Man vs. Nature

I just had a really odd Alaskan experience I thought I'd share.

So, the toilet in my cabin doesn't work. Luckily, there is a plethora of trees available as ready replacements for the crown jewel of indoor plumbing. Tonight as I found myself watering something of a willow variety I heard something bounding through the brush towards me. I looked up, expecting a frolicking bear cub (reported as nearby earlier in the day), and had several visions of how awkward it would be to be mauled by a mama bear while answering the call of nature. I quickly recognized that the source of the sound was nothing nearly as dangerous, it was only a baby rabbit about the size of a junior sized football. But it was running straight for me. The image imprinted on my mind was rather odd. The rabbit was running through a corridor trees that gave the same impression that one would have standing in the middle of a railroad track while watching a train approach. And apparently the rabbit was running on tracks too, because it it bounded towards me looking neither left nor right, not a care in the world. Just a rabbit out for his evening jog with the iPod blaring.

I kid you not, I could have soaked that little furball if I had wanted, he just about soaked himself, but I'm a kind soul and I let him pass. He pulled a u-turn around me and ran back into the woods. I don't think he ever recognized that I was anything but an odd looking tree.

I thought it was funny.

I'm still Alive

I know I've been slacking over the last couple weeks as far as blogging goes. This isn't entirely my fault because I've only been home for one day in that time period--spent babysitting neglected children (more later)--in essence I'm giving a valid excuse for my neglect.

Unfortunately, I only have two days before I depart again for another trip, so I'm not going to get anything really substantial posted before I leave again. I may do something later today or tomorrow, but I have several subjects brewing in my mind that may require a bit more effort and eloquence than I can generate right now.

So here are a few pictures from the last couple weeks of working in the Alaskan wilderness to tide you over until I get my act together again.

The beautiful pastel colors of an Alaskan night.








An eagle chillin' in a tree--hard to get a good picture of while bobbing up and down.







Childs Glacier calves right into the Copper River. We saw some pretty massive ones, but I never got a good picture.






A forest fire producing a nice hazy effect and a red-ish sun.






A small glacier up in the mountains.







An Alaskan fish wheel. This one is pretty hardcore, four baskets?






The crossing of Miles Lake. It looks lonely. It was.








A public use cabin I helped build (in four days) at Caribou Creek.







Early morning fog on the Copper.








Some mountains along the Copper River.

The Moose and the Duck

Life has been rather hectic lately as I tried to orchestrate the end of my semester (finals, papers, etc. . .) with moving my years of accumulated junk into storage. As a result, I was looking forward to the calming effect of returning to my native land where I could be one with the elements. For the most part, I'm recuperating quite nicely. . .I went to work today, rode a snowmachine, got sun/snow burned, and lifted heavy items on ice and mud. It was good.

However, not all about returning home has been inspiring. There are some things about Glennallen, Alaska that I tend to forget a bit too easily against the grandeur of the raw wilderness that has so imprinted itself in my character. I was rudely awakened to this when I attended a "concert" that my brother was participating in.

First of all I should point out that my brother is a musical genius. All of my siblings and I have accomplished some degree of proficiency in music, but my brother puts us all to shame--if only he had the work ethic to equal his talent.

With that said, the "instructor" of music for this "concert" was the best musician Glennallen could offer. He's a man who is so convinced of his own genius, that he falls short of intelligence.

The concert was embarrassing.

To fully understand the scope of embarrassing I shall explain the song--composed by the instructor and performed by his After School Honor Choir--called, "The Moose and the Duck."

It goes like this:

Unnghhhhhhhh, Unnnnnghhhhhhhh
Quack Quack
Unnnghhhhhhhh, Unghhhhhhh, Unnnnnngggggghhhhhhhhh
Quack Quack, Quack, Quack
Uuuuuunnnnnnnnngghhhhhhhhhhhhhhgghhnnnnnghghghghghgh
QuackQuackQuackQuackQuackQuackQuack

And so forth, for several moments with the instructor waving his arms as if he is conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. And he's serious. This is something being performed for the community. . . it's not a warm up exercise.

And there's my brother--musical genius that he is--sitting in the back of the choir, tall, gangly, with long rebellious-musician hair, grunting like a moose in mating season.

I am so embarrassed, and so sad. And I kind of want to move back to Provo.

The Future is Here. . .

This has been a good summer, but I am quite ready to return for another year of school. I have high hopes for the next two semesters. This semester I have a couple of pretty cool English classes lined up: Literature and Film and Mythology and Folklore. I'm very excited for the second class, my writing delves a lot into mythology so I am hoping that this class will help me more fully develop some of my ideas.

