Posts tagged #Black Spruce

Those Summer Nights in Alaska

Sunset in Denali National Park, Alaska

21.76 Degrees North of Here

The Land of the Midnight Sun

    When I lived in Fairbanks, or Squarebanks as I used to refer to it sometimes, the winters were long, dark and cold. But the darkness and the cold was all forgotten come spring, and when summer arrived with the endless summer nights we never thought about winter again. I used to chase the sunsets and sunrises, but that became harder in the summertime of course. The sky has always amazed me, how it can change so quickly, and how incredible colorful it can be, that along with the backdrop of mountains is so powerful. I never want to live in a world without that feeling, that feeling I get when I stare into the wilderness in awe and think to myself how extremely lucky I am that I get to experience this, right here and right now. Can you imagine that there are people out there who do not appreciate these wild places? 

    Where do you enjoy a sunset the most?

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Alaska, The great wide open and tagged Midnight Sun Midnight Summer Adventures summer days Summer Adventures Alaska Life Outdoors North Mountains Spruce Black Spruce Deep Forest Wilderness 2017 Memories Summertime Life in Alaska.

My Summer Bucket List and my Summer Plans

Backpacking in Yellowstone National Park

Summer plans

    A couple of other bloggers, Swedish bloggers (Livet från den ljusa sidan, Fantasiresor, Äntligen Vilse, and probably a few others), have written about their summer plans this summer, and I figured that I could share some of my plans too. At the end of this list of my summer plans you will also find my summer bucket list, because there are a few things that I really should try to do, or do more of this summer! 

Where are you going to spend your summer?

    This summer is turning out to be pretty eventful, even though I did not have high hopes about this a few weeks ago. It turns out that I will travel to Puerto Rico on Thursday, I booked the ticket not long ago which feels a bit crazy. It's not going to be a vacation though, so not really running around on the beach, not that that is my style anyways, but it will be about eight days full of fieldwork, collecting soil samples all over the island, and also measuring tree diameter and looking at other ecological parameters.

    In July, I am going to go to Yellowstone, yay, because I love that area. We are also going to go to the Tetons. Again, this is not a vacation trip. I am volunteering for W and his field crew, so we will do fieldwork during the 10 days that I will spend there. We are going to measure the amount of downed wood in burned areas, but convert it to amount of carbon, and also count the amount of seedlings. I will fly in to Jackson, Wyoming and then fly out from Bozeman, Montana (MT), and hopefully get one or two days with my mother in law and her sister if those stars align. 

    In August my dad will finally get to come and visit me in Madison, Wisconsin (WI). But I am super sad that my mom is now dead, and that she will not be with us on this trip we planned for a while :(  We are going to drive from Madison, WI to Bozeman, MT, because W and I are going to have our wedding celebration around there. We will travel to Yellowstone again, I know but I love Yellowstone, do some hikes around Bozeman and then have our wedding celebrations somewhere in the mountains :) After that we are driving back to Madison, and we are going to attend another wedding in the woods of Wisconsin, sort of like a summer camp wedding. After that, we will travel to Chicago, and then my dad will fly home to Sweden again. 

    In between all these trips I am going to be here in Madison, WI, because I just started working full time instead of 50%, and I extended my contract so I will now work here for another year, yay! Although, with this comes the disciplin of actually also finishing up my dissertation...

How long will your vacation be?

    Well, my vacation will be around a month! Which feels terrifying, somehow, but I will of course not be completely on vacation, because remember that dissertation that should be done?

Would you like to travel somewhere else, other than what you have planned so far?

    YES, I would! Of course, to no ones surprise I would love to go to Alaska too....but yeah we just went there, so that would be a little too much and I would honestly not have enough vacation (or money) to be able to do that.

Alaska

What will your Midsummer be like?

    Oh, I don't know, I am really bad at celebrating midsummer. We did celebrate a few times in Alaska though.

Midsummer in the mountains

    One of my favorite memories of midsummer, or the actual longest day, was a few years ago when I went hiking in the mountains, in Alaska, and it was so beautiful and magical, but it wasn't really a real Swedish midsummer.

    I have bought matjessill though, and I have snaps in the freezer. I will maybe try to make some pickled herring too! There is a Scandinavian group here in Madison that has a yearly midsummer party, we went there last year and I think we will try to go there again, unless we go camping somewhere :)

 

What does your best summer days look like?

    Oh my best summer days, would probably be hiking somewhere where I can get a view, sitting around a bonfire with friends who play music, and talk through the night under the midnight sun. 

How do you approach a rainy day?

