At both Henik Lake and Goose Lake, the daily commuting vehicle was the helicopter. Each day we were shuttled to and from the grid we were working on by helicopter, in addition to the occasional moves during the day. So, despite having begun the summer having never flown in a helicopter, I can now safely say that I have well over one hundred flights under my belt.

I have now flown on three different helicopters. At Henik Lake, we flew in the Bell 206L LongRanger and at Goose Lake, we flew in the Bell 407 and the Eurocopter AS350 AStar. Of the bunch, I mostly just disliked the 206L – it was grossly underpowered for the job it had to do, forcing us to travel to the grid in two groups. Since it was a 20 minute flight there, that meant that there was a forty minute delay before the whole crew arrived on the grid.

Note the basket on the side.

I must say, though, that flying in helicopters is truly the way we were meant to fly. They fly near the ground which means one always has a nice view, and never has to go through the trouble of having the ears pop. It also seems that they don’t have nearly as much trouble with turbulence – likely simply due to the fact that they don’t fly in those conditions in the first place. Finally, when has an Air Canada pilot ever offered to take you on a detour through a gorge and take you through gut-wrenching manoeuvres which leave a smile plastered on your face?

You see, I was tasked with operating the transmitter on the Goose Lake project, a job with considerably more setup and shutdown time. This meant that I was also usually the first one to arrive on the grid and the last one to leave. Because one of the helicopters only seated five passengers, that often meant that I was the sole passenger on my flight back to camp. It was on one of these occasions that I asked the pilot if I could take him up on his offer to fly me through the gorge that forms the beak of Goose Lake. He happily rewarded me with a rather epic flight, with turns plastering me in my seat and the helicopter skimming low over the land and water. Suffice to say, I was really pleased; this is what in-flight service should be.

I’m feeling kind of aimless since returning from Goose Lake. I will be returning to work, this time in the Toronto area, which I’m sure will shatter my melancholy; however, I will surely continue to miss the Arctic. I uploaded an additional video I took in order to capture the large, expansive vistas I had the privilege of enjoying every day. The fog in this video simply adds more to the beauty as I explain in the video.

This question recently came up as I was being shuttled back to camp by Dave, one of the helicopter pilots. I asked what his plans were when he finished his rotation here and he told me that he would go home and work with his Dad, adding that he hadn’t had a vacation in three years. Slightly horrified by the thought (one month of continuous work seems barely manageable to me), I pointed out our seemingly different philosophical bends – some live to work, others work to live.

In saying that, the subtler distinction between the two became apparent. Fundamentally the best I can strive for in life is a sense of fulfilment and happiness. In the past, I have often viewed working as the antithesis of these values and thus viewed living to work as settling for a life of unhappiness. But why not strive to achieve fulfilment and happiness in my work as well? While my career change can be largely viewed as a step toward finding greater joy in my work, I don’t feel I’m quite at the point where work is its own reward for me.

Now that I am gainfully employed, the paradox of working to live is apparent in my life. While I used to have all the time in the world to pursue my interests, I never had the money. Now that I finally have the money, I no longer have the time. The answer to this dilemma used to be obvious to me; one simply has to make the time. Nevertheless, the decision seems more complicated.

I very well could make the time. This job is sufficiently flexible that I can choose which work I wish to do; however, in declining work, I’m also declining experience and declining money and I cannot guarantee that work like this in an industry which is notoriously cyclical will always be readily available. For a person still developing the skills and experiences needed to be able to easily obtain work, turning down work seems foolish. For a person who recently went through the unpleasant task of searching for work, turning down work seems foolish. For a person on the cusp of some level of financial security, turning down work seems foolish.

And so, looking ahead to the fall and winter I am faced with a conundrum. On the one hand, I desperately want to be successful in my new career and show measurable progress. On the other hand, I know that the satisfaction I gain from that won’t be enough. Living to work won’t bring me happiness and fulfilment. I am therefore left with the struggle of trying to master the balancing-act of working to live.

