And sealing wax and kings …

At 4:30 a.m. there he was, the Solitary Man, hiking up the hill toward town. Whatever could drive someone out at that time of the morning, at least someone who had no obligation to be somewhere? I remember though, once you get into the mentality, in my case the Bush at the East Pole, time is measured in seasons, not minutes and you end up doing things at odd hours because the time of day doesn’t mean much except for light and dark. Big dinner at 3 a.m., reading a book in bed at noon. It just doesn’t matter. There’s an-all night supermarket in the town so maybe just an ice cream craving. I have done that. Funny thing about ice cream and Alaska. Alaskans consume more per capita than any other state. But, I could never keep any at the cabin because it just wasn’t cold enough outside. On the Mondays I went to town for mail, my second stop was always for ice cream. One day, it was around zero, I bought one of those chocolate covered ice creams on a stick. I didn’t want to take off all my gear so I sat outside and read a paper while I ate it. I must have gotten very involved in the newspaper because I didn’t hear anybody approach. Then I heard clicking sounds and a different language. I looked up and people in a small group of Oriental tourists were taking pictures of me. Crazy Alaskan, eating ice cream outdoors in zero-degree weather. Kind of like a Solitary Man walking in the rain at 4:30 in the morning.

Morning treat

Another misty morning driving home, changing temperatures created some thin fog and so much mist over the river it was difficult to make out the far shore. It held promise though, looking up there was blue overhead so it may burn off later in the day. But the big feature of the morning was, finally, a bear. It walked out of the woods near the only salmon stream i pass (not counting the river) along the way. A small black bear, probably too big to be this year's cub and very shy, it scampered back into the woods as soon as i got close. I stopped and could see his outline among the trees but then he moved farther back and was gone. Still, the first one in these three years.

Fast food delivery

Wow, if anyone is out there, you have to read this. Running I know this kid. His sister graduated with my son. Ever so close.

Oh global, where is thy warming?

Well, it’s official, this could be the coldest summer since people have been keeping track of that sort of thing. (Gloomy summer) We have had exactly zero days where the temperature rose above 75 F. We have had two, count them, two, that it rose above 70. And, oh boy, seven precious days where it got over 65. No wonder I have had the urge to split wood. If the national pastime is baseball, the Alaska pastime is complaining about weather. We complain about cold summer and rain. But the last couple of years have been warm, the woods tinder dry and wildfires burned more than 5 million acres, and we complained about that. In winter we complain about too much snow, or, not enough snow. We complain about cold but then we complain when it warms up and everything turns to slush. Where I used to live the average snowfall was about 250 inches, but one winter we got 547, that’s 45 and a half feet. I have seen 51 inches fall in 36 hours. I remember telling a friend on the phone about that and she said "Oh what fun!" I had snow up to my eyeballs and couldn't find my car. "NO! It's NOT fun!" Where I am now there is very little snow and what there is often blows away in the incessant wind and the snowmachine sits in the yard, useless. And on and on and on. You have to love it. The fact is Alaskans take a perverse pleasure in the exotic weather. It is like, we can take it and you can't, but we reserve the right to complain anyway. The picture I took when I arrived home today is the mountain I see out my front window and that is new snow on it this morning.

Rush to judgment

I may have misjudged the Solitary Man. I know I made a mistake. Today he was hiking toward the town in a hard rain, not quite torrential, but hard, not like we’re used to around here. A guy would have to be pretty hungry to walk more than a mile in that rain. And that got me to thinking what would bring him out. He didn’t have any different clothes, still the broad-brimmed hat, the lined denim jacket and his backpack, nothing that gave him any added protection against the rain. Then it hit me, same time every morning, walking as if there were an obligation instead of a choice … maybe he has a job. And, that was when the idea of the mistake hit. In Alaska you just don’t judge a person by clothing. This is a place where people go who want to escape careers and try something wild and new. The guy in the beat-up coveralls could be a physicist, the fisherman a former stock broker, the one prospecting for gold a banker, the noisy guy at the bar in raunchy boat clothes a writer of some repute. You just can’t know and it isn’t a good idea to judge because most likely you will be wrong. But, that’s what I did with the Solitary Man. So, now the horizon of speculation has broadened.

Why didn't we invest in housing when we could?

Predictions can come back to smack a guy. Think about all those people who wrote John McCain off before the New Hampshire primary. But this one was even better. In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood, every month the Anchorage Daily News has been printing a page from the corresponding month in 1958. Today's page has the usual: Eisenhower signed the statehood act, three people were lost in an earthquake-wave at an island on the outer coast. But, way down in the right hand corner, a small story quoted a Chamber of Commerce type looking forward to life as an official state in the US of A. Among other things he predicted Alaska would have a population of 30 million by 2008. Ummm looks like we came up just a little short -- by about twenty-nine million, three hundred thousand or so, depending on how the bears did over the weekend. The census bureau estimates there were 670,053 of us in 2006. Even so, Alaska seems so full.

