Fieldwork
This past summer me and my friend were out in te field scouting out new research sites. We drove far into the watershed on ATVs, until a road was non-existing. Ice was still covering parts of the watershed out there and we arrived at a huge beaver dam.
We continued walking around this weird place. It really felt like something was wrong about this place, it was just so quiet. The landscape here was different from other parts of the watershed. All of a sudden we hade this open plain in front of us, with spruce covered hills around us. The ground was mucky and we could clearly see evidence of a large spring flood. We could see tons of wolftracks on the ground, and it made me uneasy.
As we continued walking we kind of felt like maybe we weren't suppose to be here. But the whole area was really surreal, everything looked really spooky and it almost felt like a fairytale. Or maybe as Dorothy would have said:
“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore””
The Beaver dam appeared to be active, but no signs of live beavers, and then there were all the wolf tracks, both young and adult. As we looked around I could see holes on the sides of mud pit we were standing in, along with old moose bones and wolf tracks, both very very large, and very small. And I said:
“I think this is a Wolf den...”
The whole field season treated us with this wonderful landscape though. Made me smile almost everyday we were out, even when the rain was pouring down...which actually didn't happen that often this year. Instead we had long field days with too many mosquitos and temperatures up to 92F (34 degrees C) that was tough.
