Winter’s here

 

Halloween has come and gone and  the days are getting very short. We lose nearly five minutes  of light each  day. Heading into the Tunnel of a northern latitude winter.

The snow appeared last weekend like an uninvited guest with no other place to stay and no plans to leave. I found myself flinging hats, gloves and scarves over my shoulders in a desperate search for my shoe grippers. The mix of snow and rain makes walking risky without the spikes attached to winter boots, which weigh about ten pounds each.

Winter came so fast, people were caught without scrapers in their cars, or shovels on their porches. We have had 20 inches of snow so far.

I am thinking about starting a support group for all the people in town who were hyperventilating over the fact that we may not see the bare ground again until May.

Yes, we live in Alaska, and winter is no stranger. I guess we were seduced by the long, beautiful summer, and the brilliant fall into thinking we lived somewhere else.

“I never even got to hear the fallen leaves blowing down the street” I told Scott rather wistfully.

“That never happens here”, he replied. “They always get plastered to the pavement. You forgot.”

Indeed, I did forget. Then the snow came, and the hungry deer ate Mrs. Pumpkin, and it was clear Winter had staked its claim.

So we finished tarping the boat, and found the shovels. Dug out the winter gloves, hats, parkas, scarves, boots and grippers.

There is a beauty to this season too. Swirling snow lights up a winter night, and the landscape is brighter. When the sun does shine, low angle light is breathtaking against the mountains.  

It just seems like the challenges of winter reflect the general feeling of being under siege by the flu, the bills and the bad news about the economy.

Then I have to remind myself, we lived through eight years of the Bush Administration. Now that was some darkness..

 

As always, perspective defines experience. I can revel in the quiet season, or resent it. There is too much to love about Winter, to get bogged down in complaints. I look forward to skiing, when the base of snow is thick enough on the muskegs. The colored lights are going up all over town, and Christmas revelry starts at Thanksgiving, with parties and music and cookies.

Making the turn, that is the trick, from autumn into winter when the road curves sharply beneath us. Just another season..whose time has come.

 

 

 

When the leaves come falling down..

    The wild Southeast gales are rattling the house and mountain ash leaves swirl past the windows like snow. I rue the passing of the last fall leaves, hanging by one fiery thread before the storm.I have loved the brilliant color lighting up a darkening landscape, as the days grow shorter and colder.

     Autumn closes in the boundaries of town. Eventually the hunters return, the gales blow the last fishermen off the grounds by mid-November. Everywhere the fishermen stand around, legs spread wide like they are balancing on a rolling deck, telling stories of the season. The women of the town move around them at the speed of light, organizing, cooking, meeting, working..

      October is a busy time in town. The annual round of fundraisers begin. My favorite is the fund drive for KFSK radio. For an entire week, most of the town parades in and out of the studios, talking on the air, answering phones, offering premiums for donations like fresh king salmon, or bottom paint, or welding time.  

KFSK’s fund drive is a celebration of community, with a juxtaposition of age groups and interests. I love the image of the afternoon DJ jamming away to the loud metallic noise of Ozzy Osbourne, accompanied  in the studio by some older ladies waiting patiently for the song to end so they could talk about the senior nutrition program. There are radio hosts of all ages  at KFSK, which keeps it lively.

The town calendar is full of  concerts and artist’s receptions, a quilt show and a craft fair. It seems like the town meets the failing light of autumn with a barrage of food and activity. We do not go gently into the darkness of winter…

Then there is the Humpy 500, which is one of the more unusual events. For years, this go-cart race has careened down the hill above the cannery down Main Street. It started with a death defying ramp that was at least eight feet tall, and very steep. After some spectacular crashes and luckily no serious  injuries or death, the ramp is much less dramatic and the emphasis is more on cart decoration than speed.

Some carts have been remade and raced for nearly nine years. Most are fashioned out of 55 gallon drums and bike parts. I love the look of intense concentration on the faces of the racers..  

Petersburg continues to charm me every day, despite the rugged weather. Despite the fact that I leave my first job to go to my second job, and the sun is not even up yet.