Recovering

A brief in passing on the late news yesterday said the girl attacked by the bear during the bike race has left the hospital.

Reading signs

I saw the Solitary Man once more this week and it wasn't even raining. Again, of an early morning he was hiking toward the town. Speculating a little: He is old enough to be receiving Social Security. Living in his share of the woods, he probably can't keep food for very long so most likely has to go get some almost every day. He may go to shower, but a good bet is the library. Having lived that way myself now and then, at least a book a day is about the consumption rate.

Only in Alaska No. 1

Some things seem like they can only happen in Alaska, like the two trucks passing one night one pulling a snowmachine and the other a wave runner. Of course they can happen elswhere but it's unlikely. This is the first in what might be several "Only-in Alaska" events.

The Alaska Federation of Natives was meeting in Anchoage. People come from all over Alaska, many from remote villages throughout the state. They filled the lobby of the Anchorage Westward hotel (now the HIlton) one day. Many of the women wore kuspuks. That is a dress-like pullover garment often trimmed with fur. The lobby was packed making it difficult to move. Being tall, I could look around for the person I was supposed to meet. When I did, I noticed a man seemingly meandering through he crowd. He would head in one direction then turn abruptly and head off in another or come to a complete stop which seemed to surprise him. As he worked his way closer his difficulty became apparent. The man was blind and aided by a service dog, a beautiful golden retriever. As great as service dogs are, they are still dogs. What was happeneing was, the dog would help him along until its nose came up against the fur at the hem of one of the women's kuspuks. That fur hem was right at the dog's nose level and the scent proved more enticing than simply guiding his master and the dog would follow the scent of the ruff for a few steps each time he encountered one. The dog pulled his owner in several new directions as the women milled about in the lobby. Realizing his predicament I went over and took the man by his arm. I asked if he could use some help. I told him about the fur trim and that his dog was following various fur garments around the room.

He laughed, "Oh, that's what it is. I feel like I've been going in circles."

I asked him where he wanted to go and he told me and I guided him to the exit that landed him out on the street and headed in his intended direcion. At this point the dog looked at me like "I can take it from here," so I wished them well and they headed up the street, having had one of those only-in-Alaska adventures.

Play misty for me

Misty rain all the way home this morning, low clouds hanging in the mountain valleys. A foggy mist drifted over the river masking the water surface. Most of the regular critters were hiding in the brush staying as dry as they could. The solitary man was out, hiking up a hill, his head protected from the rain by a broad-brimmed hat like the one I am wearing in the picture over on the right. What is it about the rain that brings him out?

Wood, lies and winter warmth

We are past the Solstice, now, and losing daylight at more than three minutes a day. Soon it will be six minutes, an hour every 10 days -- the downhill slide to winter, the yearly race to get to equal daylight and darkness in time for the Equinox. It has been a cold summer anyway and well into June after a rain you could see new snow on the higher mountain peaks. What always comes to mind as it begins to get darker is firewood. There is something to the feeling of security a nice pile of firewood brings, and, as one friend put it: “Here a man is judged by the size of his firewood pile.”

With the cost of fuel oil so high, a lot more firewood will be burned this winter. There is some pleasure and satisfaction about doing firewood, too. Henry David Thoreau wrote about it: He said firewood warms you twice, once when you cut it, and once when you burn it. That is a treasured quote from Thoreau’s Walden. But to anyone who has ever really cut firewood, it exposes Thoreau as a fraud. Twice? TWICE? Let’s see:

You cut a tree or maybe wrestle a blowdown--ONE

You buck it into lengths that will fit into your stove -- TWO

You move it and haul it to your cabin -- THREE

You split it -- FOUR

You stack it carefully to let air circulate so it dries -- FIVE

And, finally, you burn it -- SIX

The guess is Thoreau had his wood delivered and maybe he split it himself because as you can see, the count is more like six, and that’s only if things go perfectly. To begin with some of those steps could last for days. A new degree of warmth is added with each complication that arises -- like the time you lost control of your red sled and the whole pile went flying down the hill spewing logs through the alders.

Or the little pile you leave to split when you are quitting smoking, so when the tension gets to be too much, you can go take it out on the wood. (A definition of maturity -- when you learn to plan ahead for your childish tantrums). Oh, and then there was the time you were pulling the sled full of wood and the dog stepped on the back of your snowshoe and you went down the hill along with the sled and the wood.

Yes, there is a lot of warmth in firewood, Thoreau aside, not the least of which is the satisfaction of seeing that wealth of wood stacked neatly against the coming winter.

Now, where is that woman with the chainsaw?

