"Well before I'm northward bound..."*

As I begin to pack up my five-and-a-half week stay in New Zealand, I thought it might be nice to document some of the fun the last week has brought my way. I was drawn to science because of its variability: It's rare that I spend more than a few days -- much less a few weeks -- doing the same thing. Which means that I'm never stuck on a dull task for very long, and that I occasionally get weeks like this one, which remind me how lucky I am that I get to play for a living and how much joy I get from my job!

Having finished up his seedling harvest, I spent Monday with J. at the Canterbury Museum, where I got to dust off my dSLR (which got hauled down here, telephoto lens and all, only to sit on the shelf while my point-and-shoot saw most of the action) to photograph some of the bones that he was measuring. Many of the photos will hopefully see some use as reference photos, since we posed them to highlight morphological differences between species. 

Bird-brained?

I absolutely love going behind-the-scenes at museums, and it was so cool to get a glimpse of the avian collection -- especially some enormous Moa bones!

And if that weren't enough, I also got treated to a couple evening trips to the seaside, once with K. to enjoy a bottle of our favourite wine, and once for a nice long run, as the shadows slowly stretched out in the lingering summer dusk. It's going to be hard to adjust to the short days of the Northern Hemisphere winter next week.

Sumner: the perfect spot for a beach run!

Fir is Murder! (Or: The Value of Scientific Collaboration)

About year ago -- before I did any field work in New Zealand; indeed, before I was even certain I'd be working on Douglas-fir in New Zealand -- I went for a run around the Stanford campus and passed a Christmas tree lot.

A lifelong tree-hugger, I was reminded of my annual childhood distress at the start of each New Year, as my Dad and I, walking around the neighborhood, bore witness to the ignominious disposal of many a family's Christmas tree. (We'd always had a lovely little artificial tree, passed down from my Dad's relatives. I think this was mostly to avoid the myriad cleaning joys of a tree shedding needles everywhere, but I chose to interpret it as my family's deliberate efforts to save baby trees.)

I mean, we wouldn't have these beautiful Canadian running
trails if someone cut down all these trees for Christmas!
(Err... let's not discuss the logging situation in B.C.)

When I got home from my run, I told Luke about the horrors of the Christmas tree lot, and he told me that every single year, his family had a lovely real tree, and that it wasn't Christmas without its delicious conifer smell permeating their house.

"Well," I spluttered. "Well... That's twenty-five years of murdering baby trees for you!"

Several days later, I'd come up with a slogan and was feeling very clever about it. "FIR IS MURDER!" I'd bellow at Luke every time one of us entered or left our apartment. (Fortunately for him, I have the memory of a tunicate, so I didn't keep this up for long.)

The Dynamic Duo and Their Microscopy Minion (or: Anatomy of a Harvest)

Ladies and Gentlemen, your cast, in order of importance:

The Dynamic Duo, a.k.a. the Able-Bodied Assistants, a.k.a. the best money Holly ever spent on science
The Microscopy Minion, a.k.a. Holly -- and her bloodshot eyes, too

The Backstory:
Many weeks ago, in a land far, far away, through the mysterious portal of Skype, Holly and her thesis committee members conferred.

"My, what a fine set of data we'll have," they remarked as they contemplated the upcoming harvest of more than five hundred Douglas-fir seedlings. "And we'll have a whole bank of little seedlings, all with their own tiny root system communities of ectomycorrhizal fungi. Whatever shall we do to torture them next?"

Seedlings waiting to be victimized. Note the adorable straw-
and-sticker labeling scheme, which cost S. and I an afternoon.

"Well," said Holly, feeling too ambitious for her own good, "Let's do something high-risk."

"Well," said Holly's advisor, "Let's do something involving community assembly."

"Well," said the NZ team, "Let's do something involving conifer invasion risk."

"Well," said the Stanford crew, "Let's do something cool."

Miscellaneous Harvest Stats

A longer post updating you on the current status of the soil survey will be forthcoming, but here, a few amusing (and perhaps terrifying) numbers to sketch the picture. All values are accurate to three decimal places. Totally. We're doing super-precise science here!


Number of able-bodied assistants: 2
Hourly wage of able-bodied assistants: Higher than NSF pays graduate fellows
Enthusiasm of able-bodied assistants: Off the charts
Volume of music played in the lab by able-bodied assistants: Dunno, but it's *loud*

Max number of soil cores processed in one day: 39
Soil cores processed to date: 163
Soil cores remaining: 91
DNA samples taken: 1632
Anticipated end date: Wednesday -- two weeks ahead of schedule!

