After the July fourth holiday, I met up with the guys at the Safeway (a grocery store) in Aberdeen. Jaime stayed in Boise, returning one of our fancy autolevels for one that actually worked. But this simple return took a full week instead of a day and the three of us were slightly stranded. We brought my car along to keep a few things dry from the rain, and Chris’s truck to do our work. Every single day of those eight days it rained. I changed clothes three times, rotating from one soaked layer to a slightly dryer layer every few days. Water started to seep in from the bottom of Chris’ tent, soaking everything, while Paul’s rainfly began to lose it waterproofness. We eventually bought a tarp and cramped our three tents underneath it, but this only seemed to slightly improve anything. We started to check the weather report off of Paul’s smart phone searching for any hope of this misery ending, but with few people in the region the weather reports were sketchy at best for just a few scattered towns. One of the later days in the week the weather report boasted of just 20% rain. We were pretty hopeful, but still knew better than to forget our rain jackets. By midday it began to pour but we were so determined to finish two reaches that we nevertheless didn’t walk out of the field until 10p.m. We cheeringly joked that 20% must mean only six hours of rain, while secretly dying on the inside. It was twilight when we began to walk back to the truck and I was tired so I stumbled a little more than usual. While crossing a few larger boulders on the side of the stream my boots lost their grip on the rock and I fell, overtopping my waders slightly as the water tumbled around me. Luckily I screamed pretty loudly and Paul quickly scooped me up. I was so drenched already from that day my little swim almost didn’t even make a difference. The next day was 30% rain. We groaned, predicting this must mean what, 10 hours of rain for the day? But it wasn’t – it was glorious. The sky became the color blue we hadn’t seen in what felt like weeks. And the sun! We were like vampires, sparkling in it’s radiance, unsure of what to do with ourselves other than stop working and bask in it’s glory. Mid grain size measurement, we laid down on the smooth rocks and just stayed there. Paul even started snoring. We couldn’t help ourselves; I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. You just can’t appreciate the sun without having been through eight days of monsoon. All of our outlooks changed: from depressed, irritated survival mode to much more playful and joking and just plain giddy. And, right on cue, our boss came back in time for the sunshine. I guess you can at least chalk it up as a bonding experience.
Back in the field
