I have papers to grade. So, I guess summer is really over.
I was planning to take it easy this summer, but it didn’t exactly work out that way. A move across town took up a lot more time than Moni and I expected. Our trip to Valdez is still the highlight of the season for me, but I also made it down to Montana on a work-related trip and down again to Fairbanks to help put on the Motif Film Festival. When I wasn’t traveling or taking boxes upstairs, I was busy working on class materials and whatnot. Suffice to say, it was an interesting summer.
One of the most interesting things about this particular summer is just how long the sea ice seemed to remain intact, and how long much of it stuck around shore. It seems like this last winter got started late (snow didn’t start sticking here in Barrow until well into October), so I suppose it’s fitting in some sense that the remnants of that winter would linger a bit. It certainly made for some beautiful views. Few sites compare to the midnight sun shining down on an entire ocean served on the rocks, so to speak.
Yeah, people do swim in this stuff, usually just for a minute or two, just long enough to say they did it.
Other people do this.
Not me.
(Click to embiggen.)
The cloud here steals the show.
Mid July
…and the world gets diagonal
This little guy really wanted me off his beach
Lotta Blue
Icy Reflections
Just Cold!
A little sea life in the fog there.
Hadda zoom a bit for this one
Okay, this might not be sea ice
A touch of yellow
Clear and peaceful evening
Looks like I tweaked this pic a lot, but I really didn’t tweak it much
An ice bow, some sea ice, and an annoying little blue dot.
Sorry, for the poor quality of this video, and in particular for my very shaky hand.
So, I flew out from Barrow a couple weeks back to spend a few days at a conference (Whalefest) in Sitka. I don’t get to spend much time in southwest Alaska. When I fly out, I generally go through Anchorage and then down to the lower 48. I can visit the villages of the Northslope about as often as I care to, and I can often spend extra time in Fairbanks or Anchorage, but a chance to veer off into the southeast is a rare treat.
To say that Sitka is beautiful is putting it more than a little mildly. It really is gorgeous. In the end I found myself plotting various schemes to stay longer, or to come back. Moni couldn’t be talked into spending Thanksgiving down that way, something sensible about money and inconvenient flight times, but I’d still give up a turkey for a few free days in this town, preferably while the humpback whales are still in town.
Which reminds me, whalefest did (oddly enough) include a chance to go on a whale-watching cruise. Grumbly me, wasn’t all that eager to get on a whale-watching boat. I get seasick easily and the last time I did that with my family in Hawaii, we barely saw a tail come up out of the water. This time was different, though, remarkably different!
So, yeah, that was cool!
My accommodations were at the old Sheldon Jackson College. The campus itself was beautiful. I wandered into the Sheldon Jackson Museum a couple times and found myself spending way more time in there than I originally planned. I also got to the totem park (otherwise known as the Sitka National Historic Park. I definitely needed more time in both those spots.
The conference itself was a fascinating mix of presentations on a diverse range of subjects. Oh yes, whales were the dominant theme, but speakers also addressed issues such as climate change, biology of other sea mammals, and sundry things-oceanic. The keynote speaker, Jacquelyn Gill, gave a wonderful talk on climate change and extinction, or rather persistence.
At some point I took a longish walk and found myself watching a sea otter playing in the harbor. It’s an oddly calming thing, just snapping amateurish pictures of an otter, waiting for him to do something interesting, like bring up another shellfish.
…just like the last one.
Damned cute, these little buggers!
It hasn’t escaped me that this is the Alaska that most people think of when I tell them I live in this state. They imagine trees and mountains, and moose, and bears, and all-manner of different forms of wildlife. My own experience of the state is very different, but that’s to be expected. Alaska is a whole buncha cool states.
Ah well, I really must get back to Sitka some time.
And to Whalefest!
Anyway, click to embiggen!
In Coming!
Tiny islands …er islets.
Lotta boatage
Swimming Off into the Sunset
Dining in Blue
Lunching away
Reaching up
Beware! When touristing, take care not to become the tourist attraction yourself. When staring at the otter, the otter stares back at you.
Odd Couple
The Prospector
Sheldon Jackson College
Yep, whales
Great collection of Alaska Native artifacts in there
The sunrise brought a couple sun-dogs with it this morning. By this morning, I actually mean almost noon, but the point is I went out with a camera to see if I could get some nice doggie pics. I wouldn’t say the picture does it justice, but anyway, here is what I got.
Cute little puppies, aren’t they?
Afterwards, I remembered that the ocean has been flirting with solid form lately, so after playing with the sun dogs I turned around and headed the other way for a block or two. Kinda slushy right now, but definitely not my flavor. I expect it will get properly solid soon. In the interim, my hand has suffered enough for my amateur camera games. I think I’ll stay inside and write a bit now.
Might as well add a few more pics from the last month or two. As always, you may click to embiggen.
Nuther pic of the Sun Puppies
The windows at NOAA make good picture frames, but all this sciency stuff gets in the way.
A barge and heavy equipment at dusk
Patterns of erasure
Little Junkmail stays inside when the northern lights are out. Smart Junkmail. She gets to keep her head!
Sun Puppies
Colorful dusk
A snow fence at sunrise
More northern lights
Just ocean. (I think this is an old one. I cheats!)
I’ve been back in the arctic for a little over a week now. I didn’t really expect to see ice along the coast at this time of the year. I’ve seen it before, but it’s a little surprising. Still, the coast has been littered with the remnants of the melting ice pack the entire time I’ve been here. Thought I’d share a few pics.
