UAMN holds over 2.5 million objects across its 10 research and teaching collections: Earth Science, Fishes, Mammals, Archaeology, Fine Arts, Ethnology and History, Ornithology, Entomology, Documentary Film, and the Herbarium. Here, curators discuss what many might believe is the best part of the job: the fieldwork. Getting out of the office, the lab, the classroom, the compactor–and getting back into Alaska. How do the researchers plan for weeks living and working at a campsite? How do they prepare students for remote travel, and how do they manage the sometimes-harsh seasons of the north? This is the first in a multi-part series that will air at different points throughout the year.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
UAMN holds over 2.5 million objects across its 10 research and teaching collections: Earth Science, Fishes, Mammals, Archaeology, Fine Arts, Ethnology and History, Ornithology, Entomology, Documentary Film, and the Herbarium. Here, curators discuss what many might believe is the best part of the job: the fieldwork. Getting out of the office, the lab, the classroom, the compactor–and getting back into Alaska. How do the researchers plan for weeks living and working at a campsite? How do they prepare students for remote travel, and how do they manage the sometimes-harsh seasons of the north? This is the first in a multi-part series that will air at different points throughout the year.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
But you know, at the end of the day, being out in the field is all about--first and foremost--being safe. And it's hard to do your work and be productive if you can't--if you can't be safe, and if you're not comfortable in many of the conditions we're in, then it's hard to focus on on doing your work. And you know being uncomfortable might mean the bugs, the weather, the remoteness, the mode of travel we're using. It might be exposure, because we often work up in the mountains and--and you know, you don't have to climb cliffs, but we're sometimes on rocky outcrops.
Roger Topp:Hello, and welcome to The More You Look, your behind-the-scenes journey into museum collections, research, exhibition, and public programming from Fairbanks, Alaska. I'm Roger Topp, director of exhibits, design, and digital media at the UA Museum of the North and host for today's episode. The University of Alaska Museum of the North holds over 2.5 million objects across its 10 research and teaching
collections:earth science, fishes, mammals, archaeology, fine arts, ethnology and history, ornithology, entomology, documentary film, and the herbarium. I sat down with a few of the curators to talk about what I and many might believe is the best part of the job: the fieldwork; getting out of the office, the lab, the classroom, the compactor, and getting back into Alaska. I wanted to hear about how the researchers plan for weeks living and working at a campsite, how they prepared students for the remote travel, and how they manage the sometimes harsh seasons of the North. This is the first in what looks like a six-part series we will air at different points throughout the year. Introducing first Pat Druckenmiller, museum director and curator for earth science.
Pat Druckenmiller:You know, most of the things we need to do in the field aren't rocket science. They're, go out, hike here, find the spot, and then like maybe dig something up. So it's--it's more important, most--almost all of those things--but some of them absolutely require zero prior knowledge of paleontology or geology. Many of these things can be easily taught in the field, like finding a dinosaur track isn't really--it does require a little bit of time and practice, but anyone can do it. It's not like you have to be a paleontologist to do it. Choosing the right people is difficult. And I feel--so as a--as an advisor and a professor, I feel obliged to try to provide opportunities to all
sorts of students:undergraduates, graduate students, to experience fieldwork. And to find out if this is something that, you know, they like to do. Many of them are eager to give it a try, especially if they haven't done it before. But what that means is students may also be--may not have a very realistic expectation of what fieldwork is like. So I have to look at the person and assess their experience and their background and their--and their, just kind of, general approach to things to decide whether or not they may or may not be appropriate. And my track record would be that I've definitely failed at that a few times, because some people you know--you make accommodations in a lot of different ways and make sure that they're safe and comfortable and have the right gear and you can do all these things. But at the end of the day, nothing can quite replace the actual experience of being there. And people who were otherwise really eager and motivated to go may find out that this is not for them. And it may be it's--it's also partly a matter of that Alaskan field work may not be for them. But working other places in the US or Canada might be, because in other places you just got get into a truck, you drive out to a site, you walk to a quarry, and you start digging. Here--it's so very different in Alaska. It can be really hard to gauge, both for me and for the person whether they're appropriate. So one of the things I do try to do is I just sit down and I spend a lot of time finding out what they--what they've done before in terms of camping and backpacking and hiking. Even