The Adventures of the Brave Little Tomato Sauce Bottle

What would life be without a bit of adventure?

Sunrise and full moon over the Southern Alps.

With some luck, and the intensive root-washing efforts of K and F, I was able to finish my experimental harvest in time to have a weekend free to explore! Together with my new favorite travel companion -- a genuine tomato-shaped NZ tomato sauce bottle, a gift from Jamie - I took off South and West to explore parts of the South Island both new and familiar.

"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!

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.

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. :)

An audio postcard

J. and I were sitting by Lake Rotoiti admiring this patch of forest over lunch. We were astounded by how loud the birds were, even in the middle of the day. (I'm used to hearing a flurry of activity at dawn and dusk.)

Here's a quick video recording to give you a glimpse of a genuine New Zealand beech forest, complete with native sights *and* native sounds.

Most of what you're hearing are native bellbirds; we saw a few flitting around in the canopy, but they were too fast and tiny to be captured with my little point-and-shoot camera's video function.  Apparently -- at least, judging by the signs forbidding entry to dogs -- there are also kiwis poking around in the forest's leaf litter, though they're only active at night.

Where the Wild Things Are

Everyone knows I love microbes. In general, I have very little patience for multicellular things -- they're just adding unnecessary complexity to the metabolic magic that a single-celled bacterium or protist can do.  In fact, the only thing that saves tress for me is the fact that they can photosynthesize: Photosynthesis is my absolute most favorite metabolic process.

But in spite of my preference for things visible only through a microscope, I've still enjoyed a few very special wildlife encounters over the last few weeks.

The first was in Akaroa last month (it's taken me a lamentably long time to post about it), when my friend Elise was in the country following her research cruise to Antarctica. (Elise, like many of my most awesome friends, studies microbes: She works on marine phytoplankton, the free-floating algae responsible for half of Earth's photosynthesis.)  Elise's Dad treated us to a wonderful boat trip out of Akaroa Harbor.

Akaroa Harbor sits in the crater of an ancient, sunken volcano.

Waitangi Weekend: Wellington

Like many a good blogger who also pretends to be a scientist, I've fallen.. oh... three weeks behind now in posting photos from the second half of my Waitangi Day Weekend trip.

At last!  A sort-of view of the Kaikoura Range.

I left Kaikoura on the Coastal Pacific train to head up to Picton, the interisland ferry port on the South Island.  Along the way, we got through some of the fog to see glimpses of the mountains, ducked through plenty of tunnels, and passed some very scenic wine country.

One of many vineyards in New Zealand's famed wine country.

Salt-making at work.  These vast pools are turned red by
some halophilic (salt-loving) microbes.

As usual, I spent my train ride in the viewing car, looking ahead for tunnels and traffic signs before sticking my head out to take photos.

Waitangi Weekend: Kaikoura

The weekend before last (February 4-6) was a Kiwi holiday honoring the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. This treaty, signed by British emissaries and Maori leaders back in the 1840s, established British sovereignty over New Zealand, and is widely considered the founding document of the country. (Of course, its text -- whose meaning is still hotly debated, given its alternate meanings in Maori and English versions -- is still subject to negotiation and debate.)

Thus, I've heard Waitangi Day described to me as the "Kiwi version of the 4th of July."

I guess that says something about later civilities between Britain and her colonies. For us Americans, the founding document is a -- pardon my strong language -- middle finger to the Brits which started a bloody war. For the Kiwis, it's a happy agreement that, depending on who you ask, worked rather well. Certainly New Zealand's European colonizers never chucked their tea into a harbor.

How to Get Raccoon-Eyes in Two Hours

I was feeling a bit down after my tour of post-quake Christchurch last Saturday (and after spending $40 -- $40!!!! -- on a pair of hiking socks), so I hopped on a bus out to the coast.  After living for a year literally on the water in Woods Hole, I find nothing so soul-restoring as the ocean.

Perhaps the easiest beach to access by public transportation from the heart of Christchurch (read as: The only beach Holly has yet accessed by public transportation from the heart of Christchurch; any tips Liz?) is out at New Brighton. 

It feels like a truck going by...

The first time I ever felt an earthquake, I was perhaps five or six years old, in Los Angeles visiting my grandparents.  I remember thinking that a fully-loaded eighteen-wheeler must have driven by the house, a sufficiently frequent occurrence that I wasn't alarmed at all.  That quake didn't do any damage -- nor have any others I've subsequently experienced.

Perhaps for this reason, I'm characteristically oblivious to earthquakes.  Last year, Tad (my Ph.D. advisor) was giving a lecture when suddenly the room fell silent and someone said, "Was that an earthquake?", and the projector began swaying.  As the TA, perched in the back of the room, I hadn't felt a thing.

But here in the Christchurch area, everyone is finely attuned to any movement of the earth.  And so they should be -- a big quake in September, 2010, damaged many buildings in the heart of the city.  The first time I visited New Zealand, three months later, I walked around a Christchurch liberally decorated with caution tape, bracing steel, and a few security fences.  Still, I got a chance to see a beautiful city teeming with life.  I bought the ring that I wear everyday in Cathedral Square, toured the Botanical Gardens, and saw an exhibition in the Arts Centre.

11 December 2010.  On the left, the University of Canterbury's former campus,
now the Arts Centre.  On the right, the Christchurch Cathedral.

Because I spent only one day in the city, I admired the iconic Christchurch Cathedral from afar, figuring I'd have plenty of time during later trips to get the inside tour.  Unfortunately, this was not to be.

In February 2011, almost one year ago, Christchurch was rocked by another quake -- this time, in the middle of the day.  This time, 181 people lost their lives, and the Cathedral's tower fell.

Today, the heart of the city is cordoned off for repairs, most -- if not all -- of the buildings are sealed shut, and every doorway still bears the spraypainted marks of the crew that cleared it after the devastating quake.  I felt like a voyeur photographing the city when I returned to it yesterday.  Although commerce is springing back in the form of brightly colored shipping containers-turned-temporary storefronts, the streets are only lightly populated.  Most of us seem to be tourists, taking silent footsteps and saying little, awkwardly pointing cameras at piles of bricks and twisted metal.

Left: Chain-link fences block pedestrians from entering the heart of downtown.
Many of the buildings there are still dangerous, especially since aftershocks are
still being felt every day.  On the right, Summer 2011 ads still mark this storefront.
The spraypaint on the glass marks the building as cleared, by a New Zealand team
four days after the earthquake.

The Shipping Container Mall.  Business must go on -- in this 
case, with typical kiwi flair.  Within this one block, you find
an enclave of commerce in an uber-modern setting.

And yet there is the sense that life is resilient, that it goes on.  I cannot imagine the feelings of the city's citizens, if I, who saw the place only once before, feel so utterly heartbroken by what I saw when I returned.  It seems... wrong... to feel such strong emotion about it, since I am just a visitor here.  I feel like an imposter, with an inappropriately keen sense of empathy.