 

 

 

 

I love the smell of wood smoke and wet cedar and the  fiery mosaic of brilliant leaves on the ground. I love the fish boats and the docks and the fact that Petersburg still lives so close to its roots as a fishing town. This is the first fall I have spent at home in years, and I am savoring every minute.

When October Goes..

I walked across a fresco of fall colors on my way home this afternoon. I am sad to see the fiery maple leaves plastered across the ground already, leaving skeletal branches to point at the darkening sky. The snow level has started moving down the Coast Mountains, as the line between fall and winter starts to blur.

 

I have been thinking about the edges in this life all  week . A hunting guide came in to Fish and Game with his clients. As they signed  up for goat hunting licenses, he and I talked about the Wall you encounter in wilderness sometimes. You hit it when the darkness sets in at the end of a  wet, cold day when you are exhausted and probably lost. He said it was interesting to see how people react, because it is not always easy to predict. Some very tough looking guys fall completely apart. We talked about how this country teaches you that when you reach that edge, you have to remain very calm in order to survive. Hysteria is a dangerous waste of inner resources.

 

I thought of what happens when I have reached that edge on the water. I remember being on deck longlining in the middle of the night when it was blowing 40 or wet and cold in the skiff up at the  face of the glacier and close to hypothermia with many miles yet to go. I tend to curl up deeper into myself, like a sled dog in the snow, conserving heat and energy. The same thing happens when I encounter Grief.

 

Last week was the one year anniversary of my Dad’s death. Mostly I am at peace with his passing. I still miss his company, but I have been able to let him go. Sharing his final months made this possible. So I was surprised when Grief surged back so strongly on that day. 

 

I hit the Wall. Pulling into myself, I did not want to reach out to anyone else. I did not have the energy. So I was very grateful when my cousins reached out to me. My aunt met me for lunch, my sister called on the phone. Little by little, I moved back from the Edge and into the light.

 

Some people ask me how I can have faith in anything beyond myself. I try to answer that it is at times like this, when darkness surrounds me, and I am at the edge of my inner resources, someone  or something always calls me back. It is the sense of being held by the presence of something larger that gives me the courage to find my way. There are edges in this life, and also guides for the journey. Fellow traveler,  I hope when you find one, you also find the other and it leads you safely Home.

September Song

I welcome Autumn this week, with all its flavors, like the taste of chanterelle mushrooms and Boletes, tart muskeg cranberries and smoked fish. When I ride my bike to work now, the air smells like woodsmoke and wet cedar. Gusty winds and rain alternate with molten low angle light. The nasturtiums are still trailing across the garden, but last spring’s snow drifts of apple blossoms have blushed into apples. Rose hips like small red galaxies hang where the wild Sitka roses tumbled out of the hedge.

This is the first time in many years I have not found my way east to the Vineyard in the fall. I am trying not to miss it so much that I am oblivious to the season unfolding before me. Tonight I watched for a long time as crows and ravens picked at the Mountain Ash berries. There is much to cherish, no matter where Fall finds us.

Raven gets drunk

on red mountain ash berries

full to bursting

with summer’s warmth

and sunshine.

Fermenting in cool

autumn twilight

to a robust,

bittersweet

equinox wine.

 

Git along, Little Joklhlaup!

I grew up in New England, on an island carved by the last Ice Age. The shores and hills I loved so well were shaped 10,000 years ago and I often tried to imagine the forces that formed the landscape.

Then when I moved to Alaska, and discovered glaciers, I was hooked by the living ice. It feels alive to me. I listen to the bergs rolling and hissing in the tide at Camp Island, and the thundering roar when columns of ice topple off the face of LeConte glacier. Walking among the bergs on the beach I feel like a tiny creature in the hall of the Mountain Kings.

