The sun also sets

A chickadee catches a drink from a melting icicle while 
two drops get away from him.

Eighty degrees in the sun on the deck. Comfortable chair, boots up on the generator box, five feet from the feeder. A mediocre scotch in hand with a tight-fisted chunk of snow to cool and temper it mixed with a few birch chatains to give it that woody flavor.

Action is brisk at the Chickadee Singles Bar as we all wait for the grosbeacks to come by for their afternoon set. One even landed on my boot.
You know, I write a lot about the birds, but I am not a real birder. I mean if somebody says there is a tufted titmouse in the neighborhood, I am not going to grab my binoculars and camera and race out the door. I like the ones who come to me, the ones I feed, and the few individuals I recognize as I watch them and try to decipher what their behavior means. Think about this. It is so quiet in the woods I can hear their wingbeats as they flutter about and the clicking of their feet as they land on the plastic feeder rim.

They have been checking the ventilation holes under the eaves, I think for nesting spots and it makes me glad I took the time to put screening over them when I built years ago. It's not that I wouldn't love to entertain a nesting pair or two, but I would rather not have them tearing into my insulation. The other day I watched one explore the whole front of the house, even once clinging to the siding. How I wished I had had a camera when it perched on the fin of the killer whale decoration on the door.

A couple of days later, a good one, almost 80 degrees again.

So I watch them now, the day's work done, a big chunk of the wiring project completed, even a light hanging over the kitchen, and firewood packed away. I split and stacked three sledfuls and brought out one for the next 24 hours. And, satisfied, scotch in hand, I can relax and enjoy the sun while it lasts.

I had an interesting revelation today. Someone came out to that neighboring cabin I can see these days. Whoever it was didn't stay the night and I got the idea he was just checking on it. The same thing happened last weekend.

I got to wondering why, and if anything were missing would I be the chief suspect. Giving it some thought, I realized there is probably nothing in that cabin I would want. I did a mental inventory of this place and realized I really have everything I could possibly want. Short of a hot woman or a couple of sitcom DVDs, nothing. I have it all. How many people can say that? If this keeps up I might need another bottle of scotch, though, but no need to break into someone's cabin on the off chance I might find one. I can afford a trip out and a good one if need be.

My friend Gretchen Small says the chickadee drinking

in the photo above inspired her to paint this picture of a

Swainson's thrush.

The sun is heading into the trees now, so it might be time for a little dinner and a movie. I am thinking Moulin Rouge, the new one with Ewan MacGregor and Nicole Kidman. Did I ever write about the night I chatted with her for a few minutes online, just a couple of days before her marriage to Keith Urban? Honest, I did. Jokingly I told her I had this great script with a part prefect for her. I could almost hear her mind snap shut. I told her I was only kidding, but she only came back a little way.

Well with dinner and a movie in the near future, I am guessing the following applies.

With two more weeks to go, I think I am going to have to go out for another bottle of scotch. This one lasted 30 years. I might as well pay the money for a good one for the next 30.

I love you, Padme

     This will take a minute. My son was the right age when the second three Star Wars movies came out. We joked about which woman we liked. He liked Princess Amidala; I liked Padme, never mind that they were the same person. 

     Somewhere along the way he acquired some action figures and among them was the Padme character.   I immediately confiscated it. Over the years she disappeared and reappeared and somehow ended up with me here at the East Pole, standing Titanic-like on the bow of a model tugboat I used to demonstrate tanker rescue maneuvers.     They are on a shelf above my desk here.

     Fast forward to tonight. When I first moved in to the cabin at the East Pole, I bought a bottle of scotch. Here I am thirty years later and I finally opened it. Listening to music and watching the sunset and moonrise change Denali, I chanced to turn and look out the window over the desk and there, silhouetted by the twilight sky stood  Padme, defiant and proud on the bow of that little wooden tugboat. A striking figure at once symbolizing strength and an overwhelming allure. 
     It took a moment to come back to reality, and I make no apologies.

