A Blend of Romanticism and Reality I am occasionally asked what it means when I say, “I’m off on a dig for a few weeks.” Whatever do I get up to in the field? For those who have never experienced the thrills and challenges, I can park a few words here. One of the immense pleasures of fossils is in the nature of conducting work in the field, a composite of hair-raising adventures mixed with the tedious grind, the excitements and utter disappointments, a full spectrum of emotions that rarely are situated in the mushy mediocre middle. Generally, these events cleave to the absolute highs or lows. It involves a lot of logistical planning, pre-trip research of poring over maps and old literature, and being in nature on its terms. There have been times of fear and joy as we go about this trade in a spirit of liquor and guessing. The past year has been no exception in this regard. I’ve covered over 10,000 km by road, rail, and boot. I have trekked far into the hinterlands, over rugged terrain, through thick tangles of the bush, navigating pristine waterways, swatting away bugs, sweating or freezing pending the time of year, contending with high tides and rock falls. I have also been in urban settings where fossils sit in an island of civilization, untroubled and ignored by the quick bustle around them. Some sites are a breeze, and others are a treacherous slog into the unknown. Not every field trip is a pioneer adventure into the wilds. Some of them are quite safe and banal. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that every time I stepped out for a dig I am wrestling bears or wading through tabanid-infested muskeg. And there is no doubt that when we fossil comrades get together, we drink heavily! This is something we share in common with our disciplinary cousins, geologists. It is customary that a long day in the field out in the boonies busting rocks until we can’t lift our arms any more is punctuated at the end with just enough strength in reserve to set up camp and tip the elbow. Even that takes planning. Those who must travel several miles up a mountain with a field pack full of tools are not likely to strap on a few two-fours of beer as opposed to the more portable liquor, but where possible a few cases of beer are on hand. It doesn’t matter if the beer is warm. And, no, we don’t drink ourselves stupid since we have to get up early the next day for another round in the field (and then another beery round at the end of the day). Rinse and repeat. To do this well and to score incredible finds, it takes a mix of good planning, rugged determination, fortitude, and physical fitness. Unlike, say, going to an already established fossil park, there is no safety net or easy retreat to civilization. You (and maybe a comrade) are on your own, and that includes taking into account all the contingencies of getting lost or injured. Real fieldwork is not for duffers. More’s the pity that the trend in earth sciences education has been to minimize fieldwork requirements in favour of pulling out map drawers to study specimens in the lab. Sure, that has its vital place in the increase of our knowledge, but who will fill the drawers? When I read the literature of those fieldworkers of old, one can almost feel that bracing adventure out in the wilderness, investigating untouched strata and collecting specimens in all sorts of weather. One becomes accustomed to carrying one’s bodyweight in tools and rocks on one’s back for many, many miles. At the end of any expedition, you and your vehicle should be equally dirty and broken. If going solo (not always recommended, but sometimes necessary), it can get a bit lonely, and the snatches of the stupidest songs may get caught in a loop in your head, try as you might to tune it out and listen to the sound of leaves or babbling brooks and bird calls and all that. Some people enjoy rucking and hiking for its health benefits. In our case, we get the exercise incidentally through the work towards a goal. One has to account for every pound you take into the bush, and every pound you take out. Carrying tools is one thing, but also adequate water, which can be drank or dumped to make room for finds on the way back from the dig. I know every time I go on one of these weeks-long adventures, I tend to be 5-10lbs lighter because of all the exertion and forgetting to eat. A long field expedition is a great way to get that beach body, albeit filled with cuts, bruises, and the appearance of a shaggy, dirty hobo. Failure is always possible. Vehicle failures in the middle of nowhere? Been there. Tool failure? Yup. Site failure in not yielding up anything to make the trip of any value? More times than I can count. I would say my batting average is just under half the trips I go on result in some measure of success, be that incredible or so-so. Good planning helps mitigate against that kind of failure, but even all the best planning in the world cannot prevent brute reality from tossing failure grenades in your path. Failure is the most probable in prospecting new sites, but it is in this act of pioneering and discovery that presents the highest risk/reward ratio, just as it was during the gold rush. I have gone prospecting and came away with riches or empty-handed, with the latter being more the case. It can be treacherous. It is not just having to deal with nature, but with other collectors who may be keeping an eye on where you are going, ready to look for any signs of location to steal a march on your parade. For that reason, being incredibly circumspect or even silent is the most prudent option. A competitor will deplete your honey hole faster than you may think, no matter how remote, as anyone motivated enough will try to seize the hoard. Posting here on the internet is a surefire way of putting a big sign on your special spot, and before