DISCLAIMER:Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it.
RATING: T – Teen (language and adult issues)
PAIRINGS: GSR & Yo!Bling pre-established in previous fics of this timeline.
SPOILERS: Sequel to "Displacement" and "Transitions"
SUMMARY: Everything is changing around Nick Stokes. Can he deal with it, and how it will affect him in the end?
A/N: Here's where I get nervous... All the "scientific" info in this chapter is purely from layman's research. So, if I'm totally off-base, I hope someone would point it out to me so I can fix it. Thanks.
REVIEWS: Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Chapter 8
08:00 – 2006.12.06
Lost Gringo Mtn. State Rec. Area: UNLV/EPA Desert Erosion Research Site
When Nick watched the university truck pull off onto a large clearing at the side of the park service road his whole body stiffened. He was about to have to deal with the professor face to face once more, and he just knew it was not going to be good.
Sara immediately jumped from his truck and went to where the professor's assistant was standing at the back of the trailer. They were obviously hitting it off well, and he assumed it had something to do with her friendship with David. Nick had always been fond of the coroner's assistant, but they never struck any kind of real friendship. As he watched the two women laughing and unstrapping equipment, he tried to prepare himself for a morning with the professor.
Opening the door to his truck, he carefully slid out onto the hard scrabble ground below and kicked up a little dust in the process. He ambled over to the trailer and laid a hand on the upright ramp at the back of the trailer.
He was about to ask what he could do when the professor limped around the side of the other truck. "Careful leaning on that ramp… The catch isn't always tight."
Nick immediately took his hand off of the ramp and stared at it like he had been snake bit, but the professor seemed to pay him little mind. He took one more steeling breath before asking, "So, what can I do to help?"
The professor hollered, "Stand back," as she dropped the lever that had been holding the ramps upright, and they came crashing down onto the ground.
They all jumped away from the trailer in an instant, but before anyone else could say something, Sandi took the initiative. "Christ, Doc! Would you quit that?"
Nick originally thought the trick was being played on him, but Sandi's outburst and what he thought was a smile from the professor made him realize that it must have been a running gag. She cast another look at Sandi and said with a careful grin on her face, "I guess the catch is working today."
"Whatever… It wasn't funny the first twenty times you did it, what makes you think it would get better with repetition?" Sandi hauled the large metal case off the front of the trailer and dropped it onto the ATV with the short-bed on the back.
"Watch it… That meter costs more than your hatchback," the professor shot over her shoulder as she slowly made her way back to the front of the truck.
Nick took the time to more closely examine the ATVs. All three were different, with one being the standard single person recreation vehicle he rode as a boy. The one Sandi was loading up with equipment looked like a scaled down, short-bed, four wheel drive pickup, but it still was only good for one person to ride. The third one, however, was rigged with an odd looking seat on the back end of it. It appeared to be air-cushioned with some kind of shock absorber along with an interesting harness. He deduced that it was probably for the professor, since he found it difficult to believe she could operate one of the ATVs with that bad leg of hers.
While he was sizing up their transportation for the day, he failed to notice that Sandi had come up behind him until she put a hand on his arm and said, "Hey, Nick… You want to unload the first two ATVs for me, please?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I can do that."
Nick climbed up onto the trailer when Sandi had another thought, "Ah, you have used an ATV before, right?"
"Oh yeah… We got a bunch of 'em out at my folks place." Nick climbed onto the short-bed ATV and cranked it up.
The professor came back around the truck carrying a series of radios and looked up in time to find Nick sitting atop the short-bed carrying her precious piece of equipment and he could tell instantly she worried about the logic of having him operate the vehicle. He smiled and revved the engine quickly to drown out any attempt she might have made to dissuade him from moving the ATV, and then slowly backed it down the ramp onto the desert floor in one smooth motion, without so much as rocking the equipment strapped onto the bed. He parked it, and left it to sit there idling as he moved to next ATV.
As he jumped up onto the trailer again the professor asked, "So, you've used these before?" Nick only smiled as he kicked on the modified ATV and revved the engine to keep it going. The professor dropped her gaze and he could tell she was suppressing the desire to make a rude comment. He had to wonder, as she moved back to where Sara was standing, if she and Sandi had not also had an interesting discussion about behavior patterns on their way to the site.
