A very wet Thanksgiving

Right now two of my colleagues and a bunch of our advanced undergraduates and graduate students are on a rainforest ecology field trip in NE Costa Rica at the La Selva biological station.  Usually the station provides a quite magnificent dinner for all the gringo visitors, but unfortunately they are all about to get very wet, and when you say that for this place, that's saying a lot. Hurricane Otto is bearing down on them, and while it is not a major storm in the sense of wind, the amount of rain they could get in the next 48 hours could be amazing, and this really can put the field research on hold.  TPP wishes them well.  Our previous course record was 444 mm of rainfall in 8 days, and with 18-24" predicted for their area, they may set a new record.  Yea! Go team go! It's happened before as the image shows; the flooded area is usually high and dry several meters above the river.  Fortunately the labs and cabinas are much higher still.  

Field trip packing

Packing for tropical field trips really bites. TPP has real trouble with this and while my brain cranks away on the multiple problems of what to bring, the rest procrastinates. When it's fall going on winter, it is hard to remember everything you need and all the things you don't need. High on the need list: really good flashlight, compact but tough umbrella, Wellington type rubber boots. If you remember these three items and the rest will more or less work out. If you forget real field clothes, the ones you have will work out and they will be real field clothes before you know it. Nothing stains quite like lateritic clay. So no problems really. It's also hard to know what little bits and pieces you may need if you are going to conduct any investigations. Bamboo skewers are surprisingly useful things as are the essential sharpie markers. You really can't go wrong with a small roll of duct tape. Ziplock plastic bags are terrific too. This particular field trip requires some cans of jellied cranberry sauce (arandano rojo?) which is pretty hard to find in Costa Rica if you plan to have a Thanksgiving dinner. Of course cranberries are one of the few native North American domesticated plants. Also have a list of house/garden things to fix/finish up before taking off for a few days, and the weather has been so crappy it's hard to get them done (terribly windy). Good thing the F1 will watch after the kitty-girls. So now TPP has to get busy. Maybe after another coffee, but oh no, we used up the milk a day too early!  

Return, re-entry, and readjustment

Returning from the tropics to the northern temperate late fall is not a good idea, just a necessity.  At the coffee shoppe this AM the friendly clerk asked if it were still warm outside?  It was 40 F.  How a particular temperature feels depends a great deal upon what recent ambient temperatures you have been experiencing.  So, no, it's bloody damp and cold.  As much as TPP would like to gently and gradually adjust to regular academic life, the re-entry plunges you directly into the deep water since there are only 3 days left in the semester.  At one of the last class meetings, a student asked if there was a lab scheduled for today.  No, no lab, but there will be a regular 50 min lecture.  Apparently about half the class tuned out as soon as TPP said, no lab.  This will certainly help the teaching evaluations as the situation guarantees half the class will be pissed no matter what you do.  Since there is no jet lag, you wouldn't think the change would be so bad.  However without the constant white noise of the rainforest at night, or in the rain, TPP finds it hard to sleep.  Guess that sound track needs to be packaged up and sold, and with the additional gimick that you can set a wakeup time, and then a recording of howler monkeys greeting the day will be inserted.  And no really ripe, succulent pineapple for breakfast.  Such a downer.  Good thing TPP got a couple of kilos of dark roasted Costa Rican coffee to bring home, which set such a good example that the class cumulatively brought home well over 20 kilos of coffee, so much that a 5% discount was given.  "Do you have anything to declare?"  Just some coffee.  "How much coffee?"  Just two kilos.  "Where is it?"  In that big blue duffle bag.  "What's in the bag with the coffee?"  Just more coffee.  And yet it's good to be home. 

Field trip packing

The only thing worse than packing for a field trip is repacking everything for the trip home.  All the careful packing has degenerated into near chaos as students have pursued their projects, and then revised their projects, and then punted, and then finally succeeded in wringing a bit of information, some data, some new understanding, out of the rainforest.  Now all this stuff has to get put away.  You figure out that biologists use way too much plastic; what would happen without Tupperware and zip lock bags?  Biological progress would grind to a halt. But you get real pragmatic on the way home and you have to make room for some Costa Rican coffee, a lot of coffee, 40-50 pounds of coffee (it's 15 people after all).  If you get to Costa Rica, do visit Café Trebol on the Calle Ocho side of the Mercado Central. Getting everything clean including your boots is difficult; getting it all dry is next to impossible especially as it is pouring buckets outside.  The troops are sorting everything on the veranda of their cabina, so it continues.  Unfortunately, the students don't/won't pack for their instructors.  Go figure.  Monday the trip will start at 5:30 AM bus loading to reverse the trip down.  Too bad all that coffee is packed away and inaccessible. 

Pretty smooth road trip

Left Lincolnland this morning at 6 AM and now it's 5:20 PM and TPP has set up shop in a casa at the field station and is awaiting din-dins.  No airline problems at all, which is pretty amazing.  No luggage problems, even more amazing, and even the Kentucky snake bite medicine arrived intact, a very good thing.  Our coach was awaiting us and the trip took just over 2 hrs making very good time. Just a bit hungry at this point, a problem to soon be remedied.  Things here are hot, humid, yet surprisingly dry, a rather unusual situation. This will affect some organisms, so we shall see which ones.  At any rate, we'll try to keep Mrs. Phactor updated. 