There are a number of activities that I derive a great deal of happiness from. Rock climbing, canoeing, and camping are chief amongst these; however, some of the activities I miss most of all are seemingly more mundane – a pint of beer at Kick-Offs or eating a Vincenzo’s sandwich over an evening of Dungeons and Dragons, or having an impromptu barbecue on a Saturday afternoon. A lot of these activities necessarily involve regular time commitment whether it be maintaining and developing my climbing skills or engaging in weekly quests with friends in D&D; this makes balancing these activities with a career which necessarily draws me away from these activities for regular extended intervals difficult or impossible.

I am hopelessly optimistic though. While this fall is looking like it will be busy with work, I am hopeful that the winter will give me an opportunity to make up for some of that. I’ve been mulling over a winter climbing trip, though I’m not sure my climbing will be up to par by that time. I also hope to relocate to the Waterloo area again to be closer to friends and more easily available for impromptu gatherings when I’m not away on work. It will cost me more than living with my parents, but life is a balance and that is why I have a job in the first place, right?

In my continued commitment to always posting a picture with my posts, I have decided to share this photo I recently took from our new transmitter location. The day was an interesting mixture of sun and cloud and I feel the rain in the distance really does the landscape here justice and captures the brooding gloomy weather that has plagued us the past little while.

Rain does make the landscape more interesting

Although the rain has generally held out for the most part, we finally received precipitation today in the form of an unpleasant slushy snow. This ultimately turned into a weather day for us, but if it continues, we will just have to endure it; we are too close to the end of the project to delay any longer because of some unpleasant weather.

In the meantime, I thought I’d post some links to some articles and blog posts which have caught my attention this week. I’ve noticed this as a feature on a few other blogs, and think I may adopt it myself.

The first post regards an interesting hydrological problem which I was previously completely oblivious to. Rivers convey sediment in three ways: solution, suspended load and bed load.  The first two, solution (material dissolved in the water) and suspended load (material floating within the water) are relatively easy to measure, but apparently it is very difficult to measure bed load (material which rolls along the bed of the river). Listening to Rivers by Brian Romans at Clastic Detritus details the mostly unsuccessful attempts in the past to measure bed load and an innovative new way to measure it using seismometers to basically measure the sound the bed load makes as the sediment moves along the bottom. Geophysics meets hydrogeology.

The second post is from Frank Swain at SciencePunk.  Five iconic science images, and why they’re wrong examines several science-related images which almost everyone will recognize and explains how they are misleading.  I am particularly interested in the attention he draws to March of Progress.

The March of Progress

I recently read Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature by Brian Switek which has a fantastic quote which addresses the very common problem in our understanding of human evolution that March of Progress inadvertently reinforces:

There was never an “ascent of man,” no matter how desperately we might wish for there to be, just as there has not been a “descent of man” into degeneracy from a noble ancestor. We are merely a shivering twig that is the last vestige of a richer family tree. Foolishly, we have taken our isolation to mean that we are the true victors in life’s relentless race.

The other images Swain discusses are interesting in their own right. Although I like to believe that I do not suffer from these misconceptions, examining a scale model of the solar system was nevertheless surprising.

I'm quite pleased with how this conveys the actual experience of looking through binoculars, at least for me.

Finally, because I don’t feel like I can finish a post without some sort of photographic contribution from myself, I’ve decided to include this photo which demonstrates the success of a brief experiment I performed on a recent canoe trip to the Chiniguchi wilderness. Apparently it is in fact possible to extend the zoom capabilities of a camera with binoculars. The camera was able to focus; however, significant motion blur was added due to the challenges of holding both the camera and binoculars still. I will have to repeat the experiment with tripods in the future.

A light blanket of snow envelopes the tundra around the camp.

I was expecting a much more gradual transition, but I’m realizing just how quickly the seasons change in the Arctic. Consider for example that this region transitions from approximately zero hours of daylight at the winter solstice to twenty four hours of daylight at the summer solstice.  This means that over the span of one month, there is an average of four hours of daylight lost or gained, or over one week, there is an average of one hour change.

