Tag Archives: Adventure Science

08/17/2013

Adventure Science Raw Text Message Exchanges: Reinhard, Rothaus and Barth from April 22, 2013

By Aaron Barth

Right now, as I type, Richard Rothaus is delivering a presentation at the annual Preservation North Dakota meeting. This is taking place at Richardton Abbey just off of I-94 in western North Dakota. Rothaus is speaking about the Adventure Science operation that took place in western North Dakota in late-April 2013. A couple weeks before he and Andrew Reinhard headed out, Rothaus texted and asked if I wanted to provide a kind of mobile base camp support. Because at the time I was bogged down with readings and technical reports I said “Yes, of course.” It turns out that providing mobile base camp support for an Adventure Science project on the death highway (85) in the industrial petroleum play land of western North Dakota also allows a person to get a good back-logged chunk of reading in.

Andrew Reinhard on the morning of April 22, 2013.

Andrew Reinhard on the morning of April 22, 2013.

Anyhow, it was later decided by Reinhard, Rothaus and I that after the first day of the Adventure Science outing, perhaps the best understanding of how things almost went to hell was captured by the exchange of text messages between the three of us. Some quick context: spring was increasingly realized, although by late April 2013, winter still held the evenings, nights and mornings. This meant that everything would freeze at night (the ground included), giving overland trekking crews a solid footing in the morning. By mid-morning the sun would warm the ground enough to thaw everything, enough so I had to move the truck off a dirt two track on to solid asphalt because it started sliding from a stationary position due to the melt. This proved to be highly educational to Rothaus and Reinhard who were completing the first leg of the project: they slid down from the finger-ridge buttes, and found it nearly impossible to climb up the slippery slopes. They restructured the way they would approach the routes.

But back to the text exchange between the three of us. As evening gave way to the setting sun and night, I started becoming really concerned. Reinhard and Rothaus had wet clothes from the day’s hike, and to overnight in below-freezing temps would be a certain dance with hypothermia. That would be bad. So I started sending off text-messages to them. On April 22, 2013, just off Highway 85 north of Grassy Butte, North Dakota, the text-exchange went something like this:

Reinhard and Richard Rothaus start the overland Adventure Science trek on the morning of April 22, 2013 in western North Dakota.

Reinhard and Richard Rothaus start the overland Adventure Science trek on the morning of April 22, 2013 in western North Dakota.

4:08PM, Rothaus to Barth: “We are in mud hell. This will take awhile. Hang tight. Could take till 7 or 8.”

Barth to Rothaus: “Okay. I’ll sit tight.” I somewhat jokingly added, “Let me know when I should call the National Guard.”

6:38PM, Rothaus to Barth: “We are up on a plateau heading toward 85. Will come out south of you. HAng tight. We are beat but good.”

Barth to Rothaus: “Okay. Good to hear. Can you see 85 from your locale?”

Rothaus to Barth: “No. But we are getting there. Andrew [Reinhard] is solid. I am short on oxygen. So no serious worries.”

6:50PM, Rothaus to Barth and Reinhard: “We will come out about a mile south. We are probably 2 it less to road. Still could be mud.”

Barth to Rothaus and Reinhard: “Okay. Tell me when you get to road. I will come pick you up. Would it be wise to hotel it for one more night? I’m fine either way. If yea, let me know and I will book rooms. 16 [F] tonight. 18 [F] tomorrow night.”

Reinhard to Rothaus and Barth: “I defer to richard. Almost at the rim. See you at 8:00.”

Barth to Reinhard and Rothaus: “Okay.”

7:36PM, Reinhard to Barth: “Barth: we can see 85 but it will take at least 2 more hours. Can you book 2 hotel rooms? This is crazy country.”

Barth to Reinhard: “Yup.”

8:05PM, Barth to Reinhard and Rothaus: “We’re back at the Quality Inn tonight!”

8:47PM, Barth to Reinhard and Rothaus: “Are you two walking together? Or is it going to be more like midnight when you get to the road?”

9:02PM, Reinhard to Barth and Rothaus: “We are together. Now on a ranch road so 1/2 mile easy walk. I think i see your truck. Move it forward ten feet so I can confirm. Tonight you drink all the beers… Saw you!!! We will come out there.”

Barth to Reinhard and Rothaus: “You south or north of me? Okay.”

Reinhard to Barth: “(I think)”

Barth to Reinhard and Rothaus: “It’s not as though I was looking up the number for the sheriff or anything.” You south or north of the truck?”

9:18PM, Barth to Reinhard and Rothaus: “The sun sets in teh west, so north is to your right, and south to your left.”

