Photo of the day? I think so!

This is my soil sampling buddy Craig with the caribou antlers we found today. Intense, huh?

First full day of work, and it was a good one. The helicopter dropped us off in what was was honestly the middle of nowhere, and we stumbled off to mark 50m lengths along a predetermined grid line. It was the first time I had seriously done sampling, and Craig's third, so we marked off the wrong co-ordinates and blundered along until the end of the day. Tomorrow we'll be on our own, so that will be a blast. I would not be surprised to find myself on some unnamed ridge kilometers from the designated chopper pad because I cannot read a map and am generally stupid when it comes to numbers and directions. Somewhere, God is laughing Himself silly at my complete lack of suitability for this job.

But life, right now, is amazing. Everyone is outdoorsy and intense and have fantastic stories. Our supervisor (for a couple more days) has a wild beard and hair and smokes a lot of pot and is constantly working and spends time in the field before flying off to high-powered executive meetings in New York and San Diego.

Know what's a little strange, though? Everyone I've met so far, be they 19 or 29, seem to be in seriously committed relationships. It's weird. And a little lonely. That excludes my roommate Laura, but she took off a few nights ago and came back at 4 in the morning severely hungover and wearing a firefighter's pants. This morning "We have your pants" was written in the mud on the back of our truck. She just shrugged and laughed.

All this, and I have so many more stories. My fingers will just not stop moving, but it's bedtime in the land of the midnight sun. Take care. How was the dinosaur party?