On One Hand...

ON ONE HAND... living in Alaska in the spring is awful. The snow banks, epically high after seven months of build-up,  still line the roads but instead of being beautiful and white, they are brown with mud and sand. If you look closer, the melting snow reveals months of litter and decomposing detritus, ripe in the new-found sun. And the dog poop. Alaska has a lot of dogs, and of course no one bothers to scoop when it's 30 below and dark on your daily walks... Getting down to our beach is like running a gauntlet of soft piles in various stages of decay. Our shoes and boots all live outside our front door and heaven forbid you forget and accidentally walk into the house with your treads thick... 

Dismal.

And Ice Cream Newton. A single sad wiper smear on the windshield is the only transparent glass on his whole body. The rest of him is covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt, kicked up from the unpaved roads. Every gas station squeegee is ripped to shreds and the buckets of wiper fluid are all dry; the attendants don't bother to fill them anymore. 

Ice Cream Newton's backside.

Mind you, Ice Cream Newton's glass is more than just dirty, it's shattered in that eerie windshieldy way. Rocks kicked up and thrown over the winter took their toll and, like just about every other car in town, Ice Cream was riddled. No one bothers to get them fixed yet; another day, another bulls-eye.

Another bulls-eye.

ON THE OTHER HAND... living in Alaska in the spring is amazing. Sunset is already past 10 o'clock PM and continuing to get later. Beluga whales are expected to swim past our house any day and chase salmon up the Kenai river. The caribou herds (think reindeer) should be returning to the marsh soon as well. Green grass is poking through last year's freeze-dried fare, and it's not long before the wildflowers will begin their colorful painting of the hills and roadsides. One of our neighborhood moose just sprouted his antlers, and the eagles seem to be fortifying their nests in anticipation of viable eggs. Outside of town, the first bears have been sighted emerging from their dens with newborn cubs in tow. As for human action, J has traded in his ski-commute for his trike-commute and Indigo has been out Skut-biking to the neighborhood playground. And her preschool just sent home the much-anticipated announcement: No need for snow pants for the rest of the year! I've been perfecting my slightly-illicit light tower climbing when out on my beach runs (you have to jump for the first rungs of the ladder and pull yourself up to climb to the platform... makes me feel like I'm on a reality survival show and I'm winning - very satisfying) and the view is outrageous. School gets out in May so as teachers and learners, summer vacation is just around the corner. And Indigo and I just put the finishing touches on our May baskets in preparation for secretly running about, knocking on friends' doors tomorrow... not too shabby, as long as we can avoid the dog poop!

Flowers, ribbons, and homemade cookies - but from who?

Happy May Day!

Breaking Up

BREAKING UP. Lest any of you begin to truly worry that the strength of our marriage is in question, fear not. After a combined total of fifteen years dating, being married and having a kiddo, our life-buddy status remains both solid and loving. Phew.

The same can not be said for the rivers of Alaska. Spring Break Up has begun.

Break up beneath the Kenai Bridge.

In case the picture is not all-telling, Spring Break Up is when the frozen rivers thaw enough to begin moving at their surface again. The importance of this for Alaskan communities is huge. There are negatives, like flooding and accidents, but epic positives as well. Along with the chunks of ice comes forest debris washed down and out... millions of cords of wood charging down from Alaska's mountains and out toward the sea. As John McPhee points out in his amazing tribute to this great state, some coastal villages farther north in the tundra have no trees in their surrounding area and the break up brings them their only wood with which to build and use for fuel. These are native people that for ten thousand years received the mysterious gift of wood floating down the big rivers, without ever having seen a single tree standing and growing from the ground. Wow.


THE GAMBLER. "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em..." Know when the ice will break, know when it'll run... Yes, there is a lot of betting going on right now. Alaskans living in towns farther up rivers have town betting pools on when the ice will start moving. They set up big tripods on the ice with wires attached to a clock on the shore. When the ice moves enough to tighten the wire, the clock is tripped and the exact time recorded. Winning guesses (date and time) have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars! For you science geeks out there, here is a link to a Stanford University article about the important data about climate change hidden in the betting records of this Alaskan tradition:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2001/october31/alaskabet-1031.html

POST BREAKUP. Beyond floating wood and lucky bets, Break Up also signifies the true end to winter and a quick transition from snowy ground to lush greenery. So now that Spring has sprung, at least a little, Team Leslie has begun our glorious trip planning for Spring and Summer. Words like kayak, halibut, wildflowers, float plane and SUN are replacing words like cold and snow, and our calendar is happily filling with wonderful Alaska Adventures with friends and family.

What follows is an email quote from a local friend regarding a Spring ski trip J has planned in the coming weeks. I thought it was just so very Alaska Adventure, I had to include it:

"He thought we would still likely encounter snow bridges that we would have to climb over if we were pack rafting. He said bears dont usually show up on the marsh grass till about the 20th of May, but he has encountered newly emerging bears in West Glacier creek around that time we will be there and said they were not happy. he recommended we take a gun.  He will be clam digging in chilitna bay on the 27th of april and will give us a snow report then with some pictures. He recommended we pick up with a boat or plane from Wayne's cabin which is the first one on the north shore on the spit closest to West Glacier Creek. He said Wayne died last year and no one is living there now."

Snow bridges, rafting, bears, guns, clam digging, boats, planes, dead-guy cabins? Bring it on!

The Princess Bride

FIRE SWAMP. I recently convinced Indigo to watch the classic 80's movie, The Princess Bride. Remember that one? Fred Savage from Wonder Years fame is home sick from school and is visited by his grandfather, Peter Falk, who reads him the story of Buttercup and Westley, finding "Twoo Wuv." Anyway, in one of the many excellent scenes, Buttercup and Westley enter the fire swamp and are accosted by flame spurts, lightening sand, and an R.O.U.S. (Rodent Of Unusual Size... if you haven't seen this movie, clearly this should inspire you). It is to the lightening sand that I wish to draw your attention...

I'm sure a geologist could explain the combined features of grain size, relative density, compaction, erosion, tidal flow, freeze/thaw cycles and seasonal runoff, but the bottom line is this:

Kenai's beach has lightening sand!

http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org

Risking the lightening sand holes for the sake of the hunt... I spy four eggs.

We discovered this newest Alaskan danger through an unfortunate series of incidents during which our shoes were almost sucked off, our ankles were twisted, and our hearts leapt into our throats, all while trying to jog on the beach. Like the lightening sand, a tiny bit of pressure on top of a weak point along the beach and you begin to sink, quickly. By near-life-saving necessity, our beach runs now include some serious strategy like following others' successful tracks and leaping from stable rock to stable rock. Hopefully this is just a spring thing... Some unplanned sand... A little bit weaker under my sneaker...

Vizzini: "No more rhymes now, I mean it."

Fezzik: "Anybody want a peanut?"