The ptarmigans around the camp show the gradual transition into winter plumage.

One of the more interesting observations I have made has been the transition of the animals.  The arctic hares are beginning to have a mottled grey and white coat as they transition to a fully white coat for winter.  The change in the ptarmigans is even more notable.  Instead of the mottled brown feathers of summer, white feathers are creeping upward from their feet, which have now become more snowshoe-like. I will be interested in seeing just how far the transition will come before I head back to balmy Southern Ontario.

As it turned out, almost all of the snow melted during the day; however, the reprieve was short-lived.  As the sun lowered in the sky, once again I felt the snow begin to fall.

After a miserable morning, the sun came out for lunch

In stark contrast to the consistent weather I experienced at Henik Lake, the weather here at Goose Lake has been extremely inconsistent.  One day in particular stands out as emblematic of Goose Lake weather; throughout the day, the sun was in and out of the clouds, with the temperatures fluctuating in response so that I would be freezing cold at one moment and desperately adding layers, and then ten minutes later be sweltering and peeling them off.  At the same time, we experienced intermittent showers of mist throughout the same day.

The other thing I have noticed since coming here is the wind. Without trees, the wind here picks up some tremendous speed.  Today in particular was windy, though not especially cold.  With the wind, we had rain, which means that I had to cover the transmitter with a tarp, and therefore also myself. I was initially positioned facing the wind with the cache to my back in order to deaden the sound of the generator to a degree. This caused the tarp to be blown into me and proved especially challenging all morning.  The tarps are not especially water proof either, and I found the water-repellency of my clothing was tested by the streams of water finding their way through the holes of the tarp and down my sleeves.  The afternoon was fortunately nicer, especially as I managed to move the transmitter to the other side of the cache, causing the wind to blow the tarps away from me instead.  My resourcefulness was for naught, though, as the rain disappeared in the afternoon.

Despite a lack of trees, I still get the autumn colours.

Watching the news at breakfast this morning, I noticed that it was supposed to be almost 34 degrees in Windsor today, compared to the high of 4 degrees we experienced yesterday.  Nevertheless, I can’t quite complain about the cool weather.  Although the rain will never be welcome, there is something wonderful about the colours of the season and the frost on the ground in the morning.

First, in general, geophysics is concerned with remotely imaging the interior of the earth.  There are a number of different methods of approaching this, differing by what exactly you are looking for.  A gravimetric survey measures changes in the earth’s gravitational field and can indicate changes in the density of the earth’s crust.  Seismic surveys record the propagation of sound waves in the crust and provide indications of changes in stratigraphy and potentially any buried structures.

The survey I am currently taking part in is induced polarization (IP).  Simply, a voltage is induced in the ground, and the decay is measured at several intervals from the source. IP’s strength is the ability to detect dispersed sources of conductive material, as gold often is.  The nature of the decay provides information about the quantity and quality of the material.

An IP survey is organized around an array of electrodes which are moved down a series of lines, forming a grid.  The array can vary in configuration, but will include at least one electrode for current, and any number of electrodes to measure the changes due to the current.  We are using nine electrodes (forming eight dipoles) in this survey; as the dipole moves from the source of current, the depth which is measured increases as well.

The configuration of our crew then is one person on transmitter, increasing or decreasing the current as needed and recording any field observations.  One person moves the current electrode (metal rods hammered into the ground and connected to the transmitter), three people move the pots (special electrodes used to perform the actual measurements, and one person on receiver, performing the actual measurements.

My work station each day is slightly more scenic than your average cubicle

I am on transmitter, which means that I spend most days in the exact same spot.  Somehow you would expect this to become monotonous, but I don’t find it overly so.  Time passes surprisingly quickly and there is actually a lot more going on when running the transmitter than it sounds from my description.

Suffice to say, I do enjoy this work. I love being outside all day and I have been very fortunate so far in the things I have been able to see since starting this work.  I definitely consider myself lucky.