What an adventure-filled couple of days! We have finally figured out where the favoured areas are and are starting to find sites – high sandy knolls beside clearly defined water sources, they didn’t seem to like the vague, sloping areas at all. The lithics are not terribly spectacular to the average eye, but after a week of nothing they seem absolutely gorgeous. 
It was a terribly long day though, 15.5hrs in the field – far less than ideal but we are at the mercy of the helicopter pilots and they could not ferry us home any sooner. It was amazing to be out so early in the morning though, everything was so crisp and fresh, all the birds were out and chirping, none of the insects were up and buzzing around yet. Everything just smells and looks more vibrant as the sun is coming up.
The following day was quite the exciting day; it was my turn to find a site, this time with the tiniest flake possible. 
I found a second, slightly bigger flake tangled in the roots of the moss from the top of my test pit. It was reassuring to be reminded that yes, I still do know what I’m looking for – we just weren’t finding anything.
Later in the afternoon we went to scope out some of the other high potential areas; it was a much more dynamic argo ride. We managed to get ourselves into the middle of quite a bit of swampy muskeg, we ended up crashing through the forest in attempts to find where the road had abandoned us, I almost bounced out the back several times – quite the drive. However, it was not long until disaster struck!
Alright perhaps that’s a tad dramatic, but it could have been quite serious. We came upon a tree that was crossing the path, a tree we believed would easily go under the argo and be nothing more than an unpleasant bump. However, at the last second it whipped back and caught Yvonne, our team leader across the hand and then squarely in the chest. 
She stopped the argo and hopped out of the argo to catch her breath; however, she very quickly went into a swoon that would have made any Victorian woman proud. Instantly we had her in a recovery position, injury iced and the sat phone ready to go (please note I didn’t take the picture until she was on her road to recovery).
Luckily we were done for the day and heading for the helicopter anyways. Tucking her safely into the passenger seat we were off again in no time.
Disaster strikes again! Ok, not disaster but adventure time. The storm we were trying to out pace quickly caught up to us and we decided perhaps it was not wise to be driving around with the lightning directly overhead. Pulling over we broke into out emergency kit and set up a cozy little tarp house to wait out the rain under.
The sound of the thunder cracking and rolling around us as we sat huddled in the heart of the storm was fantastic, you could feel it reverberating through your bones. Thankfully though the storm passed quickly and we made the rest of the journey home without incident.
adventuresinfieldwork 