    Well, I grab my rain jacket and my rain pants too if I have to. And that is about it. There are no bad weathers just bad clothing, right? No, not always, of course here in Madison we can get really really bad downpours, and lightning, you better stay inside then, there is no use going somewhere if you are going to get that wet. In Alaska if it was a fieldwork day, it was a fieldwork day, and no weather could change that, and that will  most likely be the case when we are doing fieldwork this summer too... 

How will this summer be different from last summer?

    This summer will be a lot different! Last year I moved away from the cabin in the woods, and we drove all the way here, all the 4200 miles or so...and then W left for fieldwork and I tried to get a job, it felt like forever, but I did. Before I actually managed to get a job I was pretty sad and lonely, because I had left one of the most beautiful places on earth. But I survived and here I am today! I had a lot of free time on my hands so I walked/biked around a lot in Madison. This summer I will not be so lonely, and it seems like it will be pretty busy.

Who are you planning on spending your vacation with?

    Family! My dad is coming, how awesome is that, and W's family, and also all of our friends that are coming from far away places to MT in August. We are stoked!

Do you have any trip planned after the summer?

    Hmm....well, maybe Alaska, we will see how that goes...time will tell.

Summer Bucket List

    I do have some things I would like to do this summer, but I am not sure I will have time, but here it is, my summer bucket list for 2017

  • I want to learn how to sail, or at least get on on the water with a sailboat...

  • I want to learn to fly fish, and then I want to go fly fishing here in WI, and maybe also in MT when we are there.

  • I want to go camping and hiking, well backpacking a lot, I am not sure we will have time for that though, not any long trips.

  • I want to get into road biking, which would require me getting a road bike somehow

  • I want to get into mountain biking, which I have already started so I guess I am half way there!

  • I want to start running long distances, and more trail running again....which might be a bit tricky because it is so hot here!

    I think that is all I have on my bucket list for now, maybe I'll add more to it later on :) What are your plans this summer, and do you have a summer bucket list?

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Alaska, Madison Life, The great wide open, Yellowstone and tagged Summer Summer Adventures summer days Summer days Yellowstone Yellowstone National Park Tetons The Tetons Boreal Forest Spruce Black Spruce Cat Cats Madison Wisconsin2 Alaska 2017 Rain Summer Plans Sommar midsommar Midnight Sun Midsummer Midsummer Eve midsommar firande.

Dirty Paws and Furry Coat, and the Forest of Talking Trees pt.1

 

Flashback Friday

Forest of Talking Trees

Today I will take you to one of my absolute favorite places in the whole world. My field site, called CPCRW, short for Caribou-Poker Creek Research Watershed.

 
 

    The watershed is mainly black spruce, but also quite an abundance of deciduous vegetation, and have a lot of different small and big creatures. We start going out already in May (sometimes even late April), even though most of the snow hasn't even melted yet. Early in the season most of the watershed is brown and you could still see leftover dead plants from last years summer.

 
 

    The fieldwork doesn't come for free, and if you by chance forget to use mosquito spray you will most likely end up like the pictures below will show. Another thing about mosquitos a lot of people don't understand, if you think there are a lot of mosquitos in the interior and north of Alaska, multiply that by 100 and that is probably closer to the reality. You can not survive without mosquito repellant. 

 
 

    We hike in rubber boots because yeah, we follow rivers. Mosquito spray or a bug shirt is needed.

 
 

We Follow Rivers

    I have a poster I printed with tons of small pictures I have taken in the watershed through the years and through the seasons. I call it "We follow rivers", because that is what we do. We sample water and try to understand how changes in the landscape affect the streamwater chemistry. Alaska is underlained by permafrost, both continuous and discointinuous, and of course the most southern part is permafrost free. Few people comprehend how large Alaska actually is. Like Sweden it's pretty long, but longer of course (1420 miles; 2285km).  Permafrost stores a lot of carbon, old carbon, since it's literally ground that has been frozen (and still is to certain extent) for hundreds and thousands of years. One of the important questions is "How much carbon is being released when permafrost thaws?", because permafrost throughout Alaska is thawing due to the increase in temperature. And of course, we also have the increase in fires and how that actually affects the landscape and stream water chemistry. 

 
 

    We follow rivers and investigate our own research questions and the underlying question about how thawing permafrost affect streamwater chemistry. 

 
 

    If I could make a soundtrack for my fieldsite, the lead song would definetely be: Of Monsters and Men - "Dirty Paws" 

 
Posted on September 2, 2016 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under The great wide open, Alaska, Flashback Friday, Science and tagged Permafrost permafrost degradation Alaska science stream chemistry Boreal Forest Black Spruce birch tracks wolf tracks 2016 Adventure Spring field Fieldwork Life in Alaska.