Uturn

My son's toes...

2007-11-23T14:01:00.002-08:00

...in the Arctic Ocean, June 2007, Tuk, Canada.
Following, in random -- mostly reverse -- order, 5 weeks of images and entries from our ethereal trip through the tundra and boreal and taiga forests of Alaska, the Yukon and the North West Territories... Grizzly, wolves, caribou, wildflowers and scenery and stones and much more from the moon and mars. Earth calling all of us.

Let there be clouds,

2007-07-28T12:52:00.001-07:00

All ends come to something good. After our 5 week Uturn, the Exit. We returned from "North" a week ago, and we have finally found time and a decent internet connection (Cheers to Ben at the flyingdisc cafe in Ebosburg!) with which to post the following shots of the last two weeks of our arctic roundabout, from Dawson City, Yukon (July 6th) to Anchorage, AK (July 22), via The Alaska Range (above). By 'exit', I suppose we're implying we haven't really stopped the journey, just changed roads. Anyhoo, our last two weeks 'up there', at the top of the Map, were totally loco, replete with a billion new sensations and sights and in-sights and not much sleep and we stayed as close to the Arctic circle as we could, on the Alaskan side, but time and money and especially a growing lack thereof slowly pushed us 'South' again, closer to the epicenter, to the vacuum of industrial life. At least we exited with a splash, salmon and killer whales included, a splash in the Pacific to be precise, off the Kenai Peninsula, after a week in or around Denali National Park. Forgive us, for the pictures below represent more of a cook's tour of our voyage than the usual shoot and rant postings of the initial legs of our exploration. We're tired, exhausted, basically so stuffed with beauty and info and meeting new people we ended up saturating, like a water-logged sponge. It's called sensory and intellectual overload. We need more time to process, to get smart again. The aging hard-drive is full and hungover - Back-up needed! According to Johnny, our Gwich'in friend from Eagle Plains, maybe we'll get back to you in about 40 years, when we finally have some wisdom to share. By then it will be Manny's turn. Until then: Peekaboo!

Permafrost,

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Hmm. What if DC or NYC were built on Permafrost? Dawson City, Yukon.

Women,

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The goldrush years. Dawson city, Yukon.

...and the double standard.

2007-07-28T12:50:00.001-07:00

Only village idiots

2007-07-28T12:49:00.001-07:00

...get their drivers license at the age of 41 and then spend the first month driving 4000 miles. If you can find a map, this is what we drove : Anchorage to Glenallen to Tok to Chicken to Dawson to Eagle Plains to Inuvik (To Tuktoyaktuk by plane), then back to Dawson, Chicken and Tok, then north to Delta Junction, south to Paxson, west to Denali, then south to Seward on the Kenai peninsula and finally back to Anchorage. Problem is, now we've got road fever and it wouldn't take much convincing to do it again. We won't because Manny needs gravity and to learn how to walk (we don't want to turn him into an RV potato - or like his dad, a (global) village idiot.)

July 7th we hop-scotched along the US/Canada border

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Without getting caught

We crossed it here, officially

2007-07-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

On the 'Top of the World' Highway

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An old dodge

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In the abandoned Outpost (read ghost town) of Boundary, AK.

Pink hills

2007-07-28T12:35:00.001-07:00

...don't mean you're drunk. Here they translate as resurrection. Read "successional", as in ecology, regeneration, life on earth - Fireweed! Or this, from Henry Miller: The weed is the Nemesis of human endeavour .... Of all the imaginary existences we attribute to plant, beast and star the weed leads the most satisfactory life of all. True, the weed produces no lilies, no battle ships, no Sermons on the Mount .... Eventually the weed gets the upper hand. ()It grows between, among other things. The lily is beautiful, the cabbage is provender, the poppy is maddening ___ but the weed is rank growth ...: it points a moral."

Fireweed

2007-07-28T12:33:00.002-07:00

What does it have in common with Corn, wheat and rice?

2007-07-28T12:33:00.001-07:00

It's an early successional plant, grows in the wake of disaster. If it were edible we'd be growing it all over the planet, as easily. Imagine the midwest this color, the heart of America would be pink. Ha!

July 8. Back in Chicken.

2007-07-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

Chicken RV camp grey water cesspool.

2007-07-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

Good for raising teal?

Arctic blue?

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...TBS

Aeshna species

2007-07-28T10:31:00.002-07:00

...found injured at a gas station in Tok (July 9th). Hit by RV. Calling Albert Schweitzer.

Young Bull Moose.

2007-07-28T10:31:00.001-07:00

Alcan Highway, between Tok and Delta Junction.

Still hanging with Mom?