then, it's not always guaranteed--not always guaranteed that it's going to work. Yeah, put it on the pile. Check this out. [Amber.] Yeah. [That's cool... metasequoia.] Let's make a little pile. This is a-- you know that's the thing--is like--not all this is super museum quality, but it's the first record--I mean, this stuff doesn't exist right now in knowledge because no one's ever found that before. When people ask about wanting to go and do something like that, if they're a volunteer, an undergrad, then I basically say something to the extent of, well--I try to just paint a really dreary picture of the situation. I basically try to scare them off. And I do that by being completely honest and realistic about what--what might happen. But I might emphasize some of the darker, scarier sides, not to say that they're dangerous, just that they're--they're less pleasant, shall we say? You know, talk about how bad the bugs can be, how bad the weather can be. The trip may be beautiful and bug free, but I'd rather they psychologically be prepared for the worst. And if that doesn't seem--if it's something they go like, 'whoa, okay, maybe that's not what I expected,' all the better, you know. We avoid any sort of problems before we even go out in the field. If, if we do go on the field, and then people have a hard time, though--I have to say, there have been some instances where people with little to no experience have risen to the challenge and found an amazing amount of--they've built a tremendous amount of confidence in themselves. Having simply gone out, done the work, and come back and done the whole trip, it may have been challenging in a in a host of different ways. But the fact that they they actually survived it is very confidence building. And, and so sometimes it's meant to be challenging, and--and that's okay. So they get the challenge. They get past the challenge. And they're better for it. You know, it's only just been a couple of times when people have really just said,'No, I just, I just--I can't do this and I need to I need to go away.' But most people do complete the work. They come back and they go, 'Well, that was fun. I'm glad I tried that. I don't need to do that again. Thank you.' And then some people come back and they're like,'let's--when are we going next. I want to go out again. When's the next trip.' And--by the way, I do use--when I have volunteers and particularly undergraduate students in the lab. I like when I have a--I focus on my graduate students, giving them an opportunity. And because seats are often limited on planes and boats and things, I'll then be able to fill a few remaining vacancies with undergrads or volunteers. But I usually only do that once they have been say, working in the lab the full year, and they've been dedicated. They've been coming in. They've been doing their work and they're committed. Fieldwork can be a reward for them in that respect. So, I'm in the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, on a very beautiful, pretty warm summer day. And we're here finishing up work today on a spectacular skeleton of a marine reptile, a long neck plesiosaur, an elasmosaur...
Josh Reuther:You know, it's one of those things where people really learn, sort of, what aspects of archaeology that they want to go into, or if they even do want to go into archaeology because of the field.
Roger Topp:This is Josh Reuther, our curator of archaeology.
Josh Reuther:You know, there are many people who enjoy the Here, we'll just--oh that's in the sun. There we go. Beautiful. lab much more than the field and--but they've tried the field and they, you know, there's a romanticism I think about the field in general, and you can see that on reality TV shows everywhere. It's you know, I think the adversity--the, I would say like, the gruffness you know, some--I think some of it's machismo in a way. And you know, the the adversity of it, I think is a big deal, and being patient. I think Pat's totally right--is that you really have to be patient and problem solve pretty quickly with people. And in every field situation I've Kelsey, this is all worth it. 1000s of dollars right here. had, something has come up whether it's a minor thing or a major problem, and people who, who aren't patient with problem solving or willing to work, you know, as a group, they really have a hard time, you know, in the future and in field archaeology. And that, that has nothing to do, like you said, basically, with the discipline itself. It's just the environment that you're basically in at that time. And you know that, at least in Alaska, but I can say, probably[Science.] Yeah, alright. in the lower 48, in certain areas too or around the world that, you know, even when you're in a--off the road on a truck, you know, those adversities can be just as much as when you're You know, I give each person an equal chance, because just helicoptering into--or snow machining into a field site. the--you never know, based on background sometimes or what they're telling you that they've done before or what they Many times you're more relaxed, right, when you're in a truck, haven't, you know, some of the quietest folks that aren't over-exuberant about things have been my best sort of people so those major things come up a lot more, because you're more because they sit and listen. But there are, you know, when you get over-exuberant people, I think that's when I worry relaxed about things and not preparing as much. And you get sometimes, or that there's