Field trips can be daunting, especially if they are particularly remote or far from home. I am often nervous when planning for them, but have found my own way to work through a trip methodically to get the most out of it. So if you’ve ever wondered how to field trip? This is the place for you.
In my experience, studying earth and environmental science is maybe 20% getting out in the wild, digging holes, eating dirt (both on purpose and accidentally), hard manual labour and observing what you see, feel and perhaps unfortunately smell while doing so. Another 30% is scouring through sources to find what conclusions others drew from similar observations and googling how chemistry works. The final 50% is spent in front of an excel spreadsheet or some other data analysis tool. Trying to find patterns in the data and figuring out how to communicate them.
But the best part of earth and environmental science is field trips. You get to see interesting places that others don’t usually get to see, go on an adventure, your grandma thinks you’re Indiana Jones (you and everyone else on the field trip are probably dressed like Indiana Jones so its a fair assumption) and you learn more than you ever could by reading. Field trips are fun, exciting and interesting, but they are also a lot of hard work.
Meeting the deadlines on field trips is brutal. Field trips where you wake up at 6am to get ready and head out into the field to do field work (read hard manual labour) until 5pm before heading back for dinner and data entry, and then data analysis until whatever time you got that days data finished, which was often at midnight, and then do it all again the next day. My friends and I would finish field trips in a zombie-like state, covered in grime, sweat, bits of tree and a pale shade of exhaustion. Except for me who was usually a rather bright shade of sunburnt.
Field trips are great, but they are tough at times, so it’s important to know how to do them right. So welcome to the “How To Field Trip Guide”
Preparation
Firstly, prepare for the field work. Read up on the site. Do as much of the field trip before the field trip as physically possible. You will be more comfortable, have more energy and it gives you a little extra breathing room while you’re there. Try and understand the previous research and where you want to sample. This is of course a no brainer to anyone in industry, but if you are at university, these things are often picked for you or require information that you don’t have. However in third year uni this was a very important step in not wasting time.
Secondly make sure you have somewhere to stay. Try and be as comfortable as possible but sometimes there aren’t many options. Beware of too good to be true prices. Pictures on the internet can be deceiving, and a building’s history is not always available. I stayed at a VERY haunted convent and I only realised it was a convent when I pulled into the driveway to be greeted by a 10ft Jesus. If your university is organising the accommodation; great! However mix ups happen so it might be a good idea to at least be mentally prepared for anything.
Most importantly, remember that camping is always an option. Yes it’s colder, more uncomfortable, no indoor facilities or internet (if you have these options it’s pretty good) but weigh up your options and decide what is best for you. Tents, backs of vans covered in blankets and swags are great ways of staying near your field sites using only your own gear that you know exactly where it’s been, while having the comfort of knowing that no ghost nuns are coming to get you.
Make sure you have all the right gear. Research the weather in the place you are going to inform your packing. If you are going to New Zealand, make sure to have a good rain coat. You will get drenched anyway as it will go straight through anyway but you will be less drenched than you otherwise would be. If you are going to a waterbody of some sort, bring swimmers or a change of clothes. You might not think you are going in the water but I hate to tell you it is rather likely that someone’s going to have to.
Getting There
Next is getting there. Your professor or field trip leader might organise a bus or something to get there, but often you have to figure it out yourself. Field sites are also often down unmarked tracks and hard to get to. I remember most of my uni field work we were given a blurry screenshot of Google earth with no recognisable landmarks and no addresses. Another time we had written instructions for a nine hour drive with things like “take the left at the abandoned railway”. And if you’re driving by yourself you can’t be reading the instructions at the same time.
My solution to this is to drive with a friend. That way the driving and petrol is shared and you have help navigating. However this is not always possible. So as an alternative, on Apple Maps, there is an option to download areas of map. GPS works with or without internet but loading in roads and the actual map part does. If you can download the map of the field trip areas, and try your best to use whatever instructions and screenshots you can to drop labelled pins so you have navigation while you are out there. If you are like me and would get lost in your own backyard this can be a life saver.
Field Trip Food
I always ate rather poorly on fieldtrips. I had a lot of microwave meals when they were an option and camp ground BBQ bacon and egg rolls when they weren’t. Unfortunately “Microwave Muscle Lo-Cal Vacuum-Sealled Meal” doesn’t always cut it and can be quite gross if you get a bad one. I don’t recommend living off them for more than a week at a time. However if you must, coles has better microwave meals than woolies. Coles has more curry based meals which make a better microwave meal than whatever was going on with the beef stroganoff my friends had to strongly encourage me not to eat.
If you can, just take the time to cook a decent meal. Vegetables are important.
I would also recommend saving any alcohol for after the work is done. I know some people like to party a little on field trips, but field work with a hangover is rather unpleasant and you get less done. Plus the feeling of being able to celebrate after working really hard is all the more exciting when you’ve really been putting your all into it.
Fieldwork
Lastly, the field trip. That part is the simplest. All the work you have done previously will make all this easier. You aren’t stressed from travel, you’re well rested and well fed, you have all the gear you need and you research to help you make smart choices about your data collecting. My only tips are:
- Get on with it (you will want to have time to process the data afterwards)
- Don’t touch “pretty” rocks at contaminated sites, aposematism also applies to rocks (it’s probably a compound of copper/iron/arsenic/mercury/something else you shouldn’t touch)
- Take breaks and stay hydrated
- Don’t dig holes next to ant hills
- Don’t wear white
Thus concludes How to Field Trip. I hope this helps and have fun on your field trip!
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