Planning for Spring

It's the luxurious time of year, when I have a few moments to put together a plan for the summer.  This means I dust off the field reports from last year and the field plan from the previous season and I cobble together a plan that I know will look equally nothing like what is implemented in the field.  It also means I get to look back at some photos.  Every string of project photos I take has a few at the beginning and/or end that are not about the project.  

They are instead about the beauty at my feet, like these flowers that were not there a month before or after.  Growing in gravelly sandy substrate.  A bright pop of color.  

Or these a few feet away, when I was looking for the outlet of a culvert to see if it was draining clear water or sediment laden water into the vegetation.

Or these bright fireweed, so common and amazing.

When I think about my planning for returning to these beautiful places, it's nice to take a moment and savor the word  'return'.  It makes me appreciate and love my job and the amazing places it takes me.  

Late season field work

Last month I had the pleasure of conducting some late season fieldwork.  I was looking for potential contaminated sites along a proposed road route, but as often happens, I was asked to check on a couple other things for a co-worker.  She needed some information about this utilidor.  It's common for them to be above ground in the arctic.

One of the really fun things about doing work in the arctic is that the policies and procedures and methods were established for other places.  

Nope, I don't really see any environmental concerns here.  No dry cleaners or gas stations nearby.  No industrial activity of concern.  

Not even when I take a step back at the bigger picture.  It's equally fun to write grants.  Especially if you get someone reviewing it who has not been up here or who does not understand the area.  

Because Autumn Colors Never Gets Old

 Like most fellow Alaskans I know right now I am so exhausted from the crazy summer that I welcome Autumn.  Plus, it is a short season and snow will be here before I have my pre-snow list stuff all taken care of.  It always does.  It's even earlier in the arctic.  I was out in three villages a month ago, trying to find some amusement in conducting wetland delineations with withered plants.

Even the mundane work photos have moments of beauty.  I never thought a gravel pit could look interesting, but it's all about the perspective, like most of life.  Our regular cast of characters were all out of town for this trip so we had a different ride to the site.  He was an equipment operator.  From which you might make some assumptions.  But without the slower pace of the work and walking around the site you would miss the conversation.  And the discovery that he had been to Fairbanks and Anchorage each, for a year of university general requirements.  These conversations always leave me wanting to ask the questions there is no space for - like how did you end up back in this village when you have no family here and you prefer the city?

I have missed doing ecology work.  I didn't realize how much until I got to dig into the details.  Plant identification is just the tip of the iceberg.  Made all the more challenging by not only a lack of flowers or berries, but also a general lack of defining features.  You know, the features that the keys are based on....

Even a task as simple as trying to figure out where the water from the site flows and ultimately ends up is beautiful.  We had a different pilot than usual for one site.  Luckily he was experienced with the other crazy biologists in the region and he caught on quick to our mission.  Can't wait to see how much has changed in a month - I will be back out here in two days.

Packed

I haven't been out to the villages in a while, but I hear they are having the same kind of problems we are here in town - warm temperatures and not much snow.  The silver lining of the cloud is that I am finally organizing my pictures from the past several years.  I take lots of pictures when I travel because I think of things I want to share that I think other people might find interesting and that I don't want to forget having seen.  This is a classic picture from my seat on a small plane this past year.  Instead of seats you often find across the aisle is filled with mail, cargo, and groceries.  Floor to ceiling.  It's all strapped down, but sometimes that doesn't stop it from moving.  Which is bad.  Our load shifted as we started to taxi for this flight.  No one got real excited, we just let the pilot know so he could stop and adjust the load.  I must admit I would have been pretty pissed off to wake up dead because a case of pepsi shifted and caused the plane to crash.  Nothing against pepsi, just not worth my life. 

Story Time

It’s only been a couple short weeks, but autumn has advanced quickly on the tundra.  I landed to a nearly instant regret of my jacket choice in the very early hours of the morning and to frozen puddles in the parking lot.  The cabelas were out in full force again.  The airport terminal is tiny to start with and always crowded when jets are coming in and going out.  Maybe I should be thankful they are all combis these days since all the passengers getting off and getting on the jet are crowded into one small room.  This smallness of the terminal also means there is a small place to get your bags.  The cabelas took up station in front of nearly half that area this morning, with their ‘small’ camo backpack carryons and their large loud selves.  The rest of us seem to have worked out a system that works pretty well, but only without them blocking the way.  If I sound harsh and ungrateful you should hear what some people who live here year round say.  Some won’t use charter companies who are willing to fly these guys.  Some get mad at me when I use the charter companies who fly these guys.  When I go to meetings where roads are on the agenda access for cabelas is the first topic discussed. 

No matter what I am here to accomplish there always seems to be time for someone to tell me a story.  Sometimes I get to hear the same story a couple times.  That was the case this time.  I heard a story about a small plane that crashed at the end of the runway many years ago.  This village has their cemetery (I learned this trip that they have more than one) right at the end of the runway.  I heard this story last time from a guy who probably wasn’t old enough to have actually seen it I now know.  I got more details on this telling and so did the story tellers husband.  We were both impressed.  She tells it that she was a little girl at the time and a couple kids a few years older than her knew the pilot.  There was to be a passenger on the flight too, but he put her off at the last minute, concerned about weight.  When the plane crashed after takeoff it caught fire.  The kids who knew the pilot reportedly jumped in some water so they could pull their friend from the wreck.  He reportedly was alive when they got him out but he died later.  The storyteller left the best part for last, very Paul Harvey style.  One of the rescuers was a girl, and she is now the president of a large local corporation.  I haven’t met her often, but have been impressed by her before this story.  Now I want to hear her version.

