Notes from the Field

This day is at long last my ‘D’ Day, with the ‘D’ in this case being for Do. It’s time to do it, to go into the field and begin the process of answering all the questions I have spent the last nine months dreaming up. I am excited. I feel energetic and light, full of hopefulness about the speed and accuracy of my data collection (I have a good track record on the latter), and nervous. I lay in bed last night eagerly calculating and recalculating how many days it will take me to get the data, to survey all twelve of my community forests, not able to sleep despite the dark and the long day I had had. I was and continue to be totally jazzed by this moment.

I have 12 community forests to sample, with a whopping nine backup forests selected (one for every sample forest) in case one gets away. The reasons to decide against sampling a forest are diverse, but a few would be if the community didn’t want you there (it’s harvest time, and community members are busy bringing in their crops), if the forest had been dramatically damaged by a fire, flood, or landslide in the last ten years (which would affect the species diversity, a measure of how many species there are, and abundance, a measure of how many individuals from each species are present), or if the forest’s elevation, slope, or topography makes it impossible to survey (the land is very folded here, and many slopes are over a 45 degree angle!)

In addition I have randomly selected an entire backup Range Post, the management unit within which my forests are located. I am sampling three range posts (to see if there’s a difference between them), but I have the back up one selected in case I show up to Pumdi Bhumdi, Lamachaur, or Hemja and the Range Post Officer, whose help I need to get into the forests and work with the local forest watcher, is sick, absent, or just plain irritable.

Did I mention I feel ready?

I had a last talk with my bestfriend/sounding board/president of ye olde kitchen cabinet last night, a last pep talk for the field and also a double-check on my plans, methods, and thinking, from a scientist I greatly admire, and a friend who knows me well. We have worked together in two countries, now, and for all the questions I’ve checked in with him on while here in Nepal, you may as well round it up to three. Incidentally, if you don’t know the ‘kitchen cabinet’ reference, google it – it was originally a pejorative description of one of the former president’s (Andrew Jackson’s?) use of his friend’s as advisors, rather than his official cabinet, and I love the analogy. Your kitchen cabinet members are your go-to people, your last-check-before-I-take-my-swandive folks, the people whose range of experience and perspectives on the world help guide you through your own choices, even though these decisions are ones that you effectively make alone. I like the mental image of opening the cabinet doors and finding all your closest advisors there, the people you respect the most, smiling and reaching in support, willing and able to help and guide you.

Last night I told the cabinet member of note (whose name is Greg) that if by some fluke I managed to discover a new species, I would name it after him, and put an “ii” (pronounced ee-eye) after his name to show him what it would be. It’s common in science to name newly discovered species after famous, well-respected scientists, and since he’ll be one sometime in the next year or so, I’d just be ahead of the curve. I think we were both imagining plants, since that’s what I study, but I also told him, with a wink, that should it be a leech I discover instead, the naming convention will hold.

And now it’s time to rally and leave, as I have one last battle to do with a laggard employee of the forest office here before I can take to the field, and I’m showing up as he starts his day, in hopes of counteracting the laziness, but here are the numbers.

18: randomly selected potential sampling sites, with 18 photocopies of forest operational plans, all in Nepali.

15: minutes before I leave campus for the day.

12: forests to sample by August 10.

7: the number of days per week I don’t want to work, but just might have to.

6: forests at or under 10 hectares in size (whoopeee! Thank you, random sampling!)

6: working days in a week.

4: Pieces of fancy schmancy American raingear.

3: Range Posts and Range Post Officers to work with.

3: pm, the time the monsoon starts.

2: Backpacks packed with gear.

1: 90 hectare, or 900,000 sq meter forest to sample (a percentage of).

1: field assistant, with the promise of others if needed.

1: last cup of delicious Costa Rican coffee before I go.

1: Last deep breath.

Namaste,

-M-