Let it snow, Let it snow!

I've made it safely home despite a white knuckle drive from Los Anchorage after my two conferences and a brief bout of not-quite-the-flu. I was not too keen on the snow when driving home. It is always a little scary when you only know where the side of the road is when you drive over the rumble strip. It makes one thankful for rumble strips in a way that one normally is not. Perhaps it wasn't too good of an idea to listen to an audio book that involved a guy deciding to cut off his arm to escape from a canyon (Aaron Ralston). I was as relieved to skid into my drive as the Disreputables and my love were. I was wired for half the night on adrenaline.

Now however, big fat fluffy flakes and snow piled higher then my knees, slush rushing down the increasingly constricted river, and lots of white stuff just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I love snow. I really do. Ask anyone who went to undergrad with me where there was no snow. I love snow, I love winter. Tomorrow the skis are coming out!

Underway

I've been traveling this week - lots of conferences and meetings, 3 to be exact. Two days for the first meeting, a day of travel, 3 days for the next, a day of travel, weekend with friends, a day of travel, 2 days for the next one. Yippee! And the really expensive hotel where I stayed would only give me internet access if I paid $25/ hr and I balked. The picture above does not really related to my travel other then it was taken in another west coast temperate rainforest. The photo is from the Popular-Icy-Surfing-Town whereas I am farther south. It was -15F when I left home, winter by all accounts although we certainly don't have enough snow to show for it, and now I'm in fall again. Me and several crates of mice that were loaded onto the plane with me. I wonder what that was all about.

PS

It's time for a new header, don't you think ?

Pictoral Summary of My Summer

As I mentioned before I had a very busy summer. This tends to be the trend in all places where the summer is 3-4 months long but this one was even more so then usual. So, rather then bore you with too much verbage here is a pictoral summary with a little bit of clarification of the highlights.

Measuring vegetation monitoring plots.

I spent a week in Denali in the same house that Olaus Murrie lived in. What an amazing place to be - staying in the place where one of the greatest -oligists of this state and one of the first conservationists here lived. I was there to help train and to pick up my 3 person crew. (Just one of my crews this summer - last week the last seasonal left. Break!)

Rafted the glacially laden river that is very famous for it's salmon. It's Red (Coho) Salmon fetch the highest price on the Seattle market. This was a invasive weed survey and patrol.

Scary holes in the water. I will post more about fishwheels (I promise Rubberducky!) later but there were plenty of them on this river (our is) including some carcasses of wheels that had washed downstream. I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures this summer, when I found a minute, was to text my sister about the very famous, expensive red salmon "Five minutes from the river to grill - you should come visit". To which she invariably replied "u stink". My sister can always be relied on to know exactly what the price is that it is fetching on the market at any given time.

Watching glacier calving from the Million Dollar bridge (not to be confused with the bridge to no where although it may well fall into that category depending on your view) - it counts as movie entertainment up here. We were camping here at the end of our float and waiting for a pickup the next morning.

Brutal hikes to research caves and mines in July heat. It was hot! Don't let anyone ever tell you that it's always cold in Alaska.

I wonder if they built to code?

A massive 60,000 acre fire, lightning caused, in wilderness, dual agency response (i.e. disagreement of what needed to be done). Flying helicopters into the smoke, trying to lay plots ahead of where it will burn.

Didn't think these guys lived here either did you? Nope, nobody else did either.

Flying over the Malaspina, a small little ice field the size of Rhode Island. Climate change and whale and harbor seal / boat collisions.

Another lovely piece of ice that threatens an entire way of life every time it closes that gap. Last time the military (and the major) thought we should detonate a small nuclear bomb to clear up the problem.

The Disreputable Dog grows tusks! Nope, he just found some sheep horns on a backpacking trip and decided to bring them home as a souvenir.

Backpacking with my love, my parents, and the DDog. (You already heard this story so I won't belabor it)

Ice storm. It did this to our tent zippers too.

More cave work.

Fire severity.

The Disreputable Cat always ready to warm my lap at home.

The Engagement: the detailed version

Yay! for all of you with RSS feeds. My own is an appalling mess and I really need to go clean it out on of these days and re-set it so it more accurately reflects my reading interests. I haven't looked at it in over a year. Really.

So let's see, it seems that the story of the summer that interests you most is the story of my engagement. Some of you may have known that I was dating someone, sort of, in Alaska before I moved back. The guy was wonderful but it just wasn't working for me so sometime in March I decided to split with him. After being away for so long I felt I had lost whatever "it" that was there. I felt terrible about it but one cannot manufacture feelings where they are not. And I was busy with my job and my new/old co-workers (I had worked here seasonally before) and friends. One of these new/old co-workers kept insisting I go x-country skiing with her and another co-worker, someone completely new to me. And so we skied, weekend after weekend as the light came back to the northern skies. On weekend new/old co-worker (who needs another name) was away on a trip to Hawaii but new co-worker and I decided to keep skiing together. I thought he was cute, I liked him, but I was new and trying to focus on my new job and blew it off as me making things up. Then he wrote me the sweetest card asking me out on a date.