Saturday AM field trip

TPP is generous and supportive of a number of nonprofit organizations and lots of starving artists.  So this AM he found himself leading three couples on a field trip wild flower foray.  It seems TPP's expertise was auctioned off along with fancy brunch for a fund-raiser; yes, botanically prostituted by his own wife.  Since 2013 has been a pretty cool and late, it was hard to know what to expect out in woodlands, but when you teach plant taxonomy for a few years, you learn about all the good places to find nice wild flowers.  So here's the rundown for April 20, 2013: early whitlow grass, cottonwood, cutleaf toothwort, dutchman's breeches, bloodroot (almost gone), troutlily (white), bluebells (only on south facing slopes), yellow violet, spring beauty, and a buttercup, and after a bit of searching, liverleaf - Hepatica.  And like any good field trip this one finished with a nice dry Spanish champagne, a mushroom quiche, sauted asparagus with avocado butter, a fruit salad with ataulfo mango, a lemon-cream cake, and bacon.  So as you can see Mrs. Phactor made it quite worth my while, and quite worth their while to have made a generous contribution for this field trip.  It was fun all the way around.

Rainforest field trip - not this year

Sixteen years ago TPP initiated a rainforest ecology class with a field trip which is now taken over the 9-day long Thanksgiving break plus a day or two.  Owing in part to its popularity, and in part to wishing to be around for holidays with family, every now and then, a rotation of instructors means that now TPP only teaches "his" course two out of every four years.  It was a wonderful weekend in Lincolnland to mostly finish up fall yard work and begin helping Mrs. Phactor with holiday decorations.  But as beautiful as it was TPP found himself wanting to take a walk through the rainforest, not necessarily teach the class, but just to soak in the sounds, smells, and sights that are rainforest.  It's just such an endlessly fascinating place, and having spent so much time there, the things that put off many people just go unnoticed, but these days the majority of people are not actually comfortable out in nature so accustomed they are to totally tame human environs.  A few emails have arrived from students to tell TPP what a great time they are having, or what wonderful thing they've seen, or that it's been raining.  A colleague reports that a study tree of our interest has stiffed us once again by not flowering when one of us is there.  One of the best things we do is provide such experiences for our students, even though it represents a considerable undertaking for the faculty involved.  Foreign travel with college students remains fraught with real and potential problems, logistical nightmares, but when you put students in a stimulating environment you find that it becomes very easy to teach.  The image is from an area in the middle of a long-time study site that has an improved trail for quicker access. 

It never rains on field trips

The drive to St. Louis was pretty wet; it rained the whole way and hard at times.  The traffic going into St. Louis was terrible as usual just crawling along the last few miles to cross the Mississippi via the bottleneck bridge.  By the time we arrived at the Missouri Botanical Garden it was nearly 1 pm, so we grabbed a bite to eat, and by then the rain had stopped.  So just as the Phactor tells his students; it never rains on a field trip, although it can storm.  A bridezilla was showing her true stripes (do you know what you're getting, fellow?) because the garden had the temerity to let a deluge turn her wedding site into a soggy mess.  Heels and chair legs would have sunk in immediately, and the area would not have been kind to the hem of that white dress either.  Here's a nice view across the garden's pond, and remember, it's still just mid-April.  The NRA was in town, but didn't see any of them taking in the garden.  Funniest thing we saw was this morning while returning from a coffee safari; a butler/doorman (?) in a tux and white tie, trying to maintain his dignity while walking a toy poodle at 8 am.  Who wears a tux at 8 am on a Sunday for dog walking?  Did he have his little plastic baggy?  A penguin and a dog are out for a walk,....

It never rains on field trips - sure

In a quite unusual break from field work, gardening, and taxes, the Phactors are off to St. Louis for some botanical doings, and the plan is to work in a walk through the Missouri Botanical Garden, which is always well worth the time, but a bit of a tease for us because at one full hardiness zone south of us, MBG can grow lots of things we can't.  Although most people haven't noticed, the upper midwest has not only been unusually warm, but unusually dry, so the area needs rain.  And today it is raining all the way from Oklahoma to Chicago in a diagonal storm track, so that covers us, our route, and St. Louis, but as the Phactor tells his students it never rains on a field trip.  But it's raining, so this must not be a field trip.

It threatened to rain. So?

It was close, but the Phactor's track record of never having it rain on a field trip is intact. OK, today's field trip will have a little asterisk next to it because the field trip was called short on account of the threat of rain, which was not the actual reason, but putting a group of students under tall trees with lightening in the area is not a good idea. As one student observed, funnel clouds are not rain. Just because a drop or two of water fell, it did not qualify as rain, as some naysayers looking to lower their grade contended, merely the threat of rain. Still the field trip lasted nearly 2 hours and a nice diversity of gymnosperm reproductive structures were observed.

