Finally some field work...and lots of down time

Recently I got a request from a friend for a blog update, and I thought, yeah but I haven’t been doing a damn thing lately! Nothing super interesting anyway, but living in a foreign country is its own adventure, so here goes!

Research stuff (and Buffy)

There’s been a LOT of down time. For several weeks I couldn’t really move forward with my research while waiting for the beaurocratic ball to roll. I had to jump through a few hoops for SDSU’s Institutional Review Board, which governs research on human subjects. I had to submit my protocol so they could approve it as being ethical, and then had to make a few adjustments before it was finally approved. I also had to turn in some paperwork for the Institute of Biological Investigation of the Northwest, the university at which my Mexican advisor works. Then there was all the paperwork for the natural resources agency that’s in charge of the biosphere reserve where half of my research takes place. So it took a while before I could even consider really getting up to the ranches.

During this time I did get some work done, like going over old drafts of my thesis proposal to see what I can use for the final draft. But I’m also terribly lazy sometimes, so I took Cali to the boardwalk, or lazed around the house. Somewhere in that first six weeks I got through all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer… for about the fifth time in my life. I know, nerd alert, right? Think what you want, but that show is EPIC- full of positive messages about women, and heavy themes of sacrifice, duty, loyalty, etc. There’s actually a national academic-style Buffy conference every year, and one of the things on my to-do list in life is to present a paper there. Or at least to attend!

My first couple of interviews were in the same area where we did that big crazy climb. In fact, my contact there was the guy who rented us the mules. He introduced me to this one old rancher who REALLY wanted to marry me and move to the United States. Yeah that never gets old…

I also went up to my contact’s ranch, where I spoke with his mom, who was a very sweet lady in her late 70s. When we arrived she was in the middle of making a huge quilt out of scraps of clothing fabric. She got the fabric from a friend who would bring bags of old clothing and then help her cut it into squares.  The quilt had no rhyme or reason in pattern, color, or texture, and ended up being this incredible patchwork explosion of polka dots and stripes and cotton and polyester and reds and purples and everything in between and outside the rainbow. And her sewing machine!! Damned if it wasn’t one of those gorgeous pedal-powered antiques, heavy iron in black lacquer and floral inscription.

Anyway, I didn’t have a translator for these interviews, and by the end of the day I just wanted to cry from frustration. There are times when I’m interacting with people and I understand everything and I’m like, yeah, my Spanish is awesome. And then there are days like this, when I swear I cannot understand a single sentence. But people here are very patient with me… plus I have a voice recorder, so whatever I missed I’ll pick up in transcription. Luckily I had a student from one of the universities help me out on the next trip and it was all so much better! Lucía took great notes and asked all the right questions, so I was able to get much better data.

On this second day of interviews, Lucía accompanied me to Rancho San Dionísio, an area with a number of individual ranches on the eastern slope of the Sierra la Laguna Biosphere Reserve.  There was an infusion of government funds in this particular area to encourage alternative tourism, and some of the ranch owners have become hiking guides and mule renters. We arrived at the first ranch just before mid-day, but it was already warm. These ranches are extremely well-suited to the heat though. The owners of this first ranch had these huge mango trees- they looked prehistoric- and they cast almost continuous shade over the ranch with leaves the size of my head.  The owners of this ranch not only rent out mules and guide hiking trips, but they also own a small restaurant and supply all of their own vegetables from a large garden on the property. Aside from half a dozen types of lettuce, they also grow these cherry tomatoes that melt in your mouth and are sweet like candy. Mmm mm!

Lucía, the ranch owner, and I sat in the shade of the mango trees in one of the half-acre orchards to talk about the history of mountain lions in the area. I sat on a cement block by an unlit fire pit and Lucía sat on an old whale vertebra while the owner regaled us with stories of his father and brother hunting mountain lion decades ago. He also illustrated what a cougar smells like by burning the hair and skin on an old piece of pig hide- little bit rank! He said that when the mules can smell that, they start to spit because they’re frightened. Ha!