I have to say I was absolutely flabbergasted on our first date. There were flowers (all the way from Los Anchorage) and a homemade meal, candles, table cloths, and champagne. I think he even intended a post but I had been in Alaska too long - long enough to not know what to do with a man who is really and truly romantic. And bold. Did I mention he was bold? The funny thing is, that both of us moved here thinking, 'dating is going to be slim to none but I'm going'. I mean after all, the community we live in has about 250 people. We were so wrong about the dating. We had a great rest of the spring and a great summer despite our crazy hectic schedules. And it just felt right. I dunno, I never used to believe people when they said they just knew someone was the one but we did. We just knew it. Of course, he loves the Disreputables. Retrospectively, he knows wouldn't have had a chance if he didn't. His friends didn't believe him that he's met someone until he sent pictures of proof. They were sure he was making me up. Guys don't meet girls in Alaska, right? Everyone knows that.

This fall my love, my parents, and I went on a backpacking trip north of the arctic circle. It's something I've dreamed about with my dad since I was in high school and we had been planning it for some time. It was sort of the end of the field season, enough so that we could escape. We had this amazing backpacking trip for 6 days across the tundra. Then, sore and bedraggled we hauled ourselves to a hot springs just north of Fairbanks. Under the new lights of the stars and the moon - new to us as the darkness was just returning - as the mist of the hot springs wafted around us and my parents were long in bed, he proposed. It was very romantic. Of course I said yes. We've had three distinct reactions: my family) what? you know what month already? his family) what? you don't know the date already? our co-workers) what?! you are going to wait a year?! Because we have decided to get married near the fall equinox next year when the workload slows, the colors are gorgeous, and even those scared of winter can love Alaska.

Re-Emerging

It's past the autumn equinox and I'm long past due on the page. I've been thinking about coming back ever since the equinox as the craze of summer field work has faded but it's hard to know where to start. I've missed being here and sharing with you and although I've been sneak reading some of your blogs I haven't been commenting much. But where to start? Do I give you the blow by blow of a crazy summer? Or do I just start with now? With the two inches of fresh snow and the peach taffeta sunrise that occurs a good two hours after I've arrived at work? With the grouse that are strutting around the yard and the ice flowing down the Copper River? And my goodness, I never did fully explain the fishwheel, oh where did the summer go? And much has changed in my life since I was here last. I moved again (I know! but I think it will be a while until the next one) and I fell in love and got engaged to be married to a wonderful guy. The Disreputable Dog has fully recovered from his surgeries and acts like a young pup and has collected his allotment of fall moose leg bones and the Disreputable Cat has been on shrew patrol in our arctic entry ever since she caught one there a month ago. I wonder who of you are still checking to see if I post? I hope I haven't lost the lot of you. I am here now. Here for the winter. I promise.

Burning Daylight

It's June and the solstice is around the corner. The entire first week of June went by in the blink of an eye and now it's summer in Alaska. It's hot too. For those of you who still secretly harbor thoughts that it is always cold in Alaska I'll have you note that it was 85F (30C) all last week. The salmon have begun running and we are harvesting the first of our lettuce. This weekend I found a junco's nest in the grass and the mosquitoes got so bad that we were actually forced inside long enough to realize the power had been off for 6 hours. I got my fishwheel permit and we're on the neighbor's fishwheel so I expect a few 3am phone calls to clean a hundred fish or so. WE even did a little dipnetting but there was a rain on Friday and the fish were hanging loose in the water, gauging the new flow, and we didn't have any hits. There is so much I want to come and write about here, to share with all of you, and yet I never seem to make it here lately. There's just too much going on. We are burning daylight here - and like the metaphorical candle it is on both ends.

I'm headed to the most famous of Alaskan parks this week to pick up another crew of mine and to attend some of their training - they are part of a network effort so all of the training for several parks will be occurring there. I'm not looking forward to the 7 hour drive (starting as soon as I'm done here) but it should be an enjoyable week and I hope it will be cooler. Truth be told though, I think this park is rather over-rated and has too many visitors, I prefer my own (but then, I'm biased). But still, it should be fun and I will likely run into many people I know there from grad school and other jobs. If I'm really lucky I'll get out on a hike or a run there. But it's unlikely - that is, if you don't count field work. Thank goodness for fieldwork though! It's what makes all the lab and computer time worth it. Of course, it makes it hard to get around to reading all of you as regularly as I would like...