Who is Lance Mackey?

                                      Leah and LANCE MACKEY!!!!

"Who is Lance Mackey?"-- was my response to my 13 year old's excited pronouncement that "Lance Mackey is going to be here!  Did you know that, Mom?  I’m going to get to meet Lance Mackey!"  We were in Fairbanks getting ready to board the Riverboat Discovery (which is the touristic thing that you do with your family when vacationing in the summer in Fairbanks, Alaska).  This large, historic paddle boat departs from the almost-a-big-as-Alaska-itself tourist shop at Steamboat Landing on the banks of the Chena River. http://riverboatdiscovery.com/

Leah could hardly wait to get back after the "three hour tour" to see the famous Iditarod Champion, Lance, and his sled dog,  "Amp", who would be there for a book and photo signing event.


But before our encounter with Mr. Mackey we were surprised to be exposed to even more dog mushing by passing by the famous Trail Breaker Kennel owned by another very well-known sledder and four-time Iditarod winner, Susan Butcher, and her husband, David Monson.  Susan, sadly died (waaaay too young) in 2006 from cancer, but her husband and family still own the kennel and share her legacy by showing off their dogs in a summer workout demonstration to all of us watching from the port side of the boat.     http://www.susanbutcher.com/

With no snow and (relatively speaking, hot temps, ~60 degrees)
these Butcher pups train by pulling an engine-less four-wheeler
 around a track that surrounds the Trail Breaker Kennels. 

We saw David again on down the river when he appeared at the Atlabaskan Fish Village to sign the children's book Granite about his amazing wife and her famously determined dog, Granite.  Yes, it felt a little gimmicky; yes, I did buy the book; and, yes, I got teared up as I took this picture of my mom with a bronze of this sweet and powerful canine.

http://www.trailbreakeralaska.com/

Granite (in bronze) with Betty (in the flesh)

But back to Lance:  Lance Mackey, like Susan Butcher, is a four-time Iditarod champion and also, like his predecessor, had cancer--throat cancer some 10 or eleven years ago.  Unlike Susan however, he has survived the disease and, like another famous cancer-survivor named Lance, has appeared to dominate his sport apres-treatment winning the grueling 1000 mile sled race over arctic tundra from Anchorage to Nome in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.  http://www.iditarod.com/ 

Once we were back on shore Leah cut the trail straight back to where Lance would be.  Extrovert that she is, she walked right up to him in her burnt-orange hoodie and somehow, right off the bat, he noted that she was from Texas and was impressed that she even knew who he was.  "We don't get a lot press down there," Mackey remarked.  But Leah set him straight explaining that they had studied the Iditarod Race in her 7th grade English class the previous year and told him that her teacher, Ms. Wendel would think it very cool (pun intended) that she had encountered him by accident in the middle of Alaska.

Mr. Mackey came off as a very kind man thanking Leah for her interest and encouraging her to continue to work hard at her passion.  He talked to her about her soccer, her school and even about her dog.  Leah brushed with greatness, whilst I stood back and marveled at that ever-growing phenomena of my child knowing more than I do.  Who is Lance Mackey?  Leah can tell you all about him.

     "Amp"
        http://www.mackeyscomebackkennel.com/ 

Locking Horns

Photo by Michael Jones, Denali National Park National Geographic

Most times, it starts this way during the rut when the bulls are fighting over mating rights.  Most times, the bigger moose wins and the littler moose runs off with a few scrapes and bruises.   Sometimes however, when the species 'alces alces' lock horns they do so literally.  In cases like these, they end up like this:

Note that there are two skulls here.
I took this picture at Eielson Visitor's Center in Denali.

Some time ago, these two bulls got so wrapped up in an argument their antlers became inseparably intertwined.  This situation is more than a predicament, a dilemma, a plight, a quandary. No doubt bloody, sore, out of breath, and mad, they will face their fate--probably a slow death by starvation--together, eyeball to eyeball, looking into a mirror of sorts and seeing only one thing; arch enemy numero uno. Not even in death will they part; they'll still be together after the wolves have found them, still together after the eagles and other carrion eaters have paid a call, and still together after the little field mice have sharpened their teeth and ingested their calcium will these beasts remain 'locked for all time'.