Rainforest Field Trip - Oh, Toto, we aren't in Lincolnland anymore.

One of the great joys and best reasons for organizing an overseas field trip, not to be confused with a tours, a tour group, and a tour guide, is the surprise, awe, joy, and excitement of students when first they encounter the rain forest. Everywhere they look is something new and interesting, and simply the things observed during a 3.5 hour hike with a Costa Rican naturalist would fill this blog for several weeks. So today is a day they will remember for a good long time, and the Phactor is quite happy that he is in no small way responsible for providing this experience. Providing such educational opportunities is after all my job. Here are some students from Lincolnland trying to decide if this is any different from being afield in the maize and soybean desert. As this picture was being taken a flock of oropendula flew over and they got to hear their unmistakable gargling call. However the effects of the short night and the sudden switch to heat and humidity, and hiking in tall rubber boots, has taken its toll and they will be a quiet bunch tonight, mostly.

On the Road Again - Rain Forest Ecology Field Trip

Today, tonight, tomorrow, all night, all day, that is starting about midnight the travel begins and with luck 18 hours later the Phactor with a bunch of students in tow will arrive at a field station in Costa Rica to study rain forest biology for the next 2 weeks. The wi-fi connections out there in the rain forest have always been a bit dodgy, but every attempt will be made to do a series of blogs directly from the rain forest. Weather has not been good in Costa Rica lately, but the heavy rains and land slides have been more of a problem on the Pacific side than the Atlantic side where the field station is located, which is always pretty wet. The record for one of our field trips was 18" of rain fall in 8 full days at the field station. As one of the students remarked, "Well, it is RAIN forest." Travel with students, overseas, is terribly stressful and demanding, even with the NO WHINING RULE in force, and it would not be worth the effort if the outcomes were not so educationally rewarding for both parties (both students in the picture are smiling!). And of course after the field trip the Phactor shall bestow prestigious awards upon outstanding members of his class: the monsoon mud monkey award to the person most at one with mud, the atad award for the student most confused by their own data (one awardee never got the joke!), the cryptic researcher award for the student who most resembles or acts like their research organism, the teflon award for that particular student that just never seems to get dirty, the closest encounter of a dangerous kind award to the student who has the nearest miss with disaster and giving their instructor more gray hair or causing more of it to fall out (those pit vipers are so well canouflaged, crocs have moved into the swimming hole, and so on it goes). Truly winners all.

300th Blog - Botanical field trips

Supposedly the first 300 blogs are the hardest, so the 301st should be easy. Just returned from a field trip associated with the Botanical Society of America's annual meeting, and it had a familiar qualities: a bus load of plant fanatics ranging from senior citizens to undergraduate students, generic food box lunches (How is it that they are all identical?), and someone who has the responsibility for getting us back on time. Now if ever botanists surrender to the clock, our professionalism is toast, and no use setting some precident of being on time. No when some little fern requires that a group bushwack through a mucky sphagnum bog, green briar, and poison ivy, why no problem. How fun to hear students tell us that this is their first national botanical meeting. If you tell them you still remember yours, which was in 1972, they look at you in rather disbelief that anything so ancient might still have functional gray cells. Sorry not to include any pictures, but no way to get them out of the camera and into this hotel computer. Sorry not to have a better story to celebrate 300 blogs over the past 2.5 years. This is not a torrid pace, and seldom is there time for more than one internet session a day; too many real things to do. Like visit beach communities and some strange holly forests with lots of ferns and fungi, and lots of plants that we associate with more southerly ranges (holly, mountain laurel, and so on). Now to wash off the dust, get a drink, attend a lecture on evolution and a mixer of several hundred botanists, some of the best people on Earth. What! You don't believe me? Well, just ask them!

Field trip winding up (down)?

Well, it's happened again, what with all the natural history, all the biological diversity, all the talk of experiments and data, all the cool observations and encounters, early morning or late nights in the rain forest, and kilometers of hiking, another fine field trip is shot to heck.
This year's class have been about as good as a group of biology majors gets, and the Phactor has not acquired any new gray hairs from their behavior. He is worn out simply because when you're on educational call more or less around the clock, there is not enough (2 instructors, 18 students) to go around.
So here's one more bit of rainforest natural history. Late November is near the end of the rainy season, and it's been wet, oh not anywhere near a record year (over 470 mm rain in 10 days), but sufficiently wet to keep the amphibians active and happy. One of the neatest little fellows is the levi frog (Dendrobates) so called because of their blue legs. Most of the frogs with which you are familiar are cryptically colored, but these stand out vividly. And their call is very loud, especially for their size (less than 2 cm long), sort of inviting you to find them. But this is a poison arrow frog, and the coloring is there to train any potential predators that this froggy will make you as sick as a dog. This is an example of aposomatic coloring where organisms use bright and vivid patterns to advertise their distastefulness. This one has actually just deposited a tadpole that they were carrying on their back into a little pond of water in a tank bromeliad.
Now to pack and return to early winter, the end of the semeser, and finals in Lincolnland. Blah!