Return to Montreal

I’m slowly starting to catch up with my blog posting here. This next entry will attempt to condense the two weeks I spent at home in Montreal prior to starting at Western.

My time spent in Montreal was very busy, so I’m having trouble remembering specific details. What was important was that I got a chance to spend time with a lot of people in a very short amount of time. I stayed mostly at Eliott’s house, but I spent a few days in Jackie and Anj’s apartment with Bucky. Maybe it will be easier if I broke this up into people I spent time with and/or events that occurred that allowed me to spend time with several people. I apologize if I leave anyone or anything out since it’s all such a blur

• Eliott, when he was not working, was with me a lot of the time except when I was at my sister’s.
• Jackie and I hung out quite a bit despite her work schedule. We didn’t normally see each other that often when we lived together. I slept in her bed with Bucky while she was sick. We went to work together and had lunch with my mom. We also had a fancy lunch at a French restaurant and went to see a movie at the International Film Festival. I also met her, Bryan, and Anj for drinks/tea in Mile End.
  
• Kevin’s party that occurred the day after I got back allowed me to see a few people I hadn’t seen in a while, including several people I had never seen before from the Liberal Party of Quebec.
• Jackie’s apartment also hosted on my first night staying there a going away party for Andrew. Andrew was moving to Toronto to study fashion design at Ryerson. So poor Andrew, like me, was abandoning Montreal for school. At least he wasn’t too far away from where I am staying. Eleanor, who also lives with Jackie, and I also met Andrew coffee early one morning.
• Jackie and I worked at registration at Vanier for a day. I got to say hi to a lot of people I used to work with, while making a bit of money to make up for my flight and a couple weeks of pay in Kananaskis.
• I saw my mom when my sister and I had lunch with her, and we did a little bit of shopping at Place Vertu, and on a separate occasion, my mom and I went to IKEA to pick up some bits of furniture for my apartment. I had Swedish meatballs for lunch, and we ran into Bryan who was working cash. Unfortunately, we met him too late to get a discount. Then my mom and I had coffee while we waited for Eliott’s dad to get home to let me into the house.
• Bryan, Anj, and I met Edith, whom Bryan and I know from Concordia, but who was also staying with us in Kananaskis over the summer, for breakfast one morning. Edith was moving from Montreal to Calgary to study at the University of Calgary. She is now living with Tracy with their two cats and her many, many books.
• Bryan, Anj, and I spent that afternoon wandering St-Denis and shopping around for nothing in particular. After Anj went to work. Bryan and I did more wandering as we tried to figure out what we should do. Then we met Jackie and did more wandering around until we decided to go our separate ways. Jackie and I then went out for vegan food.
• I saw my dad and my stepmom a couple times. Jackie, Eliott, and I went over to their place one evening for a nice dinner.
• Steph, Kevin, Eliott, and I went up to Steph’s cottage near Lachute for a couple days. It was nice. We all got to catch up a bit and do some kayaking.
• I met Marleigh, a former co-worker, and her beautiful baby, Kaelyn one morning for coffee. We then took a stroll to a local park so that Kaelyn could play.
• Eliott and I stopped by my stepsister’s birthday/going away barbecue. My stepmom was also there. Sheena was going back to Australia to continue her education. Her friends made her a cake shaped like a plane. Eliott, Jackie, and I also met Sheena for supper on a separate day.
• JJ and Michael returned from their trip to France and Spain, so JJ and I coerced the boys into watching Becoming Jane about Jane Austen. I think Eliott enjoyed it despite himself. The next step is to get him to watch all 6 hours of the Pride and Prejudice miniseries.

I think that about sums up almost everything I did in Montreal. Next you will be hearing about Eliott’s and my trip to London, including our stopover in Ottawa to see Brandon and Sarah.

Leaving Kananaskis

Even on my last day in Kananaskis, which was the second to last week in August, I couldn’t get away from doing a bit of work. We got up extra early to finish off Nikhil’s and Crisia’s grids, then we went to Fortress to wait for Jack’s class. We were taking them up to the long term grids to show them how we trap mice. They asked good questions, and we moved through my half of the grid fairly quickly and even met Nikhil on the other side. My group was lucky because we got a good variety of animals. I found that I rather enjoyed showing them what we do.

