The right equipment can save your life, whether you’re a soldier, a firefighter, or a doctor. As a journalist, I’ve worn some protective equipment on the job and come out feeling a little shaken.
I used to joke with reporter friends that I measured my worth as a journalist by the kinds of equipment I'd worn on a story. A HAZMAT suit was high on my wish list. Sadly, it wasn't to be.
Here is what I did wear, and how, in the end, none of it really saved me. In this post we’re visiting antelope in Wyoming, a police precinct in Massachusetts, a stream in Kentucky, and the home of a deaf family in Illinois.
Pronghorn antelopes and a frozen recorder
One of my first assignments as a public radio journalist was a story about the plight of the pronghorn antelope in the face of a rash of new natural gas drilling.
Companies were putting rigs rights in the path of the pronghorn's mind-bogglingly long migration route. They were losing weight, going farther and farther to find nutritious forage. I would be talking to the energy company about what they were doing about it, and going out with a biologist to find out how he was tracking the impacts. If you know anything about Wyoming terrain or natural gas drilling, you know that you might need some protective equipment. This was the middle of winter.
To climb the oil rig, site supervisors fitted me with a hard hat, safety goggles, and a neon vest. I clenched my shotgun microphone in my teeth as I climbed up the narrow stairs, holding the railings with both hands. The hard hat was the most critical, I decided, because although they took plenty of safety precautions, lots of heavy metal equipment was poised overhead, and should a bolt fail, you could be gone-zo. I made it safely up and down, obviously, thankful for the gear and clear on the fact that I would not want my next career to be as a roughneck, the name they give to folks who work the rigs.
Then I headed out with a biologist in six feet of snow just near the Tetons. He was tracking the pronghorns’ movement with radio collars, and one had just popped off. Its signal was barely detectable in a nearby valley. Our job was to find it. In six feet of snow.
I wore Sorrel snow boats, snow pants, a thick winter coat, scarf, wool and fleece hat, and the warmest mittens I could buy. I thought I'd covered everything, but it turns out minidisc recorders don't function below certain temperatures. As we trudged around, the biologist triangulating the signal with a long antenna, I kept sinking into the snow up to my thighs. I snuggled the minidisc in my pocket, shoved it down my shirt, held it against my neck—anything to try to warm it up so that I could get at least a few good soundbites and the crunch of our boots in the snow.
I did. And we found the collar just behind a rancher’s barn. But I was an icicle when we got back to my hotel, hours later, and I am here to tell you there is no amount of gear you can afford on a public radio salary to keep you and your recorder warm enough, in those conditions, for as long as that.
A bullet proof vest and the fragility of the heart
On a story about the opioid addiction epidemic, I rode along with a cop in a suburb of Boston. Even though we weren't going on a dangerous mission, precinct policy was for me to wear a bullet proof vest. I didn't feel bullet proof, though, as we drove the streets and the officer pointed out building after building where someone had overdosed.
Snowshoes and a deadly mountain valley
In the Snowy Mountains, learning about avalanche safety
For a story on avalanche safety, the staff of Outward Bound fitted me with snowshoes and took me into the Snowies. They showed me how to dig a snow trench and test the layers of snow—each one different, like a beautiful layer cake—for avalanche conditions. I huffed as I tried to keep up with them. The snow shoes were essential to keep from sinking and requiring rescue from one of the very hearty guides up ahead of me, but as they told me stories of avalanches that had taken friends' lives or mangled their bodies, I felt puny and unprotected, staring up at an unpredictable slope under a deceptively blue sky.
Waders, slippery rocks, and the beauty of dry leaves
In Kentucky, I reported a story about endangered mussels. A couple of biologists had tagged some baby mussels they had grown in a lab and aimed to find them again with a kind of underwater metal detector. I wanted to interview them along the way and capture the sounds of the scene of their searching for the baby mussels. That meant wading up a stream that could reach up to my chest and holding my recorder and mic over my head to keep them dry.
Did I succeed? No. I dropped the recorder immediately. Water poured into my chest-high waders as I fished the recorder from the slippery rocks under my feet. While they started scanning the stream bed, I sat on the bank, drying out the AA batteries with leaves. But all was not lost. I managed to get the recorder working long enough to capture a tiny bit of sound on scene and the excellent soundbite "I found one!" Still, I felt like a failure, driving home in my soaking clothes, sodden recorder on the seat next to me. Waders are no guarantee.
A “broom poll” and the sorrow of social distancing
During the pandemic, I did a story for NPR about a mother who was deaf and her hearing child. The story explored how remote learning presented different challenges for them than for other families. Hearing parents could hear in the background what was happening in a child's Zoom classroom, help kids with English homework, and communicate with teachers. This deaf mother had to find other ways to learn what was happening in her 2nd grader's class, struggled to help with English homework because American Sign Language was her first language (very different, I learned, from English), and had to use an interpreter—her daughter—to communicate with the teacher
They were making it work, but it was one more unanticipated impact of online learning, of the pandemic. One more way in which people with different abilities or disabilities have to make their way through the world in ways that may be harder than for others.
NPR’s risk management team held a meeting with me and my editor. They wouldn't let me near the house without a plan. That plan included a six-foot boom poll and everyone wearing masks. I would have an ASL interpreter, but I wanted the mother to be able to read my lips when I asked questions. No dice. Did I have a six-foot boom poll so that I could maintain distance? No, but I fashioned a “broom poll” with our handy kitchen broom and some duct tape. My son helped me lash my shotgun mic to the handle. I fitted myself with an N-95, and off I set to observe this little girl and her mother get through a math class.
The poll and the mask made me feel so far from my subjects, as if I were interviewing them behind glass. When I interview kids, I like to get down on their level, show them my equipment, look them in the eyes to distract them from it. I couldn’t do that for this story, and it killed me. Finally, I detached the mic from the broom and knelt by the girl and her mom. I kept my mask on, but tried to communicate with my eyes how closely I was listening to their story, through the interpreter, and how faithfully I would try to tell it on the radio.
We try to protect ourselves, but we are still just fragile flesh and bone, prone to slips and falls and diseases and broken hearts.
These are all amazing stories, Kristin ❤️