.) Once you're out there, use good judgement. Keep looking back so you remember what the way out looks like. If you find a road, you're already on your way back to civilization- don't leave it. And if you're well and truly lost or well and truly stuck, climb a hill with your cell phone and try to send out a text message.

My Evening.

I went out dancing with the cousin and the cousin's girlfriend tonight. We took the beginner lesson, and then went downstairs to drink beer.

Speaking of ballroom dancing- it's apparently all about archaic gender rolls, which explains a great deal about how my outlaws dance. I suspect that DoNa Conquistador is very difficult to lead, which is why one gets the impression that Don Conquistador is trying to bodily drag her around the dance floor. But more to my point- I'm much easier to lead than one would suspect. According to the instructors, I am unusually easy to lead for a beginning American female.

Unless I'm dancing with my cousin, whereupon I am possessed by five generations of my maternal ancestors and become intractable.

The bar was full of dudes with incredible non-ironic mustaches. I have been told that the truly awesome mustache is very difficult to grow, so I must give props. There was also a man with mutton chops and a trucker hat, having a beer with a eight year old boy. With a rat tail haircut. There may have been a jar of pickled eggs on the counter.

Then my cousin's friends showed up, lowering the tone of the place considerably. *

There's my grandmother stealing my brain again. It's made worse by the fact that just when I was surrounded by scruffy mountain men in varying stages of advanced inebriation, my high school guidance counselor walked by. He gave me a look which reduced me to an teenager who has just been told to please stop making out during class, thank you very much. I resisted the urge to yell, "I don't know these people! I haven't fallen in with a bad crowd! I've had only one beer! I would never drive under the influence! It's his fault!"

*When I'm not distrusting his ability to take strange syncopated steps and disparaging his friends, I'm very fond of my cousin. He's cheerful, sanguine, hardworking, and obliging. He one of the few people I know who is not a bundle of neuroses. (I love you, bundles of neuroses, I really do. But when I spend time with him and any other member of my family, our average concentration of irrational antipathies is close to socially acceptable.)

New Jorb

So I got a job. This company and I have been circling each other for four years- this marks the first time that I'm qualified and they call me about my application before I've committed to sleeping in a car in Fresno.* I'm a little freaked out because they've been so cheerful, accommodating, and upfront about their expectations and issues. Also, they keep talking about training me in valuable skills. For free.

CLEARLY EVERYTHING IS ABOUT TO GO UP IN FLAMES.

During my interview, I was asked how I felt about starting immediately- doing mollusk surveys. I looked out the window- it was sleeting hard. I thought about wedding planning and car repair and blogging and advanced Pilates and visiting the Cuervitos and seeing the boy for more than a couple of days. Then I said yes.

So now I'm looking for snails full time.

*By which I mean another job.

My poor brother...

He's writing for the school paper- for some reason, he's basically writing about rural issues over and over again- and he often asks me to edit.

I have a rule that none of his descriptions of small towns can remind me of a 19th century novel's description of genitalia. It's tough going. "Nestled" is out. So is "deep" and "bosom". "Hidden gem" "Unknown treasure" "Headwaters" "Backcountry" are removed as a matter of course.

I don't know what I have against "discovered", but it's out too.

The kind of IMen I send out.

I was at the drug store.

Buying eyelash adhesive

And there was this giant daddy long legs in the aisle.

It will be crushed there! There is no food for spiders!

So I took him with me through checkout.

It did not go well.

Disparate Topics

I was blathering on Facebook that I get to go to a party! An actual party! A costume party! Mike said that the theoretical lizards I killed to make my costume probably deserved it, and I was going to explain how they did not, but then I realized I have a blog for nonsensical ramblings- Facebook is for obtuse koans.

So. I go to Pilates Wednesday mornings. This Wednesday, my mother woke me up and explained that we were going to Pilates. It wasn't until we were halfway to the next town over that I realized she was talking about a different Pilates class in a different place. The instructor did not deign to show up for said class, so we ran on the machines and then sat in the hot tub. I was piqued about our miscommunication- and about not getting to do my stretches- so I was trying to be exceptionally nice to my mother.

Thus I mentioned that I was going to a costume party Friday, and asked if we might have any aquatic space Viking costumes.

We didn't. (I know that you are surprised.) We did have a WHOLE DAY to find and make a costume for me and a costume for C. I was gonna oil my boots, do some laundry, maybe find a funny hat... But now I have a costume. She's very excited because she has some lizard print fabric from 1998 that she finally gets to use. We went to the used clothing store and picked through their Halloween boxes in the basement, we hit up the neighbors for skin friendly adhesives so I could attach gills and we are currently dying gardening gloves and leggings into more acceptable colors. I... I live in a world where my attempts at pleasant conversation lead to me crawling around in the rafters, looking for the flippers from the penguin costumes.

Because we own nine penguin costumes. NINE.

Now, if I'm an aquatic Viking, I will necessarily be hunting aquatic reptiles. I have decided that they are some form of marine iguanas- pleasant animals, wouldn't hurt a fly. And I am thus reminded of the afternoon Darwin spent throwing an iguana into the ocean.

He grabbed a likely reptile, walked to a point, and hucked it into the waves. It swam back to his feet. He threw it in again. It swam back. And so on throughout the afternoon. Little bit of sadism on the father of the evolutionary theory, yes? And further examples of an animal reacting to stress by provoking more stress.

Waking Up Is Hard To Do.

I thought of my godmother just a moment ago. I am often reminded of her when I pour a liquid of one viscosity into a liquid with another viscosity- for the somewhat roundabout reason that she once said doing this reminded her of my mother.

There's an odd contrast in my conception of her. My parents remember her best from her vivid youth- her wild parties, brilliant cooking, and terrible taste in significant others. They tell story after story about her tremendous sense of fun, of a sideways approach to life that left everyone else blinking. I rarely met this side of her- I do recall that she let me play with her hands after she'd had three gangrenous fingers amputated- she kept the stumps warm with finger puppets.

But by the time I have solid memories, she was already very sick. I recall a woman with tremendous reserve- unsure of whether she liked you, and unwilling to expend the energy to find out. I spent hours trying to convince her that I was worthy- I don't know that I succeeded.

You know how sometimes you open your mouth and your mother's (or your father's, or your sister's) voice comes out? Every time I talk to one of my uncles my grandmother possesses me, and I start haranguing them; they are just as good as anyone else, women should appreciate them, they should be more self-confident and have better haircuts. It's uncanny how she lives on in my voice.

Sometimes, people have a ridiculously inaccurate conception of who I am. They don't see how nervous and tired I am, how anxious and out of place and uncomfortable. They say I play things close to the vest, and treat me with respect I know I don't deserve. Patently absurd, right? I like to think these gross misconceptions of my character are the result of my godmother's memes hitching a ride on my psyche.

...

Also I would like her ability to convert vegetarians with the smell of my roasts.