Upon return to the field station, I loaded all the stuff I spent all night packing (leaving some of it for the others to take back by car), got everyone together, and took off for Calgary. Those of you who are familiar with the way we work at the field station will know that this inevitably took a ridiculously long time. Crisia, Nikhil, Kurt, and Tracy were all along for the ride.

In Calgary, we had time for a nice lunch in Chinatown. Surprisingly that was my first time eating in Calgary’s Chinatown despite how often I found myself in Calgary. Afterwards we ran some errands and made it to the airport right on time. I said my goodbyes to my new friends, two of which I would be seeing in a couple weeks and two of which I might not be seeing for a while.

The flight was quick and uneventful, and I landed in Montreal to be greeted by Eliott and Steph and to the news that apparently Montreal was collapsing. It was so humid and gross in Montreal that night. It felt weird knowing that I was wearing a wool hat and gloves in the morning in Kananaskis. Eliott and I then met Bryan and Angelene for bubble tea downtown. It was nice to be surprised with a small group of friends after being away for four months even though it was rather late. Afterwards, we stopped by Jackie’s, and I gave a sleeping Jackie a good poke with my foot and got to see Bucky for the first time in a really long time.

Now that I’ve been away from Kananaskis for a while, I can now reflect on the things that I miss about it.

Things I miss

• The mountains: everything from the way they appear out of nowhere on a cloudy day and the way they turn pink when the sun is setting to the way they cause a lot of pain in my knees after a long hike
• The people
• The relaxed atmosphere
• Midday naps
• Being outside
• The wildlife
• The feeling that despite having to wake up early and do work during the day, I was still on vacation
• The ever-changing weather
• The ability to quickly (okay sometimes not so quickly, but never more than 3 hours) get a group of people together on almost no notice for supper, a movie night, or just general hanging out
• The mice

Things I will not miss

• Mosquitoes
• Waking up ridiculously early
• Poor water pressure
• Paying for laundry
• Calgary

Carving pumpkins

I'm just going to deviate momentarily from relaying my past adventures. I figured I should put this up now since its relevance will decline quickly after Halloween. This past Sunday, Crisia came over, and we took advantage of the nice weather to carve a couple pumpkins. Here are the pictures:

Plateau Mountain

Yeah, I know. I've been neglecting this poor blog. It's been difficult finding the time to write. Anyway, I'm still catching up with my posts, and I will be for a while.

Kurt (the original) and Tracy had decided to join us on this last hike before I had to go. Crisia almost didn’t come because she had hurt one of her knees, but in the end she sucked it up and joined us. This morning started early because it would take us a long time to get there. As we got closer to our destination, we drove sandwiched between Jack’s rental car and the van up a fairly narrow gravel road with logging trucks appearing out of nowhere to charge at us with just enough time for all three of our vehicles to pull over. They didn’t even slow down as they careened down the mountainside.

The top of this mountain was an alpine meadow, so there were lots of interesting plants for the class to check out. My favourite was the wild chive, which I pulled up occasionally to munch on as we walked on. Our walk up ended at a place Jack called the polygons. Here, the rocks appeared to be scattered almost honeycomb-like. After lunch, we wandered over to the edge of the meadow where supposedly on a clear day you could see to Saskatchewan. It was not a clear day. In fact, it appeared to be storming in certain places close by, and indeed, it started to thunder as we walked back to the vehicles.

Then, Jack led us to a place nearby where we could climb up and have a look inside a cave. It was a very steep, and I was surprised that Crisia, who was regretting coming along the fairly easy hike along the meadow, actually endeavoured to make her way up. As we were climbing up, it started to hail on us. This hail was the size of small marbles, and I don’t think I have seen anything like it prior to this. As they landed, they resembled small Styrofoam balls. At certain points, it came down really hard, and it actually hurt; I felt like I was being bombarded with a machine pellet gun on all sides.

We finally made our way up, and there was indeed a cave. The entire place reeked of wood rat, a scent which, by this time, we were very familiar with. Our local trailer wood rat was the size of a large squirrel and had made its presence known to us in this last week by running from our bathroom to our kitchen, while Nikhil, Tracy, and I were watching TV, and by trying to get into our cereal box on top of our microwave. Wood rats smell almost skunk-like, except not as strongly.

