Magic beans and a bear

It's all about these magic seeds I traded the Volkswagen for. The guy said great riches await. Would my bear protection rifle work on an ogre?

OK, bad segue, but here goes. Quite a story beginning Saturday night. Seven teenagers on a 30-day wilderness trip with the National Outdoor Leadership School were attacked by a grizzly bear right in the neighborhood of the East Pole. They had reached the last week of their experience where they are left to their own devices by the adult supervisors after three weeks of intense wilderness skills training. They had found themselves in thick brush and thinking better of that, began wading a stream instead.

 The fellow in the lead disappeared around a bend and the next thing anyone heard was growling and screaming. The bear dropped that fellow and went after the others, eventually injuring four, two of whom had life-threatening injuries. Then the bear went back and threw the first boy around again before disappearing. They said it was all over in a minute. They had some bear spray but not one could get one out in time to do any good, it all happened so fast.

But these kids, all between 16 and 19 kept their cool. They set off their emergency locater beacon, made a camp, tended to the severely wounded as best they could and within an hour a trooper helicopter found them. The trooper said the two most severely wounded were beyond his expertise and called for a medevac with trained paramedics on board. Four of the kids left with the first helicopter while the trooper and a 16-year old with paramedic training stayed with the two who were more severely hurt. Shortly those four were lifted out. This is the full story.

If you look at the map, the East Pole is directly south of the Talkeetna River from where the incident is located.

These things happen occasionally in the Alaska wilds, that is accepted. What is exceptional here is how these kids reacted. Though some made mistakes during the attack itself, once it was over they used every skill they had just learned (one assumes the skills are new) and did the right thing, keeping their heads, tending to their injured comrades, summoning help and just performing well under intense pressure. At this writing two remain hospitalized, one still in serious condition. But it looks like all will survive. Imagine the look on a teacher's face after reading what these kids write in the "what I did this summer" essay when they get back to school.

One off the big list

Remember those lists? Tasks, anxieties? Easy list. List of things to do that take some time and effort. Almost impossible list. Looking at that, maybe off the middle list. Two years in conception, four hours on execution. But that was only after three weeks of trying to find something to move a 300-gallon fuel tank. Turns out my neighbor had a giant engine hoist. We put that on my snowmachine trailer and after some adventures in backing the trailer into tight spaces and relearning some physics we managed to maneuver the tank into its new position. There's something about lifting. Years ago for a time I focused on pumps, just thinking how many pumps there are in our lives, almost all of which we take for granted. Today I got to thinking about lifting and sort of wished I had paid more attention to those diagrams I had in one class or another that showed the efficiencies of pulleys. Archimedes gets credit for saying "Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth." He was talking pulleys and leverage and the physics of lifting and pulling. I believe it can be done (the hard part is finding a place to stand). I have seen some amazing things lifted. There is an exhaust stack at the pipeline terminal in Valdez that stands at least 50 feet tall. There are flanges at intervals where it looks like pieces of it were bolted into place after each section was lifted. But it tuns out a fellow engineered it and was able to place in in one lift. I have a little device in my bush travel tool box that by weaving rope through it, I can lift more than 400 pounds. I have forgotten how I maneuvered some of the materials for the houses I built, but I do vaguely recall some difficult lifts and at times wishing I had a place to stand, or even more so, a sky hook. Look at skyscrapers, high water tanks, smoke stacks, bridges; everything was lifted into place. Some of those lifts were awesome. In a small way ours was today too. But, get this. After a couple of years thinking about it and then spending the past three or four weeks looking for something to make the lift, including just driving around the neighborhood looking for someone with yellow machinery parked in the yard, and finally finding it just about in my back yard, as we were taking my neighbor's engine hoist back, what passes us on the road and turns down my street? A guy driving a forklift. That just isn't fair. I waved to him enthusiastically and he waved back but I'm pretty sure he had no idea why I was waving. I stopped waving when I realized I didn't need the forklift any more.

THE PICTURES: The little one is before. The bigger one is how it looks now. That little lilac in the foreground is the huge bushy kind, so hoping in a couple of years the tank won't show at all. Also, with the weight off it, I bumped the old wood holding up the tank and it was so rotten it fell apart. It's a wonder it never gave way under the weight of a full tank.

"…a hard rain's a gonna fall…"

Finally a little excitement lit up the drive home, literally, after what seems like weeks of mindless commuting. Along the blue highway under a seriously dark cloud with thick foliage leaning in to form the sides of a forbidding tunnel, a flash of lightening, horizontal all the way across the night sky as far as I could see in either direction. Bright and so close, I am sure I heard a little electronic crackling inside the car. Mind you, lightning around here is rare. In more than 35 years I might have seen lightning five or six times. Shortly after that blast the rain began falling harder than I have seen it since I have lived in this area. As I approached the bridge there was another flash, this one round and bright like the sun. I listened for thunder but didn't hear anything. The rain still fell thick as I left the car and walked to the door. Just as I put the key in the lock another flash, this one muffled and reflected as I never saw the actual lightning. Then a thunder clap so close and so loud and so sharp I almost jumped off the porch. I watched at the window for a while but the rain soon let up and no more flashes in the sky either.

