Bowhead News

Balaena mysticetus

The Anchorage Daily News features a report this morning about a successful weekend whale hunt in the village of Barrow - the northernmost community in the United States. According to the story, whalers struck their target soon after first light on Saturday morning. Meghan and I received word of the successful hunt about twelve hours later in Anchorage. As we were standing in line to purchase movie tickets two teen girls where in line next to us. One looked up from a cell phone and said "awesome, they got four whales!" The other girl shared her enthusiasm then both girls stood silent, pondering something amid the flash and noise of the multiplex.

A mural in downtown Anchorage features a bowhead cow and calf.

Even More Kodiak Visitors

Rob and Mary Jane in their element on the Emerald Isle

Meghan and I hosted Rob and Mary Jane, two good friends from Kodiak this weekend. We had a great time sampling some of Anchorage's finer dining options and firing up the Kodiak rumor mill. Rob and Mary Jane's visit, however, was punctuated with sorrow as well. Part of the reason for their visit was to offer support to a fellow Kodiakan who recently suffered critical injuries while on a project at a remote site on the Aleutian Chain. We are hoping for the best as our friend begins the fight toward recovery.
Meghan and I also joined Zoya and her daughter Nora for a live performance of Disney's The Lion King. All groans aside the show was quite the spectacle. Although a Disney production, the sets, costumes and dialogue looked and felt very human. Meghan attested to the authentic African influences and the animals were portrayed in a uniquely organic fashion. Nora clapped with glee after each scene. We walked away from the theater awestruck by the remarkable performance. While we really enjoy seeing our Kodiak friends in Anchorage, we are itching to return to the Emerald Isle soon. Perhaps a Kodiak surfing / hunting trip is in our future...

Kodiak in the news

This piece by Anchorage Daily News columnist Julia O'Malley takes me right back...

Update: The Kodiak Audubon Society's monthly newsletter, Birds About Town, reports that a Storm-Petrel blew into town during the storm mentioned in Julia's column. Storm-Petrels, though not the most colorful birds in the north Pacific, live quite an interesting life. Mating for life, spending almost their entire adult life at sea, and producing only single-egg clutches, Storm-Petrels can live to be over 30 years old - ancient for a bird their size (between a robin and a crow). Perhaps the other Storm-Petrel spotted by our friend Patrick on a boat near Afognak Island is the mate of the bird pictured here, found in Kodiak.

Oceanodroma furcata

Williwaw Lakes Hike

On Saturday Meghan and I took a hike to Williwaw Lakes. The fall colors were in full effect and Rebel enjoyed several miles of off-leash bliss. Take a peek at the entire album here.

This giant hanging valley is known as the Ballpark.
Evidently, every major league baseball park could fit inside it.
We felt fortunate to have our own frankfurter during the hike.

The frankfurter on a ridge overlooking Cook Inlet

A recent transmission from the Mars Rover

Camp Doins

I was born in the humble mining hamlet of Silverton, CO where until recently the local paper published a section on the back page called "Camp Doins." The section would provide abbreviated details of gossip and the eccentric events that made Silverton such an interesting place for my parents to settle Out West soon after college. Because there are only two ways in and out of Silverton - precarious mountain passes often closed during the winter due to avalanches - at times it could feel as isolated as a Pacific Island. It seems that Meghan and I paralleled my parents when we decided to move to Kodiak last year. Anyway, here are some recent eccentric events from the last two weeks of our new Anchorage life.

Last Monday Meghan and I attended a lecture at the newly remodeled Anchorage Museum. "Kodiak and Chugach Mythology: East Asian Links" was delivered by a Russian anthropologist who seemed to claim that, due to Kodiak's location as the "keystone of the Pacific," it's a place where one might find many of the mythologies believed by people in both in the East and West. Meg and I pretended that we were listening to an erudite lecture at some prestigious institution, nodding our heads profusely at each accent-inflected sentence.

Last Thursday we joined some of Meg's new coworkers for a meal and a concert at the Bear Tooth. The Hold Steady, hailing from the Twin Cities and now Brooklynites, stopped in for a show before their Canadian tour. I tried to explain their sound to Meghan as The Promise Ring meets Guided by Voices post-punk rock with an ebullient spectacled "Woodie Allenish" lead singer (do I sound like Pitchfork?). Anyway, they played a full set with an encore to the delight of the talent-starved Alaska indie scene. It was a late night.

Oh yeah, and we've been doing some Xtreme household improvements like buying furniture from Craigslist, shopping at Lowe's and putting together a new dresser. If you squint it almost looks like fashioning a frontier cabin in the woods from rough timber.

Too Early?

Is it too early to be thinking snow?

Eklutna Lake tour

Happy Labor Day

farmer's market feeding frenzy

Yesterday Bruce, Rebel and I walked over to a local farmer's market. We were in a bit of a hurry because our landlady told us that the market was mobbed with people. Once we arrived, though, I realized that the crowding and the size of the market itself were of a very different scale than the markets in Wisconsin, particularly the weekly Madison market on the square (where I was recently a corn vendor). At the Madison market I have often felt like I am in the middle of combat, fighting for my cheese curds and straw flowers.

We bought broccoli, beets, carrots, potatoes, peas and flowers. The boys strolled around meeting fellow fair-goers while I elbowed my way into the veggie bins. The produce was gorgeous, gigantic and immaculate...and expensive. I had shelled out $40 before I knew it; but Bruce reminded me that we were paying for less health care down the road. My favorite purchase, a bag of peas the size of my head (which is large, as Bruce likes to remind me).

Alaska Dreamin'

Jake Beaudoin surfing Yakutat, Alaska beneath the towering Saint Elias Mountains.

So today, Meghan found a job posting for a Magistrate position in Yakutat and asked what I thought. Well I started nosing around the internet and found some ridiculous pics of the surfing just outside the Yakutat townsite (I am still nursing a nasty bite by the surfbug that I got this summer in Kodiak). It looks like the breaks are fairly consistent, but I'll bet the water is frrrrrigid (it's a glacier-fed bay). Alasaka Air flies a jet in and out, so leaving town wouldn't be a problem. Still waiting for Boppa Wilco (a human encyclopedia of Alaska and surfing knowledge) to get back about the life and waves in Yakutat. For now, it's all a daydream.

The Fourth Kind of Bologne

To be sure, there are no mountains or evergreens in Nome. As for attractive white people being abducted by aliens? Well, you be the judge.

Meghan "Coming into the Country"

Rebel and I gleefully scooped Meghan from the airport last night. She made the 2,800 mile flight from Chicago late last night to complete her three-week summer vacation and began work today in Anchorage, quite the whirlwind. The flight tracker above shows Meghan's plane mid-flight and the immense distance between Anchorage and the L48. For instance, the image is so zoomed out that it includes half a dozen foreign countries. The Pulitzer Prize-winning John McPhee once wrote that Alaska itself is a foreign country "heavily populated by Americans." And for what it's worth, the ADN's Rural Alaska Blog reports that over 50 villages in the state currently lack indoor plumbing. Perhaps the "foreign-ness" of Alaska is what makes it so appealing to its residents. Our friends the Wilcos who lived in Bethel for a spell said that it definitely felt like a different country, with its unique languages and customs. Although many consider Anchorage to lie outside the true Alaska, when measured by the number of languages spoken within the municipality (around 80), it sure does feel like the most northerly cosmopolitan city in the world. All in all, Reb and I are very glad Meg is back home.