Nikhil had a personal vendetta against this particular wood rat and walked around with a walking stick we liked to call his beating stick. Our lab has ,in the past, done research on wood rats, so we did have some traps lying around. It took almost a week from when I left Kananaskis for Nikhil to finally catch this thing, but not before it found its way into Crisia’s unoccupied room and peed on all her stuff and chewed up the insoles of her shoes. It turns out that the trap that was used initially was faulty. Nikhil really wanted to kill it, but Crisia convinced him to let it go near one of our grids. When it was let go, it jumped into the undercarriage of the Ark. They were convinced that it tried to stow its way back, but they didn’t find it at the trailer again.

The way down was much more treacherous than the way up since the hail was all over the ground and made it slippery. I fell maybe three times. Of course, Kurt bounded all the way down very quickly and with no problems. At some point, I believe, Tracy fell. Nikhil made some sarcastic comment directed at her and then fell as well. Then Crisia said “Well, that’s not ironic at all.” In the middle of that sentence, she also fell, which resulted in laughter all around.

We finally managed to get all the way down, and then we followed Jack and his class to Longview, where we bought lots and lots of beef jerky, while it rained harder than we had seen it all summer. The class and our group then went our separate ways. We stayed in Longview and had some coffee, and then took the scenic route back to our grids that we had to set. By the time we got back, we were all thoroughly exhausted and starving, and half of us looked like drowned rats, or rather, drowned mice. My day was far from over at this point since I ended up spending all night packing for my return home.

Rae Glacier

I had missed the hike after the previous one to clean the traps that we took down from Sibbald. It was quite a relief to take this grid down. I think it was the prettiest one there with its carpet of moss littered with fallen logs and its really old pine trees that creak rather disconcertingly (like they’re talking to each other like Ents), with hair-like lichens hanging from the lower branches. It was, however, a real pain to climb up to get to and to run from trap to trap, since it is rather steep and there are fallen logs everywhere. During the 3 weeks when there were mosquitoes, there was just a ridiculous amount of them. If you stopped for a moment on the off-chance that there was something in a trap, the mosquitoes would cover you like a blanket. I think Crisia even waved a vole at them accidentally to keep them out of her face. Furthermore, we rarely caught anything there. More often than not, it would be nothing or simply a chipmunk, which didn’t really matter in our population studies. I think there was only one vole there that we caught more than once. We usually consider having low trap success in the mornings to be a good thing on the long term grids since we would be done sooner; however, it often made it seem pointless to even wake up at 6 in the morning when you weren’t likely to catch anything.

Anyway, to bring myself away from my rant about Sibbald and back to the point, Crisia and I went on the hike the next day with the Alpine Ecology students to Rae Glacier. We passed a pretty blue lake and a campground and had lunch by a small waterfall past the tree line. Crisia and I spent the majority of the time in the back conversing with Brent, the other professor of the course, which led to my observation that he is an all-around cool guy. We stopped every once and a while so the students could tell us about their chosen plants. We went so slowly that we were passed twice by this large group of old people with hiking poles, once on their way up and once on their way down.

Kurt, the student who became more and more similar to a crazy mountain goat, was already way ahead before Brent, Crisia, and I climbed up after him. The rest of the class stayed at the base, and as we got higher and higher up, we could only see specks of them sliding down the glacier. This was one of the scariest things that I have ever done. The rocks of the pass up to Pocaterra ridge were a walk in the park compared to this. This was steeper, and the rocks came in varying layers above a base of solid ice. Being much less sure on my feet than the others ahead of me, I mostly took it very slowly until I caused the rocks to slide down underneath my feet, in which case, I scrambled up as fast as I could as if my life depended on it. I don’t think my life was in danger at any point, but I could have been seriously hurt if I had wiped up and slid down.