A monument to this natural imbroglio sets directly beneath the unfurled red, white and blue U.S. flag at the Eielson Visitor Center at mile 66 within the confines of the immense Denali National Park and Preserve.  It is in the shadows of the spectacular 20,320 foot high Mount McKinley, or Denali, the Great One, as named by the Athabaskan natives.  On the day I visited Eielson however, like most days, the majority of the mountain couldn't be seen, as at least the top 15,000 feet were covered by clouds.

For weeks I’ve been pondering how to write about this 'Locked for All Time' bestial phenomenon and how I might tie it to current events, politics or culture in some edgy or profound way.  I’ve thought about the log jamb we’re in in Afghanistan.  I’ve thought the enduring trade disputes with our business associates like China or the EU, and the no-win type situations like immigration and drugs wars. Anyone (everyone?) can (will?) make the easy comparison between these poor beasts and the Reps and Dems of Washington after having endured their recent tete-a-tete debates regarding our national debt.  

 

The United States, in its foreign affairs and domestically (and even ourselves as harried individual citizens), seems so involved in the daily bouts of locking horns that the good things about our country are often forgotten and go unmentioned. Why? Because the clouds of petty self-interest, rampant self-righteousness, ignorance and fear hide the grandeur that is still there somewhere and shines through sometimes. One can't see Denali's greatness very often but it is always there looming in the background and, despite everything that points to the contrary, the same goes with the good 'ol US of A.

Eielson Visitor's Center, Denali Alaska
Photo by Ellen Humpert

It's a Tongue Thing

It’s a Tongue Thing

There are many likable things about Koa, a three-year-old Arabian gelding I work with; he comes when I whistle; he hangs around the gate after our workouts like he’d like to go for coffee with me or something; and he licks his lips, yawns and stretches protruding the most comically long, pink, snakey tongue ever--it’s more bovine than equine.  His ‘relaxed and happy’ is so very obvious.

But he’s got other oral fixations that are my bane.  The little nipper is a quite a nipper so I called my friend and mentor Penny Stone http://www.wholehorsepower.com/ to see if she could help.  The first thing Penny did was to switch my negative button to the positive position. Instead of pushing his nose away with a stern “no, don’t bite me” as I tend to do, she pressed his face away gently with the knuckle of one finger and said calmly “stay in your own space”.  Penny likes that I talk to him a lot, but said to do so by stating positively what I want, showing him how to do the right thing and then rewarding him, rather than always identifying the thing that I don’t like.  Attitude Adjustment 101.

Another mouth thing he does is when I ask him to back he raises his head, drops his back, and tries to catch the lead rope or snap in his teeth rather than backing nice and straight and without silliness.  It didn’t even occur to me that he needed actual step-by-step backing lessons.  He would go backwards so I thought he knew the drill, but Penny proved to me that the nervous reaction of going for the snap probably was an I-don’t-really-know-what-you-want-reaction rather than just being naughty.  A couple of minutes of gentle refining and finessing on how to move one leg at a time--first the back left, then the front right, then the back right, etc.--did the trick.  The light bulb moment occurred, he backed nicely, (thank you very much), stood calmly and shazam the tongue came out.

You Otter Be Nice To Me--I'm Endangered!

He has an octopus in his paws that the seagull wants.  Photo taken by Trice. 

Damn James Michener!!  I'm at the end of up our terrific trip the the 49th state.   I’m happy with my clammin’ and I’ve got whale tales to tell, but now I’m struggling to hide my horrified reaction to his description of the hunting of the sea otter. There are hot tears in my eyes, my chest is tight with a held-in sob and I'm aboard flight #6750 from Anchorage to Seattle sitting in-between strangers.  Page 167 of Michener's 1988 tome Alaska--DON’T read it!  Don’t read it--even if you are a fur-coat loving, cold-hearted, unethical savage killer; it will break you.  Don’t read it--it will set you back decades; into the Cold War days of hateful fearing of Russia’s vicious ways.

Page 100 and his introduction of the otter to us is nice however: 

Thus the men of Lapak [fictional island] made their acquaintance with the fabled sea otter, a creature much like a small seal, for it was built similarly and swam in much the same way.  This first one was about five feet long, beautifully tapered and obviously at ease in the icy waters.  But what had made Azazruk gasp, and others too when they saw the creature, was its face because it resembled precisely the face of a bewhiskered old man, one who had enjoyed life and aged gracefully.  There was the wrinkled brow, the bloodshot eye, the nose, the smiling lips and, strangest of all, the wispy untended mustache.