Most of all I look forward to my Ballroom Dance classes; I've only been able to sate my appetite for Ballroom by watching videos on youtube. I can't wait to get back to dancing, though I will confess that I do have some nervousness about this--opportunities for dance being quite rare in the wilderness. I am afraid that I have lost what little I gained last year. . . while all of my friends have progressed through the summer. I'm going to be very, very behind; the classes that I need are audition based. Plus I have to find dance partners all over again. . . blah!, but with hope.

Coming back to Alaska has also illustrated how much I really do enjoy some sort of contact with humanity. I may be an introvert, but I need some social exposure. This semester I vow to be a bit more aggressive in inserting myself into the social sphere. Good luck to me.

Anyway, I've been ready to go back to a place filled with sunshine, dance, and women for the last couple weeks. Now, that future is here. Only three more days of preparation, and I'll be on my way.

Bear Encounters II

I think I might have a superpower; I can sense bears with my sixth or seventh sense. While I was camping for work last week there were several times that I had thoughts like I am going to see a bear tonight, or There is a bear outside my tent. I only get these random thoughts when I am isolated; if I'm in a group of people I am oblivious as anybody when it comes to the presence of my bear friends. But when I am alone, my extra senses kick into high gear. When I had thoughts like those I mentioned above, I was right.

So the first example of this. . . I was alone at our camp and I knew I was going to see a bear. Sure enough, at one point I turned around from what I was doing and there was a black shadow several hundred yards away among the trees. I knew it was a bear before it even moved. It turned out to be a pretty big black bear and he wandered closer to camp, pretty much ignoring me. He didn't actually come into our camp, which would have made things very hairy--me being by myself and all--but he did come pretty close.

The next day I was in my tent reading when I sensed a bear outside my tent. Three different times I looked out my little plastic window and couldn't see anything. Finally, I poked my head out of my rain fly, and there was a little black bear chewing on the berries not fifty feet in front of me. I watched him munching for a little bit, and he ignored me, which I consider to be a good thing.

Anyway, when I get feelings like this, I am always correct. I think it works with any living creature, but bears are fairly easy for me to sense.

One time, when I was young and afraid of bears (because I had read Alaskan Bear Tales), my family was living in a little cabin. I woke in the middle of the night, terrified, because I KNEW there was a bear outside. Nobody believed me, though my mom did get up and look out the windows, but she didn't see anything. The next day, there were fresh bear tracks everywhere.

That's just one of my superpowers though. I have many, many others.

May Creek

I haven't talked much about working for the NPS lately. Basically it was all I was talking about on my blog. . . boring. However, I think I will mention my latest excursion into the bush. This time we went to a place called May Creek which can only be reached by plane. Here is the only real picture that I could find on the net of May Creek.

This is the airfield, which I must add is pretty snazzy; it's almost a mile long. . . long enough for a C-130 to land on.

First of all, flying on a bush plane. AWESOME! We flew in on a Beaver, built by de Havilland in 1948. It's serial number was like 38 or something like that. . . the plane was a classic. The cool thing that I noticed about flying in a bush plane was that we only flew at an altitude of 3000 feet, meaning that we flew between the mountains instead of above them. It was pretty awesome to look out your window and watch the mountains sliding by, or being able to pick out individual trees on the ground below. Cool stuff. I've decided that I still wish to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a pilot and will, at some point in my future, when I am rich, buy myself an airplane to facilitate the fulfillment of this dream.

We touched down on the Airstrip, unloaded our gear and then reloaded it on a couple ATV's and proceeded to our cabin. One of the first things I noticed on the way was a big fat pile of red pooh. Bear pooh. The area is berry heaven, and therefore bear central. It seems bears don't really get that much from berries, they shoot right through their digestive system, so the pooh was about as abundant as the berries. EVERYWHERE!

We had a cabin, complete with woodstove, propane, and solar power for the lights, and a sweet outhouse. Yes, we were living the high life.

Work was typical for the next week; rainy, which wasn't too bad because we knew that we had a warm dry place to go after work. I spent most of my time working a chainsaw, and swamping (dragging what we cut off the trails into the woods), not that fun, but not really all that bad either.

It may have been day two or three when I saw three bears, a mother and two cubs crossing the airfield. They sure took their time, and didn't even pay any attention to us. One of the cubs, after they crossed, darted back out of the woods and wrastled one of the orange traffic cones that outlined the runway for a few minutes before mama got him back on track. That was my only notable bear encounter. The rest of the crew had their own encounters at some point, and I would wager that we had upwards of 10 encounters/sightings of different bears among the whole crew. Some of the guys had their coats hanging under a weather port, and a bear shredded them a bit. I was with a group that startled another. We never saw it, but we heard it scramble down an embankment and then were able to track where it had sprinted down the trail ahead of us. There were tons of bears, but thankfully, there were no. . . physical. . . encounters.