Sent from my iPad

Stranger in the night

Around 11 o'clock last night there came a knocking on my door. This is not good form in bear country even in winter. A strange, out-of-place noise on the porch, the first thing a guy grabs is a gun. So, I called through the door, "who's there?" A rather timid voice called back something like, "I am cold. Could I come in and warm up?"
     I cracked the door open carefully, checked him out from head to toe, didn't see a weapon or for that matter claws and gnashing teeth, in fact I saw a human being who appeared to need some help. I had just started my going-to-bed routine and wasn't really looking for anything that could delay that downhill slide into sleep.
     Nevertheless, I welcomed him in and closed the door behind him. I moved a chair close to the wood stove where he could sit and warm himself.
     We chatted a little and slowly his story came out. He had gone to a nearby lake ice fishing with his cousin. At some point the cousin had gone out to the trail head on his snowmachine and left this guy to walk to the cousin's cabin in the dark in territory where he had never been before.
    In the dark, the fellow missed the trail to the cabin and had walked two miles along the main trail before he saw my lights and decided to seek some shelter. At the moment I realized as I had been preparing to go to sleep, if he had come by 15 minutes later, my lights would have been turned off. My cabin is maybe a quarter mile from the trail and high on a hill so he never would have spotted it in the dark.
     I had looked him over for signs of hypothermia, the temperature had dropped to about 5 degrees, but he seemed all right. At least he was suitably dressed for this journey. I put some water on to boil to make him some hot chocolate and as it was coming out that the cousin was returning at some point, I asked him if he had a flashlight. He didn't. Fortunately the moon illuminated the woods enough help a little. He said he had been using the flashlight app on his iPhone but his battery was down to 15 percent. He used some of that 15 percent to call his cousin. I had not turned off the generator yet so the cellular signal booster was still functioning and the call went through.
     The cousin had made it to the trailhead and was ready to head back. I could hear the cousin arguing about things rather than figuring out how to meet. I didn't have much respect for the cousin to begin with – leaving this guy alone walking in the dark through unfamiliar terrain. The guy was trying to explain where he was and how he had missed their cabin but all the cousin did was shout insults.
    The charge on his phone had probably fallen dangerously low at this point and I asked him what kind of phone it was. Perfect. I had my iPhone connected and charging and my cord fit his phone and thankful again the generator was still running, we plugged his in.
    By this time the water boiled and I mixed some cocoa for him. He described where he had been and what he had passed while walking and I was able to figure out the general area of the cabin's location.
    I drew him a map showing all the landmarks and where he was and the time and where he needed to go and also showed him a map on my iPad to give him a better picture of what I had drawn.
    We decided the best thing for him would be to walk back down to the main trail and be on it when his cousin returned on his snowmachine and they could go on together.
    I suggested he call the cousin again so we could get a time line for when he ought to be on the trail. Via texts we learned he was just starting out, so I checked the clock to get this fellow going in about half an hour.
    We sat at the table and chatted while he sipped his hot chocolate and as subtly as I could I asked more questions in another attempt to ascertain any hypothermia symptoms.
     It turned out he had grown up in Alaska but a few years ago he had ventured south, ending up in Southern California where he worked as a painter on movie sets.
     I shared a little of my life but being wary of strangers, not too much. I kept my eye on the clock and when half an hour had passed, I gave him the map I had drawn, a cheap spare flashlight and a bottle of Ensure for some energy on the trail just in case. I had him enter my phone number into his phone in case something went wrong. By then it had reached 45 percent charged, a little better margin for him, again, just in case.
    I watched him walk down the trail. When he reached the area I had been hauling firewood from with its tangle of interlocking loopy trails he followed the wrong one for a moment; it was a small loop that took him back to the main trail and gave me a little chuckle as I relaxed a bit when I felt he was safely on his way to the main trail.
    I shut down all the noisemakers in the cabin so I could hear a snowmachine down on the main trail. After about 15 minutes I heard it and went out onto the porch to listen. Soon enough it stopped and then I could hear voices talking. Connected again, they drove away deeper into the woods.
    I went back to my bed time routine and it was then I noticed, such a small thing, but an indication of character. With all that was going on and the worries about what was ahead, he had thought to put his cup into the sink with the other dirty dishes. I had to smile at that. It told me he was probably going to be all right.

Lost in the woods

If this is 2 p.m. it must be noon

     Confused? Here's how it works. Alaska used to have four time zones: 0ne for Southeastern (Juneau); a large central one (Anchorage, Fairbanks. Barrow); west coast (Bethel, Nome); and one in the western Aleutians.
     Juneau was one time zone removed from Seattle, Anchorage one removed from Juneau, Bethel one removed from Anchorage; and western Aleutians one removed from Bethel.
     Then several years ago the Legislature chose to ignore geography and put everyone on the same time zone. The zone the solons chose was Juneau's which put the whole state except the Aleutians, only one time zone removed from Seattle, and more importantly only four earlier than New York, mostly so stock brokers in Anchorage didn't have to wake up so early to work the markets. Mind you, this was before the Internet. Then in summer there is Daylight Savings Time which adds another hour to the formula.
     So as a result, Local Noon (another name is Solar Noon) in summer is 2 p.m. And in winter Local Noon is 1 p.m., biorhythms be damned.
     Imagine if Gary Cooper had showed up for the gunfight two hours early.
     Why does this matter? Well, nowadays unless you are totally in tune with the Earth's rotation not much, but only a hundred or so years ago it was very important.
     You see, Local Noon is crucial to celestial navigation. It was all the early explorers had. If no one ever explained it to you longitude is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds from the Prime Meridian, and knowing local noon is the key to finding out how far you are from the prime. In order to learn Local Noon, what they did was take sights with a sextant measuring the sun's height above the horizon. From what was believed to be, say, 11:30 a.m. sailors took sights at short, regular intervals. Before noon the angle to the sun would rise slightly with each sight. The minute it showed a drop, they had the best approximation of Local Noon, the highest point reached above the horizon that day. Comparing this with the ship's chronometer set to the time at the prime meridian, they had their longitude. Some mathematical calculations were involved as well. Keep in mind accuracy is necessary, every second the clock is off amounts to a quarter of a mile, so it it is a minute off the ship is 15 miles from where the captain thinks it is. A couple minutes and you could miss Hawaii.
     The problem for the early sailors was no one had a reliable chronometer. They never could be sure of the time at the Prime so to speak. The British Admiralty even offered a large money prize for anyone who could design such a marvel. Seventy years passed before anyone claimed the prize.
     And what does this have to do with Alaska? Well, Captain James Cook was the first to give that chronometer a shot. He explored and charted much of the West Coast and in particular Alaska's coast looking for the fabled northwest passage. He never found it, but his charts were so accurate they are still valid today. So it looks like the thing worked. But imagine if the time had been two hours earlier as it is today. Cook would have been in the Aleutians thinking he was in Prince William Sound. Of course he might have arrived on that beach in Hawaii two hours early and missed the battle that killed him.
     Now wasn't that fun? Just think. You can sleep until noon by the clock, you're really getting up at 10 a.m. not nearly as embarrassing, in Alaska anyway, but the business people get their extra hour of sleep.