 

When I walk across the outwash plain and up onto the Baird Glacier, it is like walking through time. I follow the progression of plants all the way up to the ice, from the alders and lupine back to the tiny flecks of moss. Then there is just shattered rock and mud, and melting ice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Baird is a receding glacier, and it has melted back significantly in my lifetime. I have a photo taken of Scott trolling in front of the Baird, and the ice towers over his small sailboat in the foreground. Now the profile of the ice is much diminished. It has melted down and back, leaving  steep moraine of boulders and mud in its wake. Yet, as diminished as the Baird appears, there are times when this place explodes in a dynamic display, and the sleeping giant awakes.

 

A few weeks ago, we walked on the Baird with our friends, and noticed some unusual signs. There were chunks of ice floating in the bay, and the sand was rippled, like it had been freshly worked by water. I always keep a weather eye out on the Baird. There are times when meltwater lakes further up the glacier burst through subsurface ice dams, then come flooding out the face of the glacier, and across the outwash plains. Pilots tell us they have seen it once every 10-14 years. Scott and I flew over the last time, which was 2005, and then again a few weeks ago, when the Baird blew out again.

 

It was about two weeks after our hike with friends on the ice. A fellow charterboat operator reported being slowed to half speed by current coming out of the bay, and a line of muddy ice and debris. We flew over the Baird the next day.    Much of the Outwash plain was submerged.

 

 

 

 

The river on the left hand side was raging, maybe 40 feet above the level we had seen a few weeks before. Water way up in the trees on the left side of the bay, and far up on the ice. Here is a photo of what the glacier looked like in July when Scott and I had hiked there:

 This is what the glacier looked like in the same area after the blowout:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flying up the Baird Glacier revealed more changes. The North Baird is now virtually separated from the main part of the glacier by a moraine left by melting ice. The black line in the photo represents rock and mud, and signifies that the North Baird may not be feeding into the Baird any more:

I am concerned by the pace of the melting, and yet the dynamism of the world around me challenges my belief that I have any true understanding of the scale of change. Watching a landscape erupt in violent change is mesmerizing. Realizing that we have little information about why and how this happens is humbling. All I know is that glaciers in Alaska are changing, and the change is quite noticeable in the last 30 years of living here.

 

 

Water erupting up from under the glacier on the right, and a house sized iceberg washed down into the middle of the river below:

 

 

 

 

 

We still do not know how fast the Blowout occurs. A friend tells me that there had to have been another episode earlier in the summer, between our hikes in July and August. He had been hiking up in the mountains and returned to find his skiff overturned and sedimented in with rocks and sand. Indeed, the fresh ripples in the sand and the ice chunks in the bay point to that event as well. 

 

Late in the summer seems to be the most common time for the Blowouts to occur, but that is just conjecture. Does it depend on a summer’s worth of melting? Does the amount of rain or heat determine the violence of the event? In Iceland these are called “Joklhlaups”and the scale can be gigantic to localized.

 

Here are a few more photos of the Baird Joklhlaup:

 

At the Corner of Grateful and Amazed

Autumn blew in on the back of a Southeast storm. Now the geese honk across the tide flats at Camp Island and scarlet swords of curly dock have taken the place of Indian Paintbrush and lupine.

 

Scott and I took advantage of the huge tide this weekend to move a log off the beach. It must be over 150 years old, a tall spruce that probably blew off the slopes up in LeConte Bay, drifting up on our beach during a storm a few winters back. Now it will replace the aging logs that form our “dock” in front of the house.

Scott towed one end of the log, while I pushed with a peavey, standing up to my waist in water that quickly filled my waders. It took some pushing and pulling, but eventually it pulled free, and floated high. Scott lashed it to the skiff and managed to maneuver it through the icebergs until he was able to push it up on the beach in front of the house, on the other side of the island.

We were delighted with our success, despite being wet and cold. It was a quintessential Southeast Alaska afternoon. We listened to the crash of icebergs as they collided on the reef, and the scream of the baby eagles who just left the nest and are careening around the island on their awkward wings. Fog drifts through trees, pale and wispy as lichen. The only bright spot in this murky wet day are the icebergs, and the brilliant red berries. The nagoonberries shine like jewels in moss, and I see a flash of crimson on top of Devil’s Club.

