Adventures in the Field - The Recurring Dream

 I've pretty much sucked at blogging for the last two years, but I've found something that might make me post more: describing the crap that goes through my head when I'm in the field.  ["The field" is anything outside, but in my case it's my wetland sites around the Great Salt Lake.]  Field work is hard work, and I've been looking forward to it for 6 months.  Now that it's in full swing, I'm alternately psyched and discouraged by the task at hand.  I was way too ambitious about what I could do in my first semester, and it seems like I've probably been too ambitious about what can be done by one graduate student (and one awesome technician) in three months.  In the meantime, I'll be sharing how it goes.

That dread I spoke of hits every three hours in the night before I start field work, and sometimes in the middle of the week.  This makes a good nights sleep difficult.  That is, until I work enough long, sun-scorched days to sleep through everything.  [True story: by Friday of last week I thought my cell phone alarm sounded like music.]  So, this time of the week (today is Monday) I have this dream:

I'm driving the field vehicle out to a distant field site (usually one which I have not secured permission to visit) when I realize I'm lost.  This isn't just any type of lost (I'm quite comfortable being lost), it's stuck-in-the-middle-of-a-patch-of-Phragmites lost.  After I realize this, panic begins to set in: I'm not sure where in the world I am, and I'm completely uncertain about where in the wetland I am because the Phragmites has obscurred my view of everything.  In an effort to calm down, I decide to get out of the RAV4, which I swear to God is starting to sink into the marsh.  As I dread what the marsh will feel like on my bare feet (the stems of dead Phrag are like little spears), it dawns on my waking brain that the marsh feels like carpet....

At this point I find myself standing up next to my bed, completely disoriented.  I then spend the next 15 minutes trying to calm down and convince all the parts of my brain that I really am in my bedroom, the vehicle has not been lost in the marsh, and I still have a few hours before I have to go into the field.

To fully understand why this dream is so terrifying, I should explain a few things:
1.  Phragmites is horrible.  Below are some pictures of Phragmites australis, an invasive grass that is taking over the Great Salt Lake.  It's pretty cool that this plant can beat everything we (humans) throw at it (i.e. pesticides, mowing, flooding, drying...), but it's down right awful that it's taking over spaces that used to have cooler plants and animals.

I haven't yet become lost in a Phragmites patch, but I've come close. It grows like 15 feet tall, and so dense you can't really see anything else.  [In an upcoming field adventure description, I'll tell you about the time I thought a mower monster was chasing me down through the Phragmites].  If I managed to drive the RAV4 into a patch of this monstrous stuff, I might be able to find my way back out, but it would be pretty difficult to retrieve the vehicle.    

2.  This isn't the first time my work has haunted my dreams.  It's not even the first time my wetland field work has haunted my dreams.  When I was a movie theatre employee I would have these dreams that progressed with my position in the theatre.  As a concessionist I would dream that I couldn't remember my customer's order, if I could get the size of the popcorn right, I couldn't remember if they wanted butter or not.  After 20 or so questions I would move on to trying to get their drink order right.  Endlessly difficult.  When I worked in box office, after really long weekends I would wake up around 2:00 am frantically running my hands around my bed, trying to find the slot the tickets were supposed to come out of.  This continued when I was a projectionist, I would find myself standing next to my bedroom door, pressing an imaginary start button and feeling horrified that nothing was happening.  Even more horrifying, my hair smelled like butter, popcorn smoke, or Simple Green (c) when I woke up.

The only time this hasn't been the case was when I worked at the mall.  It was such a low brain power job it couldn't haunt me.  The current state of sleeping mind reminds me of a dream I had last year, when I was working for the state doing wetland assessments in the Fish Lake Forest.  We had this awesome site that was really high in elevation and full of sedges (Carex spp).  I was terribly afraid of losing things there after I dropped them because there was so much water and vegetation.  About a week after we visited that site I had a dream I had lost something at that site, only to realize that my crew had left me there.  While I could find my way away from the site, I couldn't find my way back home because I have a terrible sense of direction and the Fish Lake sites were very confusing....  It took a long time to get over that.

3.  I'm pretty certain at some point I will get something stuck in a wetland.  I hope it's just a shovel or pvc pipe, but I'm very worried it will be me that gets stuck, or the RAV4.  [Stay tuned for the story of the lost field veicle keys...]  To prevent this as best I can, I make 23 point turns when I have to turn around on a dike, I bring a tech with me whenever possible to pull me out when I get stuck, and I'm generally careful about what I stick in the mud.  However, watch for a post about something I get stuck in a wetland...