9:32PM, Reinhard to Barth: “South now I think. Maybe 1/4 mile? I am 100 feet og the road in the grass. I lost the ranch road. And Richard. He should head W to the road.”

Barth to Reinhard: “Can you both see me? WTF?”

The April 22, 2013 sunset in western North Dakota. Taken on Highway 85, just north of Grassy Butte.

The April 22, 2013 sunset in western North Dakota. Taken on Highway 85, just north of Grassy Butte.

Reinhard to Barth: “I will try to find a road sign. I am by a yellow road sign that is on southbound side indicating road turns to left. I will walk north to where i think i saw your truck until i see a mile marker”

Barth to Reinhard: “Okay. I turned on the roof light. Just get to 85 first.”

Reinhard to Barth: “Kk richard is headlampinf so i can meet him, i will look for your light too”

Barth to Reinhard: “Okay.”

Reinhard to Barth: “I see richard”

Barth to Reinhard: “Okay good. You guys see traffic on 85?”

9:45PM, Reinhard to Barth: “Line of 6 vehicles just passed northbnd.”

Barth to Reinhard: “Did a solo semi just pass? I’m gonna go back and forth on this road a couple times till you see me. Top light is on.”

Reinhard: “Yeah. Waiting on richard. Maybe 1,000 ft to go for him. Orange? I see yoy. I am .200 ft n of uou. Stop. We will come to you”

Barth to Reinhard: “Sounds good.”

Within a minute Rothaus and Reinhard were back at the truck. Temps were below freezing by this point, and they were exhausted. We drove back to Dickinson that night, and had a late-late dinner at Perkins.

One more note, and some unsolicited advice for policy planners, upper and lower level politicians, and so on: if you do not physically live and work in the Bakken and plan on visiting, and if you want a true cross section of it, don’t do it in an airplane. Take the same roads that the rest of us take. Go in the winter. And then do it again in the summer. Stay for at least a week, and spend a couple nights in a crew camp, and a couple nights in a hotel. Even grab a cup of coffee and watch semi-tractor trailer activity, too. You’re not going to be able to understand what goes on out in the Bakken unless you do this. A person is able to experience and understand a lot more with boots-on-the-ground than they are at 5,000 or 10,000 feet.

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05/10/2013

Adventure Science and the North American Landscape

By Aaron Barth
Reinhard and Rothaus set out on the first day of Adventure Science's fieldwork in western North Dakota.

Reinhard and Rothaus set out on the first day of Adventure Science’s fieldwork in western North Dakota.

This morning I’ve been listening to one of Adventure Science‘s raw audio press conferences and forums, this concerning the latest trek through the badlands of western North Dakota, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the divide between the hard and soft sciences and the humanities, and how it is so necessary for conversations to take place between them (another interview from Prairie Public can be found here). Throughout academia, this is often called “crossing disciplinary lines.” In non-academic jargon, this means that you walk down the hall or out the building and across the courtyard to someone else’s office, kitchen, machine shop or garage, and ask her or him why and how they are working on a problem, whether an abstract theorem or a carburetor.

In the case of this Adventure Science press conference (which everyone should listen to at least once), Simon Donato and Richard Rothaus explain at the outset that they undertook this project in a completely scientific and objective fashion, and by this they were not obligated to produce — ahem — results for one public or private group or another. This is true, to a point. Yet the cultures that we are born into also contributes to the way we see the world, and consciously or unconsciously we will speak to a variety of these groups whether we like it or not.

I was thinking about this in relation to an observation Simon, who hails from the culture of Alberta, Canada (this is important, just stay with me here), made about half way into the press conference or conversation (or press conference-sation). In the history of the British-Canadian West and the American West, Euro-American settlement above and below the 49th parallel played out in much different ways. Simon consciously or unconsciously hints at this. There is historical reason for this (something the late historian Paul Sharp researched at-length, and some comments on that here and here).

Some badlands beauty, on the abrupt cusp of the winter to spring transition.

Some badlands beauty, on the abrupt cusp of the winter to spring transition.

In the history of the Canadian West, Anglo- and Euro-American settlement was deliberate. This is often symbolized by the Royal Canadian Mounties, who would patrol and police the areas, ensuring that the Crown’s Law and Order would be maintained across all the land, and ideally across the global empire. Through this order, land would be settled in an orderly fashion, and be made “useful” and useful for the commonwealth and crown (see Thomas Hobbes for intellectual exegesis). If coming from that Canadian backdrop, either yesteryear and today, when you enter the American West, including western North Dakota, it still looks like a crazed free-for-all, even in the wilderness. At the Adventure Science forum, beginning at 35:20 in the audio, Simon said,

…As we got into some of the ranching areas where, again it’s vast, you know you feel like you’re kind of on the edge of a wilderness area, but there’s no houses… there’s fences, there’s obviously been cattle through there, but there’s no houses and no structures at all, and that was really surprising to me. Where I’m from in Alberta, if you got fences, there’s gonna be a farmhouse somewhere, there’s gonna be a barn somewhere. You get into these areas, and I was really surprised that I didn’t find these structures out there, I mean, not even hunting cabins.

