Alaska natural 2

A close encounter of the bear kind

Not the same bear. This one ran 
through our yard in Valdez then 
hid behind a tree in a yard across
the street.
 After a black bear and her cubs interrupted a foot race in Anchorage recently, an Alaska-themed 
facebook page asked followers to offer their stories of bear encounters. While considering that I realized I had never put an account of my closest grizzly encounter here, so rather than lose it among many and perhaps more exciting stories, I’m putting mine here instead.

It happened this way: If you’ve read this blog before you probably know the cabin at the East Pole stands high on a hillside. In the days when I smoked, rather than have the place smell like a smoker live there, my favorite place to smoke was leaning out an open window with a view downhill and all the way to Denali. Doing that a day after I’d hiked in one August, I heard a loud crack of wood below me and somewhat off to the west. As I watched, a full grown grizzly broke out of the brush at the bottom of the hill. Behind her came one, and then another and then a third cub followed. These were second-year cubs almost fully grown but just enough smaller than the mother to identify them as yearlings.

As they progressed across the bottom of the hill the sow approached the beaten down weeds I had trampled on my way up to the cabin the day before. I figured she would catch my scent and want nothing to do with a human and head on to the east. Instead, she halted, snuffled a little, lifted her head to look around and then put her nose down and turn to follow my trail. I watched her slowly progress toward the turn that led uphill and when she reached it she started up the hill with the cubs hot on her heels. As the situation developed, it proved fascinating for a time until I realized she would follow that trail right to the cabin and maybe I should get ahead of this situation before it turned serious. With a warning flashing in my head of a friend’s comment one time:  “I like to make it uncomfortable for bears to be around me,” I crossed the cabin considering the options. I decided to grab the large-bore rifle I carry for bears, but also a handful of bottle rockets and a lighter.

Then I stepped out onto the porch. I did that just in time to see her back as she turned the corner in tall grass that led straight to the cabin, her nose still down on the trail. At this point she only had about 50 feet to where I stood and coming fast.

Not letting go of the rifle, I fumbled a bottle rocket out of the pack and holding it in the hand and arm that also cradled the rifle, I flicked the lighter and it the fuse. I held it long enough for sparks to begin coming out of the cracker with enough force to fly off and let it go. It landed in front of her just before it went off.

What happened next left a lasting impression. First I heard a roar, then she stood up on her hind legs, her head swinging from sided to side trying to locate the source of what to her probably had changed from food to danger. Now, any grizzly or brown bear I had ever been close to was stuffed an on display. In those poses, the fur is always matted down and the bear looks skinny. Let me tell you a full-grown, live bear only 20 feet from you with its fur puffed out is a whole lot more formidable-looking than that bear in the airport. Still I kept my head and managed to light off another bottle rocket. This one hit her high in the chest between her forelegs when it went out. With that she let out another roar and did something of a bear pirouette, dropped down onto the first cub in line where it squealed loudly. All three took off running back down the hill.

I watched them disappear into thick brush, but as I listened, the sounds of their escape stopped way too soon. They had gone out of sight, then apparently stopped still trying to figure out what she was running from. I’m not sure she ever saw me standing on the porch above her.

After that experience I found a use for this gift from my 
            kids. Motion detector Billy Bass ought to frighten any 
            bear off the porch. "Take me to the river …"
With my friend’s advice still loud in my head, I tried to make their visit more uncomfortable yet and fired another rocket in the general direction they had run. I heard another roar and then what sounded like four bulldozers hurriedly pushing through the brush in a generally northwest direction. This time their noise slowly fell off as they made their way farther from the cabin and I started to breathe a little easier. In time I couldn’t hear them anymore and figured that was the last I would see of them, at least that day. I took some bear cautions like putting some pots and pans on the porch that would make noise if they came up onto it.

About half an hour later, I was moving around outside (my rifle close at hand) and I heard three distinct gunshots quite a distance away in the direction the bears had headed. At that point I found myself hoping someone hadn’t shot them — that those were just “bottle-rocket” warning shots.

At that point I took a little measure of congratulations to self; we had met with no damage to anyone and we all lived and maybe even the bears had learned a lesson in avoiding humans. When I hiked out a couple of days later I watched the trail carefully where I guessed those shots had been fired but saw no signs of a violent meeting anywhere.


Black bears interrupt Mayor's Marathon

Lost hiker found after bear encounter


2019


The Arctic is on fire

     When I first saw that headline it took a moment to fully recognize its significance. Imagine it. We grow up thinking of the Arctic as a severely cold environment, much of it covered by ice and underlain by permafrost where few people have the fortitude to survive. Polar bears and ice and not much more where the temperature rarely rises above 40 F and can dip to minus 50 or more. and you could walk from Alaska to Siberia on the ice in the Bering Strait. Tough to imagine it could be on fire, but it is, almost all the way around the world at least in the sub-Arctic regions.
ALASKA
Alaska in July when we were just getting going. By Aug. 25 more than 750 fires covering 2.6 million acres had been reported. (NASA photo)
SIBERIA

EUROPE

     So what?
     Well, here's what. while we've been looking north we discover all the lands along the Equator, all the way around the world are on fire and it looks a lot worse from here.
     First there's the Amazon
SOUTH AMERICA
Impressive, huh? Those are the lungs of the wold burning today.

     But there is more. And then just when we have that absorbed that we learn there are more fires in Equatorial Africa than in South America.

AFRICA
Seldom mentioned as such, but this has to be a huge oxygen generator as well.