Here is an interesting guide to firewood, value of different species, and tips on seasoning: http://mb-soft.com/juca/print/firewood.html

Alaska man seeks woman with chainsaw …

In the mid 80s I met a beautiful woman. We flirted for a while, but we never really connected romantically. We liked each other, though, still do. During this time she was clearing out a lot of household stuff as she prepared to go teach in a Bush village. Because I was living winters at the East Pole at the time, she gave me a chainsaw she didn’t need any more. A few years later, she met a good friend of mine. I cannot truly remember if I introduced them or not but I like to think I did. No matter. They were married and have two beautiful daughters. They live an interesting life, part remote, part not. They live close enough to town to work there, but off the grid, so have no electricity, or running water. As a result they burn wood for heat. One night her husband and I were having a beer. As I said, friends, we have been hanging around on boats together for years and were telling sea stories until he started talking about putting wood in for the winter and how he didn’t really have a good saw for the job. Somehow the subject of the chainsaw his wife had given me came up and I realized this was becoming a broad hint to return it. I listened for a while, nodding my head until it finally got to be too much. I looked at him and said, “Look, you can have any of my women you want. But, this is Alaska and I am keeping the damned chainsaw.”

The hot corner

Driving by a Little League field the other day reminded me of one of the funniest things I ever saw. Managing a league in a remote Alaska town has its own set of difficulties. I remember a guy in Montana complaining about having to go 50 miles to play a game. Our kids went 300 one way for tournaments. Anyway there was another town even more remote. You can only get there by boat or airplane. They started a league and we helped them. They only had enough kids for about one team at each level so had difficulty finding competition. Once a season we would help them come to our town to play a weekend of games at as many levels as they had teams. This involved a six-hour ferry ride each way with 30 or 40 kids. Imagine doing that to play a couple of baseball games. Of course, being a small town, they actively recruited girls or they wouldn’t have had enough players for some teams. So, one summer, in the regular Little League division age 9-12, they had the cutest girl playing third base. Our kids were smitten. The coaches were so frustrated. None of our kids would run past third base. Any excuse they could find to linger there they took. They wouldn’t steal home. They wouldn’t stretch from first to home. For her part she was all business, she was there to play baseball and could have cared less what a bunch of silly boys were doing, She just ignored them. It was hilarious. Finally one kid managed to get stuck on third. He would lead off but he always ran back. The catcher had several passed balls but it didn’t matter. The ball could have gone all the way out into Main Street and that kid would not have stolen home, At one point he led off a little too much. The pitcher threw the ball to third. The kid dove back face first in the dirt, but, he didn’t make it. She tagged him out. And it looked like she might have tagged him a little harder than she needed to. The third base coach threw up his arms. He looked down at the kid laying there in the dust smiling up at him sheepishly, and asked,” Now, how do you feel?”
The kid through dusty teeth and obviously embarrassed said, “I kind of liked it.”

Air pollution

Driving to work last night a pickup passed me. Someone had a socked foot out the passenger side window, resting on the sideview mirror. The truck had just gone by when the foot disappeared back into the cab . Immediately a dog's head popped up from the bed of the truck, as if to say: wow, thanks i couldn't breathe back here.

The Solitary Man was back on his trail this morning, hiking up a hill toward the small town he lives near. It rained during the night and raised the question how he is protected. He looked pretty wet as he hiked.

And, oh boy, there is nothing like a bear attack to bring out the opinions of Alaskans. A whole page of letters in today's Anchorage Daily News (If you read it, be sure to catch the comments at the end): http://www.adn.com/opinion/letters/story/456783.html

Found it

OK, so here's what's at the East Pole. Photo album

The cost (not the price) of gas

I paid $4.39 a gallon for gas the other morning -- $50 to fill up my little car. I was contemplating taking the long way home that morning, to go by the Post Office and get my mail, but decided to save the gas and double up on a trip later. I recalled living through much of the 80s without a telephone and communicating mostly by mail. I couldn’t wait to get to the Post office to find out who wrote and what was said. Some weeks it was only once -- like when I was at the East Pole; others when i was on the boats I could go every day. Now things have changed, I have a couple of telephones but seldom use them, I get mail maybe once a week and it is mostly bills. I communicate now by email and instant messaging and texting. And, now, I put off going to the Post Office to save a little of that $4.39 gas. I have read that this sort of communication tends to isolate people.... we use our electronics instead of our voices and seldom speak on the phone, let alone in person. We become islands, maybe lose communications skills except to speak in text language -- u kno wut I meen? jk nvm lol. So with that in mind I wondered about not making the longer trip for mail. Is the price of gasoline going to isolate us further? Will we put off visits with friends, going out when we can stay home, those little trips maybe necessary maybe not that get us out of the house for a while and interact with others. I figured out the other night that it's cheaper for me to buy a DVD at $19.95 than go to the movies. And that night I didn’t go to the movies. You can carry this to an extreme of, say if you want to conquer a people, isolate the individuals. It probably won’t be that bad, but isolation may be something to consider as we go deeper into our pockets for necessities.

expotition

As I prepare for another trip to the Bush for the winter, I thought an explanation of place might be in order. The East Pole is mentioned often on this blog. It is the name I have given to a place where I built a cabin in the Alaska Bush and visit as often as is possible. Why an expotition to the East Pole? An explanation for those who need one: When I first went to look over this land I had purchased we started in Talkeetna and headed due east. It was only natural that this interchange in Winnie the Pooh came up. It is also the reason for what looks like a spelling error in the title. It was, however, it was written and spoken in the Pooh books, and also seemed natural for us to mount an expototion to the East Pole.