...Azazruk knew it intuitively that it was special, but what happened next convinced him...that they had come upon a rare sea animal:  trailing along behind the first otter came a mother, floating easily on her back like a relaxed bather taking the sun in a quiet pool, while on her stomach protruding above the wave perched a baby otter, taking its ease too and idly surveying the world.

So back in the days of Peter the Great (around the mid-1700s) the Russians voyaged east of Siberia to explore and subsequently began the very lucrative and long-lasting trading of fur from the Aleutian Islands. According to Michener and others, the native Aleuts, like Azazruk, were forced to find, chase, wear out, and then bludgeon-to-death hundreds of thousands of sea otters because of their amazingly beautiful warm dense fur.  (Sea otters have the thickest fur of all earth’s creatures--up to one million hairs per square inch!) They have no blubber, you see, so they need all this fur, which they are constantly grooming and fluffing and oiling up, to stay warm in the frigid arctic waters.

Many other countries over time joined in the slaughter and fur trade of sea otters leading to their near extinction about 100 years ago. Finally, in 1911, treaties were signed that prohibited the big international fur companies from killing them and the sea otter was placed on the endangered species list.

This explains that while there were hundreds, make that thousands, of pelts at the Alaskan Raw Fur Company store that we visited in Fairbanks, I could not locate a sea otter pelt (just looking out of curiosity, mind you). There was wolf, wild fox, wolverine, weasel, beaver, lynx, and you can get the dark chocolate fur of a river otter for around $100-$200, (in case you are wondering), but blessedly no sea otter.

Another remarkable feature about about the sea otter is it one of the few mammals that uses “tools”.  Michener described it thus:

The hunters were staring at something even more extraordinary, for trailing behind the first two otters came an older fellow, also floating on his back, and what he was doing was unbelievable.  Perched securely on his ample belly lay a large rock, and as it rested there, held in place by his belly muscles, he used his two front paws as hands, and with them he slammed down upon the rock clams and other similar sea creatures, knocking them repeatedly until their shells broke so that he could pick out their meat and stuff it into his smiling mouth.

Cute and smart and, it turns out, the sea otters is also a classic example of what is called a "keystone species." This means that their presence in an ecosystem affects the environment more profoundly than one would suspect based on their numbers. Apparently they eat a lot, I mean A LOT, of little sea creatures like sea urchins and such. Again, because they are blubber-less, they have little fat reserves to fall back on and have to eat all the time to keep themselves warm. Turns out, if there aren't enough otters there are too many urchins. Too many sea urchins and the kelp forests are depleted.  No kelp means loss of habitat and nutrients for scads of marine species.

They hold paws to keep from drifting apart!

On the one soft little otter paw, due to the protective measures taken over the years the sea otter population is back up, not yet to pre-tzarist Russian days, but numbering into the tens of thousands again. On the other soft little otter paw, other man-made problems such as oil spills, water pollution, and conflict with fishermen continue to effect their numbers to the degree that they are still considered endangered. Orcas are a main predator and are eating more otters than ever because apparently something in their diet has gone awry. Also, those pesky bald eagles are known to swoop down and steal the pups from time to time. This image almost leads me to tears again!

Michener puts a pretty harsh light on the Russians in his book Alaska. The Russians were not only hard on the otter population they were also brutal to the Aleut people, enslaving them and narrowing their population too with disease and deprivation. I'm on page 254 now and I think the Aleuts are preparing to get their revenge on those debauched sailors and unethical traders. Thank goodness, at least for the now, the sea otters have also gotten their revenge in their own little, sweet-faced, soft-pawed, brilliant, beautiful way.

Pre-Alaska Letter from Chalk Bluff, Texas

Letter to my father written on July 10, 2011. It is early in the morning. I'm sitting on a hard concrete picnic table bench. There are fire ants are on my feet and I'm drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup, which I hate)

Dear Dad,

Perhaps I’m here at Chalk Bluff (yet again for yet another in-law annual family reunion) this year so to "fast", (as in not supply nourishment to) my senses prior the feast I’ll be served up in Alaska.  This eternally lovely spot where the Comanche loved to fish and hunt and hone flint chips into weapons and tools, is OOS, (or Out Of Service as we say in fire department lingo).  Just like when an engine, tanker or brush truck goes OOS there may still be many well-functioning parts.  Here at Chalk Bluff, for example, the  birds are still singing*, the majestic bluff still towers and casts its shadow blessings as the very highly-functioning sun travels overhead; and the whitish-gray river rocks pursist in their solid, smooth and seemingly unchanging beauty.