very much an idealism about, you know, being out in the field, like an over idealism of say, used to just throwing things in, you know, gearboxes, and not you know, what it means to be in, in a remote field camp, because when I--when I hear that I--or when I see that--I worry really checking, you know, you're not doubling up on gear, about a maturity level. Those idealisms get in the way. It's when the experience level--you can really tell the experience or you're not doing the sort of over-engineering aspect, or level when you're talking about, you know, what it means to be remote or what it means to be--to prepare. And so those are over-preparation that you would when you go and fly into a field things that I kind of key in. I ask some questions, but also, you know, if they haven't had a lot of experience, you know, I camp, and you're there basically by yourself for however many tend to sort of ask them questions about their upbringing sometimes, and what in key and like situations that they might days and--by yourself as the, as the team, not the have been, like, just just like fixing a tire, you know, things individual--but so, you know, it's in all different settings. like that. And what that was, like, like were you totally throwing it or whatever, you know, things like that, you know, but I try to give each student a--you know, the benefit And I would agree with Pat, I think it does take sort of a, of the doubt once we start going in, but I always have some sort you know, a patience, but also a mentality that, you know, you of seasoned people that can mentor those students through and usually those are seasoned grad students or seasoned staff, really want to, in a way, be part of those initial things like that. So it's not just me it's--there's a redundancy actually in that mentorship. And that usually discoveries, because that's, you know, partly what the field is works pretty well, especially when you have you know, different levels of--sort of experience in that mentorship about, I think--is those initial discoveries and, and that and also females and males when he have both, because you know, I hate to say it, but it does, you know--it does make a initial sort of excitement. It's sort of an addiction, you know, difference. And so a lot of that can alleviate some of this sort of--when you get out--these problems when you get out there. in a way.
Roger Topp:Link Olson, curator of mammals.
Josh Reuther:So, the single most important attribute that I look for is attitude. It's unlikely anyone that you haven't worked in the field with before is going to be terribly experienced in what you'll be doing. So I would agree that the attitude someone brings into it, and their ability to roll with the punches and take things in stride. I've worked with people before--without naming names of course--who have loads of experience in whatever it is we're doing, who nonetheless just didn't really fit well. And we are social creatures. So fit actually ends up being pretty important. In fact, among many of my colleagues, we make a distinction between being compatible in the field as colleagues and being compatible in all other settings. And most of us have learned about that distinction the hard way. Unanticipated hiccups, bad weather--and bad weather just makes the entire experience more challenging. And of course, up here, even in the middle of summer, we can get snow, we can get--depending on where you are in the state--we can get cold rain. And even if a rain storm is relatively brief, or even just a heavy dew, if we don't get direct sunlight or a wind or warmer temps, everything just stays wet. And once you get wet, it's hard to dry back out, I actually use the word inertia a lot in the context of fieldwork and just remind students and visiting collaborators and colleagues that it's easier to stay than to get pretty much any positive attribute in the field. It's easier to stay dry than to get dry. It's easier to stay warm than to get warm. It's easier to stay found than to get found. And I have a list somewhere. I think we're up to 15 or 16 different conditions for which that holds true. So that then means you just want to plan accordingly. And I'm like a lot of field biologists who've been doing this for a while; we keep lists, we curate those lists, we share them with people coming into the field with us. And occasionally you find somebody who doesn't read that list too carefully. And maybe they only forgot one piece of field gear, but if that's a rain jacket or a pair of warm gloves, then that, of course, has a disproportionate effect on their state of mind. And that can have a ripple effect to the rest of the field group. All that being said, in my experience these are the exceptions, these situations. Most people who seek out field opportunities are a pretty self-selected group to begin with, ideally someone that I know. And if I don't know them at the time and they're being considered for an expedition, I do my best to get to know them. And that's gotten easier to we can FaceTime and Zoom with someone. I will ask for references. And if--if I think it's necessary or would help me understand this person's unique combination of attributes better, I'll contact that person. It's a pretty small field and it's a pretty flat world so, it's usually easy to suss somebody out now. That isn't to say I, you know, do a deep dive into their background, but it usually--it rarely takes more than a phone call or an email to assuage any concerns I might have.