     If there were a large land mass out in the Pacific Ocean it would probably be on fire as well.
     Those fires in the Amazon and Africa may be the most dangerous. In Alaska we have serious fire-fighting ability. You have to wonder what's available in Amazon and African jungles. Both look so massive as to seem impossible to extinguish. And, they are consuming large numbers of trees in areas that produce a large portion of the available oxygen for the planet.
     Does anyone think climate change is junk science now? You have to wonder if by the end of the year if the fires continue we will have passed the tipping point, where Earth heats up to the point no mitigating measures can reverse the effect, those resources that regenerate naturally have been exhausted and eventually our planet becomes uninhabitable much sooner than the most radical of those fake scientists predicted.
     Aren't we lucky Antarctica doesn't have trees? Oh, wait. There's melting.

At least 2.6 million acres have burned in Alaska this summer
The Amazon can't be recovered once it's gone
More fires burning in Africa than in South America
More than 1,600 fires reported in Europe this year.
Siberia: World largest forest has been burning for months

2018
On being a good moose neighbor
January 3, 2018


Today promised to be a good one. I was up at the break of dawn (10 a.m.) these days. My plan was a little putzing and cleanup around  the house and then some fun with the snowmachine. Yesterday I had finally got the last of my stuff and the machine up the hill to the cabin and I was looking forward to driving around grooming my trail and blasting all the way up to where I can make a turn around right next to the porch.
     I went to the picture window to see if the mountain was out. It wasn't, but there was a moose browsing through a thicket at the bottom of the hill right next to my trail.
     Now that put a kink in my plan. Sure, I could make some noise and chase it out of there, but that's poor form when you live with wildlife. Moose are stressed in winter, food is in short supply and their energy gets down and they don't need any extra stress. Best to leave her alone. I am in no hurry. I took a few pictures and started some indoor projects, all the time watching her while she took her sweet time. Two hours later she hadn't moved 20 feet. An hour after that I took another look and watched as she calmly laid down. Interesting, she laid there for some time her head up her ears alert, as if making sure it was safe to sleep. Then while I was beginning to lose daylight for my snowmachine sojurn she seemd to sigh and then stretched her neck out, put her her chin down on the snow and most obviosuly went to sleep. How rude.
     Counting the time she spent alert listening for danger, she laid there for almost three hours.
Toward 3 in the afternoon I looked down to check on her and I heard a sound in the woods off to the west. It sounded like a human talking in a normal voice, too far away to hear what was being said.
     Only a couple of minutes later at least four and maybe as many as six moose burst out of the forest from that direction heading right for my sleeping friend. She sprang up in a heart beat. What I saw as I wrestled with my camera to get it to focus on the moose instead of some damned twig somewhere betweeen us (later I remembered how to go to manual focus) was a big bull a couple of smaller moose, probably mature cows and a couple of yearlng calves. One of them was bawling while it ran past. I assummed it was one of the calves, maybe hurt. They moved through pretty fast, though the bull stopped for a moment to check out the moose that had been there all day.
     Then they all moved off, the group northeast toward the river and my cow somewhere up the hill to the southeast.

That was when the snow started falling. That took the last of the potential fun out of the snowmachine riding for me and I went back indoors for a good long nap. Tomorrow is another day.


2010

Rain? Really?

November 23, 2010
Some days just aren’t fair. I mean, you live in Alaska and you can expect certain things from the weather. Mostly it won’t get too hot in the summer. It will rain on and off from mid July until September and in winter it is cold and there’s snow. Given.
Today we had icy rain. All the way from the south coast to the Arctic coast. Roads so icy they were barely passable. The first 10 miles of the commute were ice shoulder to shoulder on the road and no treatment whatsoever, not even a little gravel spread on the curves or hills. It was 20 mph the whole way. I followed a school bus with chains and they chewed up a little track that I kept one wheel in, The highway was a little better but never got over 45. Schools closed around me and should have been closed in Anchorage.
Fairbanks was just about immobilized and even Barrow the northernmost city in North America got icy rain. A meteorologist in Fairbanks said something like this only happened twice in the last 100 years.
Coming home was worse. An hour and a half to do a trip that normally takes about 40 minutes.Worst again was the blue highway to the house. Ten miles of sheet ice and no school bus. I stopped once I got on it to clean the headlights but even pulled off the road it was so slick I could barely stand up. Thought better of it and drove on with dirty headlights. On the way out this afternoon I passed some folks who were going the other way. A truck was hooked up to a small car and it looked like the car couldn’t make an icy hill and the truck was going to pull it up. I remembered that on the way home and got a little way on at the two hills I have to climb. First one went fine, but the second one was longer. 
I love the seven gears the paddle shifters offer for the control they afford, but even so I barely made it. There’s a good straight stretch before it but every time I got up to about fifth gear, the wheels started slipping and climbing toward the ditch. Barely made it to the top as I held onto each gear as long as I could, knowing each lower gear added that much more torque to make the wheels spin. Even so I topped it in second gear, barely, and then still slipped and slid the next five miles before I got off on a side road. Snow I can deal with but rain? Really? What’s fair about that? Supposed to be same tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving, indeed.

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Best headlines ever

Naked pair fed LSD gummy worm to dog

Owners of a Noah's Ark replica file a lawsuit over rain damage

In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

Alabama governor candidate caught in lesbian sperm donation scandal

Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

Crocodile steals zoo worker's lawn mower

Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel

Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Naked pair fed LSD gummy worm to dog

Owners of a Noah's Ark replica file a lawsuit over rain damage

In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

Alabama governor candidate caught in lesbian sperm donation scandal

Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

Crocodile steals zoo worker's lawn mower

Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel