Phosphorus from my childhood

The story behind the first chapter of my dissertation

When I was growing up I loved to spend time near the water. Whether it was riding my bike down the street to Canyon Lake so I could fish off the dock and swim at the spillway or it was packing up a picnic lunch to enjoy on the shore of Sheridan Lake, the spirit of the water has always run through my veins. So maybe it wasn't so surprising when I pursued a PhD in limnology at the University of Minnesota. I was four years into my program (having spent the first couple securing a M.S. degree) when I started to hit a bit of a wall. I had just completed my preliminary exams and I was starting to plan my summer field season to collect the data that would become the basis for my first dissertation chapter. The task ahead of me felt daunting and while I had won some fellowships that would provide financial support for my work, my idealized designs far exceeded my budgetary capacity. I needed a plan that would allow me to answer my questions, but I also knew I was going to have to get creative.

At this point in my life it had been awhile since I had returned to my childhood home in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Maybe it had been several months, maybe over a year, or even a couple of years, I can't fully remember. But as I was thinking about the lakes I would need to sample to finish my dissertation something struck me; I didn't have access to a boat. I had my kayak, which would get me by on some of the smaller systems around the Twin Cities and I had access to the University of Minnesota field stations (both of which had boats available) that would grant me access to the waters near them. But outside of that, I had to ask myself, who do I know that has a boat? Since boats don't grow on trees the next question was an obvious one, if I needed a boat then I needed people with a boat; so I asked myself, "Where do I have people?" Where do you go when you need people? I go home.

My parents are the kind of people that would do anything to support their son. They have that type of generosity that is easy to exploit, at least it can feel like exploitation until you realize they get joy out of being helpful and the thought of demands on their time as being a hassle never even crosses their minds. So when I called to ask if they knew of anyone back home that might be willing to loan me a boat and a trailer for a couple days, they immediately started calling friends and neighbors. My mom started crafting a list of the best lakes in the hills to sample and in a manner of minutes I'd secured a boat, ten new field sites, and two free field assistants. All I had to do was go visit mom and dad for a week.

Now I will admit, at this point in my dissertation work my ability to keep work-life balance was not well honed and I wasn't exactly an expert in keeping my priorities straight. While I now understand you never need an excuse to take a break from the field or lab to spend time with family or prioritize your own mental health, at that point in my career turning a trip home into a sampling trip was just the permission I needed from myself to pack up my Jeep and head west for a week. The plan was to sample Monday-Wednesday and Mollie would fly out on Thursday to join us for a long weekend. It felt like the perfect compromise; three twelve-hour days in the field followed by three days with family. Turns out it was also the recharge of my emotional batteries that I so desperately needed after a long period of neglecting my own well-being.

---

My parents had secured the use of an 8-foot Jon boat from a neighbor down the block. So when I arrived we hopped into my dad's Tacoma and headed over to grab the boat. Turns out the boat was the perfect width to slide right on top of the wheel wells so all we had to do was tie it down in the back; no trailer was necessary. The neighbor loaned us a small trolling motor and we were in business. We got back to the house, had a couple beers on the deck, and decided to call it a night so we could get on the water early the next morning. Before I stepped inside, I took one last look up at the sky. My parents house is just outside the city limits, tucked back in a canyon with no street lights. Back there it gets a kind of dark that you can't experience in a city, a darkness that can engulf you where you stand and heighten your other senses. In that kind of darkness, when you look up you see stars; you see all the stars. I'd forgotten what it was like to see stars like that, diamonds against a black blanket with no light pollution to diminish their brilliance. Taking one more lingering look to the heavens, I felt peace wash over me. I was back home, the kind of home your spirit can always find and a part of you never leaves; in the morning my home would meet the man I had become.

"Well Shit." My dad looked over at me from across the bed of the truck as the words escaped under my breathe. He was untying the boat in the back of his truck and I was digging through the cooler of supplies I'd loaded into the extended cab.

"What's wrong?" He inquired.

"Nothing, I just forgot something back in the lab. It's no big deal"

Now my dad is an orderly guy. He likes control and when things go according to plan. He is a measure twice and cut once kind of guy.

"Is it something you need? Something important? Maybe I've got one in the garage?"

"It is moderately important, but I don' think you have a handheld with the software for a Hydrolab data logger in your garage."

"Okay, well can we still do your work?"

"Lesson one of my world, if everything goes to plan, you aren't doing field work."

We spend the rest of the day hauling the boat in and out of the truck, stopping for a quick picnic lunch and ultimately returning home to the makeshift lab I had erected in my parents‘ garage to process the samples I had collected. That day in the boat, I got to talk about lakes. I got to explain my love for the water, the peacefulness of exploring a new system and observing what it has to share. My parents got to experience the tools of my craft that had become extensions of my senses: the Secchi disk, Van Dorn bottle, and plankton net. In those moments we got to share a part of my life that had grown outside of their experience with me. We sat in the garage that night filtering water for several hours, drinking beers as the sun set and moon rose. Over those beers in the garage, we talked about what the water could tell me, the stories of those lakes playing out on the filters in front of us.

In those two days back home we collected water from ten lakes, most of them ones I'd spend my childhood exploring. Those samples became the basis for a dissertation chapter and a publication in a special issues on phosphorus. The trip put me back on track with my research, but more importantly it renewed my soul. It gave me the energy I needed to finish and reminded me that my science was only part of my identity; not its entirety. Over the past decade I've visited hundreds of lakes, collecting data on three continents and running thousands of samples, but those ten lakes and their water are ones I will never forget.