There was also a wolf that was scouting our cabin, but I only caught flashes of him moving through the woods. I've seen them before, but it still blows me away how ghostlike wolves can be. . . or any other predatory animal for that matter.

On a different note, because we are a group of hairy Alaskan men, we naturally gravitate towards competition, and in honor of the Olympics, we had our own version right there in May Creek. Our events were things like: left handed football toss, free-standing ladder climb, the ladder hop, horseshoes, and the May Creek Mile (run on the Airstrip). I can't say that I did particularly well in any event, though I did have a pretty sweet stall in the freestanding ladder climb, showing a dancer's balance, but I wasn't high enough enough to win--the typical technique was to scramble up as the ladder was falling. Bah! Where is the poise? The control?

The mile was a beast! I have not run since high school basketball, but I still beat my previous fastest time by seven seconds. . . which isn't saying much, I'm not a fast runner.

We flew out on Sunday, and while waiting for our plane, a group of us hiked up the trail towards the old Chititu gold mine and did some gold panning above some falls; cleaning out a seam in the bedrock. Of course this included a pretty hairy crossing of the Chititu, which was quite fast and muddy. We found some color, and a copper nugget, in about an hour of panning. What could we have found with a full day, and a shovel?

Anyway, those are the highlights of a pretty fun trip. Alaska rocks! Even if it is a bit cold and rainy this summer. And, someday I will own a digital camera so I can capture at least some of these moments on film.

Working for the NPS: Week 4

I have a couple ideas for different blog entries floating around in the convoluted depths of my mind but none of them are thought out to the point that I am ready to write about them. So, that means you get to read about me and my fabulous job. . . again.

This week I actually went out in the field for training on "Trail Layout and Design." What that really comes out to is "hiking around in the woods." Yes, I spent one day getting lectured about making good trails, then I spent the next three days wandering around in the woods looking for possible trail routes that filled the requirements that we were looking for. The area that were in was beside the Gilahina River and we were looking for a possible trail that would take us to the Chitina river about seven miles to the south, but that didn't work. We eventually decided on a loop trail that went up to a saddle between the Gilahina and Chokosna and then followed the edge of the cliffs that overlooked the two rivers until their confluence. It was beautiful country, and the trail that we eventually decided upon will be awesome--that is if the final proposal can get through the billion levels of management. One of the possible drawbacks for this trail was the obvious level of bear activity in the area. There were bear trails everywhere, and one spot that we visited (on the Chokosna side of the saddle) was an obvious feeding ground--fish skeletons and all. Our camp was also the site of a bear rub--where a bear rubs against or scratches a tree as a territorial claim. I can't say that any of the bear activity was recent or not, I saw no obvious signs, but I did track what I thought to be a bear for a way before the trail was obliterated by my companions--there were like fifteen of us.

Anyway, it was a pretty good four days of hiking/camping, though it did get cold, and it rained for the first day. Other than that, I had a blast! And we did finally encounter a a young grizzly bear when we went out to Kennicot to scout a site for a bridge, but he ignored us and just wandered up the mountain.

I wish I had a digital camera so that I could post pictures of all this. . .

Working for the National Park Service: Week 1

Well, my first week of working for the U.S. Government is now at an end. I must say that it turned out rather different than I expected.

I work as a trail "Maintenance Worker" for the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Basically, my job entails grooming and maintaining the few trails and "airports" (where the trees don't grow) that do exist in this pristine wilderness. However, when I showed up on Monday, my supervisor had not been told that I was coming. I soon found out that a flight was scheduled to go fix up the "runway" at Horsefeld so I got pretty excited. I have been looking forward, with great anticipation, for flying in a small bush plane for the first time. I was pretty bummed when I discovered that I had not been included in this trip.

Day 1: I showed up bright and early Monday morning at 8am. The weather was cool but not cold. I was met by my boss who directed me to my supervisor. The rest of the day was to be spent with him getting organizational things out of the way. One of the first things that we did was head over to the park headquarters to do some paperwork. It was all rather mundane and boring until I was enlisted to haul a box of envelopes down into the basement. My supervisor was with me, and a worker from the visitors center. Instead of taking the stairs, somebody suggested that we take the elevator. Bad idea. As we stepped in the elevator, my supervisor commented that it would be nice to kill two hours in there. At that comment the other employee commented on being stuck in an elevator one time. As soon as she finished speaking, the lights went out, the emergency light came on, and the elevator stopped. Thus began a very entertaining 45 minutes--on government wages mind you--until we were rescued. It turns out that the power had gone out, which is quite common in Alaska.

After lunch I got fingerprinted, and I was also trained in using a $1000 GPS digital camera, which is pretty sweet. And that was all. It was a good day.

