In your face people not in the boreal forest!

Posted by: Nic

Okay, I used the title of this post in an email already, but I liked it so I thought I'd use it again. This post involves boreal forests, a relatively famous scientist, cows and dead birds. Lets begin...

I went hiking a few weekends back with some of the Duke crowd. Sal wasn't able to come unfortunately. Our hiking destination was Linville Gorge, a wilderness area that was too steep to bother logging so it has basically the only old growth forest in the state. We went for three days and had a ball! The weather was beautiful but the walking was tough given that the trail was rocky and uneven went up and down 300 to 400 meters. The trail was also poorly marked which meant having to think and navigate. The picture below is the guys napping on a cliff looking into the valley.

The famous scientist I mentioned was Professor Norman Myers. I had never come across him but his wikipedia entry describes him as a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity. He is Professor and Visiting Fellow at Green College, Oxford University, and at the Said Business School, Adjunct Professor at Duke University and holds visiting professorships at Harvard, Cornell, Stanford and Berkeley. He is and has been a senior advisor to organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the White House, scientific academies in a dozen countries, influential politicians (including six prime ministers and presidents) and business leaders worldwide. He has publicized his work in hundreds of scholarly papers and popular articles and 19 books (sales of these books, over one million copies). So there you go. He was lecturing to Sal's class and some how he ended up having dinner with us, as you can see from the picture below. Despite how the picture looks he was a friendly and interesting dinner guest.

The logical thing to follow a famous scientist is cows. I have started field work again and this picture was taken at my field site near Reidsville, North Carolina. The town of Reidsville, population 14 thousand, was once a major rural center and wagon route but has since suffered local recession and decline like many small North Carolinian towns. The town is sprawling, run-down and ugly (sorry any Reidsvillians) but the land around it is beautiful. We have a field station nestled in the rolling hills west of the town. I tried to capture the landscape and fall colours but didn't get a good shot. These cows are in the field next to a patch of canola I am working on.


Finally, Thursday was Thanksgiving, the best holiday in the USA in my opinion. Every one typically spends Thanksgiving with their families, which mean university students leave town. So the previous weekend the Duke crowd had a gathering. The picture below is from the party.

I had been invited to go deer hunting over the Thanksgiving weekend so Sal opted to go to the mountains with a friend. The hunting trip was canceled at the last minute so I got to spend this long weekend by myself. Luckily our neighbors invited me over for dinner.


That's all for now. Not long before Arwen and Gracie arrive for a visit and then we are off to Chicago!