A Family in the Field

As much as I love carrying Anna, she's almost 5! Still, there's only one way to get her up a wild West Coast creek, and that's in her "baby" backpack. Anna promised that she'd wear her boots and help me collect rock samples if I took her into the field to look for faults. Well, you can see how long her boots lasted! While I collected fault rocks, she splashed in a little rock pool, made a bed on a mossy cushion, found forest fairies, and learned to leap from boulder to boulder. She loved her days in the field, but she has agreed that it's much nicer to stay home :-)

We stayed up the creek until 8.30pm and met numerous native birds on the way back to the truck. I really like the large flightless wekas, which look a little like wild brown chickens. They are cheeky birds who often walk up to see if you have anything that they can steal or eat. It may be the massive amounts of poison DoC put in the native forest last November to control of the invasive pests (like rats and possums), but for some reason the native plants are really flourishing. In turn, the bird population has boomed.

While Forest and Bird and the Department of Conservation tote the benefits of 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate), the debate against poisoning rages on the West Coast. I personally am tired of seeing "poison" signs and skulls and crossbones plastered on every fence post the length of the coast. We are not allowed to take dogs in the forest and are cautioned to watch children at all times. It's not back to nature, it's warfare. I would love to hear any comments from chemists about this compound; it is dumped aerially by the ton into our forests every year, and frankly, I've had enough. I am all for traps, but aerial drops of pesticide are foolhardy.

Now, I will return to being my normally perky self. On Sunday, we went to the beach at Hokitika to observe the high tide mark left by the tsunami generated by the M8.8 Chile earthquake. Here, you can see Anna and James standing next to the waterline left by the tsunami waves. The photo was taken at high tide! Luckily, New Zealand was spared extensive damage because the waves arrived during low tide.

West Coast Bliss

The West Coast is my piper. I constantly long to march up streams to the tune of rushing water, rumbling gravel, cooing wood pigeons and laughing kea. I first fell in love with its primordial podocarp forests when I spent a semester abroad in 1999, and I remain passionate about the place to this day. In less than 30 km, the Tasman Sea gives way to rushing rivers, glaciers, the Alpine Fault, and 3000 m mountain peaks. Not only that, but in summer, the evergreen forest comes alive with bright red rata flowers.

For 6 days, I traipsed up rivers looking for the Alpine Fault, collected rocks, and carried them home to analyze in the lab. Along the way, I met interesting fellow geologists, marveled at sunsets in Okarito, and drove a spiffy 4x4 up braided river beds. Thankfully, said 4x4 waited until the end of my trip to have a transmission meltdown, and I made it home safely to spend James' birthday with our extended family in Moeraki.