A&E network produced a series about the development of the chronometer titled Longitude.

A post script: I have always loved the saying attributed to the ubiquitous Old Indian about Daylight Savings Time: "Only the white man would cut the bottom off a blanket and then sew it to the top and tell you it was a longer blanket."

Nothing about politics

about 








It's been quite a while and we have a lot to go over so we'd better get started. This is going to be mostly about the East Pole so be ready for that. I seem to be all healed from my adventure with the maul that sent me to the emergency room last time. Big whew on that one. You get to be my age and you wonder every time you get hurt if this one's going to be permanent  I came in to the East Pole two days ago. I can't remember having a better trail – like a highway. Then I got farther up the trail to the cabin than ever before pulling a heavy freight sled. I was here with everything in the cabin in less than two hours. Even got the snowmachine unstuck where it had stopped. And for once I wasn't exhausted. Sometimes parts of that chore slop over into the next day.
     Chickadees arrived just about the same time, so I fed birds even before I got a fire stated. It's been cold here and the indoor thermometer read zero. In two hours it had reached comfort level though not completely warmed yet. Opened the cabinet doors to thaw all the canned goods.
     By midday Sunday I was moved in and living here and comfortable with it. That usually takes three days or more. Felt so good I made a real meal, roasted chicken breast, mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans. Usually it's Dinty Moore and Chef  Boy R Dee for the first few days.
    Had a bit of a mystery early on. A couple of days before I left last time I had tried to bring down a huge birch tree for firewood. Talking 70 or 80 feet, another one that blocked the Denali view. The problem was it didn't fall. I cut the notch on the side where I wanted it to fall and then a horizontal cut above it from the other side. I got almost halfway through and the tree leaned backward pinching the bar and chain in the cut under a couple of tons of heavy birch. I tried yanking it in a couple of directions with a come-along but it wouldn't budge. I finally had to give up. I unbolted the bar and chain from the rest of the saw and took it up the hill, hoping the tree would fall while I was gone.
     Well it had fallen all right but a new snowfall buried it. A few cursory eyeball searches couldn't locate it. No visible bumps in directions I had thought it would fall. So yesterday I went down and poked around with my avalanche probe. I found it but it had fallen in quite a different direction than I had expected. As a matter of fact if you drew a line between the two expected paths, this would have made a 90-degree angle. That's the kind of situation that made logging one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. I am glad I wasn't cutting at it when it went down.
       By that time it was getting late so I went back to the cabin. I did a test of my arm and tried to split one of the huge sections left over from the last tree. I did it with a small sledge hammer and a wedge and split it into halves. Those I could split more with the small maul, a sled full.
     Then today I reassembled the chainsaw with new bar and chain and headed down the hill. It took two tanks full of gas but it is now all dug out and cut into sections. I brought three up and found out something wonderful. They split easily. I was just trying it out to see how they would work and didn't expect that. I was able to split all three including one of the huge ones that came from near the base of the tree. So now I am even for the trip so far, three sleds of firewood out to burn, three put on the stacks. If it's this easy I will get well ahead of it by the time I am done with this tree. Next year's firewood..
     Clear and cold and I see a half  moon a'risng and Venus bright off to the northwest. Temperature goes just below zero at night and then up to almost 20 during the day. Beautiful night skys with moon shadows playing down the hill. Not quite warm  enough to sit on the porch with a scotch in the sun yet, but it's coming. I even learned something about my camera today that will make my pictures better. Nothing to help my view of things though.
    At this writing there is a faint line of pink right on the horizon. The mountains are black shadows against a sky deep gray heading into the night. A few stars out to accompany Venus on her voyage through the night. Creedence on the stereo. Peaceful. Good to be home.