Bison in the badlands of western North Dakota.

Bison in the badlands of western North Dakota.

So I guess what Simon hints at and what I’m communicating here is that yes, science tries to be as objective as possible. But there is no amount of finality to that objective science, because as cultures evolve, so does science, and so do perceptions. What appears normal to one person will be abnormal to an outsider. This is why cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary studies and conversations absolutely have to take place, and this is why it is worth our while to conserve and preserve some of these places (one of the reasons Theodore Roosevelt set up the national parks).

Note: Native America/First Nations had occupied these badlands and North America for millenia, at least 12,000 to 13,000 years (and even this is contested by Native friends, as they have told me much longer), before non-Natives got to the area. Even the fact that we call a wilderness a “wilderness” today is a cultural bias worthy of consideration and contemplation.

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05/03/2013

Applied Archaeology Updates by and for the American West

By Aaron Barth
Andrew Reinhard (Princeton, New Jersey) gladly suffers for science in the Badlands of western North Dakota. He's pretty much a punk archaeological editor without borders. Photo by and for Reinhard.

Andrew Reinhard (Princeton, New Jersey) gladly suffers for science in the Badlands of western North Dakota. He’s pretty much a punk archaeological editor without borders. Photo by and for Reinhard.

The Bismarck Tribune reported today on Adventure Science‘s latest project in the Badlands of western North Dakota (the link to the article is here), a cross-disciplinary study that brought together a variety of hard and social scientists, humanities folk, and what I endearingly called Mutants — much in the sci-fi X-Men vein — the types that get a kick out of running through the Badlands in rain, sleet or snow in the day, and camping in mud at night. I had a chance to provide basecamp support for Adventure Science’s first week (some of that linked to here and here). This team was also recognized by The Explorers Club (New York City) for pushing the boundaries of human knowledge in otherwise unwelcoming environs. The team will gather today, this afternoon, Friday, May 3, 2013, at the Bismarck Public Library (in Bismarck, ND) for a press conference.

In other archaeological news, in the last week I received an update from the PaleoCultural Research Group. It is a great outfit (here is a link to some Fort Clark historic archaeology from last summer), and if you haven’t already, you should consider joining. If you’re interested in putting your archaeological volunteering skills to work throughout the American West this summer, below is a list of three projects Mark Mitchell is coordinating. Give him a shout if you’re interested. He’s great to work with, is perpetually optimistic (but not in an annoying or delusional way), and he has been known to wear a cowboy hat while excavating. Here is a link to one of his latest works that considers the political economic history of the Mandan-Hidatsa and the Heart River (which empties into the upper Missouri River just south of Bismarck-Mandan, North Dakota) out of University of Arizona Press. Below, the summer’s schedule.

PCRG Volunteer 2013

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04/27/2013

Real, Surreal, Romantic, and Wilderness

By Aaron Barth

Last week while tooling around with and providing basecamp support for Richard Rothaus, Andrew Reinhard, and Adventure Science in the badlands and above the Bakken oil patch in western North Dakota, one of the evening camp sites we occupied was located in the National Grasslands. Starting on the evening of April 25, 2013, a Thursday, and ending on the morning of April 26, 2013, a Friday, I noticed that over the course of about 10 hours, depending on the direction one looked and at what time of day, the spot of our camp site was on a borderland between the city and the country, the petroleum industry and the grassland wilderness.

Reinhard ultimately found the place we would camp that night, this on one of the thousands of finger-ridge buttes that the badlands offers. On the butte of our campsite (about 15 to 20 miles west of Grassy Butte, North Dakota), short trees and shrubbery protected our spot from any potential winds that would come out of the west and north, and just a bit to the east. A larger butte to the south would provide additional wind break. A raised and ditched scoria/clinker road wrapped around this larger butte, and like most of these roads, it was made sturdy enough for semi tractor trailer traffic.

Below are photos arranged in chronological order, and this speaks to how the surreal and romantic, the wilderness and industry, all intersect at one particular location, and all in less than half a day.

Photo of evening campsite, looking north, tent at bottom-center.

Photo of evening campsite, looking north, tent at bottom-center.

 

Just as the sun dips down and sets in the west behind the badlands buttes.

Just as the sun dips down and sets in the west behind the badland buttes.

