What's new?

Below Forks 2001

Where to even begin! This past summer was one of the busiest periods of my life. I had the opportunity to work at the Below Forks site as part of the SCAPE research project. Five days a week we lived in a derelict farm house some 15 km from Kinistino, Saskatchewan. The house reminded me of the deserted farmhouse in the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Most of the crew got to sleep on beds (or at least on the precious foamies) inside the house. However Steve and I, being the Men of Steel that we are, elected to sleep in tents. I spent about 63 nights in a small 2-man tent downwind of an outhouse this summer, but I'm not bitter.

Each day started off somewhere between 5:30 and 6:00 AM. We gathered in the kitchen where we each prepared our own breakfast. The breakfast menu consisted of eggs, toast, or cereal (including a box of shreedies that featured the Star Trek: Generations movie on the box [circa. 1994]). After breakfast we reluctantly made sandwiches for our lunch. Our choice in lunchmeats were normally limited to either Salami or Ham. Sometimes we used both on the same sandwich and came up with "slam" or "Slamwiches" as we came to call them. After our lunches were made, we would pile into our two rental vehicles and blast down to the forks (South Saskatchewan meets North Saskatchewan).

Once we arrived at the boat launching area, we all lugged gas tanks, excavation equipment, 14' fiberglass boats, and a cooler of "slamwiches" down to the boat area (about 75m from the truck). Wade "The Rock" Dargin had the privilege of lugging the 125 pound motor to and from the boat every day. Once all was loaded onto the boats we began our perilous journey across the river. The distance to be crossed by water was only about 150m but invariably we hit submerged rocks, submerged trees and even the occasional submerged beaver with our outboard motor.

Once we disembarked, we trudged up a squirrelly goat-path of a trail that lead up the cutbank to the actual excavation site. This was never an easy task despite having to travel along this trail at least 4 times a day (more if you were water screening) I never got used to it. The excavation site itself is on the very edge of the cutbank (and thus there was always the risk of falling off the cutbank and tumbling 15 or so feet to talus slope at the base).

The site was divided into three excavation areas: The western area, the main trench, and the eastern excavation block. I worked in the Main trench for the whole summer. The Trench is a 1m X 7m excavation unit running from the very edge of the cutbank to a point seven metres inland. When I started working on the trench it had been excavated to varying depths. Most of the trench had been taken down to about 240cm below datum with some areas as high as 200cm below datum. By the time I had finished the entire trench was excavated down to 270cm.

Most days at the site were impossibly hot, so I was thankful to be deep down in the earth. On the warmer days it began to get uncomfortably warm sometime around 10:00am. The worst period was from about 1:00pm to 3:00pm when the sun was directly above us and the trench was turned into a clay oven. Most of us experienced some sort of heat-induced disorientation and/or hallucinations at some point. Nevertheless we kept working through it all.

We were in Saskatchewan, so that meant that it hardly ever rained. I think we missed 2 half-days of work due to rain throughout the entire summer. The days when it did rain and we were at the site we donned our rain gear and got wet. Except Wade. Wade had no rain gear. For Wade "raingear" was a state of mind. On occasions when it really started to come down, Wade mysteriously disappeared and we were treated to a sighting of Ment (It's Ment! Half-man, Half-tent!).

We packed up at 4:30pm everyday and essentially did our morning ritual in reverse. For 2/3 of the summer we cooked our own meals (The horror! The horror!) We had fish-sticks, Perogies, Smokies and Spaghetti every week for about 2 months. At the beginning of August we got a cook to come in and cook for us. The food was good and there was lots of it.

For entertainment we started out with a single board game called "Tour De Force". It was some crazy Canadian Trivial Pursuit knock-off from the 1970's created by Pierre Burton. The questions mostly involved obscure events that transpired in the 1960's. The answer to every fifth question was "Pierre Burton". We attempted to play that game once and only once.

At some point (I don't really remember when as every day was exactly the same), we brought up a TV. and VCR and a bunch of movies. We watched a movie pretty much every night. The was also the possibility of making a trek into Melfort. Melfort was the closest town of any real size (maybe 5,000 people). Melfort had a small independently owned movie theatre, a coffee shop, a gym, and a recreation center with showers and a pool. Melfort also has a hospital. I became well acquainted with this hospital during the summer.

We made it into Melfort maybe once or twice a week. Normally Wade went to the Gym to work out while the rest of us sorta milled about town and drank slurpees or hungout in the coffee shop. We took in three movies during the summer: Tomb Raider, Planet of the Apes, and American Sweethearts. There wasn't really much to do in melfort, but it beat sitting around the table in a derelict farm house staring at each other in silence until it was a socialy aceptable time to go to bed.

Regina Life