East Pole Journal V. II, No.4: Nuthatches

Notice it has a seed in its beak.

 This year I realized an interesting facet of bird behavior. It has been in front of me for as long as I have been coming to the East Pole, I simply never noticed it before. It’s mysterious. 

    Every year Chickadees come to the feeder in significant numbers. Other species show up as individuals or in small groups. It seems though, every year there us kind of a dominating second species, not dominating in physical sense but showing up in numbers only slightly fewer than the Chickadees.

            They two that stand out are common redpolls and Pine Grosbeaks. One year so many redpolls showed up they almost overwhelmed the Chickadees. Other years I don't see any or only one or two at a time. Then there was the year of the Grosbeaks, not large numbers, larger birds and maybe six at a time. Redpolls are known to move around in what are called irruptive migrations. That essentially means they go different places irregularly on their migrations. They have been seen as far south as Nebraska but mostly stick to the North, though gathering in different places each year.

            There was a year when two hairy woodpeckers spent a large part of the winter around the feeder.

This year it’s redbreasted nuthatches. Maybe half a dozen have been coming to the feeder regularly among the Chickadees. I’ve seen them one at a time in previous years, but never more than one. Just had a flash of a thought. Maybe that single visitor was an individual male or female and this past summer another one showed up and the resident found a mate and they raised a family. I've seen a couple of little brown birds I think are either Pine Siskins or Brown Creepers.
Who knows? But I haven’t seen a redpoll or a grosbeak yet.

The invasion of the redpolls

More about Alaska birds

East Pole Journal Vol. 2 Episode 3: There IS a mountain out there

Moonset on Denali just before dawn December 29, 2020.

 The common knowledge is Internet posts with a picture get more hits than simple words. Let's see if it's true. That picture has nothing to do with what's below. It only stands out as the only time I have seen Denali since I came out here almost three weeks ago, so I am sharing it. (It's also pretty obvious I need to relearn my camera.

Memories are made of this:

As I’ve grown older, I’ve found there are lots of pundits out there willing to advise me or let me know what’s coming. Each of them thinks he or she is the only one who knows this stuff or is telling me something the writer just discovered. One thread that runs through most of them is the admonishment to get rid of your stuff, your kids don’t want it. With my life in such flux this past year, I took that one to heart. I still managed to fill one of U-Haul’s larger storage units and that doesn’t count what’s in this cabin

So, today in the process of a different chore I came across my collection of nautical charts. Earlier I had tried to sell them, no takers. I tried to give them away, still no takers. Mind you this is easily more than a thousand dollars’ worth of charts, covering most of the west North American coast from Seattle to the outer Aleutians, many of them laminated thanks to the generosity of a skipper from the Gulf of Mexico who didn’t expect to return to Alaska after the first summer of the Exxon Valdez spill cleanup efforts.

            I asked a friend who also has a nautical background and his suggestion was use them for wallpaper. I like the walls in this cabin but the ceiling is covered with shiny foil-faced insulation and has been waiting for years while I try to think of a covering for it. Here’s what happened to that idea.

         I brought out all the charts and all kinds of glues for the project. I even bought some moveable scaffolding. The first day I found the laminated charts would not stick to the slick foil surface. In the process of wrestling with it I stepped back off the scaffolding and landed with my back against the corner of a heavy coffee table. As I laid there taking inventory of my battered body, I decided this was not going to work. Once I regained my wits I dressed and headed out on the snowmachine to the trail head, managed to drive my truck to a health clinic 12 miles away and learned I was lucky. I had a bruise that was covering the lower right quadrant of my back, but no damage to internal organs.

I stayed with some friends overnight, then came back the next day. The first thing I did was put the charts behind the couch and never look back.

            Then today I was cleaning back there and came across them. The first thing I thought about was “your kids don’t want your stuff. The second was a memory of a story I read once about a guy who was preparing for his boating season. He had taken out his charts with the idea of cleaning them, erasing all the course lines he’d plotted over the years, all the position fixes, and many of his calculations. He stopped, though when he realized every one of the scribblings on his charts represented a good time spent on the water and he was getting lost in the memories. In the end he decided to leave them on the charts.