Other conversations that day unearthed a ton of interesting stories about how and why the ranchers killed cougars in decades past -usually with guns (.22s) and for various reasons. There was a female with kittens who was likely to attack livestock so she was preemptively killed, one had rabies, one was killing wild pigs too close to ranches, and sometimes they were killed to sell the hides to interested parties. There’s also this story I’ve heard several times now in several different areas of the state, and I’m not sure if it’s something that actually happens sometimes, or one of those tall tales that gets passed around. Ranchers tell of one of their friends (it’s always a friend, never themselves) whose mule goes missing for a day or two. When the mule finally shows up, it has these long gouges down its back. As the story goes, the mule was attacked by a mountain lion and in order to remove the beast from its back, the mule slammed its body against a tree, stunning and dislodging the mountain lion. In my imagination, I always picture the cougar walking off, dazed, shaking its head in confusion and pain.

I love being exposed to these stories and they really help me get a handle on what the general feeling about pumas is in this region. They have almost a mythical status among the people I’ve talked to in the reserve, probably because there haven’t been many pumas since the government bounty program of the 1950s. So far people are almost surprised when I tell them I’m studying the relationship between pumas and people, and about every other person looks at me askance, laughs, and says- Pues, no hay! There aren’t any pumas here! My northern site will probably be different in this sense, since I’ve been told of more recent attacks.

In any case, it was great to finally get started with the data collection, and next week promises to be just as busy.

Agua/ water

My water comes from a underground cistern. An electrical pump pushes it through a PVC pipe into a holding tank on top of the house. This is the water I use to shower, brush my teeth, wash the dishes, and flush the toilet. It makes you very aware of how much water you use when you actually have to go turn on the pump because you’ve run out. But that’s a good thing here, in a region that has so little water to spare. The good news is that I can pump it as often as I need to.

When I was working in Rio Lagartos, down in the Yucatán, we had to be very careful about our water use. The first day I asked our boss about it, and he said, oh yeah, don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of water in the tank. So I and the two gals I worked with were washing our clothes in the sink, not really paying attention to water use (there weren’t exactly water shortages in that part of Mexico). The next thing we knew, the tap was dry!! We asked our boss what the heck had happened, and he said that the water tank was only refilled when it rained and the town water services refilled it! Gah! We had to wait until the next morning to have water. We washed our clothes in buckets after that! So yeah, now I get to turn on the pump every week or so, and that is great.

Garrapatas/ Ticks

Cali has made a number of new friends here. Yeah, of the eight-legged blood-sucking variety and I’m none too happy about it. Every night I spend at least half an hour searching her fur and skin for the little suckers. They are disgusting. And, get this- I kept wondering why I was always finding two ticks at every bite site, one big nasty engorged one and a smaller one. I looked it up. Prepare yourself, this is NAAAASTY. Yeah they’re mating. EWWWWWWWWWWWW!! The big one is the female, who after feeding on my dog, will drop onto the ground and go lay thousands of eggs. Gross.

Balandra Beach/ La Playa Balandra

Balandra is a beach that’s also a local icon of community-led conservation efforts. It’s got this mushroom shaped rock that shows up in tourist guide photos and bumper stickers around town. At one point they were going to turn this particular bay into some kind of tourist destination, but local people rose up, and hundreds (or maybe it was thousands) of people from La Paz walked out to the beach in protest. Apparently that and some other activist events got the government’s attention and it was declared a protected area.

I’ve been there a couple of times for a beach day, and my favorite partner in crime is Daniela. Daniela’s family are the ones who help me out so much while I’m in La Paz. Her mom, Alba, was my professor in San Diego while she was a visiting faculty member, and her class on the society and ecology of Baja California Sur eventually led me to my thesis topic. I was Daniela’s math tutor in San Diego, and I tutor her now as well. But we’re definitely not all business, and she’s one of my favorite people to goof off with.

Cali loved the beach in San Diego and she loves it here, too. The water at Balandra is very shallow for a long while, so when I threw the ball for her, she bounded through the water looking like a dolphin racing along the surface.

Mm’okay, so that’s it for now. I’ll try to be better about getting some blog posts up, even if it doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing anything cool. I'll start carrying my camera around and taking pictures of La Paz.