 

The hot summer days seem like a dream to me now. No more hummingbirds at the feeder. No more hot afternoons on the beach. Scott has one more charter trip next week, but I have taken a job working for Fish and Game in town. No more trips on the Heron.

 

I am helping with research on black cod populations. This means I go to the cannery and count the fish as they are unloaded and check for tagged fish. The reality of this job is so gothic, I can hardly describe it. Pictures are needed, but when I am work I am standing up to my ankles in fish blood and guts, and getting spattered with thick grey slime. I hate to take the camera out in those conditions.

 

Really, I love my job. I enjoy working at the office with wonderful people and am glad to be involved in some sort of scientific research again. The atmosphere at the Fish and Game building is as serene as a library. The flip side of my job, down on the docks and in the cannery are another story.

 

My supervisor and I stand on the dock, waiting for fish to be offloaded, in an atmosphere thick with diesel fumes from forklifts and heavy equipment. The noise is deafening. Both of us are spattered with slime and blood from the unloading table. We grab fish for biological sampling, which means we weigh and measure them, then Becky whacks open their head and pulls out their ear bones and then their gonads. She is fast at this. She says I will get the chance to practice soon.

 

My job is mostly on the line. I stand with a long line of swarthy looking people with knives who are hacking up the fish. Some of them look like pirates, and every so often they start to scream loudly. Not sure why this is, but it makes sense. Between the squealing forklifts slamming down totes of fish on metal tables, the fire hose effect of water spraying everywhere to make sure the guts don’t cling to the machinery, and then the loud rap music, screaming seems like an option. Then there is the fact that everywhere you look, there are guts and gonads clinging to every surface.  This makes for a unique work environment.

 

What amazes me most is that the people around me have been working here all summer, for 12 to 14 hours a day, and they are still smiling. The woman that works across from me has a face as calm and still as a quiet pool. When I get overwhelmed by the endless line of fish or the noise I look at her. She  takes each fish and turns it, inspecting it to see if it has been adequately cleaned. Her hands are as careful as a prayer. She amazes me. I was only in the cannery for three hours, and by the time I left my eyes were rattling in my head like dice.

 

I was grateful for this quiet weekend at Camp Island to recuperate. After getting warmed up and dry by the stove, I walked out to the beach at dusk to admire the new float log. As always, I was drawn to the other side of the island where the pattern of ice changes with each tide. The falling tide left piano sized chunks of ice scattered across our beach, glowing in the failing light. I watched an enormous iceberg roll over and crash into pieces the size of two buildings, thundering and hissing and spouting like a breaching whale. The icebergs talk out there, in the Hall of the Mountain Kings. They crack and moan and roar as they cleave apart, exposing deep blue hearts of ice. 

I think of the powers at work in this world, of ice and gravity, metamorphism and tides. These are huge forces, and human lives seem as inconsequential as gnats. I think of the peace one person can hold in her heart against the odds of noise and chaos and poverty, and I am in awe of that too. Living on the Corner of Grateful and Amazed these days, glad to live in a world that constantly challenges my imagination..

 

 

 

 

 

Camp Island Journal For July 16th:

The first rain in weeks is dripping through the spruce trees. I can imagine all the plants singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” this morning, These weeks of hot, sunny weather have left the forest parched and moss crumbles underfoot.

 

Scott and I run the skiff up into LeConte Bay to check the shrimp pots.Climbing rocks to get the first set, I noticed layers of black and white metamorphic rock deeply folded beneath my feet like ocean waves frozen in time. The glacier had carved deep grooves into the rock much later. Huge forces of nature left their mark on the shore. The rock under my feet reflected eons of time. I felt like a  midge, or a caddis fly, my life span tiny in contrast to the history written in stone. 

Yet I seemed like a giant to the bright orange shrimp pulled up in the pots. I sorted through the spot prawns and coon-stripes as an iceberg the size of large house rolled over in the distance, cracking into pieces, water pouring out of its azure blue depths.

On Indian Point, half a dozen eagles feasted on a baby seal carcass. They flew into the spruce trees as we approached.

