FIELD NOTES

FRIENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA BIOLOGICAL STATION

Reflections –being a kid, a student and a faculty member at the Bio Station—Geoffrey C. Carpenter

I love the Biological Station. When I was a kid my favorite day of the year was in early June when I got in the station wagon with my Dad and went out to the Animal Behavior Lab on North Campus, met Dad’s grad students, and loaded up the big red truck with an assortment of cages, traps, and various field and laboratory gear, and sent it on its way to the station.  We would then return home and load up my sisters and our personal gear and set out for what seemed like a lo-o-o-ong drive to Lake Texoma.  I knew that for the next eight weeks I would live in my natural habitat, running free in nature, catching turtles, snakes, lizards , fish, crawdads, various insects, and maybe armadillos.  I would spend all afternoon every afternoon in the sun and in the water, swimming, making sand castles, and beachcombing with other kids.   I was a very lucky kid. I had all of my birthdays at the Biological Station, receiving Peterson Field Guides from my Dad for several years, from which I tried to memorize all the common and Latin names.  Since there were no televisions at the Station, we watched National Geographic films in the commissary, where in July 1969 we all watched the moon landing on a black and white television (brought in especially for the occasion).  I learned to swing dance, square dance, play volleyball, play the guitar, stuff rodents, seine and shock fish, gill net, and learned lots and lots of things that pre-adolescents are not supposed to understand, from hanging out with grad students, undergrads and the faculty and families. Along the way, I made good friends for a lifetime.

I had to wait until the summer after 9th grade before they’d let me into the high school program.  That summer I took Natural History of the Vertebrates from Howard McCarley, worked in the kitchen to pay my way, and turned 15.  The next few summers I took Herpetology and Animal Behavior from my Dad, Ichthyology from Clark Hubbs (for which I got my first college credits, and an A).  A couple of summers later I had Stream Ecology from Tony Echelle.  I did individual research projects on red-winged blackbirds, sunfish, gars and turtles. I was a very lucky young man.  I always dreamed of coming back to teach at the UOBS someday, but never really expected it to happen.  But I love the Biological Station, so I continued to visit most (if not all?) summers until my Dad retired, and some summers after, and I attended the Friends of the University of Oklahoma Biological Station reunions when I could.  At one of these reunions, one October some years back, I joked, over a beverage, to Larry Weider (who was Director at the time, and an outstanding Director for 13 years!) that if he ever needed someone to teach one of the summer courses (now two weeks, rather than eight) I was his man.  He asked me what I was doing in August, and I immediately replied that I guessed I would be teaching at UOBS!

Now that I’m an adult (but certainly not grown up) and a parent, one of my favorite days of the year is when I load up my truck in New Mexico with various traps, herping gear and field and laboratory gear, my daughter Emilie (and most years my good buddy Charlie Painter) and head to Oklahoma to teach Field Herpetology at the Biological Station.  While the drive to Oklahoma is fairly long (8.5 hours from Bosque Farms to Norman), it pales to the “all day” (= 3+ hours) it took to get from Norman to Willis in the 60s (before I-35 was built).  The drive from Norman to Willis (after visiting family) now takes less than two hours, a short jaunt.  I get to catch turtles and lizards and snakes and frogs and toads; some summers I teach in a classroom named for my Dad; I get to interact with the faculty and students from other classes; I get to yuck it up with lifelong friends that still reside and work in the area and, probably most important to me, I get to show my daughter all the fun things I did spending my summers at Lake Texoma as a child and adolescent and watch her, and my students develop a passion for field biology.  Along the way, I make good friends for a lifetime.  I am a very lucky not-so-young man. I love the Biological Station.

or
Copyright © 2010-2011 The Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, All Rights Reserved
The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity employer.