Pat Druckenmiller:I think I generally shoot for a lot of our trips--it generally falls into about a two week window of time. And that includes--but it does highly depend--but it often includes some period of time just getting to the field site, which can range from minimally a day to three to four days. And then the same thing coming back out, because often aircraft are involved, and bad weather, and that can very much change the length of the trip compared to what you actually plan for. But when we're in the field, once we actually finally get to the field, we almost never feel like we have enough time to do what we want to do. So I try to plan--I try to balance--between having enough time there on site to do the work, against knowing that people every day get progressively more tired. And they might be, you know, getting wet. And depending on how we're getting there, you know, maybe an issue with respect to food or fuel or some other commodity that we need to do the work. And, and usually, frankly, even my own schedule too, I often don't have--I've got other field projects I need to do. And so, for example, we could go to the Colville River and it'd be great to just spend a month up there--they often just don't have the luxury of spending the month of August up on the Colville. There's other things I need to do. So the trips are
very much a compromise:in terms of length of work, you know, how long we stay, when we--some of our work is backpacking. And so, usually the length of any given leg of backpacking work is not more than five or six days because that's about as much food as anyone can reasonably carry in the time. Our workon--boat based work when we're on rivers, for example, are usually in the two week mark, and then we can carry a fair bit of supplies and just, you know, take our time. I think the longest trips we've probably done are three weeks, maybe up on the Colville. You know, it's Alaska after all. So we have a short field season. And in fact, it's even worse than that, because even when the weather gets warm, many of the places we work are either high elevation, like in Denali, and so we have to wait for the snow to go away. Or they're up north. Same situation up in the Arctic, where it takes a long time for the snow to go away. And then there's bug season. And it's really miserable to work some places at certain times of the year. So then that will often limit like--okay, I really try not to go to the North Slope between middle of June and late July, because I just really don't want to be there and deal with those bugs. And so that then constrains your window of opportunity. And then on the Colville, like, we were told that there's a concern that our field work might interfere with breeding birds, particularly Peregrines and Rough-legged Hawks. So then we're told don't go until after basically they're fledged and out of the nest. So now all of a sudden our window of time is late August to go to the Colville Okay, well that's fine. Well, guess what? Early August is when the rain starts--when the rainy season starts. And the snow starts. I mean, I was up there three days ago, and it was snowing on us you know, so I was like, this is middle of August so now we're in the bad weather window. The bugs are okay--better. And yeah, oh, and by mid--there's no way I'd ever be up there after like probably the first week of September. I mean, that's just generally--just a very difficult time to work anywhere. Usually need to be back in the office by then. So we have started taking more interesting approaches and we we are now beginning to explore winter exploration-- as a good option to--don't have to deal with bugs. Transportation is often easier because we can use snow machines. It makes things easier on a permitting front because we don't worry about you know--some some of our permits are restrictive because they're afraid we're going to dump sediment in streams or that we're going to interfere with the birds. None of those issues come into play, so I'm really starting to think that winter operations are a good way to go. But then that comes with its own challenges. So we're always being creative and trying to think of how to how to get the job done and just be really open-minded about when and how that will happen. Little bird-sized prints, and there's got to be some bird tracks in here somewhere. This is a fairly nice plant slab... Unfortunately, it's a little hard to... You know, a perfect day--I think it's the perfect kind of field work would be where you're going into an area that you know can be quite challenging for--because of wildlife and bugs and weather. And you might have a low, low probability of return on fossils, you know. It's maybe exploration. You don't know what you're going to find. And then you go out. And all of your flights pretty much work out on time. You stay on a good schedule, the bugs aren't so bad, and--and you find good stuff. You know, generally speaking, almost all of our trips, we find good stuff. We've been very fortunate that way. We've made predictions on where to go and get things and we've been we've been lucky, but not always. So yeah, I think the trips that I think back on most fondly are the ones--they're often very weather related, trips where the weather just isn't wet and cold and miserable all the time. I mean, I think one of the trips--one of our trips we did down the Yukon River was was very successful that way because we collected a ton of material, We had pretty good weather. Actualy, we had some pretty horrible bugs, but all our flights and stuff worked out okay getting back. The boats worked alright. We didn't have any major mechanical issues on the outboard motors.
Botany Field Crew:Where the leaf rolls over... So, we'll find another, we're gonna get another one. Oh, there. Oh my god, there's a forest! Oh, yeah. See, I told you this is a good spot. Careful of your ankles up there now. I love that. I love that.
Roger Topp:Steffi Ickert-Bond, curator of the herbarium.