When we met Kurt at the top (or sort of top... we didn’t go all the way up), I was very relieved and quite impressed with myself. My knees were still aching from the previous hike, and I have never and probably will not ever consider myself to be a hardcore hiker. Yes, what we did on our grids on a daily basis was certainly more than most people do on their walk to the bus stop, but it hardly compared to a half day hike up a mountain. Here we took a few pictures of ourselves using the timed functions on our cameras. We also got to taste and take away in our water bottles some glacier water. This was the best water I’ve ever tasted. This could have been because it was cold and straight off a glacier and because I had just come to the top of strenuous hike, but you’d have to try it to understand.

The way down was much quicker. I actually found riding the rock slides down quite enjoyable rather than frightening since they were travelling in the direction I needed to go, and I didn’t need to fight against them like I did on the way up. Crisia and I took off without the class again so that the day wouldn’t be a complete waste work-wise. By the end of it, both of our knees were shot, especially Crisia’s (I think she pushed herself harder than she should have even if she is a much more experienced hiker than I am), and we had another hike the next day to look forward too. This would sadly be my last full day in Kananaskis.

Pocaterra Ridge

These next few posts will be about my last week in Kananaskis, which was obviously busy enough to keep me from writing to all (or perhaps just one or two) of you. There a few reasons this particular week was so busy: 1. It was my last week, and I needed to pack up four months of my life; 2. To be able to leave early, I had to take on some extra trap and trailer cleaning; and 3. Jack’s field course was taking place, and every day of the first week, he took them on a hike, and we were invited to come along. We were therefore allowed to drive to wherever they were going, so we took full advantage of the guilt-free hikes.

The first hike was to Pocaterra Ridge. We joined up with the class prior to this hike after taking care of our grids. As with probably most field courses, the hike was slow-going since we had many plants pointed out to us. One particular plant that caught my interest was alpine sorel. This plant, similar to its relatives in the east, wood sorel and yellow wood sorel (shamrock – nicknamed “yummies” in Plant Field), is edible and tastes kind of tangy, even lemony. Crisia and I kept picking these and eating them as we went.

We eventually came to a talus slope where, to my delight, we discovered pikas (These were taken at another time; I got one picture from this hike, but it's not as good. Also, for those who are interested in what a red-back vole looks like, here is a picture.). Pikas are little mouse-like rodents that are bigger than the mice we work with and make high-pitched squeaks as they run along the rocks, which they blend in very well with, often carrying grass in their mouths. I am pretty sure these are the animals upon which Pikachu of Pokémon, a Japanese children’s cartoon, videogame, and card game, is based.

When we came to the beginning of a pass, Jack let us run off to climb to the ridge on our own. Crisia and a student of the course, who also happens to be named Kurt, ran off and speedily clambered up all the rocks. Nikhil and I followed along more slowly behind them, nearly stepping on a few ptarmigans that were camouflaged against the rocks. Rocks are rather frightening things to climb since there is always the danger of them falling as you are climbing on them. One of the worst sounds you can hear on such a hike is the sound of a rock slide. You also don’t want to be directly behind the person who causes the rock slide.

At the top of the rocks, we met the ridge. If I thought climbing up the rocks was hard, climbing up the steep dirt slope of the ridge to get to the summit was even harder. I think Nikhil and I nearly gave up a few times and may have stopped if we didn’t know that Crisia was already up there and that there may be an easier way down. We did eventually get to the top; we were followed by a couple students from the course, one of whom was deathly afraid of heights and was “shaking and terrified” the entire time.

At the top, we couldn’t even see where Crisia and Kurt had gone. One of the students said that she saw Crisia head running down the other side of the ridge, so we decided to go that way. We bounded down as best we could without killing ourselves, but either way, it was really tough on the knees. We finally found Crisia and Kurt, along with Jack and some other students at the bottom of the ridge. It had turned out that Crisia had bounded down at almost full speed and had even flipped over. Since it was so steep, instead of wiping out, she landed on her feet.

At this point we decided that it would be best if we headed back more quickly without the class so that we could get some work done before going out to set our traps again. The way back seemed much harder than the way there even though it was mostly downhill. I guess going slowly makes the hike seem much easier. At one point, we found ourselves off the path, and Crisia ran right into a moose. It stood there long enough for her to take pictures before wandering off.