Day 2: I showed up bright and early at 7am. My compadres and I (there were four of us) got in three different rigs--two end-dumps, and a pickup hauling a skid-steer on a trailer--and traveled for around three hours to a gravel pit just across the Kuskulana River. About an hour of the drive was spent on a nasy little stretch of asphalt thut bucked and pitched like a roller coaster. Another hour was spent on a gravel road that was actually better than the aformentioned road. Once we arrived at our destination we filled the two end-dumps with gravel (with the skid-steer) and traveled six miles back down the road and turned off on a one lane track through the woods. It was such a tight fit, that branches and trees were constantly smacking our rigs. It would be an understatement to say that the drive through this bit was rough, but considering that it took us an hour to drive four miles of this "road" sort of suggests something to this effect. The culminating point was driving through a creek and powering (barely) out of the steep incline on the other side. We did this eight times, and it took us all day. It was pretty brutal, those eight trips, I felt like a rag doll in the washing machine. Towards the end of the day, two other guys left early and I stayed so that I could drive the truck hauling the skid-steer home. The day ended with that three hour drive--my first time hauling a trailer, and I'm doing it with 4 tons of machinery, heheh, I love this job already. 13 hours, most of it riding shotgun. What a day.

Day 3-5: Not much to report here. My crew flew out to Solo Creek (Horsefeld was too windy) and I stayed with the Maintenance shop crew and we all tried to look busy. It's a bit early in the season right now. Things will pick up later. Other than that, it was a great week.

Bears and Bear Tales

My sister wrote an excellent story on her blog about being hunted by wolves (http://www.shadowsnatcher.blogspot.com/), which inspired me to write about my first bear encounter.

When I was about eleven or twelve I was somehow exposed to the book Alaskan Bear Tales by Larry Kaniut (an excellent but at times rather morbid book). I was fascinated by this book and could not put it down. Unfortunately, by the time that I was finished, my head was full of "and the bear's teeth grated against my skull like chalk against slate," which kind of starts to run away in the mind of an eleven year old boy.

So, it shouldn't have been any surprise that soon after I finished the book I had a very eerie dream. I was walking in the woods near where my family burned our garbage (you can do that in Alaska, there's no trash services around). The ground was mossy, and beams of sunlight filtered through the countless skeletal branches of spruce to light a small clearing in the trees. There in the center of the clearing was a cinnamon colored black bear. It was lying in the moss, watching me. And that is all I remember.

Two or three days later, I saw that bear in real life.

It was my job in the family--being the eldest and strongest son at home--to empty and burn the garbage. The problem began when I took the garbage out the previous evening, and for some reason (wind, wet, lazy), I didn't actually burn it. My family was--and still is--building a large house which at the time was just four concrete walls that we had poured for the basement. Surrounding our "construction site" were piles of various lumber, plywood, and insulation. The day after I had neglected my duty as a "garbage man," my father and I were engaged in some sort of productive activity around the house when my dad asked me to go get an item. As I made my way towards the pile of stuff--I think it was insulation--I heard a thrashing of branches from behind a deadfall near the garbage area. I stopped short. My dad noticed and called over to me and asked what I saw. I wasn't sure, I had just seen a flash of brown before the thing disappeared. I told him it was a "moose, or deer, or something," (deer don't live in Alaska by the way). About the time that I finished my sentence, it appeared hesitantly from behind the deadfall. It was a bear. At the time, I didn't notice that the bear was remarkably similar to the bear that had seen in my dream--my train of thought was more along the line of a female park ranger who had her arms gnawed off--but it was. A small cinnamon colored black bear was trying to get into the garbage that I had neglected the previous evening, and I had startled it. My exit strategy was to back away slowly before I sought the "safety" of four concrete walls with holes for windows and doors. My dad tends to tell people that I ran like a "scalded cat." Whatever.

By the time I felt safe (on top of a pile of plywood with my head poking over the wall), the bear had meandered nearer to the garbage and was eyeing it speculatively. My dad had ambled a little closer to get a good look. There was a moment of uncertainty on both sides before the bear changed its mind and wandered back into the forest. I exited the house and joined my dad as we paralleled the bear's path through the woods. The shocking thing was that even though we could see the bear in and out of the trees, the bear made no sound. It was like a ghost drifting through the forest, a dry and brittle forest which makes squirrels and rabbits sound like demons. But the large, heavy bear was deadly quiet. Soon after, it disappeared.

This was the first of my bear encounters, and it instilled in me a respect for a (sometimes) deadly animal that is large and powerful, but silent in its element. However, over time, my unfounded and childish fear of bears faded and was replaced by a certain. . . affinity for them. I view bears (and a certain falcon) as my "nature guardian" if that makes any sense.