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We slept here, in a river bed, between Tok and Delta, July 8th

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Most glacial rivers are braided, they never occupy the full bed, only small rivulets within, that are always changing course and reshaping the entire bed over time.

The world is a sandbox

2007-07-28T10:29:00.002-07:00

Delta Junction. End of the Alcan Highway.

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This was a special one for us, Manny's grandpa worked for Alcan!

Why we build stuff

2007-07-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

Ships, carriages, planes, rockets : the initial impetus is always to carry a canon. We are not alone; wolves, chimps, lions, hyenas will carry out deliberate, strategized AND lethal attacks on their own (one definition of warfare). To gain resources and reproductive rights. Etc.

Raven. Delta Agricultural Project. Mostly Barley and Yak.

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Manny got to pet some baby yak.

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Happiness on both sides of the fence. The yaks wagged their little yak tails, Manny drooled and said something like a-dat-gable-brrrrrrrr and then yanked on a yak's nostril and then clapped his hands.

White admiral

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Beginning of Alaska range. JUly 9th.

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Between Delta and Paxson. Richardson Highway.

Close-up.

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Glacier. Richardson Highway. Close to Paxson and Summit Lake.

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Mamma Moose...

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Trouvez l'orignal.

The Alaska Pipeline.

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The pipeline that changed Alaska. From the Lonely Planet guide:
"Alaska pays citizens between US$800.00-US$1900.00 a year just to live there. The subsidy comes from royalties the state earns from Prudhoe Bay oil, which is starting to dry up. At one point, the state wanted to cap the payouts from the Permanent Fund to help pay for everything from roads to schools. But in a special election, 80% of Alaskans said 'no way'."

Where the Salmon run

2007-07-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Where harlequins breed

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Sockeye!

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I had never seen salmon. So I thought about it. How many of us ever have?

Can I squeeze them?

2007-07-28T10:18:00.003-07:00

Now we're talkin.

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I live for these roads.

The road to Denali (July 10th)

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The susitna river

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Denali, aka MT McKinley.

2007-07-28T10:14:00.001-07:00

...turns out most Alaskaians use the Athabascan. We stayed in 'Denali' for 4 consecutive days. July 12, 13, 14 and 15. Two ways to see the park. Get on a tour bus for a 9 hour ride thru the north east section and suck it up because you're just another tourist (one of 415 k/yr to be accurate). Or get out and walk. We chose the bus - a campground was recently closed due to a pack of wolves surrounding a tent with a crying baby inside. Plus grizzly bears can smell babies, even silent ones. So we played it safe, Manny safe. To give you an idea of bear densities at Denali: we saw 25 in 4 days, on the same 45 mile stretch of road. I did get out of the bus for two short hikes, leaving family behind (the buses will drop you anywhere and pick you up on the return), one short hike up a mountain at Polychrome pass and one down a stream bed at Little Stony Creek. Once out of view of the road and the sound of heavy bus traffic (5000 bus rides/season) I finally realized where I was and both times I felt dizzy and cold. Earth dizzy and earth cold, like i was standing on the edge of the cosmos.

Home of Grizz

2007-07-28T10:13:00.003-07:00

Males here only reach the 400 mark on average. Coastal Grizzlies - or Alaskan Brown Bear - get much bigger, in the 1000 lb range, because of salmon. But these tundra bears, apart from the odd slab of scavenged meat, rely on roots, grass and soap-berries.

Cloud maker, from the North East.

2007-07-28T10:13:00.001-07:00

Worldview

2007-07-28T10:12:00.001-07:00

..or plate tectonics and ocean-bottom granite? You decide. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Polychrome pass, Denali NP, July11.

2007-07-28T10:11:00.001-07:00

In rhyolite we (t)rust

Real green

2007-07-28T10:01:00.003-07:00

Denali is mostly alpine tundra. Some boreal forest at the entrance, and some timberline taiga woods (a Denali tour guide joke, along with "if you see a bear, undress and then you'll be bare too"). I'm telling you, it's the great American drive-thru, infotainment wilderness.

The first 9 hour Tour bus ride.

2007-07-28T10:01:00.001-07:00

Manny was a sweetheart. No complaints (on his behalf).

We tried to escape this...

2007-07-28T10:00:00.001-07:00

But in ALaska there is none. The cruise industry is everywhere. Naively we thought that by staying north we could avoid the hustle of Skagway and Haines. But "they" caught up with us. Most boat tours include a trip up the Alaska railway and a day trip through Denali - where indeed we saw thousands of cruising retirees. Baby Boomers from the south, mostly (Kentucky, Tennessee, Carolinas). The cruise companies are currently pushing Congress to up the quota of 5000 buses a year, and to bring even more people to the park. We are all people, right?

Stuck in the middle...

