Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

Digging on the mud flats for crabs Success- five Dungenss Crabs ready to cook Star fish A Sun Star Star fish on the beach Sea Cucumber A Horse Clam  When most people talk of going to the beach, there are visions of warm water, bikini clad beauties, sand, surf, wading in the water and swimming. I decided to join my family members the other night and we didn't experience any of the above. Instead we faced snow, wet boots, mud flats and exercise with clam rakes. On December 23 and 24 of this year, we were blessed with unusually high tides. As I've mentioned on this blog before, really high tides create really low tides about six hours later. It seems that the lowest tides are usually in the evening, as was the case the other day. Both nights experienced a minus 4 foot tide. When that happens, all the areas that would usually be covered by water are exposed, and it's the prime time for going beach combing, looking for clams, cockles, or Dungen...

    Years ago, after I had grown up and gone, my parents moved to Florida. Dad loved the warmer weather, and unlike Ohio at the time, there was a building boom going on. In addition, my brother and his family lived there. It was a win-win situation. For reasons I'm not sure of, my folks ended up taking over the care of my brother's dachshund. Perhaps my brother felt that they needed a dog in their lives, so he gave up ownership of his dog Oscar. Oscar Meyer, which was a fitting name since he was a wiener dog. Like many animals, dogs like a routine. At a given time every night, Oscar wanted to go to bed. I"m not sure why, but my folks kept his bed in a coat closet. What was even more bizarre was the Oscar insisted on being wrapped up tight in his blanket. When it was time to go to bed, my Mom would say "OK Oscar- go get your "blang". So he dutifully grabbed his blanket, and they wrapped him up tight and laid  him in his bed and there he...

When I was a kid, winter was always a challenge for me. I didn't like cold weather, and Ohio in the winter was quite cold and frequently snowy. Like any kid, I wanted to be out with my friends though, throwing snow balls, sledding, building snow forts and whatnot. There was one closet downstairs for the whole family to share, and into that closet was crammed as many coats, hats, snow suits, gloves and mittens as possible. Every year for Christmas I was given a pair of gloves. By December 26th I had usually managed to lose at least one. No matter how diligently I searched the closet floor or shelf, I could never come up with a glove to match it's mate. On more than a few occasions I went out with mis-matched gloves. I don't recall now, but I may have had to settle for a glove on one hand and a sock on the other. Socks were notorious for getting lost too. Gloves and socks are probably part of the same genus- Clothingus Disappearus. Well, obviously I'm not a little ki...

       It's hard to imagine when looking at these tranquil pictures, that a very different scenario was playing out some 546 miles away. Anchorage of course was hit with a pretty strong earthquake several days ago- a 7.0 . My daughter, Autumn called that morning shortly after it happened, around 8;30 in the morning. She was working in a cafe in Palmer when it started and mentioned that things were falling off the walls and something fell down and hit a glass table top which shattered. Everyone rushed out into the streets and hoped for the best. Back in 1964 a magnitude 9.2 quake hit Anchorage with the loss of over 130 lives. I heard that the ground dropped over eight feet in places during that one.  When I spoke to Autumn, she was still pretty shaken up, and rightfully so. You never know if that's the worst of it or if there is more to come. Unfortunately there are aftershocks that can go on for some time. The USGS mentioned that in t...