It’s odd, I suppose. Over the years, I find myself taking fewer pictures of Barrow. I keep thinking things like ‘that’s old’ and ‘my friends have already seen that’, but I suppose that’s the same thinking that left me with so few images to show for a decade in northern Arizona. Anyway, that’s one thing I like about about getting away. You come back home and remember what’s cool about it.
…in this case literally.
(Click to embiggen!)
Taking off!
Pretty sure that’s a sealion begging for a fish
Didn’t even notice the seagull till I got home.
Precipice
Precarious
Seats two
Just Ice
Like Styrofoam packing
Ice again
That small line of ice was moving kinda fast in the current
Just flew in yesterday from a trip to Minnesota. The plane usually approaches Barrow from the ocean-side, and this time of year that can be rather cool. I was seated in the aisle, so this could definitely have been better. Still, I think it’s kinda neat. I reckon the plane finally crosses over land at about the 1:06 mark. If you look closely, you can see shoreline. The Snow gets smoother.
Couple pics from the trip (click to embiggen):
Loring Park
A few minutes before landing
Loring Park, II (which I actually took first)
At the AIHEC Powwow (AIHEC stands for American Indian Higher Education Consortium)
This last December, I underwent a brief bout of Southyness. One of my favorite moments came when my gal took me to Newport Beach.
The thing about the beaches in California is you can actually swim in the water. I mean, I didn’t, but other people did and I saw it with my own two eyes. You can actually swim on those beaches. Right now, you can swim right in that water. Totally true story!
Right now, we can walk on our water.
No miracles necessary.
(Click to embiggen.)
I think Moni took the big orange shot of the beach with my phone while I zoned out with the camera. I must have snapped over a hundred pictures of that silhouette family. Presumably, they have full bodies in a different light scheme. The mother kept taking pictures of her child and I just kept taking pictures of her doing it. Hopefully, she doesn’t mind.
…and hopefully, she isn’t really a shade, because then I’d be in big trouble.
I’m busy flying about with a small cadre of students (got to catch up on some comments from earlier posts), but I thought I’d share a couple photos with a nice bit of contrast. Okay, so this many jelly-fish isn’t a common sight on our beach, but then again neither is my friend Lauri.
As I’m away from the North Slope at the moment, I find myself looking at photos and such. This afternoon, I am looking at pictures of pictures of the village of Wainwright. I have been there a couple times, in the late summers of 2011 and 2012.
Wainwright is located on the coast (of course). It has a population of a little over 500, but the first time I visited the place I could have sworn it was a ghost town. I literally couldn’t see anyone on the streets. I learned later that folks were probably out hunting, and in any event people began to show up on the streets that afternoon.
I always think it’s fun to just zoom out from these little maps one click at a time. If it doesn’t show, then hit refresh.
.
You may of course click on a pic to embiggen it.
Bush planes, you never know who or what will be in the next seat.
Wainwright from above.
Wainwright Street
Another Street Scne
Church
Old Boat
Driftwood in the rain.
I was looking for walruses, worried about bears, and this is what I actually found
Another Old Boat
Boats eye view
Old House
A Dew Liine defense station
Yep, that was my ride home.
Apparently, the school is a rug free zone.
Patriotic Dumpster
Edited Sign
Serpentine Dumpster
Dumpster Gotsa Tude!
Coast
Looking the other way up the coast.
Tundra from the flight in.
…and of course the flight out (not the best video, but it’s kinda neat to see the tundra from above).
The last couple weeks have been a bit of a blur, what with the end of the semester, several work-related projects, and plenty of random events.
The ocean has been unusually interesting this Spring. By ‘unusually interesting’ I mean ‘rather disturbing’. As mentioned in a previous post, the ice pack had shorn off rather early this year and very close to the shore. That isn’t entirely unheard of, but it is very unusual. It’s particularly problematic for the whaling crews as they hunt from the ice in the Spring. It didn’t take too long for the ice to flow back in and begin bonding with the shore-fast. It even piled up a bit at the meeting point, but the overall effect was a little thin. And by ‘thin’ I mean ‘dangerous’. I understand the ice was still fairly solid out North toward the point, but all-in-all folks seemed a little hesitant this year. As I left Barrow, the whaling crews had begun the hunt, and people were out on the ice.I can only hope they stay safe.
…and bring home the muktuk.
One day, I saw the most amazing ice-bow. It lasted only a minute or so, and I didn’t have my camera or my phone, …cause I suck. But I took my camera the next day when a sun halo came out, complete with a pair of perfect sun dogs. I caught those pics from the school van.
So, here I sit on the 14th floor of an apartment complex in Denver. I’ve finally slept off the jet lag, and I’m starting to think about stuff to do for the day. My head is still in Barrow, not the least of reasons being that I brought unfinished work with me. I miss my cats, but I’m waiting for someone wonderful.
Civilization is beginning to seep into my thick skull, and I’m taking in the new setting. I’ve seen more people in the last day than I have all winter. Plus a fly! I saw a fly. It flew right past me, as if to say; “yes Dan, we still exist.” I don’t miss bugs, really I don’t.
On the other, hand last night’s chicken satay was amazing.
Ice Build Up
Build-Up Close-Up
I seem to be really fascinated with this one.)
Ice and Open Water
Ocean
The Ice returneth!
More Ice
This was the ice a couple days before I left.
This slogan was big on the North Slope in the days of the Duck In
Sun Dog
Sun Dogs 2
Sun Dogs 3
The Sun at 10:30pm. By the end of this month, it will cease to set.
Barrow Graveyard
The place was messier than usual toward the end, but the kitties didn’t seem to mind