But equipment can OOS for the smallest of reasons like a flat tire or a dead battery.  So I could say that Chalk Bluff. and it’s Rio Nueces,  is completely OOS because their water pump is broke.  (Not “broken” as is grammatically called for, because around the Dripping Springs Volunteer Fire Department they aren’t big sticklers on English refinements, and folks around here near Uvalde, Texas. barely the U.S. of A.  don’t care a flip about past participles.)

Truth be told, it’s really just too bad that the damn river isn’t just totally dry because the filthy, swampish, algae-infested, stagnant, non-flowing, pockets of nonpotable/nonswimmable “water” are more depressing and health hazardy than nothing at all would be.  Spanning the area there is little green to be seen, (but the algae); no grass on the cracked dry, earth.** The mesquites are doing okay (of course), but the pecans are stressed out!  Dust and wind.  Drought and misery.  Poor river.  Poor Texas.  If there were any wishing wells they wouldn’t be full enough to hear a penny kerplunk.

Alaska will make me sick to my stomach after this.  I’m starving for visual beauty, variation in natural color.  I’m going to gorge!

Love,

Ellen
* mockingbirds, killdeer, vultures, etc.
**does make it easier to hunt arrowheads (more often flint chips)

This is Captain Nicole from the story Go Ahead, Call me Ishmael

Go Ahead, Call Me Ishmael

July 17, 2011

“O, man! admire and model thyself after the whale!
Do thou, too, remain warm among ice.  
Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it.  
Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole.  
Like the great dome of St. Peter’s and like the great whale retain,
O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.”  

Ishmael, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

To me, to truly “live in this world” means taking advantage of every opportunity to go to, to see, to experience as many exotic places and to do as many fantastic things as possible; to live a carpe diem lifestyle. To this end, I, long ago, created what I call “My Life List”.   I’ve done a rather fine job of checking things off my list over my, now, five decades.  I’ve jumped out of a plane; marveled at the pyramids; dived with sharks; floated the Grand Canyon; etc. (Note: My list is somewhat flexible. I admit that I have added to, subtracted from, and revised my list over time.  For example: I no longer need  to go to the top of Everest; a simple trip trekking in Nepal will suffice.  And doing twenty back handsprings down the middle of a football field, well, I’ll have to save that one for another life.)   


Remaining steadfast on this list however, has been:  See(a) Whale(s).


In the quote above I guess that part about “without being of it”, means:  don’t sweat the small stuff; seek equanimity; find peace in adversity; stay even-keeled; level-headed; centered; balanced; non-dualed; zen-ified; etc.  But the Leviathan on my list has loomed too large for too long so on the day we went whale watching I was not at peace.  I was disappointed in the cloudy, chilliness of day.  The boat was bustling with too many overly-excited whale-wanting world wanderers and even though 'I are one' I'm not as pushy as the Japanese and not as noisy as the Germans.  But, worst of all, was the Kenai Fjords National Park Ranger  who got on the loudspeaker to welcome us on board our ship.  As we backed out of the dock, Ranger Ann launched into her rules, regulations, and repertoire of disclaimers.  


Her accent, while authentically Alaskan and Palinesque, lacked Sarah’s enthusiasm and good humour.  Her attitude was at best bland, and at worst quite discouraging.  She kept saying words like “doubtful”, “improbable”, “I don’t think” and “we have only blank percent chance of seeing a blank”.   I felt that with that negative juju we wouldn’t have a chance.  I feared she was jinxing us.  Besides, what ever happened to all the good looking, masculine park rangers of my youth?  She was frumpy looking in that traditional drab olive park service uniform (you could even see her panty lines, and that’s just not right!)  Humph!


But, I should have been more whale-like and serene, I should have not let my blood boil, I should not have become so indignant, because for every negative there is a positive and on this day Ann’s antithesis was her counterpart on board; our boat captain.   Another non-stereotype, Captain Nicole was a 20-something, pretty blond who smartly presented in her starched, nautical uniform--no bearded drunken sailor she; no wizened, cigarette-lipped, foul-mouthed crabber boss from Deadliest Catch either.  She was perfectly perky and positive.
(It turns out Nicole and I were on the same, albeit  unspoken and unacknowledged, wavelength. I think she wasn’t too keen on the old, monotone codfish  either.  She seemed determined to show Ann a thing or two about nature scouting.  That and/or, she was on a mission to show this boatload of tourists so much stinking wildlife in a day that we’d be begging to get off her boat out of sensory overload.)


