Blustry Day

As I drift towards a waking state I am first alerted to the noise of the wind howling outside my house, pebble sized pieces of snow and debris hitting the windows, the sound of a trash can doing cartwheels down the down the street, an odd chiming noise that comes from a loosened piece of metal roofing somewhere in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, as my rental house is not terribly well insulated (I know! I live in Alaska! What were they thinking?) I can also hear the sound of my electric box rattling as the wind moves through the walls and if it was light enough I would see my curtained doorway blowing gently. I'm just glad that the wind didn't blow the window open in the middle of the night as it has done in the past, cold air rushing into my cozy bedroom peace and me having to stumble into my layers and go outside and shove it closed while balanced on a ladder.

Believe it or not, this photo is in color - notice the wave smoke?

The husband of a friend told me once that if Alaska was a whale this town would be it's blow hole. I must say, the image works. The Disreputable Dog and I brave the weather (the Disreputable Cat is cheering us on from the window more then happy to not join) and seek refuge in the forest from the sandblasting caused by the airborne sand that was put on the roads to prevent us from slipping on the ice. The wind, at least 75mph this morning, is quickly polishing up the roads into a fine glare ice and solidifying the snow plowed medians that already stand taller then my head. It is not unusual to see cars driving on the wrong side of the street this time of the year because drivers cannot possibly get across the barriers of snow that are taller then their cars.


Layering is absolutely key to this kind of weather. I'm still trying to get back into judging exactly how cold it will be with the windchill after the summer. In Fairbanks I could look out at the thermostat and dress exactly for that temperature. Granted, it got very cold there, the occasional minus 60 was nothing to sneeze at, but this wind is harder for me to judge. The thermometer says we're just below freezing but with 75mph winds? Ever since they changed the way they measure wind chill a few years back I'm all confused. All I know is that it's cold and that the wind cuts through many otherwise warm layers and so everything must be topped with a wind proofing, even my hat. It is also very critical to make sure that the ears, ankles, and belly have no secret exposures at any layer and that the fingers and toes are appropriately covered. The ears, fingers, and toes are all susceptible to frostbite and with the ears you never know it until you come in and warm up.

The Spilling of Oil

Okay, I can't stand it anymore (DJ, I am getting to your tag - I promise!) but I have to write about these two ecological disasters occurring right now.

Photo from a UNIS Environmental Technology Photo Gallery

1. The oil spill in San Francisco Bay, USA. This spill was caused when the container ship the Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco Bay Bridge on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 causing 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil to dump into the bay. Some 2,000 birds have come into custody (either dead or alive) of the International Bird Research Rescue Center and their counter parts.

2. The oil spill in the Black Sea, Russia. First the oil tanker Volgoneft-139 was split in half by high seas outside the Kerch Strait spilling some 1.3 million tons of oil into the Azov and Black Seas. Second, the sinking of a dry cargo ship near the Port of Kavkaz that was carrying 2000 tons of sulfur. Because ships were being run on the ocean that are outfitted for rivers, ships broke apart in storms and who knows what kind of shape those ships were in. I've been on Russian ships, I can imagine it. Supposedly there were storm warnings but the company CEOs couldn't be bothered to change their plans. You know, who cares if a bunch of seamen die and oil spills during the height of the bird migration. Imagine it...300,000 birds reported dead by the end of the day. The International Fund for Animal Welfare is helping assist Russia assess the impacts.

Photo from the UK Telegraph

Both spills are killing and affecting wildlife. Birds are usually the first hit. Their feathers get oiled and they cease being waterproof. Then the birds get cold and wet and hungry. Sometimes animals eat the oil which then coats their intestines keeping them from getting energy from food or sometimes from swallowing. Next are the fish who get the oil as it sinks. They die because they can't breathe the stuff and it coats their gills. The algae is coated, the mollusks get clogged. In Russia now dolphins are washing up dead on the beach. The effects of these spills will affect these places for a long time to come.


