After a week of eleven-hour workdays, increasing levels of job-related frustration, and the growing awareness that my boss has little appreciation for the work I'm doing (typical, I'm sure, of most jobs), I wanted to make this week a little easier on myself. With Labor Day approaching, complete with a free day off work, I decided to take Thursday and Friday off, too, and treat myself to a five-day weekend.
I set myself up for what I thought was to be a mellow three days- two days where my only task would be to deploy bat detectors at three of my last five locations, followed by the necessary weekly grousing on Wednesday. I assumed that setting out the detectors wouldn't take much time, and that afterward I could catch up on data entry and other office work. Not surprisingly, even that seemingly simple task ended up taking an inordinate amount of time.
I was well-prepared to set out detectors. Last Friday I had enough time after grousing to map out routes into the areas where the detectors would need to be placed, determine who owned what land, and to contact all the landowners, so that Monday morning I would be set to go. And in fact I was set to go... until I got out to a two-track just a mile from two of the three sites and found it to be in terrible condition. I've driven some rough roads this summer- unmaitenanced two-tracks, dirt and gravel roads, rocky, narrow inclines traversing canyons in the Black Hills... But I hadn't yet come up against something that threatened to maroon me in the middle of nowhere. Until Monday.
The road I needed to take had washed out, almost completely, at the bottom of a steep slope in an area surrounded by hillocks. Little gullies had formed, complete with dried-up pools and water-filled pits, the perfect width and depth to snare a tire or contribute to high-centering. The spaces between the gullies, pools, pits, and hills were so narrow that I couldn't find a decent path through. What should have been a relatively quick in-and-out deployment turned into a three-hour-long saga of intense manual labor towards road maintenance. Our vehicles are well-stocked with a variety of tools: shovels, Pulaskis, axes... I ended up using them all, carving out the side of a hill, filling in some of the holes, and trying to level out my intended route. I then spent about a half-hour gathering old planks from the remnants of a nearby fallen barn to try and make a bridge of sorts over the largest part of the impending ravine.
Though not really dangerous, the eventual drive was harrowing... Getting stuck somewhere is seen in most offices as the apex of ineptitude, the most pathetic thing you can do to yourself in the field, if for no other reason than the fact that it costs one of your coworkers a lot of time coming to winch you out. I made it through, but I did not relish the idea of having to come back.
I continued on to find the two-track nearly gone, and in places I had to rely entirely on the topographic map on my GPS to reassure me that I really was in the area the road ran (or at least, the place the road used to run). Eventually the path became easier to see, but it was obvious it hadn't been used in at least a decade: 6- and 7-foot-tall junipers were growing right in the middle of the two-track, junipers on opposite sides of the road had grown together over the tire ruts, and ponderosa pines had extended their branches out at windshield height over the old path. I spent almost as much time winding in and out of and around the trees as I had digging my way in.
I finally made it to my first detector location, had a relatively easy set-up, and continued on to set the other. The road had become clearer and less overgrown, so I was feeling good. And then I ran up against the worst gate I've ever faced, which, based on the number of gates I've had to fight with this summer, is saying a lot. What ensued was an epic battle of wills, with the rusty barbed wire and old wooden posts of the gate largely winning. When I finally did manage to (roughly) secure the gate back in place, I realized my success was tempered by the fact that I would have to open and close it again on my way out, and yet again the following day when I came back to retrieve the detectors. Damn you, gate!
Although I should have had plenty of time left for office work at the end of the day, I didn't end up getting back to the office until after 3:00 PM, meaning I ended up yet again working more than eight hours. Not wanting to face "the road" a third time, I decided to try another route the next day, technically the other end of "the road" that came into the area from the opposite direction. After printing off more maps, calling more landowners, and driving out to the area the following morning, I found that the other end was, in fact, gone, without a trace, completely overgrown and impassable. So I made the trek back around to the other side of "the road" and once again braved the wash-out, trees, and, yes, the gate, too.
Luckily, the third location really was an easy in-and-out, and was situated next to a pond rife with Northern leopard frogs and minnows. The pond also sported a muskrat and some type of Scolopacid (a sandpiper of some sort, or one of its close relatives).
The week continued to improve, as yesterday, after nearly two months, I finally picked up a signal on my other long-lost female grouse, and after about two hours-worth of hiking in the interior of Thunder Basin, I managed to find her... right next to the highway.
Of course.
I did find her, though, for which I was happy. In fact, I found all five of our radio-collared grouse, something I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to achieve in the course of a single workday. So the week "ended" well.
Now I'm enjoying a luxury: five days off. Although one day is nearly gone already, I have four more to look forward to. I spent most of the day today engaged in my typical weekend chores- cleaning and doing laundry. I invested much more time than usual cleaning, and I threw some cooking in, too, because my mom is coming tomorrow to visit! Why anyone would want to spend any time at all in Newcastle is beyond me, but I suppose my being here probably adds a modest incentive.
Just in case you were wondering, we'll be spending most of our time in South Dakota.
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