So with an “anchor’s aweigh” and with the vigor of Ahab in his Pequod we set out to find my Moby.


We weren’t halfway out of the harbor--and just as Ranger Ann was warning us about nature “being unpredictable”--when Captain Nicole interrupted to say, “there’s our first sighting now!”  A proud bald eagle stood sunning himself right there on the lane marker.  Each tourist’s camera captured the nation’s scavenger symbol  from every angle.  Soon afterwards, Ann started up again about how “animals don’t punch a time card”, Nicole came on again to say “excuse me, but there’s a sea otter”.  She then proceeded to drive a wide circle around the belly-side-up, old-man be-whiskered ball of fur.  Click. Click. Click. One regal and one adorable in the first minute and a half.  Ha-ha!


This scenario continued to play out:  Dall porpoises, (which look like mini-killer whales with their sleek black and white bodies; orange-billed horned puffins; a black bear lumbering about on the wooded shoreline... And then, not too many miles out into Resurrection Bay, Nicole was heard to say “Ah, there ya’ go—a pod of orcas”.  And indeed, despite the odds, there swam some six of the piebald Sea World favorites.  One was obviously a mother whose half-sized baby at her side goal for the day was to learn some new tail tricks;  another was, perhaps, an older brother because he was feisty and full of “youthful exuberance”, blowing and breaching and zooming around.  Meanwhile, I’m overwhelmed with joy, I’m glazed over with awe, there are tears in my eyes and my teenagers are  embarrassed by my emotion.  Another item to check off My Life List.  Sigh......


After that we steamed down to the end of Holgate Arm to watch and listen as boulder-sized torquoise-colored icebergs broke off (or calved) into the sea.  Pretty powerful stuff that; thousand year old ice moving before our very eyes.  Floating in that bay was like being a fly in a big Cola Slushee.  The water was silty and filled with icey floaters.  On one rested a seal.



And then, more orcas!  Nicole spotted them again and even old Ann was even starting to sound excited; “So rare to see them at all, twice in one day is remarkable!” 


Again, I choked up with gratitude from this gift from the sea gods and goddesses. After that I was feeling pretty satisfied (eleven whales at least!)  so I could simply sit back and enjoy the cat-calling cacophony of the thousands of black-legged kittiwakes nesting on the cliffy walls, chuckle at the penquin-like antics of the tuxedoed common murres.  It was as we were powering over to find the lounging brown blobs of the endangered Steller sea lions when we stumbled upon my true Moby--a lone humpback.  Eureka!!


For several minutes the whale had the indistinct look of a submerged log.  Then, with a spew of watery air, the slinkyfied motion of a scintillated dorsal roll, and with a flip of its fluke it was gone.  Ranger Ann explained that that motion was a dive and that he'd probably be under for 10-12 minutes, at least.  Captain Nicole was already feeling a little behind schedule because as she said we'd "already followed that second orca pod halfway to Hawaii”.  She told us, “Okay folks, we’ll give him five minutes, but this is not just a whale-watching tour and it’s definitely not a whale-waiting tour so we’ll have to move on if he doesn’t resurface soon.”

By now, I’d finagled my way through the photo-snapping Asians and stationed myself at the bow, I didn’t quite have the look of Kate Winslet in Titanic, nor the cockiness of Leonardo’s character, but I was determined to see that whale again.  And lo and behold, about five minutes later, it was I, my very self, who cried the “thar she blows” and pointed straight ahead.  (I guess whether male or female whale the pronoun is always feminine in this fisherman’s phrase?)  Anyway, this time at the surface he spouted off several times then started a major twacking game with his tail vs. the sea.  He’d raise his huge, black fluke and bang at the water over and over again, then he’d roll over on his back and slap it for awhile more.  The underside of his tail was a beautiful mottled-marble.  Then, just as the captain lamented that we simply had to go, the great humpback almost anthropomorphically waved goodbye with a lift of his 10 foot flipper. 
Ranger Ann, her negativity was now thoroughly dashed--her monotoned you-betcha-banter now enthusiastic amazemen--by all the tail banging behaviour. She explained it as either “youthful exuberance” (again) or, perhaps, he did this stun his dinner of fish and krill below making them easier to catch and eat.  She said she’d never seen a whale "tail lob" for so long.  She, the captain, the crew too, not to mention the ship passengers were as stunned as the little fishies.  We motored away in a silence that occurs after witnessing a miracle.  (Even the Germans were quiet for awhile.)

