Plans

John Lennon said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to think he came up with that while trying to conduct a season of geologic field work.

I don’t want to imply that all of my surprises have been negative. All of my flights south went very smoothly. We successfully imported Rene’s rock drill at the very last minute, just when we thought it was going to get sent back to Canada. Our hotel room is on the top floor of our hotel, has a nice little bonus kitchenette, and (cue sound of angels singing) full bars of pretty strong wifi in the room. That’s new! I’ve been able to Skype phone Grandma and video chat Dave whenever I feel like it, while simultaneously downloading papers and seeding my favorite TV shows. I found some fresh road cut exposures of glacial sediment on roads that I thought would just have the same stuff I saw last year. These are good things that I did not plan for.

Might not look like much, but it's a road cut exposure that I haven't seen before! Note the little station wagon.

However, I have also gotten a few sharp smacks in the face from the gods of planning, or whoever might control whether or not what you think is going to happen happens. For example, although I thought I was getting a minivan, I ended up with a pretty bare-bones Chevy station wagon from the car rental company in Rio Gallegos. While some of the problems can be shrugged off (what, no cup holders? Who doesn’t love a lap full of coffee cups?), others are just plain disruptive to my carefully laid out plans. Basically, the clearance of this vehicle may be lower than that of a baby who just reached the crawling stage. Gravel roads pitted with pot holes that took me 2.5 hours to drive in a pickup truck last year now take Andrew 4 hours to crawl down (while miraculously maintaining a sunny disposition despite my side-seat driving). Rutted, sandy roads that were passable last year are now a pipe dream. I am finding that I cannot access places that I thought I would be able to, or that due to longer transit times, I do not have as much time to do my work as planned. On top of that, roads that this brave little Chevy might be able to wander down, that seem to go to new and exciting locations for geologizing are gated off, with large warning signs to not trespass. I have to admit, it can be a challenge to gracefully accept that my day is not going to be what I planned it to be. Discussions with Andrew, emails with friends, and phone calls to Dave have helped me feel better about the situation. A part of doing field work in remote areas is learning how to execute your plans, and learning to bend them to the weather and other hurdles thrown your way. Sometimes it’s necessary to reassess and try a different angle. Sometimes your field goals do not pan out, and it’s important to know that does not equal failure, as long as you tried.

Important lesson: if there is a lock, you can always hop the fence!

To end on a positive note, I should share that the penguins at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan seem to be strong and happy this year. Their babies are all grown up, and many of them seem to have left the colony earlier than they did in 2012. The choiques, a small ostrich-type bird, also seem to have larger and healthier babies than last year. This February seems to be warmer and less windy than the last, and everyone from the animals to the people seem happier here at the tip of South America. This Saturday night, Andrew and I will camp at Cabo Virgenes and make a day hike on Sunday up the coast to try and see some new exposures. Cross your fingers that we are not caught by the 9 metre tide!

Walking like penguins at Cabo Virgenes, at the north-eastern coast of the Strait of Magellan