you know it word gets around and it gets raided by many people. It does not matter that you did all your due diligence in establishing that site through hours or even days and weeks of satellite mapping and LIDAR, scratching around in the dirt: giving that information away means you’ve done all that work for other people who can just saunter in and take it. The Gear Most of us would feel naked without our hammers, and we can be real snobs about them. You also contend with the mystery of why you have so many intact left-handed field gloves and hardly any right-handed ones. In the run-up to a trip, you may be raiding liquor stores for both drinkable provisions and flats for specimen storage, and making a trip to other stores to get tin foil and superglue. The chisels, the hammers, the specimen wrapping materials, the glues, the beer — all tools of the trade. At times, a rock saw, but that depends on site (no sense carting a rock saw and gas for a 10 mile bush hike). Fieldwork is no fashion show, yet we do have our ‘uniforms” of sorts that are entirely practical. The ability to bundle up or strip down (or having a change of clothes if one gets soaked) is key. Blasting out the knees and ass of pants is common. Old, sturdy clothes with lots of pockets is beneficial. I usually will wear army pants and sometimes don a surveyor’s vest. On my head a trusty hat, and on my feet a rugged steel-toed clodhopper boot. Expect that clothes will get sweat-stained and ripped. When out in the bush, shelter is a necessity. Over time getting used to another man’s stink, particularly if you share a few weeks in a 2-man tent is all part of the adventure. I find expeditions so much more meaningful with a field comrade: someone to share beer with, to bleed with, to delight in discovery, to commiserate over disappointments, to plan next steps, to meet challenges together, and those rolling conversations late into those very dark nights. The Elements There will always be those things outside of one’s control, and although one can prepare for just about any contingency short of asteroid strikes or sudden wombat attacks, one must contend with the fickle nature of weather. I have planned for months to go on a trip only to get rained out for days even in the statistically driest month of the year. It is beyond pointless to look at weather forecasts so far out as it is to predict the stock price of a company on any given day. The farther out the forecast, the less likely it is to be accurate anyhow. At best, you take it as it comes and prepare accordingly. Perhaps on the day prior to travel, looking at the radar (not the forecast!) is far more informative and predictive. Sticky, Blaring-hot sunny days mean keeping hydrated, cool, and preventing sunburns. Rainy, wet days are just miserable overall and may limit what one can see in the field. Snow is a nuisance that buries rock under an unhelpful additional layer of strata, not to mention if it is cold enough to freeze the ground so that even picking up a piece of talus requires chiseling it out of the frost. Hurricane force winds and thunderstorms sort of put a damper on collecting specimens. It is not just the meteorological phenomena we have to contend with, but also its aftereffects, such as flash floods that swell rivers or turn an otherwise dry area into sucking mud. If temperatures plunge to below freezing, it is all well and good to bundle up (and add more weight), but it may still be a bit uncomfortable, particularly on even gloved hands (doing delicate hammering work with thick gloves is about as good as that sounds). In the cold, what would be a minor ouch from hitting a rock or missed tool strike is amplified considerably. Death and Safety
The more remote the work, the higher the probability of sudden or creeping death. None of us set out with death in mind beyond unearthing long dead things. I have been to areas where cell signal coverage is nonexistent, and the nearest trace of civilization would take a day of trudging through the bush. I find it always pays to tell key people where I am going in the event that I go missing and my carcass may not be found for months, years, or ever. There is also the chance around tall cliffs for a fatal rock fall, and not even a hardhat is going to be much of life-saver from a car-sized rock falling from 30 feet. There is also a chance that wildlife will not take kindly to one’s benign trespass. Or you may lose your food and water, now having to rely on nature itself. No matter how well you prepare, shit happens, and inasmuch as you can pack for every contingency, there is a balance to be struck as well: how much of that can you realistically cart into the bush? The operative thing is to remain cool and collected in a crisis, managing one problem at a time, but also avoiding unnecessary risks. Sure, you may need to ford a raging river using ropes and risk being washed away, or maybe it means taking the extra time to go upstream to a calmer part of the river even if it adds a few more hours of travel time cutting into collecting time. There are those eventualities that one can never account for, such as being alone and having a heart attack, but that is the risk. In the end, prospecting and fieldwork is both an art and science, but on the whole it also remains liquor and guessing. Every one of us who have traveled deep and far into the field has campfire stories to tell, and although I have several, I hope to continue adding to them for as long as this body allows. Every time I venture out I say goodbye to my wife and cat, not knowing if I will return. The song that haunts me on the way out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqO4vBSLHMw (Alice in Chains, "Don't Follow:") Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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