Andrew Reinhard at left has Richard Rothaus go over his photos from another 10+ mile leg of Adventure Science's 100 miles of North Dakota Wild.

Photo looking to the north. Andrew Reinhard at left has Richard Rothaus at right go over his photos from another 10+ mile leg of Adventure Science’s 100 miles of North Dakota Wild.

Not long after the sun set in the west, I looked to the east and saw this moon rising.

Not long after the sun set in the west, I looked to the east and saw this moon rising.

While the moon was low in the sky, it looked like this, with serious camera zoom.

While the moon was low in the sky, it looked like this, with serious camera zoom.

An hour or two later, when the moon got much higher in the sky, it looked like this.

An hour or two later, when the moon got much higher in the sky, it looked like this.

Just as the sun starts to rise, the petroleum industry returns.

Just as the sun starts to rise, the petroleum industry returns. This photo is from our National Grasslands campsite, early morning, facing south.

Eventually one embraces the industrial surreal and absurd, and begins to make morning coffee, while smiling.

Eventually one embraces the industrial surreal and absurd, and begins to make morning coffee while smiling. This photo is from the campsite, facing south toward the scoria/clinker road and taller butte.

After the coffee is made, chairs were set up along the roadside to take in the industrial sounds of a morning in western North Dakota.

After the coffee was made, chairs were set up along the roadside to take in the industrial sounds of a morning in western North Dakota. This photo is from the campsite, facing west-southwest.

More industry, or Leo Marx's idea and reality of that machine in the garden. I like to think of it more as an industrial playground in our family livingroom.

More industry, or Leo Marx’s idea and reality of that machine in the garden. I like to think of it more as an industrial playground in our North Dakota livingroom.

It is 1.5 trailers of industrial semi.

1.5 trailers of industrial semi.

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04/23/2013

Notes from the Basecamp (04/23/2013)

By Aaron Barth
Basecamp water wagon and supplies.

Basecamp water wagon and supplies.

On April 4, 2013, Richard Rothaus and I chatted via e-mail about some base camp logistics for Adventure Science’s 100 miles of North Dakota wild, a pedestrian overland trek through ephemeral drainages and butte plateaus in the nation’s #2-producing oil field that is western North Dakota. We came to the conclusion that I could 1) be useful and helpful in coordinating points of drop off and extraction, and evening details for Rothaus and Andrew Reinhard; and 2) in the interim, between dropping off the team and setting up camp, I could read for comprehensive exams (also known as “comps”). On the April 21, 2013 drive out to western North Dakota, I also thought it would be a good idea to capture some traffic samples that are part and parcel to the borderline anarchy of any blossoming petroleum industry throughout the planet.

After dropping off Rothaus and Reinhard yesterday (04/22/2013) morning, I drove the field vehicle around to where they would arrive that evening, and set to reading for comps (“comps” is one part of the intellectual bootcamp, or disciplinary training, when working on a doctor of philosophy, in my case with North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota). Winter in North Dakota is holding on a bit more than usual, and it is getting the attention of folks in both the city and in the countryside. The late winter means a late spring, and so the snow has been gradually melting.

While reading for comps, and while temporally in late spring and spatially in western North Dakota, I revisited a short passage from the first chapter of Elwyn B. Robinson’s 1966 History of North Dakota (University of Nebraska Press), entitled, “The Grassland Setting.” In this, Robinson says,

For hundreds of millions of years the Williston Basin [of western ND] and the area surrounding it were intermittently covered by a salt sea stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic. Sediment carried into the sea by flowing water was deposited on the bottom and slowly compacted into strata, or layers, of sedimentary rock made up of clay, shale, sandstone, and limestone. (Robinson, 1966: 2)

Basecamp 2 TrafficIf wandering around in the badlands today, the tops of all the buttes represent the bottom of that ancient and dried up sea floor. Erosion from glacial advances and retreats helped shape what we see and make up our landscape on the northern Great Plains, and also what Rothaus and Reinhard slogged through all day. I noticed the slipperiness of this clay and mud about mid-morning (04/22/2013): while sitting in the cab and reading, and while the mid-morning sun warmed the badlands, the snow and mud went from frozen to melt, and this caused the field vehicle to start sliding from a standstill. This feeling is at first a bit unsettling, at least before realizing what is happening. I fired up the vehicle and drove it to a less-remote location, namely a raised and ditched off-road of Highway 85, not too far north of Grassy Butte, North Dakota. That solved the vehicle sliding problem.

From here I collected some traffic samples, capturing the number of vehicles that passed by in two separate 15-minute windows. Below is a short clip of the traffic (arguably a way to humanize the social science).

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