Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

Ah, another beautiful day in sunny, Southeast Alaska. For the third day in a row we've had the most delightful, bright sunny days; absolutely glorious. The only drawback to the sunny days are the cold, clear nights. Whatever moisture is in the air settles on everything during the night and by morning frost has turned the landscape into a white wonderland. A frosted landscape, unlike Frosted Flakes, is a delight to observe, and, it's not fattening. Apparently there wasn't a breath of wind the other night, so the little bay behind the Icy Straits Lodge as well as a few other spots had a pretty good coating of ice on them. I think the fresh water freezes on top of the salt water when it gets really cold and there isn't much tidal or wind action. The ice can get surprizingly thick too. Years ago when I was still living on the farm, I decided to take my fourteen foot fiberglass skiff back into the bay where the Whitestone Logging Camp was located. It was February and we wer...

It's hard to imagine that it's January 27 already. It's even harder to imagine that the weather on the East Coast is so much worse than what we are experiencing in Alaska at the moment. As you can see from these pictures, the snow is pretty well melted down by the water. Outside of some rotting piles along the streets , most of the snow I see here is confined to the mountains. Just the way I like it. I don't want to gloat though- it could all change in a heartbeat and we could be shoveling mountains of it for the last half of the winter. I hope not. I know that there are a few former Hoonah residents who follow this blog and it's been awhile since they've been here, so I thought I'd let them see our new ferry terminal. Its a pretty fancy affair, with a covered walkway, fenced in staging area and a huge parking lot. I don't know why we needed something so big. I guess the powers that be figured we'd be needing it some time in the future. It's a f...

I'm sure anyone browsing the web, hoping to come across some pictures of Alaska would be sorely dissapointed if they came across this blog post. After all, what does a toilet have to do with Alaska? Well, obviously, we do have toilets here- at least in this part of the state. Up north in some of the more remote villages they still don't have the pleasure of indoor plumbing so they resort to five gallon buckets. When I was on the farm we used outhouses or camp toilets if we were inside for the night and the urge hit. It made for some interesting stories. Everyone who lived there for any length of time had a story or two about the potty. I don't know what is so funny about toilet humor- I guess it's something we can all relate to. I was speaking to my daughter Camille the other day. She was talking to me from inside her bathroom. My grandson is in the process of being potty trained, which, anyone who has ever had kids knows, is quite a big deal. Like many kids, he at fir...

As I have mentioned before, in an effort to reduce my feelings of guilt for staying home while my lovely wife is working, I've accepted the challenge of cooking at least some of the evening meals. Frankly, I'm a pretty good cook. I can't take all the credit though. When I was working at the school I had to work with one of the students in a home economics class. To be quite honest, I assumed it would be as much fun as watching paint dry. However, I was wrong. Today I'm putting to use many of the skills I learned in class. Last week I made a knockout Mexican quiche. The next day I baked a pumpkin pie. I made my own crust for both dishes- something I learned in home-ec. Tonight I lit the grill and cooked Alaskan halibut with a green chile blanket. To be honest- it was delightful. Thank you Mrs Maples, wherever you are. You were a great teacher. Yesterday afternoon I whipped up a pot of venison chile. The remnants in the bowl is all that's left of that whole big pot. T...

Living in Alaska provides me with opportunities to view wildlife that most people will never get a chance to see. I frequently spot Sitka Blacktail Deer or Brown Bears when I'm out on the boat. Over on the mainland when I'm fishing at Homeshore or Excursion Inlet I've seen several Black Bears and once I saw a moose on the beach. I've come across rafts of Sea Otters with forty or more bunched together at Idaho Inlet and it's not at all uncommon to spot multitudes of Humpback Whales in the tide rips of Point Adolphus. All of these animals congregate in these areas because a ready food source. This past summer a number of the local fishermen were complaining about the number of fish they had lost to sealions. One fellow said he had lost twenty cohos to them in one day. It's a devistating loss. The sealions have a habit of getting behind a boat and following it and as soon as a fish bites they dive and pull it off the line, frequently taking expensive gear with the...

Mamma-mia it's cold outside. I about froze my little patootie off just walking the two blocks from my house to SpudCreek. The temperature is in the single digits right now, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't blowing a fairly stiff Easterly breeze. The radio said it was supposed to blow sixty in Juneau tonight with a wind chill of minus forty-five. I know I'm living in Alaska, but it's really hard to stay warm with those kind of temps. I guess I shouldn't complain. It sounds like the whole lower forty-eight is being pounded by Old Man Winter this year. I wanted to contrast the picture from the Fourth of July with the one I took today. I don't know how cold it has to get to freeze running water, but apparently it's that cold here now. I had to do the old Chinese lady shuffle to keep upright on the street today. That's when you have to slide your feet just a few inches at a time to make forward progress. If you try to walk normally you'll end up...

When the kids were visiting over the Christmas break, Autumn said she wanted to go out and get pictures. We had one day when the sun came out and it just so happened to be at a time when I could go out, so we ran up to a spot that overlooks Port Frederick and back towards the old Whitestone logging camp. The last picture shows the downtown float and cold storage. When we first arrived in Hoonah the cold storage dock was half rotten and dangerous to walk up and down at low tide. A number of boats used to tie up to it, sometimes six or eight moored along side each other. It could be a real pain if you were the one tied to the dock and wanted to get out . That was long before the boat harbor was in existence. The breakwater is attatched to Graveyard Island. I believe the NOAA charts lists it as Pitt Island. Today it was once again used as a burial place. Karl Greenwald was laid to rest there. He used to commercial fish with his brother on a seine boat years ago. I had the pleasure of doi...

Finally....my pictures downloaded for this blog. I've been trying since last night.Perhaps we could have a little rendition of the Hallelujah chorus from Handle's Messiah play in the backround . I was mistakenly thinking that having a satellite Internet provider would solve all my computer problems. How naive! The holidays are over again for another year and everyone has left the nest and gone back to their own lives. The boys caught the ferry last Friday- Brian went back to Juneau and Ben returned to North Carolina for some more intense training. Autumn left today. Things will go back to normal now I guess, whatever that is. No doubt it will be much quieter around here. For whatever reason the kids seem to think that visiting here requires staying up into the wee hours of the morning and sleeping in until the afternoon. I can't really complain too much since they spend so much time at Jen's house talking and laughing and carrying on. Our place is mainly for grabbing ...