City dweller

One thing I'm still adjusting to in Alaska is wildlife - or, more specifically, the wildlife that adapts to urban life. Living stateside, people usually never think twice about the animals that occupy their space. Many even regard them with outright disgust. I used to watch my hopelessly awkward cat stalk squirrels almost as large as she was and laugh. Or I'd smile in passing as a humming bird buzzed by. Moments like that felt basic, domestic - they never changed the outcome of my day. But here, all you need to do is glance outside, and often you'll see something that has the ability to trample or maul you to death, or that has national notriety second only to the Flag ... "oh, another moose is walking down the road." "A bear stepped on my car!" "Hmmm ... looks like one of those $#&! bald eagles landed on the power box again." Alaskans yawn. I'm still caught off guard.

I didn't want this to become the "Gee Whiz" journal of an Outsider who doesn't own anything in flannel and still visualizes sundaes when the term "Arctic Circle" is thrown into casual conversation. But, still ... it's kinda cool.

Overland

In many ways, winter is the ideal season for hiking in Alaska. Set out in the summer, and you're stuck on the trails - unless you want to try your hand at land swimming in a sea of shrubs and mosquitoes. But in the winter, with the landscape stripped of all but its most basic elements and covered in an indiscriminate layer of snow and ice, overland travel is a breeze. You don't even have to have a good sense of direction ... if you get lost, just follow your own trail back. Geoff and I set out today from Ohlsen Mountain and walked toward the Anchor River for a couple hours, traversing the open fields, forests and streams with relative ease - that is, it was as easy as something can be when you're stamping down fresh tracks in calf-high powder. It was fun to think that summer exploration of this area would require rubber boots, a machete, 100-percent DEET, strong protection against scratches, a partner for crossing large streams and more than a passing awareness of bears. In the winter, all you need are a pair of snowshoes and a warm coat.

People in Alaska have looked to winter as the premier travel season for hundreds if not thousands of years, but it's still a strange reality when weighed against the usually uninviting obstacles of cold, ice and snow. I'll probably get more traction out of my snowshoes this year than I ever did in warmer climes, and I'll cover more ground than I ever could in the summer. Plus, there's all that freedom of movement, even when bushwhacking (see above). Good times.

Powerline run

The snow returned today. Geoff and I headed behind the house to get a few runs on our snowboards. We found a powerline run that was short but sweet; however, that did not change the fact that beneath five inches of fresh power was a rain-drenched layer of glare ice. On the way home a couple of kids called out to us from the hill. When we looked up, we saw them beckoning us toward a jump they were building, with the crest approaching the tops of their heads and an instant drop-off into a steep gully. It looked like a blast and would have been tempting if not for the whole certain death aspect. And my family thinks I'm not going to live through the winter.

This evening I took a backstage tour of the tallest building in Homer ... the Mariner Theatre at the high school. The production manager of our hometown Nutcracker ballet led me up the twisting staircase to the "deck," a full seven stories above the stage. Already a bit dizzy and disoriented from climbing those stairs, I stepped onto the cross-linked metal platform and, of course, looked down. I'm one of those vertigo people that tends to see long drops rush up at me ala, well, Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo." So I just froze in place, absolutely exposed with no hand railing on a bottomless, dangling floor. I must have looked absolutely stricken because the production manager said "I like to bring the little kids up here. They think they'll turn to Jello and slip through," he said. "It gives 'em a good scare." As I struggled to find my center of balance, I felt exactly like Jello, but I didn't say anything. Although the rest of the tour was a bit hazy after that, walking around on those narrow catwalks with my heart in my head and vice versa. And my family thinks I'm not going to live through the winter.

