Jack has put the finishing touches on our kitchen in our new home and is already feeding us well. The above razor clams were dusted with seasoned flour, dipped in beaten eggs, and rolled in cracker crumbs in preparation for frying in olive oil. Having been frozen fresh, they tasted like they were just dug. Every bite evoked the wonderful memories of digging those clams just weeks ago.
I’m grateful that our school not only has a pool, but also a weight room this year!
We put our fingers into the icy cold water during our walk along the beach. It reminded me of the cold waters of Lake Tahoe in the Sierras. I remember swimming in those waters as a child until my body went numb. Jack remembered taking a dip in the Merced River in Yosemite…the shortest dip of his life.
There is a woman in Barrow who will issue a Polar Dip certificate, officially proving that the bearer has fully immersed herself in the Arctic Ocean. No gracias.
We are in Barrow, Alaska for a little over a week. It is the northernmost city in the United States.
As the crow flies, we are miles away from everywhere…
728 from Anchorage, Alaska
2,582 from Sacramento, California
3,040 from San Diego, California
4,290 from Key West, Florida
4,071 from Paris, France
(This data courtesy of the following link: http://www.findlocalweather.com/how_far_is_it/ak/barrow.html)
We love Alaska.
This state is beautiful. Jaw-droppingly beautiful in some cases. Contemplatively beautiful in others.
We are both inspired to take photographs, and so we carry at least one of our cameras with us at virtually all times. This diligence has paid off, enabling us to take advantage of some surprises.
As Malcolm Gladwell spells out in the book Outliers, one needs meaningful practice, and lots of it, to become expert at something. We study photography and others’ photos in order to better improve our skills, and then we go out and shoot, steadily accumulating our 10,000 hours.
This is a great place to do so.
During the summer, the ice on the sea is gone and barges have access to coastal communities. We understand it is cheaper to send goods up by barge versus the alternative, plane. It is quite a spectacle to see a barge loaded with what looks to be lego blocks from a distance, only to realize the shiny objects on the top are full-sized tanker trucks!
The newest addition to our community is a set of brand new garbage dumpsters conveniently placed throughout the town. (The city empties these bins daily.) We also noticed a brand new Chevy Suburban in front of the school…
Coho Salmon
Trolling is boring, I thought. Two summers ago we drove around in our boat outside of Whittier at incredibly slow speeds dragging a couple of lures only one silly little pink salmon came to bite. Heck, you don’t even get hold the rod!
This was my impression.
That has changed.
This summer while in Seward, we heard the silver salmon (Coho) run on Resurrection Bay was hot. Out on the bay, Jack got gear ready for trolling; I was prepared to enjoy the scenery. But no sooner did he put a lure in the water and set the rod in the holder than we got hit! We quickly strategized–I drive, Jack tends rigs, fish hits, Jack shouts “FISH,” I drop the boat into neutral, Jack reels in the fish, I grab the net, and Voila–major fun! Then we switch–Jack drives, I reel in the fish, and Jack does honors on the net!
The limit for silver salmon in Resurrection Bay is six fish – which meant with two limits, we could keep 12.. The first 11 salmon came easily. Naturally, that last elusive fish took us a while to find. We took a break from trolling by catching other fish that day…halibut, lingcod, and rockfish. When we went back to trolling, a dime-bright silver was waiting for us. When we finally pulled up at the cleaning station at the marina with our beautiful catch (two Chinook, several large silvers, halibut and rockfish)…even the locals were impressed.
I hesitate to call it Chapter 2. What do I call the summers? Interludes or intermissions between the chapters? At any rate…
After the plane made it through lifting fog, we arrived in Point Hope last Wednesday. We planned to arrive early in Point Hope so we would have plenty of time to settle into our new home and get oriented to the village. Last year, we were faced with many unanticipated tasks that made our school year start seem frenzied. We wanted to ensure that there would be plenty of time this year in the event our hours overfilled.
We arrived laden with nine coolers stuffed with frozen foods. As we met our ride, we were cheerfully greeted in spite of all of our luggage! We drove the two miles into town on a mix of gravel and concrete roads. A quick tour revealed the general layout of the town and the locations of the grocery store, the post office and the school.
Our home is a palace compared to our place in Shishmaref. It’s a two bedroom, one bath home with tons of space. The ceilings are 10 feet tall. We have a flush toilet, a great shower and our own laundry room! (If you have been following along, you’ll remember the last house had essentially no bathroom and a water tank we had to fill every six weeks in order to have running water.) The school provided us a stand up freezer which easily stored all nine coolers worth of goods. The best thing about the house is that the kitchen, living room, and office are in an open floor plan. That is the perfect configuration for people who love to cook and simultaneously socialize.
We’ve walked out to the point a couple of times now. It’s 2.3 miles from our front door. Both times we’ve gone out, we’ve seen hundreds of birds. We’ve also seen bearded seals (oogruk in Eskimo) playing in the surf. Both are indicators that there are fish. The natives tell us the pink salmon have begun to run and soon there will be HUGE sea run Dolly Varden to catch. We are eagerly waiting for our fishing gear to arrive in the mail so we can go see what we can catch. Last year, we were given Dolly Varden to eat…delicious!
Back home, the house is coming together quickly. We’ve already tested out the bread machine. A warm, sweet, white loaf indicated perfect operation. Next test — the oven. Chocolate chip cookies should do the trick. (The postal workers and the school maintenance team will benefit from that batch. Boy, they did a lot of work delivering all of our boxes.)
Next week, our district sends us to the district office in Barrow. We’ll get to spend some time at the “top of the world.” Should be interesting…
Two hours before low water
the clam digger walks the pebbled beach and waits
clatter of rocks under each stride
eagles silhouetted against the morning sky
on the towering, sand-colored bluffs
the tide edges back slowly
exposing fist-sized rocks
red and veined with quartz
green rocks with speckles
look like eggs
the saltchuck laps at the last fringes of rock
till at last the sand beach begins to show
and dimples
and blinkers
and neckers…
Everywhere!
Naturally occurring layers, dimensions, and patterns.
At the summit of the Exit Glacier trail, we put our packs down and let our eyes sweep across the Harding Ice Field. It looked like a vast lake of white, dotted here and there with the dark, bare rock of mountain peaks pushing up from the ice field like islands.
“What’s that out there?” Barbra asked, pointing far out on the ice field.
“Probably just some person,” I replied, barely looking up.
As the dark object continued to lumber toward us, Barbra finally picked up the binoculars. “It’s a bear!”
Sure enough. On the hike up the trail, we’d spotted a sow black bear with two cubs grazing in an alpine meadow. With the image of the black bear fresh in our minds, it was clear that what we were now looking at was a grizzly. A massive one with a large shoulder hump, probably a male.
We marveled at the speed with which it made it’s way across the frozen landscape, it’s tracks stretching out as far as the eye could see in its wake. He appeared to be heading straight for Exit Glacier, which, we imagined, he would follow until he came to a river where he could find spawning sockeye salmon.
Glaciers are like rivers of ice, pushed down mountains by the weight of the ice fields where they are born. It is not known for certain how deep—how thick—the Harding Ice Field is. Judging from the mountain peaks that surround it, it must surely be thousands of feet thick at its deepest places, and it spawns dozens of glaciers, each one carving its own path in the mountain rock as it flows. Exit Glacier moves at a rate of about one and a half feet each day, grinding out a valley under the tons of ice it carries.
