Carrie’s Ramblings

The Great pumpkin shortage1
Carrie posted in What's happening on October 28th, 2009

I read today that a blog, to be a blog, must be updated every few days.  Since I seem to have fallen off on that recently I guess I’d better start writting. I think I’m mostly jealous of other people’s blog.  Uncle Mikey has cool photos and stuff on his.  I can’t figure out how to do that. So I’ll just have to focus on writing well.

Yesterday we tried to have a pumpkin carving party.  2nd annual.  Last year’s was actually pretty big.  We had heaps of people and cool carvings though none as interesting as Hayley’s Obama silhouette carving last year.  But this year was a little less exciting.  It sorta snuck on me, Halloween.  So I called people together using the reliable Facebook messaging system and people couldn’t come! Why?  Here’s why:

1) Nick has highland dancing at the college.  And he was sober.  I try to imaging a 6-ft-something tall gangly guy doing Highland dancing and have to say, “Pardon me?”

2) Holly had a pottery class to attend.

3) Sheila had Can-Can.  She just told me Can-Can.  I don’t know what that means.  Like, is she watching it or doing it or is it code for, “I don’t want to go to your stupid party this year”?

But all of this doesn’t really matter, because it’s not like there were any pumpkins around.  Ryan went to both major grocery stores as well as 2 of the smaller ones and there were none to be found.  Apparently, word on the street is that there was a bad pumpkin crop this year and so they’re hard to come by.  Tim managed to get one earlier that day but by the time we got to the store, nada.

I wondered if other people had managed to find a pumpkin and when they started showing up I realised we weren’t the only pumpkin-less people.  So we got beer instead.  Pretty good trade off if you ask me.

Lindsay however, would not be deterred so easily.  She purchased a small watermelon that must have cost her a fortune at this time of year and proceded to carve it.  Jack, the Pumpkin King from the Nightmare before Christmas resulted, and he’s quite cute sitting there all green.

At least we’ll have one decoration for Halloween.

Yurt living0
Carrie posted in What's happening on October 13th, 2009

Thanksgiving came and went quickly it seems.  The long weekend was a welcomed break.   I mean, 3 weeks of this full-time job thing and I’m beat.  Slept late and did some puttering, then dinner at a University friends’…place.  It’s a yurt.  Yeah like, Mongolian engineering at its finest.  I’m talking 1 room circular tent made out of yak wool.  Well, theirs is a little more modern (not many yaks around these parts).

Actually the yurt is quite cozy.  We had 10 people all sitting in there (on log stumps for stools) and even had to open the door because it got too warm with the wood stove running.  My friends are borrowing land for their yurt and have built the platform and set it up, this Thanksgiving being the Christening of the first night in the yurt.  They have electricity (”we’re going hungry but we got tunes!”) but no running water and a good trek to the outhouse.  Together, with the dog, the happy couple will spend the entire winter.  Good luck with that.

We also tried to pit-bake a chicken.  You dig a pit and line it with stones, then light a fire to heat up the stones. Lay sticks across (like an oven rack) and sprucebows and then the chicken on that.  Cover the chicken with a burlap sack and heap on the dirt.  The rocks are supposed to cook the chicken, as you may have guessed, but we apparently need more practice at ours.  It was quite funny when we checked on the chicken’s progress only to find it somewhat warm.  Quickly Jarod and Laird grabbed the chicken before anyone noticed and scurried off into the yurt to boil it!  Later Jarod jokingly complained that dinner was delayed because my potatoes took so long to bake in the fire.  It was a great boiled Thanksgiving chicken though.

It was a fun night of reminiscing on school (there were 10 Lakehead Grads there of various years) and talking about the upcoming mushing race circuit and who was running what.  The whole thing was very…organic.

On Sunday night we had dinner with the gang.  We even had a big enough table for everyone to sit, so we decided to dress up all fancy and make a night of it.  We had so much food (and a vat of mulled wine) but finished it all.  During intermission, between dinner and dessert, we played road hockey on the street.  We could barely see the tennis ball in the streetlamps and we used someone’s winter tires as goal posts.  It made dessert that much more deserved.

What do I do?0
Carrie posted in What's happening on October 7th, 2009

What do I do, what do I do, what do I do….

