When I read this issue's cover story about scientists working in distant places far from indoor plumbing, I was reminded of my first foray to a research station, about 20 years ago. It was located deep in the Mojave Desert, a ramshackle collection of huts populated intermittently by earnest undergraduates, bearded postdocs and faculty who all seemed to wear the same brand of safari hat.
The group I accompanied was there to study flora and fauna and grow understanding about the desert's surprisingly (to me) rich ecosystem. I was there to describe it, photograph it and avoid scorpions, not necessarily in that order.
Research in such places is not for wimps. The pathway to discovery is usually littered with obstacles, characterized by long periods of tedium and work performed in uncomfortable surroundings. The students on our trip spent hours each day literally counting different species of plants within a designated area. It was decidedly unglamorous, not to mention blisteringly hot.
Learning how to deal with field conditions was part of the education. Our team did virtually everything together—traveling, eating, cleaning, playing Hearts on rustic tabletops. You awoke at dawn, mustered the group for a hearty breakfast, held a debriefing about the day's plans and then embarked into the desert in jeeps. It was analogous to what I imagine being in the Army is like—the happy difference being that no one was likely to shoot at you.
It also was a kind of demonstration laboratory. Early in the 10-day expedition, a faculty member picked up a lizard; moments later the squiggly little guy dropped to the ground, leaving the scientist holding only the tail between his thumb and forefinger. He was demonstrating the defensive capabilities of the lizard, which can detach its tail to avoid predators. The undergraduates thought this was exceedingly cool; the lizard not so much.
And despite the often-hostile conditions, there also were profound pleasures for the senses and for the spirit. Rising before the rest one morning, I walked out of the compound to see the first slice of sun emerging above the horizon in the east; to my right, the descended full moon hovered above the mountains in the west, a perfect white ball framed by brightening blue. The stillness was penetrating, a blanket of silence thick enough to feel.
One afternoon while stooping to retrieve a lens cover, I spotted an arrowhead, a museum-quality artifact that had been lying there for who knows how many hundreds of years. I picked it up, inspected it, and imagined some long-ago native hunter on an outing looking for food. Such encounters are the unanticipated benefit of field exploration.
So I confess to being a little jealous of the folks out there studying in remote, beautiful places. The work is hard and often physically demanding, but it has its charms. And we should all be grateful that while you and I are settled comfortably in our easy chairs, someone is in the field fending off a howling wind or a nasty intestinal bug trying to make the world make more sense.
Kevin Cool is the executive editor of Stanford.