Once all the ATV's were ready to go, and all the equipment loaded up, Sandi handed out helmets to each person. As Nick was about to slip his helmet on the professor stopped him and said, "You might want to plug in your radio first."
Nick looked down into the helmet and found that there was a headset inside the padding there. He looked around the side and found the jack for the radio unit and plugged it in as he examined the controls for the radio. Not seeing a talk button, he had to assume they were voice activated, and then he found the microphone tucked up into the face shield of the helmet.
Having gotten everything on the short-bed adjusted for his comfort, Nick looked up and noticed Sara having a little trouble with her helmet. So, he walked over to her and asked if she needed any help. While he was readjusting the headset inside of her helmet he watched the professor getting up onto the modified ATV with only a little balancing help from Sandi.
He observed as she leaned back onto the ATV from the air-cushioned seat and pulled herself up into the seat using her left arm, hoisting herself into position by gripping what looked like a handlebar welded to the side. It was an interesting maneuver, but it seemed to do the trick. During the whole thing, he noticed that Sandi did not balance the professor with her right arm, but instead kept a hold on her side. When he saw her tuck the right arm into her overshirt and pull the shoulder harness strap over it, he suddenly realized there was something wrong with the arm.
Before it was over, Sandi had placed the professor's right leg into an odd looking stirrup and tightened a webbed harness over her lap as well. He had to wonder why she would go through so much trouble to go out to a field research site, since it obviously took a great deal of effort just to get her there. Out in the desert, with nothing around for miles, he also wondered about the sanity of having someone with so many physical limitations on the field research team at all. The whole thing seemed far too dangerous for his comfort, but he was currently in no position to voice his concerns.
Sara noticed that his attention had been closely attuned to the professor's actions and she nudged him with his elbow. "Didn't your mother teach you not to stare?"
Nick whipped his focus back to Sara and said, "Huh?... Oh yeah, sorry... I was ju-… Nothin'."
Sara smirked and then whispered, "Let me guess, you were wondering why she even bothers if it's that much trouble?"
His face immediately betrayed his shock at being caught, and a blush flagrantly passed over his cheeks. "I'll give you a hint… Because guys like you, think like that."
Their exchange went no further when Sandi walked up to inspect the device attached to the back of Sara's single person ATV. As she was checking to make sure it was securely fastened to the back Nick became curious as to why it looked like they had attached a road grater to the vehicle.
"Hey, Sandi… Are we plowing roads with that thing?"
His question was met with a condescending laugh from the professor. "Not hardly… Soil compaction is a huge factor in changing the face of the desert landscape. So, we do our best to keep the soil at existing compaction densities by only heading out single file and trailing the grate on the last vehicle. We also use two alternating routes to reach the site."
"So, compacting the soil… From like trucks and stuff?" Nick was really trying to understand the work they were doing out there.
The professor effortlessly launched into the explanation, "Various land use practices that involve trampling or off-road vehicular use can cause soil compaction, which results in decreased rates of water infiltration and increased soil erosion rates. We're experimenting with this area for a recoverability practice, since it demonstrates a controlled zone in which there is little to no moisture present through the flats here. In some places, fifty years later, a single incursion of a vehicle continues to impact the area it has left, making it devoid of even lichen growth. This is just one way we're trying to reverse the effects of improper land use." The professor obviously knew her stuff, and Nick had to admit he was impressed with her dedication to not only studying the desert environment, but also working to correct damage already done.
"I wish I could say that will be the end of the lesson today… But I've taken this trip with her too many times to even hope." Sandi winked at Sara and Nick as she made her way back to her ATV and then called over her shoulder. "And just like the lady said; single file, Sara in the rear. We've got just over four miles to the site and I really don't want to have to listen to Doc if she misses her meeting today, so let's get going."
They all mounted up and did a quick radio check before motoring off to the west of the roadside pulloff. The terrain was a little smoother than Nick had anticipated, but looking ahead he could tell it was not likely to stay that way.
