The ultimate field trip

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You flunked biology. You can't tell a fossil from a fern. But as Zoe Cormier reports, if you don't mind a few chores you can still spend your next vacation contributing to science - and having one big adventure

Digging in the dirt, a hot sun overhead, Charlie Bigger felt elated.

It's true, the 37-year-old had spent most of his week in central Mexico slowly chiselling through rock, then painstakingly brushing out fossils. But he and his team had uncovered an ancient rhinoceros skull and the complete remains of a camel. And then they stumbled on what looked like gnarled tree roots.

"It turned out to be a jaw bone," says Bigger. A jaw bone, further digging revealed, for an entire wooly mammoth skull that weighed more than 300 pounds. It was only the second such skull ever found in Mexico, a find destined for the annals of paleontology.

Not bad for a guy who isn't actually a paleontologist. Or even a scientist. In fact, Bigger is a sculptor from Seattle who dropped out of university geology because he was "terrible at chemistry." His big find? All part of a vacation package that pairs science nuts with professional scientists.

At the Clayoquot Field Station in B.C., guests stay in dorm rooms. But that gives them immediate access to what one visitor calls ‘a museum of nature.’

Call it the ultimate field trip: A growing number of research sites are opening their arms to "citizen scientists" - travellers who are not only keen to experience nature, but to study it. At sites from Algonquin Park to Costa Rica, tourists can bunk down with the experts, and even take part in projects ranging from three days to six weeks.

Of course, the digs aren't always Club Med-worthy. Visitors may sleep on rickety bunk beds or in breezy Nylon tents. Often the guests have to cook for themselves as well, or subsist on non-perishables that can be carried to the field. And while travellers in some spots raise caterpillars or take samples from Icelandic glaciers, other tasks include mailing newsletters and doing laundry.

So why spend up to $2,500 on a scientific "holiday"?

The chance to go green in a meaningful way is part of the appeal. At the Clayoquot Field Station on Vancouver Island, a UNESCO biosphere reserve, visitors stay in shared dorm rooms. But that gives them extraordinary access to what one visitor calls "a museum of nature," and they get an inside view of professional conservation projects.

"Most people are just aware of the trees, but after a few days here they go away with a better appreciation for everything else, like the fungi and insects," says George Patterson, who runs the foundation in charge of Clayoquot.

Adventure is another draw. Guests at the Tirimbina Rainforest Center in Costa Rica break up careful monitoring of wildlife - for instance, capturing and measuring bats - with rafting through rapids and aerial tours of volcanoes.

Education itself is the reward on many other retreats. Visitors to the Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Station in St. John, a self-described "eco-camp" in a national park, can take guided tours of the beaches or learn about coral reefs. The Desert Studies Center in the Mojave Desert offers three-day courses run by the University of California on birds, geology and archeology.

Or for something more celestial, there's the Algonquin Radio Observatory, which started hosting tourists this summer.

While the rooms are up to hotel standards, this isn't your average Muskoka retreat: The observatory houses the largest radio antenna in Canada (46 metres across), has the most accurate clock in the country (called a hydrogen maser) and has its own thermal vacuum chamber (which can heat up or cool down to simulate conditions on Mars).

Guests at ARO can take a guided tour of these facilities, or do their own stargazing through eight-inch refractor telescopes.

"It was pretty wild, and kind of surreal, to see this semi-futuristic, hulking mass of machinery sitting in the middle of the woods," says Benjamin Tiven, a photographer from Brooklyn, N.Y., who was one of the first visitors this year.

Then there's the Churchill Northern Studies Centre in Manitoba.

It's welcomed tourists every year since 1976, subsidizing scientific research at the station by offering vacation packages to see the Arctic wildlife, floes and northern lights first-hand. But visitors can also volunteer for anywhere from two to six weeks at the facility. Room and board is free in exchange for six days of work a week.

The work isn't necessarily glamorous. "What we really need help with are the fairly mundane tasks; mostly we need people in the kitchen," says Michael Goodyear, executive director of the Centre. But as he points out, "We want people to feel like they contributed in a meaningful way to our research - they don't have to be scientists to help, they can just come and give us their time to provide the support services we need."

Take Gerry Mobey, a 43-year-old mechanic from England who has spent more than three years volunteering at CNSC. While he says there's no guarantee that volunteer vacationers will take part in cutting-edge research, he's chipped in with everything from repairing snowmobiles to tranquilizing and weighing polar bears and tending to the sled dogs.

As for tourists who are determined to tackle the nuts and bolts of scientific research - logging data, taking measurements and handling equipment - on their next holiday?

One option is a trip booked through the Earthwatch Institute, a Boston-based organization that places laypeople in more than 120 science projects worldwide. Packages usually cost at least $2,000 for five days or more, but they include surveying coral reef biodiversity in Indonesia and tracking elephant migrations in Kenya.

"Most of our researchers wouldn't get their work done if they didn't have the volunteers," says Jeanine Pfeiffer, director of the Earthwatch social sciences program.

More importantly, she adds, "Our overall mission is to inspire people, for them to be more environmentally aware and to change aspects of their lives when they come back."

It certainly worked for Bigger. His wooly mammoth discovery in Mexico left him "floating."

And that was his second big science score. Three years ago, his wife booked him his first Earthwatch vacation in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. While her "gift" meant he had to get up every morning at 6:30 and walk half a mile to a blazing hot field site, he says his wife knew he would "rather mess around in the dirt and sleep in a tent than watch TV in a hotel room." There was also a big payoff when he got home.

"It takes you out of your reality and puts you in a different one," he says. "It definitely gave me a better appreciation for what it means to be alive."