The transition period of working for Wildlife Viewing has been relatively painless, given that I did a small stint here last winter as coordinator of the Celebration of Swans.  Now, as a permanent, full-time Wildlife Viewing Technician I’m drawing on a lot of what I learned last season and expanding on it in fields other than just…swans.  A good chunk of the last couple of weeks (being my first couple of weeks) were spent reading policy. OHMIGOD I HATE POLICY.  But the idea was to become familiar with the WV programme and thus what it is that I’m supposed to be doing.  The most complicated part of the Wildlife Viewing Programme, from what I can tell, is that it is not just “governed” by the Fish and Wildlife Branch, but rather has a committee of members that represent Yukon Parks, Tourism Yukon (including one really abrupt lady who frightens me), the education department, and lastly (and sometimes leastly) Fish and Wildlife.  All of these people have made this 5-year strategic plan for the Wildlife Viewing Programme which we’ve been following for 2 years now and will finally be presented for approval to the Directors this Friday.

No one said the government made sense.

So my job, as a technician, is to do everything.  It’s really quite a good match because you need to sort of be a Jack-of-trades.  I have to know about tourism trends: managing databases, conducting research/surveys/monitoring activity patterns, working with tourism operators to develop opportunities; I have to understand parks and protected areas and their mandates; I have to be able to design lessons plans for school children of all ages and adult programmes, as well as deliver them both in the traditional classroom and in the field.  But to be able to do this all effectively I have to have a solid grounding in ecology and biology that at least gives me enough knowledge to ask the right questions, to find out what I need.  I’m not an elk, fish, caribou, or bear technician, but I need to know about all of those things.  Our goal is to develop programmes and initiatives that promote wildlife viewing in the Yukon, mostly to residents, but also to visitors.  In doing so, we hope to encourage better environmental behaviours though stewardship rather than regulation.
I work with Bruce Bennett who’s been the Wildlife Viewing Biologist for the last 10 years and is a quirky hippy who is a little frustrated regarding the lack of appreciation within the “Game Branch” for Widlife Viewing opportunities and development.  Our new slogan - which we came up with after Elk bugling a couple of weeks ago where we saw the most magnificent Elk on record which was then shot - yes, our new slogan is now “We view ‘em, you shoot ‘em.”  No, I have not stumbled into a mess of public service malcontent, it’s really not bad but it is present: a feeling of being under-appreciated.  Right now I’m so overwhelmed with a 9-5 that I’m going to stay busy playing oblivious for a while.

So I have a desk surrounded by a couple dozen mounted animals including a very creepy Bald Eagle on my desk behind my computer and a rather vicious looking Wolverine on the filing cabinet behind me.  The Pine Marten is super cute though!  I work a 28-day Flex schedule, meaning I have to work 150 hours, no more no less, in 28 days and I do whatever works for me (and the job of course).  So I could work four, 10 hour days, and take a day off, or come in at 7 am and work ’til 3.  For example, I worked 12 hours on Elk bugling day because I was in the office all day then delivered a programme for 3.5 hours that night.  So for the last couple of days I’ve been leaving work an hour early to go to the rink and skate.  It works really well.

BUT WHAT DO I DO?

Last week I worked on a new Yukon Wildflowers brochure.  I research the flowers, write up a bit about them, find appropriate pictures, write intro, viewing etiquette, First Nations information, and do the initial layout for the designer.  I’m also working on the Carcross wildlife viewing pamphlet.  I helped deliver an Elk bugling nature hike where we took a bunch of people out into the bush to call for Elk.  Bruce and I, along with the education co-ordinator will be designing some school programmes and delivering them in Old Crow next month. I’m collection information from naturalists, locals, and ornithologists to create a Birding Checklist for the Dawson area.  I’m researching aquatic ecosystems in Watson Lake to creat 6 interpretive panels for their walking trails.  I’m following up with tourism operators regarding the Wildlife Viewing Workshop we hosted last winter and what’s going on there.

When I took both my Undergrad and my Grad degrees people would often say politely (and some less politely), “Oh that’s nice…what do you plan on doing with that?”  I usually made something up that sounded important until I became more defensive and said, “Whatever I want!”  Suddenly I’m in an interview where they ask me what degree is titled, and as opposed to the blank looks that I usually get, they say, “Oh that will fit in perfectly here!”  So now I have a job that combines my interest in science and biology, with my knowledge of tourism and natural areas, throwing in my passion for the outdoors and teaching, and I’m doing exactly what I want.