Log or  Leviathon?

Tail Lobbing

Mottle Tail

Adieu!

"Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last." says Ahab near the end of the epic.  Truly, though, it was the whale who captured my heart--all of our hearts--on this day in the Kenai.

Clam Etiquette 101 or They’re funner to “catch” than clean!

July 15, 2011

We were last on Ninilchik sound

Where the Native was feeding her crowd

Her digging was furious

Her method imperious

 But I got in her space and she frowned.

Okay, I admit it…maybe I was too zealous in my admiration of her technique.  Perhaps, it’s true, I got just a little too close to the Clam Clan’s Grannie.  But the beach had filled with people seeking the pock marks on the shore.  Prime clamming space was getting limited. I, obviously, in my touristic ignorance and enthusiasm, had crossed an invisible threshold--all of the unseen creatures within a certain diameter were hers to hunt, that became apparent.  I kept looking down and working frantically even while I felt her glare.  My claim on her
clams was unwelcome.  I got my prize of shame and slouched off, humiliated.  After that, I noticed that my luck was gone.  I’d do all the necessary prep but the slim balls fellows eluded me from then on.


My hands were sore, my knees wet and cold.  I’m taking my bucket and going home.  


She must have put a real hex on me because the whole clamming procedure continued to go downhill from there as the multistage cleaning process began;  first you quickly dunk the whole thing in boiling water which opens them up; then you separate the innards from shell; next you toss the outtards and marvel at the disgusting treat. 


“Leah, can you describe how the “cleaning” is done from this point on?”  I ask.
“O,  God.  Okay, you hold it by its sucky ma-bob and you cut up the Velcro-looking part and on up through the squirty tube thing.  The squirty ma-bob actually has two tube thingy-a-ma-gigs and you have to cut both of them.  Then, with your scissors, you cut around the gut in a little triangle shape.  From the gooey gut part you take out the pooey stuff and the thing that looks like lung but you can leave the pinkish gunk if you want to.  Then you rinse the pieces off.”
“How long did it take?”
“Way more than two hours.”
“And how did they taste?”
Schrunching up her nose, she reluctantly admitted, “ I didn’t like them too much.”
Meanwhile, during the entire cleaning procedure, Shelby just kept saying from her set-apart position “Que asco! Que asco!”  (“How gross!  How gross!”)  No words could better describe…….

Proving the Tide Tables Wrong

July 15, 2011

As everyone should know, before you come to fish in the fishing capital of the planet you must check out the Tide Tables chart, found conveniently in an ubiquitous little book that costs a buck and is in every gas station/convenience store/fly shop in the great state of Alaska, of which were are many.  This little book fits right in to the pocket of your fishing vest.  (And please you lower-48ers, though finding one may be difficult, undoubtedly your fingers can, and should, Google its data.  Do it before booking your flight.)   

The little pages are filled with little numbers and little letters showing the date of month and day of the week, AM/PM High Tides and Low Tides, and the feet of difference between the two. (It reminds me of the mind-blowing,  goobly- gook of info found in European train schedules.)  Most importantly, perhaps, the little book has little symbols of little fish next to each little line. A little fish about the size of the tab key arrow northwest of your pinky finger means the fishing is good.  There may be three or four Tab Arrow Fishies in a row, then on the next line the fishy size will begin to diminish to a Sideways $ Sign Fish size say, then to a <> Fish size, and on down to the lowly Hyphen-Fish.   We arrived on an Ampersand-sized Fish day, and yesterday was Tilde Fish day.

So here we are here on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula on one of the worse days to be fishing in the best fishing spots in the world.  Our plan--outsmart the darn natives who put this farmer’s almanac of fishing together.   

