When it rains really really hard.. like the sideways rain we had the other day, we stay indoors and measure spruce needles. Reallly! Steve Mamet is working on his PhD about the advancing (or maybe not) tree line. He's collected spruce needles from trees in different zones (maybe the word is biome) like forest, tundra, forest tundra mix and collected them from different points on the tree.. the subniveal level (the part that's covered by snow in the winter), the abrasion zone (the part that's blasted by wind-driven snow) and the canopy (the very top of the tree). He's also been careful to collect from three different orientations on the tree... north west, south and east. And he's done all that on 7 different sites. So, three zones, 7 sites, 3 wind directions, 3 points on each tree... do the math ... that's a LOT of little envelopes of spruce needles that need to be measured. And he's got at least two years worth of data. So measure with little rulers and tweezers, filling out spreadsheets for others to enter.

This actually turned out to be fun in a repetitive and tedious sort of way. I tunes and smart funny people made all the difference. Yesterday, after dinner, after drinks and after a talk about Peat Plateaus & Palsas, we sat down and did some more just because. That says something right there. (It probably says that we're all nuts)