2007-07-28T09:59:00.002-07:00

Baby boomers ! That would include me, on the tail end... The woman on my right, Marth, was from Kentucky and asked me what church i went to. The woman on my left kept singing David Bowie tunes, which made me feel a whole lot younger, of course, between rants on how predators like wolves and eagles should really stop eating chipmunks and turn vegetarian, just like her.

The only road thru Denali. Good.

2007-07-28T09:59:00.001-07:00

sort of steep

The great american drivethru, part 3

2007-07-28T09:58:00.003-07:00

Roadside Hare

Roadside hare eaten by roadside fox

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Roadside porkie

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Artic Ground Squirrel

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Dubbed the "BFC" - bottom of the food chain.

Parking lot Ptarmigan

2007-07-28T09:56:00.001-07:00

Gobey! In case you're looking for the dumbest animal sound on the planet, copy and paste the following url:
www.birdnote.org/uploadedFiles/Birdnote/2005/April/041305-WIPT-KPLU.mp3

Magpie looking for trouble

2007-07-28T09:55:00.001-07:00

...and a light (look closer, click to enlarge).

Look closer still

2007-07-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

tuk-tuuuuuuuu

Tuk-tu, on film. This is the barren ground caribou.

2007-07-28T09:40:00.001-07:00

Must be we've fallen in love with this animal

2007-07-28T09:39:00.003-07:00

Oh Grandma, what big teeth you have...

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Moose au chocolat

2007-07-28T09:38:00.001-07:00

White spots?

2007-07-28T09:36:00.003-07:00

Dall sheep, dude. Wolf grub.

2007-07-28T09:36:00.001-07:00

Also the reason Denali was initially created. To save the Dall sheep (they were being eaten by/for the construction of the Alaska railroad). It was later imagined that the wolf be eradicated too, to ensure the continuation of Ovis dalli - a project laid to waste by the ground breaking study of Adolf Murie, one of the world's first wildlife biologists to show how wolves actually 'invigorated' the sheep population by taking the week and the aging.

McWolf. She wouldnt let us by at first, trotting out to the middle of the road. Twice. She's known for doing it to most vehicles.

2007-07-27T14:30:00.001-07:00

The wolves of Denali

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More pchicken

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Rock collection, enlarged

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Yummy

2007-07-27T14:25:00.003-07:00

Learning how to fold a map

2007-07-27T14:25:00.001-07:00

Zapruder lives!!

2007-07-27T14:22:00.001-07:00

The antlers are deciduous. They grow up to 1/2 an inch a day in the summer.

Suspension

2007-07-27T14:21:00.001-07:00

Check out the hooves, hyper long for walking on spongy tundra vegetation. Thing is, when these caribou come out on to the river beds and gravel, they look like animals in drag.

Grrrrrrfalcon

2007-07-27T14:19:00.000-07:00

Zapruder, continued...

2007-07-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

These two 10 gram lbj's (Arctic Warbler above, Blackpoll Warbler below) meet in Alaskaian wood and scrubland to breed in the short arctic summer but migrate separate ways for the winter; the Blackpoll to the Amazon, the Arctic warbler to Asia. Thousands and thousands of miles away. Factoid: if we could drive that far on such little fuel (a layer of subcutaneous fat reserves in the case of these birds) we'd be getting 720 000 miles to the gallon.

Post zapruderism, reaches new heights.

2007-07-27T14:17:00.001-07:00

You thought you'd seen it all with the "Ivory Billed woodpecker" film. This here is a Wandering Tattler (the gray blob on the left hand willow bush). It's like my friend Andre Dhondt says, from the Cornell Lab of O, "it depends whether you believe in the evidence." Fans of the Enlightenment, take note.

Same tattler

2007-07-27T14:16:00.003-07:00

Upper left hand corner. A female guarding her chicks (which is why she's perched on the willow). She kept on flying up into the air, circling, to call/bark at me (as in alarm call), distract me 'away' from her family. I only spent a few minutes at this spot (little stony creek). I was sent there by some parkees, who knew of the nest. I didnt hang around too long. 1) I didn't want to disturb the bird, 2) I was soaking wet and cold and afraid (cosmically speaking) and 3) there was a sow grizzli with 2 cubs on a hillside less than one mile away. So I walked away, back to the road, and waited 30 minutes for a bus. More people die of Hypothermia here than from anything else, wolves or bear combined.