It is so tempting to wax poetic about the cycles of life and death, or the passage of time, or my place in the food chain. But the sun is coming out, and the tide is dropping. Time to go chase crab around the shallows, or pick some blueberries. I leave the philosophical chattiness to Thoreau.

Walden at 57 degrees north latitude

Camp Island Sojourn, July 12th, 2009

 

I have been trying to read “Walden” this week. It seemed like the perfect book to bring to the island. Like Thoreau, I have taken to the woods to live at some distance from my community. I am measuring my days against the rhythms of the natural world, instead of following the routine of summers past.

 

This is not by choice, however. The economic downturn cut our charter business 60%. Suddenly we are rich in time. Living down at Camp Island makes lots of sense. We can get away from the thrumming business of town, where the fishing season is in full swing. Petersburg, as I have said before, is no place to be idle.

 

We are honing our subsistence skills, setting shrimp pots among the icebergs, and catching Dungeness crabs on the tide flats. The blueberries are ripe, and  now my favorite lunch is a peanut butter and blueberry sandwich with the fresh berries bursting in my mouth.

 

At first, I thought I might be at a loss this summer. But no, I have dived right into life at Camp Island, where nothing seems more important than bearing witness to this glorious place during an unusually sunny summer. Like Thoreau, I am finding value in memorizing the patterns I find in the natural world.

 

I am trying to come up with ways to describe the smell of salt grass, wildflowers and seaweed baking in the hot sun. Or find new words for all the shades of blue from the  pale sky to the glittering icebergs to the dusky blueberries.

I spend much time quietly holding the hummingbird feeder in my hand until the tiny birds light on me, and I can feel the buzzing of their wings on my skin.

 

It hardly seems like the work of an adult some might say. I am sure they said this about Thoreau. In a way, Walden makes a path that I can follow, although I am finding little in common with the man.

 

Thoreau has lots to say about the people of Concord, and the way they labor like ants in their lives of “Quiet Desperation”.  Oh, those people so invested in the daily grind..If only they would look up once in a  while. They might transcend their mundane existence, he tells us.

This may be true, most people do live lives of routine and detail, but scoffing at them is like the grasshopper mocking the ants that worked hard all summer to put stores away for the winter. Those ants know the cold, dark season  is coming, just like the hummingbirds fighting at the feeder, or the bears gorging themselves on salmon. One could say their lives are desperate as well. I prefer the word “focused”.

 

I am puzzled by some of the words I read in “Walden”. I was familiar with excerpts from the book, but am dumbfounded by some of what he says, like “The old have no very important advice to give the young” and he never “heard a syllable of valuable advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything..” Oh Henry. I wonder at that.

Meanwhile, he  is basically supported by his Mom who lives in Concord, cooks for him and does his laundry. His older friend Emerson pays his bills..

 

Now I am not saying that is a bad thing. I say, Henry, just admit it. You have some connection to that nest of ants back there in Concord. You do not stand alone. None of us do.

I would not be here without someone working for me at the radio station.  Scott going to town for supplies and to work on the Heron’s alternator gives me the time and space I need to write. My time to philosophize and ‘transcend the ordinary’ is well-supported.

When I was a younger woman, my Mom once described my strong opinions  as “Often wrong but never in doubt”. Now I am in my fifties and what do I know? I hardly know what to call the color of an iceberg recently turned in the tide. Is it a milky turquoise, or gaslight blue? I am not here to pass judgment. I am here to witness what is, not what should be.

Walden is not about the town connection of course. The best part of Thoreau’s book talks about living deliberately, paying attention to the natural world, and taking time apart to think, and giving value to that. This is Thoreau’s precious legacy. Many years and much social change divide Henry and I. I am reading further to try and understand the context of his life, and looking for more insights from his journals. He is an intriguing character.

 

 Meanwhile, I think Henry would be an amiable companion to my days down here  at Camp Island. He would probably see the value in quietly holding hummingbird feeder long enough so that the tiny birds land on my hands. He would not ask me if I had looked long enough at the icebergs or spent enough time wading in the Great Tide Pool. He would know.