They had been going for a good twenty minutes when they started to approach an arroyo and he heard the radio crackle in his ear. It would appear the lesson was just beginning.
"Those are dry stream beds, commonly called arroyos. They're typically formed by the violent storms that flood the desert environment: sometimes sending thousands of liters of liquid through a single arroyo in a matter of minutes. Actually, more people die in the desert from drowning than from heat exposure or dehydration. Those flash floods are quite common out here because the water really has nowhere to go but out, and in a hurry."
The next few minutes were quiet again, but then Nick noticed a strange sight off to their right. At first glance he thought it was some kind of NASA probe, but he decided it would be a good way to make points with the professor by noticing. "Is that some kind of instrument station off to the right?"
His headset crackled again with her response, "Good catch… It's actually one of the eleven climatology stations we operate onsite, feeding data to the USGS. They work off solar power and transmit wind direction and speed, precipitation, humidity, air and soil temp, as well as barometric pressure via that antenna linked to the GOES-4. The USGS has these stations all over the country in an attempt to better catalogue U.S. climatology data. There are a few privately held stations as well… Run mostly by amateur climatologists and quite a few environmental activists. However, the USGS prefers to use their own station readings, in order to prevent any possible political bias in regards to the actual data reported. But so far, even the private data is sticking to the official record and telling a fairly compelling story."
The scenery was all starting to blend together for Nick and he was having trouble following along any longer, so he was really glad when Sara decided to pipe up with a question of her own. "Hey, what's the significance of the soil changes at the base of the watersheds, but not beyond that?"
Without fail, the professor had an answer for that as well when the radio popped off again. "It's called an alluvial fan and they're pretty common to the Mojave Desert and the California portions of the Sonoran Desert. They're formed through geologic time where an arroyo or wash drains a mountain, depositing the detritus in a semicircle at the canyon's mouth. Much of it's been washed out during torrential summer downpours. In the Southwest these detritus skirts or pediments are frequently called bajadas. The substrate is coarser, with larger rocks on the upper bajada and then the finer ones are found at the lower elevations."
Nick was getting a forced crash course in desert geology, but he was beginning to find the information somewhat relevant to his work. He had been a surprised a few years back when they found a female victim of drowning in the desert. Nick and the detective had a tough time grasping the fact that anyone could die of drowning in the desert. At the time, Greg had given him a quick lesson in rainfall around the Vegas area. He racked through his brain trying to figure out what that term was Greg had used, because he figured it would help him not sound so much like an idiot. "Hey, I had another case a while back and we were talking about something called the 'mountain shadow effect.' What exactly is that?"
"I think you're referring to rain shadow deserts…" Nick was wrong, because he was yet again proven a fool. "Rain shadow deserts are formed because tall mountain ranges prevent moisture-rich clouds from the reaching areas on the lee, or protected side, of the range. As the air rises over the mountain, the water's precipitated and the air loses its moisture content. A desert is formed in the leeside, or shadow, of the range. And yes, this area is the prime example of a rain shadow desert."
It was Sara's turn again when Nick heard her voice over the radio, "So, if there's little or no precipitation in this area, what kind of erosion are you studying? Wind?"
"Well, while little rain does fall in the deserts, they do receive runoff from ephemeral, or short-lived, streams fed by rain and snow from adjacent highlands. These streams fill the channel with a slurry of mud and commonly transport considerable quantities of sediment for a day or two. That phenomenon is very similar to what happens with man-made erosion, and by studying the natural process of sedimentary erosion, we're able to predict the patterns of man-made wastewater disposal erosion and then we can prevent much of the damage that's being done to our country's waterways and aquifers."
Nick was finally starting to understand just why the professor's work seemed so important. She was trying to preserve the environment in a real and effective manner, using the principles of erosion she was studying in a controlled, but natural setting. And the fact that someone turned her site into a crime scene actually made his stomach turn.
For the rest of the ride to the site, Nick listened to the various snippets of conversation, but his mind was occupied with other things. And he wondered if Sara had picked up on his mood change, because she seemed to take over the questions side of things at about the same time. Of course, she could just be interested in the professor's work. She is just a science nerd after all.