First thing we did was send out the big guns--Trice and Jim.  They launched-off, out-to-sea with the ‘We wack em, stack em , pak em, and vak em’  Irish Halibut Warriors from Nilnilchit Beach at O900 hours.  The girls, armed with clam suckers, shovels, buckets, rubber gloves and ignorance marched down to said beach water’s edge as the tide was receding—round 9:32 according to the table.  (Note:  when the fish punctuation is little bitty the clammin’s supposed to be pretty good cuz the negative tide exposes more of hideouts of the oblong, mouse pad-sized bi-values.) 

In case you don’t know:  to clam you scan for thumbprints in the sand.  And, you watch what the Eskimo lady is doing: see divot, gently shovel like mad (and this takes finesse) a hole six to eight inches deep;  reach in; dig, dig, dig; grab the “neck” AQAP (Q=quickly) before it squirts its way into deeper sand; don’t crush shell ( and don’t slice your finger on it as Leah did if you choose not to use the rubber gloves as Leah did, cuz these aren’t called Razor Clams for nothin’);  toss in bucket; straighten up, unkink your sore back; look for next tiny clam dot for next victim.  Take bucket-full (turns out to be 87 clams) home for cleaning…when the real fun begins!

Low Tide in Ninilchik

Everythang's Big in Laska

July 14, 2011

We've seen so many bald eagles we've stopped counting...we're bored with the birds, now bring on da bears (but not too close please)!  Just kidding, we're not indifferent to these soarers one bit, we are still in awe, but truly
the day was full of them.

It started this morning as I lay three-quarters asleep wondering what time in the world it was when I heard an overhead cry; it sounded like a chicken ate a kitty cat or vice-versa.  Then, I thought I dreamt that I heard a mumble coming from my sleeping-bag-tumbled spouse "That was an eagle," the muffled voice said.

Then later, while we were looking for up-stream swimming salmon, Mr. BE himself, swooped down grandly to show the already present gulls how to fish. Talons at-the-ready he confidently took aim landing upright, gripping the water...but alas, it was he who had to eat crow--he missed, ha-ha!  The gulls went wild with glee and
proceeded to molest him as he regrouped nonchalantly on a nearby dead tree.  With his yellow beak piercing the air, he offhandedly commented, " I meant to do that" and swooshed upward, looped and glided arising to a far away tree where he joined others of his ilk to oversee the valley. Nearby, in the crook of a tall birch, was a very large, branchy nest.    

Can you see them?  There's three or four bald eagles in that tree.  

Other birds in residence on the Southern Kenai Peninsula are ravens and crows, magpies and robins, as well as, the ubiquitous über-gull; regular gull-like looking fellows but as big as three Aransas Pass seabirds put together.  Another large predator bird soared by that looked a lot like the eagle but was all mottled and brown, bedraggled and well, plain goofy looking.  It turns out it was BE's offspring; emphasizing the need for such a ginormous nest. 


There are flowers galore, including giant bluebonnets that, like the gulls, must be on steroids.  They call them Lupine. We've not sighted a moose yet but we've seen the signs,; broken limbs and a lot of scat.  Did you know that moose turds look like the chocolate-covered pecans?  Beware next time you shop in one of those all-things-Texan tourist shops.  And the mosquitoes, well they're so big that they call them the state birds of Alaska.  Har-d-har-har!  


I can just hear it now if Palin and Perry go head-to-head in the Republican Primary Debates, Palin:  "Well, it's ovious that I'm the bettha cayndidate cuz my stayte is bigger dan your stayte. My bluebonnets are bigger dan your bluebonnets. And even though we can see Russia from here, we've been able to keep 'em from crossing da bordha, ja, ja,ja, ja!"

My Poor Little Soul

July 13, 2011 


Today, our first in the wilds of Alaska, as I marveled at the glacial-clad mountains that border Turnagain Bay, as an intensely pleasant air enveloped me, and as a palette of verdant color brought tears to my eyes it dawned on me that my poor little soul was thirsting for this lush naturalness.  Now I get my fair share of outdoors but the dry, hotter-than-hell of our Texas existence of late is more draining than refreshing.  More like a fasting than feeding.  Now my poor little Texan soul is feasting.

Not to sound too pathetic or sappy, (I hope), but my poor little soul needs this vacation.  My birthday wish (tomorrow is the big day!) is that if your poor little soul needs a replenishing you can get the stuff you need somewhere/somehow this summer--be it at the beach, a hike through tall trees, gazing at falling stars--or through your own vivid imagination.

Blessings y'all, Ellen