B4ITMELTS

Geoff and I went to a global warming presentation today. There was no earth-shattering information. Well, not in the metaphorical sense, anyway. Just the simple facts ... Alaska’s melting. The ranger from Kenai Fjords National Park didn’t want to get political at all. He just wanted to show us cool overlapped photos of glaciers that were there ... and then gone. While the guy’s speech tended to veer toward the glossy confusion of fifth-grade science, the graphics were intriguing: one hundred-foot walls of ice that just vanished into lush, green valleys. A continent’s worth of polar ice, melted into the sea. Thunderstorms and tornadoes in interior Alaska. The most interesting part was the time-lapse. Thirty years. That’s it. I’m starting the understand a tourism campaign that parodies Alaska’s license plate pitch: See Alaska, B4ITMELTS.

Maybe the presentation was more effective because it’s been raining continuously for two days. That’s not an anomaly in coastal Alaska in November, I’m told, but still. I grew up in the decade of CFC-free hair spray and Toyota Tercels, but despite taking and entire college course on global warming, I never thought I’d see any effects of it in my lifetime. But as long as I stay in Alaska, I may not have a choice.

'til November

It's mid-November, and the weather reflects it. A steady drizzle of rain hits the snow like acid, burrowing into the pockmarks and emerging in gray streams of slush on the city streets. Evening's coming and everything's gray, monotone, shadowless, as you're driving toward the Spit with a camera that only has one shot left on it. You're heading due south on the narrow strip of land, so you scarcely notice the sun slipping below the cloudline into the thin sliver of clear sky to the west. You don't have time to notice because the change is instantaneous anyway - as sudden as a camera flash, the distant shoreline erupts in a magnetic shade of turquoise you never even imagined existed in nature. It startles you so much that you pull over that second, like one of those finger-waving tourists that just spotted a the hindside of a bear, and you get out of your car, and take that one picture. Then, when you look at the image reflected on the tiny camera screen, washed of all its color and surprise, it almost breaks your heart, but not quite.

Futures

Today I interviewed a local writer, a longtime resident that these Alaska-types refer to as "old-timers" or "sourdoughs" though no self-respecting Alaskan outside the Chamber of Commerce uses that "s" word. He's just the type that grew up on a homestead, remembers the '64 earthquake ... a longtime resident. They're a minority in Alaska.

As often happens during a phone interview, he turned the tables on me toward the end.
"You new here?" he asked as I was trying to wrap things up.
"Yeah. I just moved here two months ago, from Idaho." (with the apologetic tone I tend to develop when I tell people just how new I am.)
"You like it here?"
"Sure. It's a beautiful place."
"It is. So why'd ya move here?"
"To Homer?"
"To Alaska."
(At this point it's getting close to lunch, and the conversation has rambled on for nearly a half hour.) "I don't know. To live in Alaska."
"Is that right?"
(silence from me. Of course that's the reason, the absolute truth, but it sounds a more than just a little silly when said out loud.)
"Yeah. Lots come up here just to be up here. Most are just trying to get away from something they left behind."
(a pause on both ends. I'm thinking he wants some kind of further justification from me, a good story to match his yarn about the time the Spit almost sunk into the sea. He's probably just reflecting on whether he wants a hamburger or spam helper for dinner.)
Finally I say, "Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me .... "
And so on.

The people are strange in Alaska. But they have a worldview colored by quiet truths few others would ever see. Maybe it's the drawn-out darkness and cold, the solitude and stark landscape that demands silent reflection. I don't know. I can't help but wonder if this stranger on the phone had me pegged all along.

Yikes

So I know this is a diversion from my regular subject matter, but I saw this rather unflattering picture pop up on Geoff's rotating screen saver today and instantly thought "yikes." I didn't even recognize it as myself at first, but after a few minutes I just had to dig through the archives and look. Sure enough, I came across a photo taken in June 2004 at a friend's wedding, and sure enough, it's me. Blah. I guess I really don't have a very observant self image, but I think now I finally understand why I weigh nearly 30 pounds less than I did at the height of my post bike-trip weight binge. I used to think that the numbers on the scale were a big joke and I hadn't actually changed much at all. Hope I have. Hope I actually have. Anyway, the reason I post it on the WWW is sort of akin to putting a butt-crack picture on the refridgerator. It's an effective way of saying to myself, "44 oz. Pepsi = BAD! Step away! Step away!"