Other things have been going on, and they will show up in time, but in light of the previous post, they seem trivial to me at this point.

" … so, where have you been my blue-eyed son …"

Desperately seeking Kitty

Increasing use of social media has led to the development of a new kind of relationship. For lack of a better name, I call it guarded intimacy. It's like you will tell anybody almost any intimate detail about yourself but you won't give your full name, or address, or phone number, nothing that would let another person actually reach out and touch you; For the past six or seven years I have had such a relationship with a young woman on line. For the life of me I cannot recall how we first came into contact but over the next few years except for some troubling interruptions, we chatted online almost every day when we were in touch. She was always guarded about her personal information and I respected that but occasionally she would slip and over time I could put together a picture of her life. I do know her name and she has sent me pictures of herself.

She never would tell me exactly where she lived though and that raised some suspicion. I am not stupid. I know people will con you and lie to you on line but I also know it is very difficult to maintain a lie for six or seven years, so I am fairly confident she has been honest with me. Even one time when I felt so sorry for her and wanted to send her a warm winter coat, she had too much pride to let me do it.

Mind you this was a very troubled young woman. Among other things I learned was that she was a runaway from her family in Texas, sometime before her 18th birthday. By what path I don’t know, but she ended up in Cleveland. Along the way and there, she did turns as a prostitute and suffered from an addiction to methamphetamine, though she would hardly call it suffering. Part of the suffering comes from the hepatitis C she contracted from a dirty needle.

She seemed to get by moving in with a series of men, leaving when one tired of her and then finding another. Most of them were abusive and at least one of them turned her out to work on the street.

I could tell by her typing when she was high and occasionally lost patience with her.

There were times of clarity when she displayed an amazing intellect and creativity. She read books, her choices in music were eclectic and she showed an affinity for Irish folk music, not the hard rock one might expect from a meth user. She seemed to like plaintive ballads as well and was always suggesting I listen to this or that singer. She could be very insightful as well catching me at times in inconsistencies and calling me on them.

There was a time in Cleveland one night we were chatting and her typing gradually degenerated and she became more and more incoherent and then said she felt sick and wanted to know what to do. I was pretty sure she was having some kind of a drug-related reaction. Turns out the man she was living with at the time had injected her with a mix of drugs and she had no idea what was in it. She asked what to do and I said contact a neighbor. Fortunately she did this and the neighbor came on asking me what was going on and I suggested drug overdose, gave her an idea of first aid and to call paramedics. My friend ended up in the hospital for a time and then ended up living with the woman who saved her.

But she destroyed that one night when the woman was away, she got high and invited friends over who trashed the woman’s apartment.

This is getting longer than it needs to be. Over time there were highs and lows but in between there were some wonderful conversations and gentle chiding to clean up and make something of herself. She even audited some college courses and for one semester took a writing course. What she wrote could be beautiful.

More recently she moved to St. Louis. During that period she did well for a while but had a relapse and at one point told me she knew how the world worked and I was wrong. At that point I figuratively threw up my hands in frustration and didn’t talk to her for almost a year. But I kept track of her. She is the most avid reader of this blog. If you combine the hits from Cleveland and St. Louis there are almost 200, by far more than from any other single ISP. In following the hits I at least knew she was alive and that was reassuring.

Then after almost a year, last fall I answered one of her IMs and we renewed our relationship. Still like before she was very guarded about personal information. She told me she had a job and I could sort of confirm that by the regularity and schedule of when she came on line. She had her own place and told me she had cleaned up and had been off drugs for a while after reaching the lowest point ever and seeking help. We talked almost daily until a few weeks ago.

She was going to try camping though she had never done it before. Among other things I told her to set up the borrowed tent in her apartment so she would know how before she had to set it up in a hurry at some campsite. It turned out she had so much trouble with it she put off her trip for a week. Though she never told me she was going the following week, when she didn’t show up online over the weekend, I figured she was camping.

But then I didn’t hear from her for almost two weeks. I worried she had been mugged as she was going to a fairly public park in the St. Louis area. When she came back on two weeks later I discovered it was worse than that. I noticed from the blog counter she was using a different computer (Mac now instead of PC) and signing on through a different ISP. I asked her why. That is when she told me she had given away all her stuff including her computer because she tried to kill herself. I always knew this was in the undercurrent but the reality of it was chilling.