Steffi Ickert Bond:Nothing compares to seeing a plant in its natural habitat, than, you know, looking at a dried specimen, and it says, oh, yeah, it's at Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile, you know, and then you're there. And you're in these fjords, and you have these towering mountains in front of you, and then your tiny plant grows right there. And there's--the vicuñas are running through the... It's, you know, it's just--you will never forget that, and you'll never forget what that plant looked like versus when it's squashed on the herbarium sheet, you know, and you will--you will have certain sounds and scents that you associate with that experience. Also, you'll never forget, and they'll come back sometimes when you have certain foods and, and things like that. Really, I'm very, very fortunate to do what I do, which combines a lot of things that are very dear to me. I love to travel in general. By and large, it's always been travel to seek out distant plants. I love languages. So, I love to--when I'm able to visit different places, I like to, when possible, speak the language and experience the traditions and cultures more deeply. There's a lot of challenges to field work. And you know, there's a lot of challenges traveling international that anybody experiences really. But what people don't know so much about is challenges within Alaska. And Alaska is really, very vast, very few roads. And so as such, when you're out collecting, you're very far removed from civilization. And the potential, the risk for endangering yourself is much, much larger in Alaska than really anywhere else--maybe some areas, some remote areas in the Amazon, or perhaps other areas in Siberia. But by and large, Alaska is really remote. So there's one experience that we had visiting Nikolai ridge in the Wrangell, St. Elias mountains. And we hired a small Super Cub plane to take us to one of these high elevation ridges to find some rare and endangered plants. And so the pilot dropped us off on this really bare ridge and said,'Yeah, I might be able to pick you up in three days. But looking at the weather, it's very unlikely that I'll be able to.' And so we were pretty shocked because we weren't planning on spending more than these three days up there. And the first night, the winds were just incredible. So the tent was, you know, flattened multiple times from these really strong winds that came up the ridge--and the day before we had seen bear tracks around where our tent was located. So. that wasn't very reassuring, either, but by sheer luck, the pilot was able--there was kind of a window of one hour when it was possible to land the plane--and kind of we ran to it. And, you know, he took us off the mountain. And then there was another massive thunderstorm that came through and--
Josh Reuther:Even--you know, are just talking with each other, we're--we're inundated with what we think, you know, Arctic Alaska is, you know, or just on TV, you know, I mean, you look up Alaska TV shows, and most of them say, like 'Life on the Edge in Alaska,' or the, The Last Frontier, things like that. I mean, it's really, it's really kind of, in your face about the, you know, these idealisms about being sort of--the adversity of things with--not understanding, basically, that this is just another environment that people have to work in. And I think that sometimes the--at least Alaska, but there's other places, you know, that I've seen this too, is that the rugged, quote, unquote, ruggedness is sort of that ideal, ideal ruggedness that people have. And I think it gets in the way sometimes--but for me, I would be more scared to be in the tropics. Even even on some beach with tourists doing archaeology, I would be even more scared, you know, there's certain things in that environment that I'd be, you know, you know, just even going back to Washington doing some work down there. You know, there's different things that you have to think about, but there isn't necessarily the idealism in Washington. You know, we don't, we don't think of it as an arctic-harsh environment all the time, even though there are certain areas of it. You know, the Scablands, in particular there. And so I think that idealism does get in the way sometimes, and it goes away with experience, I think, a lot. You know, I hate to say it in academic fieldwork, you can get a lot of weird personalities ... field work. So I think it's good for students to be, to be open, but also be wary. And I think that that's hopefully changing that there's sort of, you know, the sort of openness and there's actually, you know, things for field work that that you have a bunch of people in one place where not just like a couple people out there anymore. But I think asking a lot of questions, I think, you know, many people who have been out on those field projects and getting getting multiple opinions how that hat--you know, how do they run camps, not just who the person is, but how they run camps, you know, things like that, because that can be--it can be the nicest person in the classroom. But when you get out to a camp, you know, maybe they run it haphazardly, and it's just chaos. You want to check that.
Roger Topp:Thank you, to UA Museum of the North curators Pat Druckenmiller, Josh Reuther, Link Olson, and Steffi Ickert-Bond for sharing their stories and thoughts on fieldwork preparation. The museum could not conduct this work without public and private sector partnerships, and without state and national funding through agencies such as the Park Service and the National Science Foundation. Explore the museum's website for more information about recent and forthcoming projects, and perhaps even ways to get involved. It's not all bugs, bears, and bad weather. Before we go, a reminder that the UA Museum of the North YouTube channel hosts video series documenting many of our collections, exhibits, and education work, including a detailed look into the articulation of the museum's bowhead whale. Have a look. The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dene people the Lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe, share and rate the program. This helps other listeners discover more about not only the work of this museum, but quite possibly other museums in their neighborhoods. The more you look, the more you find.