Field Trips

A couple of weeks ago, my class went on an overnight field trip to Sweden to track a wolf pack. We tracked the pack where they had been about 4 days before to see if there were any fresh bed sites or carcasses of animals they had eaten. The trip was so fun and we found 2 moose carcasses, a jawbone from a beaver, and several bed sites where the wolves had slept. We were on skis and snowshoes the whole time and this is what I looked like 17 times during the trip....


How embarrassing...yes, I counted. I fell 17 times. We were back-country skiing and I hadn't done that yet. I had only skied on flat areas and this was through woods and hills and such, however, I had a blast and I got quite an arm workout from pushing myself back up so much. :)

About a week before this trip, I also got to see a pack of wolves out on a frozen lake eating a fresh moose kill. It was very far away, about 2 kilometers, but here is a somewhat close picture of the wolves we saw. It is quite rare to see wolves like this so everyone came out of the woodwork to come see. There were at least 10 other cars lined up across the lake with us.
Like I said, we couldn't get very close.

ALSO. Last week I got to go see some actual collaring of deer. A classmate of mine invited me on one of the trips where we sat in the car next to the big pile of hay known as a "feeding station" where some red deer were eating. We inched up closer and closer to the deer and then when we were close enough, my friend darted one of the deer by leaning out the window. We found the deer after it had fallen asleep and collared it with a GPS collar so we can get data on where the deer goes. I just stood there while they did all this stuff, but at least I got to go. :) I held a flashlight, that was my contribution. There is a picture of me with the deer, but I don't have it yet. I'll get it and you will see that the deer looks pretty dead, but no worries, it's alive and has no idea that I got a candid picture with it. Needless to say, it is exciting to live here sometimes and go on adventures like this. :)

Another field trip was last weekend with all the international students in the area. Mostly I went sledding and made a large snow-deer/llama (you can choose what it is...).

AND. Here are some pictures of the icicles outside my window. So cool. I wanted to reach out and lick them, but thought that might be a bad idea.

I hope everyone's doing great. I miss you all!