 

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, Sarah

July 3rd, 2009

The big news of the weekend was Sarah Palin’s resignation. We were shocked. Watching her naked ambition and  lust for political power last fall never prepared us for this.

There have been all kinds of explanations and guessing and all that really matters is that in  a few weeks she is done. Her political career in Alaska is over, certainly. Who knows where she will go from here. As an Alaskan, I will be glad not to be asked about her everywhere I travel. I was heartily sick of her, and it sounds like most of the State Legislature was too. “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry” has been sounding loudly on both sides of the aisle.

I do resent what she said about quitting though. She said  something like “Well, we Alaskans are different”. It may be true that Alaskans are independent, but they are not quitters for the most part.Then she made some basketball analogy about “passing the ball” when what she did was throw down the ball and walk off the court because she was not getting her way. Just so you know, very few Alaskans I talked to respected her for that.

I was talking to a young woman who fished commercially for halibut with her family since she was a child. We talked about how no matter how evil it gets out on the water, you just tough it out. “Yes” she agreed, even when it is rough, you are throwing up and your Dad is yelling at you. You don’t quit.” That is the Alaskan Spirit I know about.  

Maybe Palin can get a job on Saturday Night Live.Tina Fay would be glad to move on to another role, I am sure.

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, Sarah. We don’t miss you already.

O Say Can You See?

Blog for July 1^st, 2009

The Fourth of July Weekend is approaching. I plan to avoid the noise and the smoke and the crowds and head down to Camp Island. That is not to say I will not be celebrating. How could I miss the chance to celebrate Independence Day and the ideals of our Constitution?

I really mean that. I have been thinking about the importance of democracy quite often these days. The Petersburg City Council is in conflict and our town is in turmoil. In the middle of the summer salmon season, you would think it was February with all the talk of recall petitions and lawsuits. Too many meetings end in recrimination, and angry commentaries blare across KFSK’s airwaves and Letters to the Editor.

Some council members seem to think their personal agenda for the city is infallible, and they do not want to be bothered with the messy and slow democratic process. Fire the city manager if he opposes you. Why wait until the entire council votes on whether to hire an interim city manager when you can get a potential candidate on the phone today? If city department heads don’t go along with your plans, make them quit or fire them. This kind of rogue behavior is a slap in the face to democracy.

This situation reminds me that the principles of our Constitution call us to a higher standard of behavior and that freedom is hard won and never safe. Democracy is a legacy that requires our vigilance and participation, because greed and selfishness are a constant threat.

This is not to say that the councilors in question are particularly venal or oppressive. They are just self-righteous, and convinced they know more than anyone else does. Hey, I have been there. I remember last summer taking care of my father, when I was convinced I was the only one who knew what to do. Soon I was railing against the nurses, the doctors, my siblings, and health aides…In short, everyone else was wrong. That is when it helps to do the math. I was right, and 25 people were all wrong. When the odds are stacked like that, a “You might be deluded” light should go on in your head.

“Don’t let the Best be the Enemy of the Good”, a friend told me then. This is true, especially when you are trying to build consensus, which is the foundation of democracy.

Yes, the democratic process is messy and convoluted. So much listening has to take place. Building consensus takes time, compromise, and a huge amount of patience. Progress is slow but without this process, there is the danger that one person‘s short-sighted vision and urge for power will create a landscape of fear and oppression. It happens over and over on the small scale of interpersonal relationships, and on a global scale.

On the Fourth of July, we shoot off fireworks and remember wars fought, but “Bombs bursting in Midair” is not the only or even the most important way to support and protect our freedom. Voting serves democracy, and sitting on local councils. Educating ourselves on issues, listening to opposing viewpoints and trying to come to consensus should merit a medal. So should speaking out against those who abuse power, because it protects democracy at its most basic level.

This Independence Day, I am grateful for all those people who came before me, who served democracy in large ways and small. I salute the courage and patience it takes to preserve this ideal, and pledge to support it however I can. Maybe drink beer and light stuff on fire too. After all, it is the 4^th of July…