Into the Berkshires

Work seems to be consuming my Boston life already. It's been bloody hectic these past few weeks due to ongoing experiments. Plus the pressure to present some positive results at the weekly group meeting, or risk getting grilled by The Boss, is always a prompt motivator to be in the lab doing stuff. With scientific research, experiments don't work 90% of the time (well for me anyway...), so most of your time is spent tweaking the conditions for one experiment in order to get it working. This means there's a lot of repeating experiments which can be incredibly frustrating and demoralising. Coupled with the constant threat of a verbal crushing by The Boss, it has been getting increasingly stressful. I'm very conscious that the honeymoon-period of protection that is conferred by being the new guy is wearing thin in the eyes of The Boss.

In non-work news, made my first sojourn out of Boston last weekend. Went with Bay-buddy, his wife and another postdoc in the lab on a 2 and 1/2 hour drive west of Boston to the Berkshire region of Massachusetts that borders on New York. We spent the day hiking in the area around Bash Bish falls and Mt Alander. It was a fairly moderate hike of about 7 miles I think (11.2 km) up fairly steep terrain for the most part, so I was glad that we were only lugging day-packs and not rucksacks for camping.

The falls were only a few metres high and not that spectacular, but hey...

I had a great time being out in the US wilderness for the first time and I really enjoyed the tranquil and my somewhat sweaty reconnection with Nature. The only thing that bugged me was that the map they provide at the beginning of the track sucked big-time as it wasn't very detailed. So if you're ever heading out there for a hike, I'd recommend getting a decent map of the trails elsewhere before you go.

Ferns and fungi, what's not to like?

We crossed into New York going to the South Taconic trail and Mt Alander.

I also saw my first chipmunk running around the bush which excited me greatly. There was this fuzzy little brown and black ball capering noisily through the undergrowth and when I excitedly pointed it out to Bay-buddy and asked him what it was, he glanced up for all of 1 second and in a completely unimpressed tone said "It's a chipmunk". Then he turned back to cursing at the map. I assume now that chipmunks are quite common. Well I was excited... Glad I never told him how cool I thought it was to see squirrels running around Boston.

"How's the serenity?" A small stream from the falls.

So this was my animal spotting list: chipmunks, a small snake, two frogs, a green and yellow caterpillar which plopped onto my arm from the sky, and many birds. Again, I got childishly excited when the tap-tap-tapping sound that echoed through the woods was identified by Bay-buddy to be a woodpecker. A lyrebird calling, and not a woodpecker pecking, is the norm in the Aussie bush: hence my excitement.

(Left) Aaaagggh snake!; (Right) Spot the wildlife...

Leave a comment if you spot the wildlife in the photo (it's actually pretty easy).