For those of you who didn’t notice the links to specific pictures, here is the album for the entire hike:

View Album

Get your own

Last Visit to Calgary

Hello! I know it’s been a ridiculously long time since I’ve written here. This is not because I have had nothing to say; it has more to do with the fact that I’ve been so busy, there’s been no time to write anything. That said, expect a few catch-up entries. Since I last wrote here, I spent my last week in Kananaskis, spent a couple weeks with some of you in Montreal, visited my friends Brandon and Sarah in Ottawa for a night, officially moved into my apartment in London, and officially started my life as a grad student at the University of Western Ontario. Because it would be insanity to attempt to fit all this into one post, I will attempt to break it up into several smaller, but probably still long, entries. This first one will be about my last week in Kananaskis.

This particular week began on a Friday, when Nikhil, Crisia, and I had to drive in to help pick up the students for our supervisor Jack’s field course. Jack had flown in the previous morning. Nikhil was supposed to pick him up while Crisia and I entertained 13-14 year old Girl Guides with live and origami mice. However, Jack and Nikhil ended up waiting for each other at opposite ends of terminal, so Jack rented a car and drove himself back, while Nikhil waited for a long time until he called the field station to find out that Jack had called and said that he was renting a car and driving back. Jack was given a Cadillac as a rental car, so he was quite happy, especially since he had something with which to make fun of Nikhil.

The first thing we had to do that day was pick up Brent, who was the other professor of the field course. He is a young professor from New Zealand, is very sarcastic, and is an all-around cool guy. We waited where Jack told us we should wait, which was where Nikhil should have gone the day before. Jack went to find Brent inside to make sure he knew where to go. However, a guy from Air Canada, whose English was not very good, told us that since we were not waiting for an Air Canada Flight, we would have to go somewhere else, so we let Crisia out to find Jack to tell him the change of plan and went to the WestJet terminal, where Nikhil had actually waited the day before.

As soon as we got there, we noticed a guy matching Brent’s description, standing by himself with his luggage. It turns out that Brent didn’t understand Jack’s instructions either, and we weren’t sure what exactly had happened to Jack, who was supposed to find him. I don’t think I ever found out since Tracy and I were unceremoniously dumped off to wait at the airport because the car would have been crowded otherwise. After maybe 45 minutes, we were picked up again by Crisia. Jack had rented another car and had gone back to the field station to await the van in order to pick up the second batch of students, while Nikhil went in the van with Brent to direct him back to the field station after they picked up the first batch of students.

This was all done by late morning, so this left us girls to do whatever we wanted to do before having to go back to set that evening. Our first stop was a Best Buy, so that I could pick up a case for my laptop. We took a wrong turn getting there and happened to find a sign for a used book sale. Being the nerds that we are, we became very excited and immediately followed the signs until we found the book sale. It was much bigger than we thought it would be, and we ended up staying there for 2 hours. Those of you who know me well enough will be surprised to know that I only came out with 3 books. Yes, 3 is a lot considering that I already have a stack of books that I own that I haven’t read, and I would be taking a plane back to Montreal in a week with much less room for all my stuff than is needed. However, 3 is not a lot considering that Crisia walked away with more than 10, and Tracy came out with a box full of books.

We did eventually find our way to the Best Buy, and I really like my laptop sleeve. What was interesting was that we had been to this Best Buy before but had never walked into the giant shoe store right next to it. I think the reason for this is that we are always with Nikhil and, therefore, feel obligated to not be the girls that we undoubtedly are. Nikhil made fun of us quite a bit when we got back.

The three of us ended up buying very similar shoes. Tracy’s and mine are identical except for the size, pattern, and colour. The most amusing part about all of this was that Tracy, the least girly of the three of us, had been going on about why anyone would want to buy these flat ballet-like shoes that appear to be everywhere. Since I actually wear shoes like this on occasion when I’m not in the forest, I explained to her that these shoes are useful when one wants to wear somewhat nice shoes but does not want the heel. Some of you may have seen the shoes I bought, which are green.

After our little shopping spree, we went for Vietnamese soup and bubble tea, and then did our practical shopping by stocking up on groceries. All in all, I had a lot of fun on our girls day out, which actually had never happened before this point, and was happy with my last day in Calgary before I had to come back for my flight.