"Not all who wander are lost.": "Dig a tunnel, dig dig a tunnel, you could dig and never get done..."

This weekend I visited Boone and it was, again, a pretty blissful few days. Long nights of talking, movies, dinner out with friends, hiking, photography, waterfalls, hammocking, and some much needed rest...

But of course, Boone had to come to an end and let me tell you that it still doesn't get any easier, especially leaving this guy...

As ridiculous as it sounds, and believe me I know it sounds ridiculous, leaving him feels like ripping off my right arm and driving 3 hours in the opposite direction.

As for things back at Coweeta, Nitin has made a reappearnce, so naturally we're back to working 10 hour days. Today was spend installing a soil moisture probe. Through this internship, I have come to learn the hard way that anytime the word "install" is mentioned, long, grueling work is to be involved...today was no different. The length of the hike seems to be proportional to the amount of stuff we have to carry, aka we had to carry an inordinately large amount of equipment to the watershed the furthest away, watershed 2. Installing the propes then consisted of digging 1 meter deep holes, untangling meters upon meters of wiring, sampling soils, placing all of the probes, then finally burying said probes.

The digging was particularly difficult given the incredibly rocky/rooty conditions and took a great deal of time and effort. I had one particularly traumatic experience when I accidently thrust my spade into the guts of a particularly cute salamander. If you're reading this Marcie, I swear it was on accident and be comforted by my deep remorse as well as the fact that it was a clean cut, instant death for the poor little guy. On a brighter note, I learned from this mistake and took great care to avoid the other 5 some salamanders I saw while digging.

By the time we got about 6 inches from a meter deep, the shovel stopped being helpful in getting dirt out. Catherine's solution...stuff your body down the hole and get it yourself haha.