            I thought of that as I looked at these charts of mine today. Many of them have the same kind of scribbling, the same memories and the collection stands as a reminder of one of the happiest periods in my ife. So I rolled them up and put them up in the loft with the storage containers I had put up there yesterday, where they will probably stay until they come to haul me off. Unless I discover them again some times and try to live my storms at sea. And then some.

East Pole Journal

East Pole Journal Vol. II, No. 2 Christmas Day 2020

Thank you Judy. Now it's all clear.

Some interesting discoveries around the East Pole

 

About the Poles

Both Pooh and I believe we have been at or near the East Pole; however, neither of us has seen it. That picture of the South Pole my friend Judy Youngquist sent me might hold a clue. When you think about it if the North pole sticks straight up and the South Pole, straight downward, it would fit that the East and West Poles might be horizontal and we have been searching in the wrong direction. Maybe the poles don’t stick up at all, but are lying on the ground somewhere, or at least on short posts in that horizontal position. WE could possibly trip over it and never realize what it was. Of course, if you are looking at a globe instead of a flat map, the poles could be standing up anyway, but would appear horizontal as observed from space. That constitutes a new condition. As there is no up or down in space (Take a little time to ponder that.) and if you were approaching toward the East Pole, it would look like what we call the North Pole. That has about taken us beyond what a bear of little brain can be expected to understand; perhaps past the comprehension of an old man as well. So, as Pooh might say we are close enough to believe it is there, and we can let it go at that.

 

Plans gone awry: I had a plan today. The snowmachine has been stuck at the bottom of the hill since I came in Monday. I stopped before it dug down, but when I started up I didn’t get more than 20 feet and stuck, unstuck and stuck again at another 20 feet. I haven almost everything I hauled up to the house, but it was hand over hand pulling a sled and just about wore me out. I have also been working one plan or another to g4et it unstuck but nothing has worked out so far. To begin with it is on a side hill. The problem has been I have a good hard trail, but it is underneath about two feet of powder and I can’t see it at times. Twice it has slid off to the downhill side burying the rear end. Yesterday, I snowshoed a new trail off the side where it is stuck: That’s mostly downhill and then almost level turning back to the main trail. So, today I was going to use a come-along and either turn the machine entirely so it is heading back downhill on the main trail or turn it enough to get it headed out the new trail. But befpre that came all the daily chores, then this concern about the East Pole and then the storage problem  and after that a solution to my flour shortage in preparing Yorkshire pudding (solved by a couple of friends on facebook) and all of a sudden it’s 1 p.m. Two hours of daylight left on Christmas Day. We are up to almost 5 hours and 3 minutes of available daylight if the sky clears. Today is the first day I’ve seen the mountain since I’ve been here. It all led to this: the hell with working on the snowmachine, taking a day off of hard work. Eat a good meal, take it easy all day, let my aching body heal and attack it in the morning.

 

Domesticity. As I was packing all the new winter supplies into the kitchen I discovered I was running out of storage space. I looked to clear some room and discovered I have one full-sized base cabinet full of empty storage containers: Tupperwear on top of several other brands of boxes and bins. I use them at most two at a time and the rest just sit there taking up valuable storage capacity. Big chore ahead for sure. Merry Christmas.

East Pole Journal

A new one from Joe May

 A baby named Israel

Gleaned from a web conversation with Joe May recently

Used by permission

     When I moved here my nearest neighbor to the west was 27 miles away. All I knew was their last name. One winter day a knock on the door revealed a woman with a baby all wrapped in blankets. She handed me the baby and a diaper bag and said, "I'm Diane...emergency in town...back in 4 or 5 days...his name is Israel...instructions in the bag"... and she ran for her snow machine. I lived alone then and learned a lot in a hurry. We had a good laugh with a cup of tea when she returned. It's how it was here then. 

Israel survived, grew and prospered in the 45 years since.