The East Pole winter of 2019-20

OK, here is the real quote from "Winnie-the-Pooh" (the real one)

"(Pooh) had had a tiring day. You remember how he discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of this he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such
that a Bear of Little Brain could discover.

“There’s a South Pole,” said Christopher Robin, “and I expect there’s an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don’t like talking about them.”

"Pooh was very excited when he heard this, and suggested they should have an expotition to discover the East Pole but Christopher Robin had thought of something else to do with Kanga, so Pooh went out to discover the East Pole himself."

-- A. A. Milne (Did you know his brother CC is buried in Dillingham?)

The East Pole Journal

Strange things are done 'neath the midnight sun

A 15-year-old girl is recovering now in an Anchorage hospital bed. Two nights ago, at 1:30 a.m. Sunday, she was beaten up by a bear in an Anchorage park while she was racing in a 24-hour bicycle marathon. Mind you, this is not a manicured city park. It is a large section of almost wilderness that spills off the western slope of the Chugach Mountains onto the Anchorage plain. It has a few parking lots at entry points and a number of dirt trails used by runners, hikers and bicyclists in summer and skiers and dog mushers in winter. Racers had been warned about bears and she reportedly had bear bells on her bike and had lights on both her helmet and her bicycle, but she and the bear collided at an unfortunate point in time and space. She suffered severe injuries and already has endured three surgeries. Her chewed up helmet may have saved her from even more serious damage. Maybe someday she'll get an endorsement deal from the manufacturer. One can always hope for a bright side.

What was disconcerting about the whole deal were the comments posted on the Anchorage Daily News web site after the initial story went up early Sunday only a couple of hours after the attack. http://www.adn.com/bearattacks/story/450061.html (the comments are at the end of the story)

Seems like every wacko in the state had something to say from condemning the race organizers for choosing a path along an active salmon stream in the dark, to gun control, to bears vs. people, to blasting every bear in sight of the city, criticizing or defending the guns the police carried to protect the paramedics who went in to get her, (I’m not a big fan of shotguns in this application either.), to blaming environmentalists for everything. A woman wrote from Memphis saying all the bears should be shot. One idiot even managed to drag in the right-to-life debate.

Quite a stretch for a little girl bleeding in the trail. Finally about an hour into this diatribe a woman wrote to shut up the couch-sitting gun toters to say what was important.... This girl was suffering in a hospital from the encounter, and let's think about her.

The fact is, all these writers look at a simple cause and there is no such thing in a disaster. Look at everything that contributed to Exxon Valdez or Hurricane Katrina. We live in Alaska and bears live in Alaska. We are bound to meet once in a while. In the not too far distant past, a posse would have hunted down that bear and killed it, if someone hadn’t gotten it even before the incident. Of course in those days, there weren’t many 24-hour bike races, either. But we have progressed and value our wildlife more these days. We also push the limits in their territory. It is almost the irresistible object meeting the immoveable force. In afterthought there are lots of “what-ifs.”

What if a huge oil company hadn’t donated the money to build a soccer stadium in the park where the race has been held in the past. The construction led to moving the race to the area where the girl was attacked.. What if the girl had decided to go to the mall with her friends instead. From the sound of her, though, that is unlikely. Reports indicate she had been skiing and bicycling almost since she could walk. As a matter of fact the first person to come upon her and begin the rescue was her former ski instructor.

It all raises a quandary that won’t be solved easily. We live in a state where we kill wolves and bears because they prey on moose, but when one lunches a human we defend the bear. Do we go in and shoot them all? More people have been molested by human beings on Anchorage bike trails than have ever been bothered by bears. Do we shoot those human beings, too? Do we start airborne hunting of cars and trucks and trains because they kill so many moose?

From all the reports that girl in the hospital was aware of the dangers, though she probably, like all of us, never thought it could happen to her. But we certainly shouldn’t be blaming her for what happened any more than we should be blaming the bear for doing what comes naturally.

Mostly, hope the girl comes out of it all right, although this is most likely a serious life-changing event. Let’s hope she recovers quickly with no long-term suffering, and can get herself back up on her bicycle soon. From everything written about her so far, it seems that is what she would like to do most.