A thunderstorm to start it off

I've been writing my Rio Stories blog for a few years now. (And its sister blog, Sambagypsy, which chronicles some of my musical experiences outside of Rio.) But this summer I've got a different kind of thing going on: biology fieldwork. It's the first time in over a decade that I've done real fieldwork. Out in the woods, on the plains, in the tundra, by the mountains, in the middle of the Bay of Fundy; whatever habitat it is, fieldwork is as different from my Rio Stories world as can be. It's a strange transition, coming from the crazy, noisy, mass-of-humanity Brazilian cities where I was a few weeks ago, from the bright-colored city of Salvador, with Olodum drumming in the streets and all the people dancing.... to the solitude of this vast and magnificent Wyoming mountain land, chasing tiny birds through the endless dark pine trees.

But there's something similar in both, in the act of abandoning your "normal" life and hurling yourself heart-and-soul into another world, trying to understand it, diving into it, swimming in it, thinking of nothing else. So, I'm starting this little Bio Stories blog, to write about fieldwork. Mostly so that I can remember it later. I so wish I'd kept a journal during my years at Toolik Lake in northern Alaska.... This time I don't want to let it slip away. (Eventually I'll add some notes on my other biology projects too, which currently are: bird, elephant, lion, whale and sea turtle.)

Of course, there's a couple of problems with the idea of trying to write a blog about fieldwork. The first problem is that I'm in the middle of Grand Teton National Park living in a campsite with no email or electricity. The second problem is that my working day is 5am to 10pm, generally with no days off and certainly no time for writing. Nor for any other frivolous activities, such as, say, eating breakfast, taking showers, doing laundry, or sleeping.

But today we woke up at 4am to the loudest, most torrential downpour I've ever heard - a huge crack of thunder and WHAM, it sounded like our tent was standing directly under a waterfall! I have never heard such a thunderous onslaught of rain in my life! Complete with wild lightning and strings of stunningly loud thunderclaps. Jamie hopped up out of her sleeping bag to check on our frayed, 30-year-old tent and its flimsy tarps (we'd lashed two jerry-rigged tarps together, since neither was big enough to cover the tent on its own). But everything held - actually the tarps had even withstood a minor moose attack a few days earlier - and so after Jamie verified that everything was still standing, we just lay cozily in our sleeping bags and listened to the fury just outside.

(I thought, what on earth do all the birds do in a rainstorm like this? Can every one of them really find a hidey-hole somewhere? Some of them must surely get drenched now and then.)

Two hours later, when we got up at 6am, the sky looked clear, but massive banks of dark clouds were sweeping directly toward us over the Tetons trailing ominous gray sheets of rain underneath. The weather forecast was an interesting "70% chance of strong thunderstorms, with heavy rain, some lightning, large hail and strong winds". So we've reluctantly decided to postpone our bird-catching efforts for one day. And we've already completed most of our site visits... which means I get a HALF DAY OFF. So I'm in the town of Jackson, Wyoming, now, at a little wi-fi cafe, starting this little blog.

All we're trying to do is catch a Red Crossbill. But more on that later.