Hours per day Holly spends at the microscope: 8
Car Talk podcasts listened to at the microscope: 7
Number of times Kid Cudi's "Up, Up and Away" has played on repeat on my iPod: 217
       (Yes, I can get a little obsessive.)
Number of Rutgers football games listened to on the radio: 1
Number of Rutgers wins listened to on the radio: 0
Percentage of workday calories comprised of chocolate: 97%
       (Also I think I ate three plums and a banana.)


I was starting to have dreams about meat again, but luckily J. arrested my rapid degeneration into protein deficiency by suggesting Indian takeaway on Thursday night.

In other adventures, I have learned that the proportion of drivers who like to honk at running girls is substantially higher in Chch than in SF. (Today's mile times averaged 7:45 so I'm heading in the right direction!) And that, according to J., I drive a standard transmission "better than expected," but "can only improve from here."

Have I mentioned that J. is a pretty laid-back and super-accomodating guy?

Roadside Tourism

[[You can also read the Seeing Green column inspired by this trip here.]]

Until my first whirlwind of graduate school interviews back in 2008, I didn't realize exactly how much travel was involved in being a scientist.

But by the time I interviewed at Stanford in 2010, I was a firm believer in travel as one of the perks of the job. As a result, I somehow convinced my amazing advisor to let me siphon off his grant money for a field project in New Zealand, convinced the National Science Foundation to let me spend a month at a time visiting collaborators in Woods Hole, and in the end managed to spend fully half of 2012 out of my own bed.

In general, you can expect graduate students to have extra pages in their passports, stockpiles of frequent flier miles, and exceptional time zone-acclimation abilities.

How did we wind up getting so spoiled?

Mostly by being exceptional opportunists. Yes, concerned funding agencies and taxpayers, all the travel we do has a very carefully justified purpose! But once we're at our fantastic destination, it doesn't hurt to poke around a bit, right?

A snowmelt-fed stream cuts its way through native
mountain beech trees in Arthur's Pass National Park.
Our first stop on our way across the Southern Alps.

That's the principle that J. and I applied last weekend. Tasked with obtaining a handful of leaves from a species of tree that grows only on the western side of the Southern Alps (the mountain backbone of New Zealand's South Island), J. generously offered to take me on a bit of a sightseeing tour on the island's other coast.

On Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving, United States-ers!

Once again, I've managed to be out of the country for my favorite holiday. (Well, favorite outside of the day after Easter, which I celebrate with my credit card and circuit through all the major grocery stores within 5 miles.)

Last year, I ate amazing smoked turkey with friends, collaborators, and future founders of "The Ukranian Journal of Looking at Animals" (future home of many a paltry thesis chapter?) in Montreal and was grateful for a warm dinner, laughter, and snow on the ground.

This year, I had an even stronger prompt to remember all there is to be thankful for. Because my experiment failed.

That's right: Those cute Douglas-fir seedlings, looking all fat and happy in their posh greenhouse, had next to no ectomycorrhizal fungi on them at all.

Individually tagged, pulled out of the PVC
pipe, and ready for washing!

We're not sure why the experiment failed.

Baby, we were born to run!

I have a really clear memory of the first time I ran as a deliberate exercise.

Looking back, I had always been a runner in some way. I was the kid at recess who sprinted back and forth on the field just for the joy of it. (Luke and Danny will appreciate that, after Dad read Jurassic Park to me, I used to pretend I was a velociraptor on the hunt. Surprisingly enough, I was not a particularly popular child.) I always ran the full set of laps on field day, and, err, I suppose I chased a few boys around the playground as well.

But then one day, Mom took me to the fitness club with her. Usually, we'd go inside for a few laps in the pool, but this time, for some reason, we went around back to a few jogging trails. Mom settled in for a brisk walk and said, "Why don't you run some, Holly?"

Off I went.

The girl who quit gymnastics and basketball, who dodged wiffleballs instead of catching them, who didn't learn to ride a two-wheeler until middle school, and who couldn't swim the crawl without drowning herself until last year... That girl had finally found something that would stick.

Let the record reflect that I outran this thunderstorm home. :)