Lost Again

In my previous post I mentioned that we have a lot of GPS units out in the field, four to be exact.  Teaching my technicians how to use the GPS units has been tricky, to say the least.  Especially our cheap Garmin GPS units that belong to the lab.  The navigation system on those units is odd, they'll put you on track for your destination up until you get about 30 feet away, at which point they lead you in a circle around your point.  Really, a full circle.  This isn't a problem if you're walking around a playa or in short vegetation.  But in tall vegetation like Phragmites or hard stem bulrush, where each step is a battle, that extra circle is incredibly frustrating.  Add to this frustration, the fact that those units often need to have their compass recalibrated, but it's difficult to tell if it's leading you in a circle because it's wacky or because the compass is on the fritz, and you find yourself wasting a lot of time walking in circles (add to this the fact that they're trying to get within 1 foot of their goal when the accuracy of the GPS unit is about 3 meters).  I found myself getting a little annoyed at how long it was taking to learn how to use the Garmin's when I remembered the time I got lost following a similar unit and set my team back at least an hour.  

A GPS is a global position system that uses satellites to tell you your position on the globe.  They're a god-send for people like me who rarely know where they are.  Unfortunately, it's easy to become overly dependent on a GPS unit and stop paying attention to where you're going.  Such a thing happened in 2011 while I was going field work with the state.  I had a great time doing field work that summer, the crew I was working with was pretty rad and the mountain wetlands we were working in were also really sweet (except for the one's the weren't, those were heinous).  The job was to assess a random selection of wetlands from across the state, and they were disproportionately in the Ashley and Fishlake forests, which was great for me, I love those places.  My job on the crew was to assess the buffers around each site, defined as 100 meters from the boundary, then help describe the soils in four soil pits.  The way I had to assess the buffer was to walk 100 meters away from the site along a line to the north, west, south, and east.  A feat that was only possible with a GPS unit that not only gave me my bearing, but also told me how far away I was.  One of our final assessment sites that summer was not actually a wetland, but we had to assess it like it was. It was actually a conifer forest, which is cool, but I'm a wetland person, so I had no idea what to do.  The wetlands I work in are flat, you can see all the way across them and use pin flags to mark things like your center point or boundary.  Not do-able in forests, and there are no natural landmarks, just trees.  Trees everywhere.

Things were tense this day, maybe we got up too early, maybe it was a feeling like we were wasting time assessing a forest like it was a wetland.  Either way, it led me to make some poor decisions.  So here is a story of terrible decisions

1.  Not stocking up on batteries.  I looked at the GPS unit before I started and saw that it would die soon.  Ben had extra batteries, but I just wanted to get started and thought I could make it at least part way through so I set out toward the west.  Every 30 meters I stopped and looked at the cover of different types of vegetation (i.e., trees, shrubs, grasses), presence of invasive species, and influence of stressors like grazing and erosion.  But I only looked for these things in a 10 meter circle around me.

2.  Not looking back to see where I had come from.  I got tunnel vision, I only looked ahead of me to make sure I wouldn't step on a snake or something.  I never looked back to see if there were any landmarks that would get me safely back to my team.  I didn't even look to see if I was going uphill or downhill.  I got 100 meters away from my site, noted the coordinates of the end point and started following the GPS unit back to the center.

3.  Pushing on despite signals I was lost.  As I started my return journey to the center point I wandered off into the woods.  The GPS was changing it's mind an awful lot about where the center point was.  And for about 10 minutes I just kept following it.  It felt wrong.  A 100 meters is not a long distance, I should have stumbled upon my crew mates pretty quickly, but I didn't.  I couldn't even hear them.  I started looking around and trying to remember what I had wandered through.  Well, it was all trees.  Just stupid straight trees.

4.  Yelling and continuing to wander, rather than calibrating the GPS.  My family and I have a call that works like a charm when we get separated in the grocery store:  I yell "Ca coo!  Ca coo!"  and they yell "Ca ca! Ca ca!"  and through these calls we work our way together.  It works like a charm for Downards, but no one else seems to understand.  So I kept on my journey to nothing through the forest yelling "Ca coo!  Ca coo!" and listening for nothing.  Eventually I wised up and started calling for my co-workers.  "Ben!  Toby!  Alex!" and for the first time all summer they were silent!  At this point my resolve melted and I started getting cranky.  I kept thinking "Why are they being so quiet when I need them?"  and "Why is this GPS so stupid?"  and "Why am I so stupid?  There were fresh batteries in the backpack I was carrying."  It was a dark time.  Then I made a good decision.  

Finally calibrating the compass.  I finally stopped yelling and wandering I calibrated the compass.  To be clear, I hadn't calibrated the compass up to this point because I thought it would drain the remaining battery and I would be left holding a calibrated, useless electronic item (instead of the uncalibrated, lying electronic item I was carrying).  Once I finished turning two times in a circle (which is actually how you calibrate a compass), I found out that I was now to the east of the center point and headed back to the center.  Once there I started making bad decisions again.  

5.  Forgetting about jokes.  I got some batteries from Ben and he thought he'd be hilarious and do a bit from the cartoon Family Guy, but I was a little bit irrational and hadn't seen Family Guy, so it did not go over well.  It went like this:  

• Becka approaches quite composed,  relieved that I had finally found my position on the globe again; I told Ben why I was so late and had only complete 1/4 of the job I was supposed to do.  
• Ben says "It's not your fault."  
• Becka thinks, "Oh, I know what he's trying to make a joke about, but it is my fault." and walks away
• Ben says "It's not your fault."  
• Becka thinks "Calm down, he's being funny.  But it is your fault!  There were batteries there.  And now you've held the whole team up."   
• Ben says "It's not your fault."  
• Becka tears up and thinks "Quit being so sensitive.  It's your fault but he's trying to be funny."  
• Ben might have kept on yelling that after I was out of hearing distance, but turns out hearing distance isn't very far away.  

All of this seems kind of funny now, and is very humbling when I watch my technicians following the GPS in circles.  They're not holding me back at all, but I definitely held my crew back that day.  Best of all, my track was logged in the GPS so we could see that I just kept on moving and got very lost.  We could also see that I was never more than 100 meters away, even though I felt like I was on the other side of the mountain.  There are some good lessons out there for people who are often lost (you people who have a superior sense of direction can go somewhere else and celebrate your superiority):

1.  Always take the batteries with you.  

2.  When you're lost, quit wandering for a minute and get your head on straight.  

3.  Remember how to laugh, the Family Guy is not supposed to make your cry.