Tastes Real Good

I often get the chance to learn more about subsistence food when I travel, sometimes from people I see every day in the office.  They are different when they come home.  At dinner in the fancy restaurant tonight I had a view of the Sound.  The tide was high and I kept thinking I could see something bobbing or floating in the water and wishing I had worn my glasses and gotten a table right next to a window.  My first guess was that it was some kind of buoy or net float, but I couldn’t tell if it was disappearing in the waves or dropping below the water surface somehow.  A co-worker from Town sat at the table next to me, joining her Mom and said hi to me as she passed.  **A couple notes here - sometimes I see people who I know I recognize and they see me, but they chose not to acknowledge me.  I have learned it’s really nothing personal, there are just a lot of political strings, kind of like a web, surrounding me.  Also, sometimes relations are not what we expect.  For example, people often have several moms.  I asked about it once and nearly got dizzy in the explanation.  This has generally been the result for everyone I ask.  In this particular case they did look similar so it could have actually been her mom in a sense that is familiar to me.

When I was done stuffing myself stupid I stopped to say hello to my co-worker.  She commented on the view out the window.  Sometimes I am so white.  I had not even noticed the birds.  Or how wide spread the dark things on the surface were.  They were seals.  Lots of seals.  Tons of seals.  Seals everywhere.  Feeding.  Duh.  That explains why I thought it was Tatonka when I first saw it out of the corner of my eye.  They were even going for the birds when they ventured too close.  It was amazing and no picture could do it justice.  I went outside in the nearly freezing wind without a jacket just so I could stand there and see it up close after I talked to her.  Not for the first time when I have been admiring a beautiful animal in the arctic, she told me they taste real good and that they are the black meat in the seal oil.  But that you can only dry the meat in the fall.  I confirmed that she meant air dried.  Some day I will get someone to explain to me how you dry the meat in the fall when you kill the animal in the spring.  Or maybe they will tell me I got that backwards or that you kill these animals in the fall.  Either way, I can’t quite get the logic worked out on my own.  

Autumn Lakes and Leaves

“Hey what you doing here? Did you see Lisa on the plane? Where you going? You with them other guys I come here to get?” Peppered with questions while being enveloped in a big bear hug, there’s no doubt where this jet has landed even through my sleepy haze.  There’s also no mistaking the season - autumn - based not on the clothes or the temperature, but on the amount of camo clad men with big bags and big mouths.  One in the back row with me this morning talked the entire flight in his loud mid-west accent.  I hope all the animals hear him coming too.

Before I can really answer any of the questions fired my way by the bear hugger he asks another - ‘what you going to hunt this year?’  I remind him I’m a vegetarian.  “Hey, I hear a good one, my food shits on your food.”  I can’t help but join him in laughter and tell him that’s why I wash my food real good.  We catch up to the others - or rather, they catch up to us - and then I see he was right, Lisa was on the plane.  I wonder how she liked that landing.  I was amazed the right wing tip didn’t hit the runway, we were so sideways and bouncing down it.  Not common for here. 

 

The jet just started a new schedule, two flights a day instead of three, and the regional flights to the villages haven’t changed.  They also downsized the combi planes coming out to the region.  This makes my journey a little exciting, but companionable as the bear hugger walks across the parking lot with me to see if there are any seats available on one of regional airlines or if I will have to wait until afternoon and see if the others can alter their charter to drop me off.  The first one only has standby but we see lots of people to say hi to, some I have met before and recognize and some are new to me.  The second airline has room, but is leaving soon.  I get a ticket and go see if the bags are off the jet yet.  They aren’t and I have ten minutes to get them across the parking lot.  And my cargo I sent up yesterday I can’t get until the jet leaves again.  But I get to hear what Lisa’s destination is (Diomede) and that if she gets weathered in she is going to sit down and have a chat with the bear hugger.  I’m cheering for him on this one. 

I make it onto the local flight with no time to spare and then get lucky that the pilot recognizes me and holds up the flight while they fix the manifest to actually include me and that my bags actually got on the plane.  In the air at last and amazed by the tundra.  It’s the same view but never gets old.  The first week of September by my calendar but mid-autumn by the tundra.  The lakes look amazing surrounded by the blazing colors of the tundra, leaves of the shrubs, and dark green of the spruce. 
 

I’m the second stop on this circuit, one of my favorite villages.  No cell service for my personal phone (though the first village had service) and my work phone is being fairly non-functional.  The local agent also owns the ‘bed and breakfast’ where I am staying so I help her drop off supplies at the other store (they also own a store) before checking in to my ‘efficiency suite’.  I’m on village time now.  Walking over to the tribal office I get my first sweet breath of autumn air and it hits me that I haven’t been getting out enough at home.  That’s hard to fathom with all that’s been going on in August; I think I just love autumn or maybe I love changing seasons.  Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t walk to my job site in my time to kill until the local labor is ready to start because there have been a few bears around that end of town.  So I charge my camera batteries and eat lunch. 

Village time is a good reality check, way cheaper than medicine to lower your blood pressure….if you let it.  Sink in a little bit and embrace it, just go with the flow and be patient.  Maybe even learn a little while you’re at it.