That of course upset the life she had with her own place and job and I learned she was now in a room with some sort of social agency that was helping her. Again we started talking almost every day but only for about two weeks.

In one of her conversations she told me that I was the only one in the world who stood by her that she had no one else. That was after I asked her where she could find some support. In that conversation she asked me who she should live for. Who she should live for? I tried to support her because I knew it was a serious question but my answer was in the long run, you live for yourself. I could tell by her hesitation and then her very noncommittal response, my answer wasn't good enough, not convincing. That response gave me a sinking feeling that this was deadly serious and for once I felt incredibly helpless to somehow intercede and change her direction, to somehow say the magic words that would make it all right.

I have not heard a thing from her since then. The last time she looked at this blog was June 27. Not a hit or a word since then. Given what was going on in her mind I am very worried. The only thing that gives me any hope for her is that knowing she is from Texas, even knowing she never wanted to go back to her abusive parents, maybe she did go back to her family. There have been hits the past couple of days from two ISPs around Dallas with several page views. That’s a very thin thread. So, I guess the length of this speaks to how worried I am. Which just goes to show that guarded intimacy can lead to some very deep connections and, I hope, explains why I am “desperately seeking Kitty.”

Discoveries

I suppose it is one of those laws of nature. Seems like when you don’t know what you are doing, you automatically assume you are doing it wrong. Good enough for me, is not a very professional way to achieve satisfaction.

So, last night I happened to edit the newspaper’s garden columnist. As the season goes on weekly he tells people what to expect in their gardens and what to do or what might be coming up, literally. One of last night's alerts went like this: “Peas: Harvest.” WHAT?????

I automatically went to those assumptions, not doing it right; what’s wrong with my plants; what am I dong wrong; what can I do to fix it at this point?

I have seen a few blossoms but harvest? I don’t think so. Also in the little garden outside the newspaper building there is a row of peas and they look so much healthier than mine. The stems are thicker and stronger and the leaves are huge compared with mine. I mentioned to my garden guru yesterday that I did have a few blossoms on my plants which, though taller, look scrawny next to those at the paper. She said you have to have blossoms before you have peas.

Today as I was raising the support wires for the pea plants for the second time and noticing quite a few blossoms, it hit me that I have always been looking at the tops of the plants and some time ago I had noticed blossoms closer to the bottoms. With that in mind I inspected down near the ground. Whoa, look what I found. (The first picture). I didn’t look at each plant but a quick survey found half a dozen of them. They aren’t ready to harvest yet, but they are much closer to the garden columnist’s schedule than expected.

I am guessing the time is coming to renew the squirrel war. Especially if that round green fruit on the other plant matures. Can you believe it? Tomatoes! Now we are talking. Checking the live trap too. But I am thinking maybe the local cats got most of them. I haven’t seen any lately but someone ate the bird feeder hanging in the tree, literally.... the top was chewed to the point it fell off and some of the perches had been knocked onto the ground. I may have a new animal. That feeder was there long before I got here.

Going back out now. No matter how I framed the photos, I couldn’t hide the weeds that need tending.

Sea of Garbage

Sea of Garbage

This is it, the Dan Rather report about our sail in the North Pacific in the summer of 2010. It is slow loading but eventually it will show up.

July 4, 2011

So, what does a fellow do who wants to show a little patriotism when he works a swing shift on Independence Day? I know, get up early and go to a parade even if it means being tired at the most difficult part of the work night. Instead maybe he leaves the little high-mileage Japanese car at home and drives to and from work in a good old American-made Jeep, that icon of the American military in World War II. Of course, they weren't red then. And on the way to work, stop and pick up a bucket of chicken and a small cake for the rest of the hardy souls putting out a newspaper on a holiday, Then on the way home enjoy the fireworks at various spots along the way. Some folks still camping on the riverbank shooting them off as the Jeep crossed the bridge, All in all a pleasant Fourth, though I did look at the families camping and thought how pleasant that might be.

Was one yoke traded for another?

Independence Day and there’s another oil spill to contend with. This one is in the Yellowstone River, fortunately downstream from the park, but unfortunate for those folks whose ranches are flooded from the high water which is now spreading the oil all over their pastures. The spill originally was estimated at 100 barrels, which later was adjusted to 1,000. Remember? Oil spills never get smaller. It is easier to estimate this spill because it came from a pipeline where the flow is monitored and shutdown time can provide something more accurate than a blowout a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, this spill is from our old friends at Exxon, the “We don’t care, we don’t have to” folks so we can trust their word for how much oil was released.

But all is well. The president of Exxon flew over the spill area and assured us all the damage wasn’t bad, no wildlife was affected and it would all be cleaned up. And the bulk of the oil damage was contained along a short section of the river. Does any of that sound familiar. Do these guys all go to the same school? Is it part of oil industry executive school to say in a reassuring voice the oil spill is all right and in time the country affected will actually be better?

Meanwhile oil was spotted 100 miles downstream heading toward the Missouri River. It all makes us much more comfortable with Shell drilling in the Arctic Ocean. That process took a giant leap forward in the past week. For one, federal regulators tentatively approved the company’s clean air permits which were holding up their exploration.

In Alaska, political absurdity also gave Shell a helping hand. That coastal zone management issue received quite an airing. Legislators finally decided to have a special session to try to get the program extended before the June 30 deadline. Everyone flew to Juneau and on the first day the Senate passed a bill extending the plan. Then the governor said he would veto that bill. This is from the silent governor who worked for the oil industry before he was anointed by the Governor Interrupted who quite mid-term leaving him in charge. The House met the next day and voted the bill down. No coastal management program. Both sides said jobs would be lost if the program passed, or failed for that matter. Then one of the excuses was there were only five people left working on it. Of course that’s because the 28 other people in the office left knowing their jobs would be over at the end of the month. There's that magical political word "jobs" again.

So the result is now with all federal projects offshore and onshore in coastal areas, the state of Alaska has no say, and worse the people who live there have no say. All they can do is write letters to some obscure bureaucrat in Washington who could care less what Alaskans think. Something like 26 other states have coastal zone management programs in place. That’s all of the eligible states except Alaska.

Now Alaska, which has a coastline longer than the whole rest of the United States combined, and that complains constantly about federal interference, has allowed the federal government to do what it wants along that coast.

This all of course is applauded in the oil industry; one less obstacle in the permitting process to overcome.

So Shell wins twice in a week. The safety plan that Shell assures us will handle any spill in the Arctic involves two ships and six smaller boats. Does anyone remember how many boats worked on Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon spills? Shell also reassures us that shallower water and lower pressures in the Arctic would preclude a spill. But, then there was no Arctic ice pack to contend with in those spills. No problem.

It all reminds me of an old joke: “A rather electronic voice gives the welcome-aboard speech on an airliner: “Welcome to the first fully automated passenger flight in the world. Every contingency has been anticipated and we want to assure you that nothing can go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong ...

Might we again need to declare our independence?

A book is born, a voyage completed

I just finished editing a book by a friend of mine. About a year or so ago there were a couple of posts on here titled Conversations with Patricia. She is the author. I wasn’t asked to do the full-blown edit, just look for Alaska references to make sure they are correct and because she lived in Alaska for several years, there weren’t very many. Very pleasant and funny reading, it is satire about the Governor Interrupted under the working title: “Alaska by Heart: Recipes for Independence, by Sarah Pagan."

That’s all I will say about it at this point; you will have to find it and read it when it comes out in the near future. Final edit has been sent to the publisher so it won’t be too long.

Other than that it’s been a slow summer with a lot of recent overcast skies but not much rain, just threatening without fulfillment. For excitement there was one of the neighbor’s cats playing with a vole in the driveway the other day. How they do tease those little guys. I seem to recall reading there are no mice native to Alaska, just voles and shrews. Watching the vole reminded me of a conversation around a campfire so many years ago. As we sat there we could see voles scurrying around a huge rotten tree stump. It wasn’t long before someone called the stump Volehalla, which of course led to several other vole puns and the thought of a book similar to the “Book of Terns.” We were going to call it “High Voltage.” Some of the suggestions were Voletaire, voleuptuous, voleume. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

That was also the night of my first and only cruise paddling a kayak. The folks I was with were staying in a tipi they had erected on an island. I had anchored my boat offshore and had ridden to the beach in someone’s skiff. After a night when numerous beers had been consumed and even more vole puns offered, people began to tire and head off to bed, including the ones who owned the skiff I rode to shore in. So the consensus was to pack me into one of the tipi dwellers’ kayaks and set me on my way toward my boat. Despite my objections, and after only the briefest of training sessions, I found myself floating away from the beach out onto an ocean, paddle in hand and operating a type of boat I had never even been in before. And, of course, life jacket? I don't need no stinking life jacket! I truly don’t recall how I managed to get to my boat and even less about how I got from that low-to-the-water kayak and over the gunwale of my boat which would have necessitated standing up in that less than stable watercraft.

 Sometimes you have to wonder how you survived your adventures to live this long. Also how such a common occurrence as a cat playing with a vole can trigger such vivid memories. At this moment I can almost feel the heat from that campfire and the tickle of various bugs landing on my skin. Funny no chill of fear though, which probably should have been the strongest feeling of that night. But then, what’s the fun of doing something if you know how?