Well here we are again folks, as my dad would say. Its 4:50 in the morning, and that's what one says when one has been lugged roughly into it from the bliss of sleep.
It feels like I should go to the airport now.
But instead I am driving to Pennsylvania.
Life of a research technician in crops and soils. I don't actually mind my task today, it is one of helping and following directions and not making my own decisions. My own project and grant writing and telling others what to do can wait--and this is why I like this job so much for its diversity--and instead my role is as Helper. Graduate Student #5 in our lab, or The Clever Irreverent One, has a beetle diversity project in two different locations, one being the foreign and incorrigible land of Pennsylvania. We're looking at how different densities of organic corn and soybeans influence beetle population and weed seed predation. All week I've been focusing on this project with Clever, as its Northeast Bug Week or whatever, and I've spent much of every day setting out little round plates of appealing weed seed snacks for beetles to browse. Then we, or rather, some other unfortunate research assistant, will count what's left to determine what was eaten.
One of my favorite little portions of this job, which I didn't expect, is serving a support role, a little bit being the mom of the lab. I've been a consoling ear to overwhelmed and upset grad students, I've made people eat my backup banana chips when I've noticed them get stoic and silent and hungry during field work. I've helped with all things logistical. "How do I get the biomass samples taken and get the seeds counted all before my class at 2pm?" It's logistics. "It's not a crisis: it's a puzzle," I'll say and we calm down and accomplish things.
So Clever and I are driving south through thick morning fog, talking about artificial intelligence, listening to the BBC or Sirius radio. The light is growing imperceptibly up through the fog, even a thick gray fog seems bright in comparison with the black early morning.
Clever groans about Pennsylvania; "careful yuh don't git spit on", he'll say, as everyone seems to be chewing tobacco,
or roll his eyes about the hunting shops and diesel mud-spattered pickups idling in the gas station parking lot, the occupants eating massive sandwiches.
But for all the redneckosity and the mines, and granted this is not all of Pennsylvania of course, there are some beautiful bucolic vistas, low mountains rolling and crossing, views down into valleys green with crops.
The research site in Pennsylvania is a testament to the power of organic weed management, ie, tine weeding, because it had none. I'm walking through the corn plots, the lambsquarters and pigweed as tall as I am, pornographic terrible trees these things are, leaning aggravatingly into the rows. I'd traverse through, flapping blindly through the corn leaves, pulling myself thru these grabbing weeds, like combing dreadlocked hair. I'd put out my little plate of seeds for the beetles, then turn around and exit that plot and comb everyone the opposite direction again.
Clever and I arrive in the dewy morning, a large research cornfield of work in front of us. "It's sunny and beautiful!, put on your rain gear everyone!" calls out Clever. This is because the dew here is insurmountable, as if every leaf were supporting a thin flat pond; walking through the plots would soak us. So we kit up and slosh through the plots. My feet carry a sludge of mud, water, and weed seeds. We're itchy from the grabbing weeds and work stoicly, hours on end of going into every single one of the hundreds of plots, doing the same little task systemically and carefully. Champions of Science.
When we finish, Clever and I are hooting and cheering, and there's muddy high-fives and yah! how happy are we to have finished this experiment. A latte, shower, rest, lunch, whatever, becomes immeasurably more satisfying after something like this.
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