And there’s a back story:

     These people from my corner of Wisconsin I was to learn later. Long ago when a teen she, with her twin sister went to Africa and WALKED across the continent. At what latitude I don't know. That's kind of the kind of people we had here at one time. Her husband built a steam powered paddle wheeler at their homestead on the upper Skwentna..

 

More from Joe May

The ghosts of Candle's Fairhaven

Two Marines took the first Korean conflict to a whole new level

Memo from the creek, Christmas 1972

Love in the time of Covid

East Pole Journal Volume II 2020-21, Episode 1

December 9, 2020

How I continue to love nature except for one particular moose

I made my first trip to the East Pole this week. I say first because this is a short one. I have usually had problems getting up the hill to the cabin until a good trail is broken out and tamped down in the snow and that means leaving a lot of stuff down in the woods below the hill. Last year I tried something new and came out for only three or four days with a light load. I spent the whole time getting set up and in particular blazing my trails so when I make the second trip with the bulk of my outfit, I will have better luck getting it all to the cabin.

True to form I got the snowmachine stuck about halfway between the main trail and the cabin, that was even after leaving half my load behind. I put on the snowshoes and started trudging up the trail carrying a small knapsack full of vital stuff and my computer briefcase. That was when I discovered exactly what poor shape I am in. After about 20 feet or so I dropped the knapsack and after another 20 feet there went the computer. Still it was trudge 5 or 10 steps and rest, rinse and repeat. I have no idea how long it took but I do know I was whipped by the time I reached the cabin. Always thankful for my foresight, the fire I had left laid in the wood stove took off with one match. That was about all I was capable of for most of the rest of the day from late afternoon. That was Sunday.

Monday not feeling much better I headed down the hill, the only goal in mind to bring the snowmachine tipped right side up and level. A little shoveling that worked. I liberated a couple cans of chili and the next season of Game of Thrones along with that knapsack and computer bag and headed back up hill putting in much the same effort with the same exhaustion as the day before. Come Tuesday I headed down again, my only goal to start the machine and get it unstuck. Again, I took some vitals in the sled and went back up the hill.  Overnight I thought about how I would turn it around. With trepidation I headed downhill, but it took only a little shoveling and I started to drive it out of there.

That was when I learned about this detestable moose. You see when moose go to sleep they first dig down to ground level, hoping for edible grass or maybe a warmer bed. Then they flop and over the course of several hours of sleep pretty much melt a hole in the snow also down to grass level. This particular moose had made its bed right in the middle of my trail, a sure snowmachine catcher. I’d say it was probably six feet by six feet and two feet deep. I know it took me at least half an hour to fill it in and stomp it down so I could drive over it. I didn’t anticipate road work when I signed on for this gig.

With that done I was able to drive the machine to a wider level area where I could turn it around without a lot of heavy lifting. That accomplished I went out to the main trail, picked up what I’d left there and brought it all to one place. Then I tossed some more vitals into a light sled and tried the rest of the hill. I got about halfway up, maybe a couple of hundred feet and stuck again. I unhooked the sled and tugged it up the rest of the hill. Tomorrow I will turn the machine around headed out and hooked up for when I go out Friday. Out for probably a week and then back for the rest of the winter.

COOLERS THAT DON’T

Most people including myself usually buy a cooler to keep the beer and other stuff cold during outdoor summer activities. In addition to that I look at how one might prevent perishables from freezing during winter activities. Last year I bought a very expensive, double-walled, super insulated cooler and it worked fairly well. Tonight I discovered just how well it works. I didn’t bring the cooler up today, but I did bring some of its contents: four bottles of Ensure, half a dozen small juice bottles and a gallon thermos full of milk. That cooler has been outdoors since about 7 a.m. Sunday morning until 3 p.m. Wednesday, about three and a half days in temperatures mostly in the low 20s. Nothing was frozen. And I will tell you cold milk after being without it for several days is one of the great joys in life. I don’t regret the expense involved.

IN OTHER NEWS

Social distancing didn’t work. Just about 24 hours after I filled the feeder, the horde of chickadees showed up.

So, all told I hope this is a prelude to another great winter at the East Pole. Watch this space.

 

East Pole Journal