Context

2007-07-27T14:16:00.001-07:00

...this is the high tundra slope where i found the tattler. Animals exist within their relationship to the world around them, so now, when I think of tattler i think of this - and viceversA. Reminders: the Tattler breeds here, in this tenuous layer of the biosphere, then crosses the Pacific to winter under palm trees. Seeing arctic birds for the first time on their home turf has been an epiphany for us; having seen many of them in the tropics, where they winter, had already been a privilege. Short of shapeshifting, there's no greater intimacy (and grounds for empathy) than to getting this close to being (with) another animal. Ask a life-long hunter (or naturalist), let him tell you what it feels like to FEEL the life of your prey. Hey, at least my birder and hunting friends will know how thrilled I was to see the Wandering bloody tattler. It only took me three weeks of constant searching, from the Yukon south. Obsessive? Neurotic? Primitive? Suit yourself. We're closer to our ancestors than you think.

This blurry blob of fur is a PIKA !

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(member of the rabbit family)

Yikes, more flowers...

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Grass of Parnassus (Saxifragaceae)

Single delight

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Pyrolaceae _ Wintergreen family

Yellow marsh saxifrage

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Not sure

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looks like Star Gentian

Pink-flowered Wintergreen

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Cow Parsnip, head

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Denali, from the SE (Parks highway to Anchorage)

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Idem, with zoom

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People actually climb this Mtn.

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The first guy to "reach" the summit, in 1910 actually cheated by thousands of ft, then cropped his "summit" photo. Name: Frederick Cook. Says alot about why the male of the species conquers heights (apart from the usual and jaded and syrupy "oh, because it was there..." response). FYI, Hundreds have died trying to get to the top of the damn thing. I say we leave some Mts alone.

South!

2007-07-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

July 16th to July 22nd. We finally left the naked Tundra and higher latitudes behind us, above us, drove south (!) to Seward and the Kenai peninsula (via anchorage) where we spent 5 damp days on the rocky coast, in boats, tossed around by whopper waves, peering into glacier ice or the eyes of Whales and Sea otters; on walking paths too, in giant rainforests, under moss and lichen-smothered Sitka spruce and Pacific Hemlock, within the serrated enclaves of fog-laden fjords. Soggy!

Kenai...

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Switzerland on steroids.

Fjords carved out by millennia of frozen water

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10000 year old ice...

And water...

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Humidity from the Pacific ocean currents, it rises, condenses, then falls, cascading straight back down again, into the ocean. In coastal Alaska you measure yearly rainfall in feet.

The forests of coastal Kenai

2007-07-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Far north-western tip of the Pacific 'temperate' rainforest.

Kelp!

2007-07-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

Pacific ocean currents from Japan circulate the northern Pacific and sweep down the Alaskan and Canadian coasts from Kamchatka, bringing cold and oxygen-rich waters that fuel the richest marine community on the planet. Starting with plankton then giant kelp beds replete with arthropods and giant starfish and sea urchins, humongous salmon populations, seabirds, dolphins, porpoise, baleen whales, killer whales, sea otters, sea lions, seals. When converted to capital, it will disappear.

Where silver salmon run in rivers the color of larimar

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click to enlarge and see the salmon in the water behind me and Manny.

Killer whales

2007-07-27T12:23:00.001-07:00

3 populations, genetically distinct: Pelagic, transient, sedentary. The later, photographed here, are hyper social, they form family pods and superpods in the late summer and eat fish. The transient orcas feast on sealions (and whale tongue...they discard the rest). The pelagic killer whales represent more of a mystery, although they have been found with shark bites.

Stellar's sea lion

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Need a Q-tip, dude?

Intertidal gold

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Humpback

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Okay. So the whale doesn’t look that big. Sorry we couldn’t get in closer for a better shot, sorry we don’t have like, a propho 8 million millimeter lens . For the record, however: this humpback has lungs the size of a VW ladybug. Its tongue alone could barely squeeze into your bathroom and the calves are so yooge at birth that for the mom it would be like delivering a Cadillac. Both car metaphors are from Alaskaian biologists we met. The bathroom idea is French, from a nature writer buddy of mine, Yves paccalet, who used to write for Cousteau. Do I see a difference in culture, here?

Harding Ice field

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More than 30 glaciers grace the slopes of coastal Kenai, they join in the middle and together form the 1000 square mile Ice field known as Harding Ice field. There's enough ice in it to cover the state of Rhode Island. To imagine the area, think of a yooge angel cake with loads of icing. The ice field is the middle of the cake, its center filled with ice, so much so it's overflowing, over the cake and down the other side, where you are, looking up, at its edge. Bon appétit!

Name?

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Brown bear and salmon

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Inside of one of our highspeed state of the art whalewatching catamarans

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chug chug chug gas guzzle cough chug surf chug peak-oil chug

Time to chill out

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To see a glacier calve is to watch time slow down and happen to something other than your own face. Very peaceful. The crowds watch from the boats, waiting for giant chunks to fall. I thought about it; never in my life have I seen crowds waiting so anxiously and with such enthusiasm for something to fall.