There was a slow response in San Francisco but California has mobilized, they have set up Oiled Wildlife Care Networks, there are organizations trained in the cleanup effort, in Russia soldiers have been mobilized but while they attempt to clean up seamen, who are trying to cleanup the wrecks, are simply pumping fuel into the ocean. I dunno about you but this makes me angry. On Wall Street there are complaints about the rising costs of fuel but they're talking dollars. I'm concerned about the rising ecological costs of fuel. And in case any of you are wondering, the Exxon Valdez has still not paid off all the money it owes Alaskans for the damages to their livelihoods in 1989. In fact they're taking the state to court to try and avoid paying money that is about the equivalent of 5% of their quarter earnings. Yeah, that's right, they're willing to spend more money to fight us in court rather then do the responsible thing.

(Note: I am not quoting my sources because they would be too many but clearly this is not first hand information but from various news sources combined with some background info from my own participation in cleaning up 3 oil spills.)

Footprint Friday: Gray Wolf

Location: on a lake in northern Ontario, Canada. The forest around is decidious birch forest.

Approximate size of actual footprint (not the foot drag): 4x6inches (10x6 centimeters)

The snow is about human calf deep.

Can you guess who made these tracks?

Edited to add answer on the following Monday: Yep, this is the gray wolf or Canis lupis. Doesn't it look just like a daisy chain? Up a bit, and not in the photograph is where it caught a snowshoe hare. Wild canines, unlike their doemstic counterparts, usually travel in pretty straight lines. He, I'm thinking he because their hips are narrower then females whose back feet are usually just slightly wider then their front, was probably dragging his toes along the top of the snow causing the drag. This is common in snow but not in mud.

PS - I changed my header/ banner. What do you think?

Shoveling the Boat

Snow shushes beneath my feet as it falls through the grate of the dock ramp to the water below. Thick fat snowflakes quickly coat my eyelashes, wet and white. The Disreputable Dog has gotten used to this route now although, like me, he is probably still wondering how we got ourselves roped into shoveling this boat. I mean, we don't even shovel at the house with the exception of the two steps. The rest will get packed down by feet and if I must drive I've got 4-wheel drive and can usually get out eventually. Even when it snows 5 ft in one snowfall (which it hasn't yet this winter) I don't shovel. The calm snow globe world has disappeared and I can hear the crash of the waves whipped into a frenzy even here in the calm protection of the bay. It's not a good day to be on a boat, I think. The sky is flashing lightning, which I don't think I've ever seen here, but it's muted by the clouds and there is no thunder. The wind is pulling at my scarf and my hat and I am glad that there are no exposed places for it to suck the heat away from me.

Soon I am warm enough from shoveling the heavy snow off the boat. Ever notice that shovels seem to have in-built heaters? My dog lies happily in the snow with his head resting on the side of the dock keeping an eye out for sea lions and seals but none appear. He is shedding his summer coat for the winter one right now. He loses about a dog a day. This time of year no chickadees hop over to pull it out for their nests (which, amazingly, he tolerates) and when I take the boat brush to him he luxuriates in it. Finally we are done and we walk back along the abandoned tourist shops. I like the dock sides a lot more in the winter when I have them to myself. No busloads of tourists unloading, no hundreds of pounds of fish being photographed and filleted. These shops are cute but they don't sell anything a local would need and so they are all shut and shuttered for the winter. The mountains loom over the sail masts as the soft snow quickly fills our lone footprints across the boardwalk and we head home to hot apple cider.

Living in a Snow Globe

Bald Eagle on old pier posts

I love this weather. It's like living in a real snow globe. Fat, luscious snow flakes whirling around and falling so fast they coat your eyelashes and clothing in seconds, the sea a quiet slate of dark gray. Every grumpy or cranky thought I've had this week flies out of my head in this kind of weather. I'm going to have to shovel the neighbor's boat in the harbor tonight. It will be fun. The Disreputable Dog and I will take our evening walk there tonight. I love walking in this kind of weather too - every noise is muted like it's under a blanket. Every surface is softened. The smells seem muted to my nose too but I know they're not really because the Disreputable Dog is really enjoying all the smells dug up by the snow plows and I am enjoying seeing the animal tracks that he finds by smell and that I normally can't see. I love winter! And this last Sunday we got out for our first ski of the season! Yay!

