Fieldwork is done

 Well, until early fall. (I want to go out and resample the same transects then)

Went out EARLY this morning (left home a bit after 7) in the hopes of being done before it was truly hot. I also brought a bottle of Gatorade along with the water, which was probably smart.

It was really hot and humid. There was a slight breeze so it wasn't as bad as the day when I had to bug out after the second transect, but I think it was hotter.

Also, I had to walk farther - these areas were way down by the lake, perhaps a mile and a half northwest (as you walk on the trail) of the parking area. 

This was the area. I think those are some kind of cricket frog you hear, maybe Blanchard's - the sound like glass marbles clinking together. (There are also birds, and the sound that is like wind is actually partly traffic out on Route 70, the main road nearest the area, though this is about as far as you can get from it and not be in the lake)

(Earlier I said "chorus frogs" but realized I was misremembering)

 I could only do 7 samples per transect (I had been doing 11) because for two of them, the ends of the transect would have been under water (the lake is still up) and on the third, there was a huge pile of driftwood/dead snags, and not only was there no sense in trying to sample there, that's a real hazard - you can get your foot caught and damage an ankle.

There was poison ivy again today. I used part of my second water bottle to rinse my hands after doing the transects (supposedly if you just use plain cool water within a half hour of exposure, you're a lot less likely to get poison ivy).

I also showered right after getting home; that's partly to defeat any ticks that might have breached the layer of lemon eucalyptus on my skin, and DEET on my clothes. But also it helped bring my body temperature back to normal.

I won't lie: it was HARD. At one point I straightened up after observing a sample and was momentarily dizzy, and I felt chilled as I was walking back (a sign of heat exhaustion starting). I'll probably be sore tomorrow; I probably walked a bit more than four miles, and much of that over pretty uneven ground. Walking back I counted off ten steps at a time, and just kept saying "just ten more steps and you're that much closer." I was farther away from anywhere "obvious" or immediately accessible so it would have been a bigger problem if I had gotten injured or just wound up "going down" (from heat exhaustion or whatever). I did not sleep well last night thinking about it, like "what if my life just ended there, what if I had a heart attack way back there in the field or something?" and of course I didn't, I'm fine, and it's been just over a week my doctor listened to my heart and lungs and pronounced them sound, but I still worry. Maybe for the fall sampling I'll be able to recruit a research student to work with me so I won't be out there totally alone. 

At least I didn't see any signs of hog activity; wild hogs are the only (non human) animal out there I'd be truly concerned about - deer will run away, coyotes and bobcats won't even let you see them, snakes you can avoid, but a pig will come at you. (We don't have bears here, or I'd worry about sow-bears with cubs, because they are extremely protective).

I saw the (native) loosestrife again, didn't remember what it was, so snapped a photo (It wasn't *crucial* as it wasn't in any of the samples I took, but I wanted to know.

Not Lythrum salicaria (that's the bad invasive, and as far as I know, not known from my county, if it's known at all from Oklahoma) but Lythrum alatum or winged loosestrife. (It looks more white in that photo than it actually was; it's a pale purple).

***

Also thinking about something that happened and my reaction to it. Without too much detail, I had written something elsewhere, and someone took that as an opening to track down my e-mail address and send me .... well, it's not EXACTLY a concern-troll e-mail, but it was basically a "you're wrong" e-mail, except....it was about a subject only very tangentially related to what I had actually said.

I think part of my reaction to it was that it was weird and intrusive - I very, very rarely "cold" e-mail people, and then, it's only about something positive (Like: when I found that website about all the craft books, I e-mailed the author telling her how she had helped me find a book I had looked for for YEARS, and that her website was really useful). This almost felt vaguely shaming, and it was about a topic people often get shamed for. (I'll supply details privately if anyone is extremely curious). 

Anyway, I was really oddly....hurt....by it*

And I later read this on twitter, from someone going by the handle "Bletchley Punk": "the more I interact with others in-person, the more I realize we are all traumatized and it's coming out in spiky ways no one is the same person they were in 2019"

Yeah.

And, later, from the same person: "everyone crystallized around their coping mechanisms and now it's the main way we know how to function"

And yeah, they are right about this. And I think some of us maybe lost some things we had? Like some of the protective layers I had built up, the sense of "well, most people seem to like me and when someone is rude to me it's telling me more about them than it is about me" and I think that got stripped away in the past year of really almost NO interaction (some weeks, during the worst of 2020, the only person I spoke with was my mother over the phone). And so I've forgotten that some people are jerks, I just see other people out there and my inner Golden Retriever comes out and I want to believe everyone is a friend....but they really aren't. And that there's nothing I can do, there are some people I can never be good enough or perfect enough to please.   

But I don't know. In some ways, yeah, I am still lonesome, and....I don't know.

I think also the whole thing shocked me a bit because I tend to forget that trolls exist. My circle online is pretty small, a lot of my accounts are pretty well locked down and anonymized, so I don't get the kind of bad-behavior a lot of people (especially women) online have to swat down on a regular basis, and I would not think of out-of-the-blue concern-trolling a person I had never interacted with before. (In a way, it's kind of like my disproportionately negative reaction to finding students cheat, where I take it personally - it's because I wouldn't have done it as a student, so there's the bad-surprise element along with the disappointment) 

But it does surprise me to see that I've become more emotional again, more prone to tear up when I get my feelings hurt - shoot, more prone to get them hurt in the first place. (And in a way it makes me angry all over again: I was making progress at toughening up! And then this happened....)

At least I'm getting better at not rising to bait? Thirty years ago, if e-mail had been a thing for me, and this had happened, I'd have sent a long screed back to the person and probably lived to regret that. This time, I sent the e-mail to the trash folder. I admit I had an uneasy feeling of "maybe you SHOULD respond" but also the feeling of "but if you react it will only bring more." (Formerly bullied kid, who was told "ignore them and they'll stop." They didn't stop, but at least ignoring them, when I learned how to do that, didn't give them the satisfaction of seeing me react).

I wonder if kids who bullied other kids ever think, as adults, about how they had a hand in shaping (or perhaps, warping) the personalities of those others. I mean, okay, maybe I am more compassionate than I might have been, but I am also wildly fearful of rejection, easily hurt, and often avoidant of situations where I feel like people might not welcome me (so: a lot of social situations). 

But I don't know. I'm tired. On the one hand, I feel good about what I got done today, on the other hand...boy darn I wish I had someone THERE. Someone to remind me that I'm an okay person, I have value, someone to give me those good interactions - most days, especially in the summer, it's very few interactions, so the bad ones loom larger.

(*though I later found out that this was, shall we say, a person known for this kind of behavior, who has worn out their welcome elsewhere.)