The Disreputable Dog loves it too. Look at that smile!

In Holland

Preface: I traveled through Morocco with a dear friend I met ten years ago in Ghana, West Africa. When we lived there people constantly asked us, "Are you twins?" which at the time seemed laughable because she is a least a foot taller then I am and has bright red hair while mine is brown not to mention the fact that she is from the Netherlands and I from North America. However, I often wonder if the Ghanians didn't see something beyond the surface, something other then "all white people look alike", because although it's been seven years since we saw each other last and much has happened to both of us in that time, both good and bad, it was as if we had only seen each other moments before. After Morocco I had the luxury of being able to travel to her home in Holland and finally meet her husband and two children (who thought it was about time the met me). It's one of the most amazing connections that seems to persist no matter how outwardly different our lives might appear and I am grateful for it.

So here are some images from a wonderful visit with a dear friend which included such delights as bicycling everywhere, playing with her kids, going horse riding, eating luscious Dutch cheese, joking with her husband, having dinner with her mother, bird watching at a local park, walking through autumn leaves, going grocery shopping. We were both recovering from salmonella that we caught in Morocco (did I mention that?) so we were lazier then we otherwise might have been. At the end we both felt so strange saying goodbye because in so many ways it felt like I had always been there, sleeping in their attic.

Notable Smells: farmlands and manure, rain and water, fresh cheese, autumn leaves, rich chocolate and hot tea, line dried laundry

Notable Noises: small children playing in the streets, the sound of bicycle bells, migrating geese, crunching of leaves underfoot, the sound of children in the house, laughter

Look at all those bicycles!!! There was about a kilometer of them, this picture doesn't show the half of them. This is the bus/ train station. I don't think there are this many bikes in the entire US. I love watching the bicylicists during rush hour in Holland: men with their ties flying out behind them, women in fashionable skirts and boots, and teenagers in packs often with linked arms down the pathways.

A village street. Notice the bicycles (you wouldn't imagine that I'm in favor of bicycle commuting from reading this post would you?). Here we went into a delightful store that specialized in freshly roasted nuts. Yum!

Fall colors at a lakeside park.

At a bike trail crossroads...and the bike I borrowed from my "twin's" neighbor. I tell ya', they don't make bikes like this in the USA. This was the limousine of bicycles. I have recently been trying to get a pedal power operated light for my bike because it is cold enough here that batteries freeze up and then I end up with no light. The main response I seem to be getting is that it isn't available because after all they would slow you down! Well, this lovely bike comes with one built into the frame and it even has an automatic setting that turns it on when it gets dusky out. And it may be that it slows me down but you'd hardly notice unless you were in a race and that's not something I'm planning on doing any time soon. Ooo - and this has a cool built in lock that just goes around the back tire, no need for a bike rack. I want one!

My "twin" and her two children (faces obscured) using a common mode of transportation. When we went to pick up her oldest child (rear seat) at school I noticed that only two of the parents had driven to pick up their kids, the rest had either ridden bikes with similar child seating arrangements or walked. Notice too, the lack of helmets, the Dutch think Americans are absolutely hysterical over helmet safety.

Just boating through the neighborhood. Something that one can do most anywhere in Holland due to all of the canals.

Traditional thatch roofing on a farm house.

A picture of the village that my "twin" lives in.

Unusual Cultural Differences

It's not something that would usually come to one's attention but there you go. Historically, it would seem, that there was a cultural difference between how Moroccans and Scottish would deal with their political rivals and bring down monarchs. In Scotland it seems the story of anyone of historical political importance ended with "and they were beheaded in the year...". In Morocco beheading wasn't so much the thing, they perfered to poison them and the historical literature is full of tales of the various poisons used and the tricks of applying them.