Alaska!

One small note...I've added my own name & e-mail to this blog, just to make it easier for folks to see who's writing. I think it'll be useful even for Kate and me, in years ahead, if we decide to take a look back at all the things we were writing so intently about earlier on in our marriage.

Right now I'm typing away in the small house owned by TerraSond on the East Cooper loop, more or less stranded here by lack of a car. TerraSond keeps this house as a dormitory for the transient workers--whether short-term hires, or folks imported from another office farther south for a specific project--and while free lodging is great, there are eight of us here right now, with anywhere from one to two company vehicles we can share. So if I want to do something simple like drive 10 miles down the road to Wasilla (yes, that Wasilla) and its great bookstore & coffee shop Pandemonium, with the astounding view and the carved salmon out front, I often can't. I'm a big fan of coffee shops--

they've sometimes helped determine my choice of where to live--so when I find a good one, I quickly become a regular. The kids at Pandemonium are already used to bringing me my double espresso.

But I'm not here to sit in coffee shops and sip beverages. I'm here to survey and make maps, either of the sea floor or the subsurface. TerraSond mostly does bathymetric mapping, the type of work you'll see in NOAA coastal charts for boating and shipping, but they also do land surveying and other types of submarine remote sensing. I like the company, and the work, and I am quickly learning to love the environment out here. Transferring my entire life to the icy northwest was something I'd never imagined doing, and now the prospect of doing just that gives me a bit of pause.

Katie, of course, is up for the challenge. Sub-freezing temperatures, twenty-hour nights, and living cut off by everything except phone and internet devices like this blog, is all outweighed by being together. I think she's felt the absence more acutely than I have, since I'm learning a new place and a new job, surrounded by new people--all the things you'd expect about being in a new place. Now working the upper cook Inlet near Anchorage isn't quite like hitting the high seas, but being on the water, surrounded by the Chugach and Kenai mountains to the south and west, and the distant, snowy Alaska Range to the north, is pretty impressive itself. I don't need to make lots of touristy visits on the weekends, when my workdays include views like that (and especially when I have no car of my own)! I do want to head to Glacier Bay for a few days at some point, and I'd love to spend some time around Denali. But I've heard so much about the bears around here that it gives me pause.

It depends on whom you ask, what methods you'll hear are best to deal with bears. The one point of agreement: make noise. A bad bear is a startled bear, so you want to give them plenty of warning, before they see you, that you're coming. I'm picturing a sort of hip gong, getting an aluminum saucepan and dangling a few cowbells on it, and hanging the whole shebang from my belt, to make a right nice clatter as I walk. But if one charges...Marta, the hydrographic survey chief and a decidedly crunchy person, advocates bear spray as better than guns. It's mace for bears, makes them miserable, and drives them off. (Though the scent later is an attractant for bears not sprayed in the face, I guess.) Another of the non-gun crew told me that it's all about dealing with the charge. Since most bear charges are bluffs, to make you run, you never run (you don't run from a charging dog either, since it makes you more vulnerable, so I can believe that). Instead, you stand your ground. If the bear doesn't break off its charge, what you do next depends on the species.

If it's a black bear, punch it in the nose. Since black bears are scavengers, and don't like to fight, you want to beat the crap out of it. So you just pound away at its face until it gives up and leaves. If it's a brown bear--and there's no separate species of grizzlies, they're just big brown bears--then you don't want to fight. Brown bears are fighters, so you don't want to try. That's the time to play dead. Since they don't like to eat things that are already dead, they'll probably just leave you alone and move on.

Now, I put about as much stock in that advice as you probably did right now reading it. Ask the guy at the gun counter of an outdoor sporting goods store, and he'll say that if you spray a bear with the Mace, the bear will lick it and keep on coming. And even if a brown bear is dumb enough to fall for the lying-down-like-you're-dead routine, he'll at least give you a couple of trial bites first. And the counter guy really won't have much of an idea on how you'd actually fight a black bear. No, the guy at the counter will tell you a gun's the way to go.

Shotguns work well, and they're cheaper than the others. Rifles cost a little more, and have the advantage of power, but they're a bit more cumbersome. Pistols can be very effective, but there are some problems. First, they're more than three times as expensive. A basic, light .357 magnum will cost you about a grand. (And they have a big kick. You need to hold it with both hands when you fire.) Plus, it takes more practice to aim a smaller gun. And, you need to buy one of the big-bore--a magnum. (Actually, the Indy lover in me doesn't mind the thought of carrying a piece. "After all, Marcus...you know what a careful fellow I am.")

So much for the bears.

Alaska is the land of mountains. The entire southern coast is a knotted mass of them, raised by the collisions of North America with small continents, and now the Pacific Ocean. I've yet to go far from Anchorage or the Cook Inlet, the most populated part of the state, and decidedly more temperate than the interior. (I'm looking forward to a winter average temp. of 25 F or so, as opposed to 0.) When I first touched down in Anchorage, it took me a while to find a cab, but by 9:30 I was safely en route to Palmer, and it was bright as day. (This was July 26.) The cab driver and I chatted on the drive up, and she pointed out the purple fireweed, in full bloom, and a sign that summer would soon be over--kind of Alaska's version of the cicada. As we passed one of ther bars, I was amazed that they were so full so early in the evening--and then I remembered that it was 10:30. By midnight the sky was still light, and I could walk outside and see clearly. I slept horribly that first night, maybe only an hour or two, and I was wide awake again by about 4:30. It was just too bright to sleep. I figured that one bad night, with its resulting fatigue, would let me sleep better the second night and on--and so it proved. It's still easy to stay up pretty late, but now, by mid-August, it gets legitimately dark by 11 PM.

I'm skipping stories about the jobs and the people, and I'll fill in some gaps as I go along. But there are two big impressions I want to describe right now. First, the mountains. They're on every side except the ocean, and they're steep, rocky, jagged and awesome. We're close enough to the ocean that lots of moisture-laden air comes wafting up the valley, and when it hits the mountains here and rises, the clouds form. So there are caps of clouds sitting on the peaks, and strands of mist floating along the slopes and over the ridges. The same mountain has so many outfits of cloud, shadow and sunlight, that it puts a woman to shame. I've missed a few opportunities for great photos out here, including the 747 taking off right over our boat (I hit the "off" switch instead of the zoom), and the Chugach ridge the other night from my Pandemonium office: lower part in shadow, the middle sheathed in clouds, the upper half with its peaks bathed in the orange light of sunset. They're an ongoing revelation of beauty.
Second is the change in the seasons. Night is growing noticeably, from nonexistent in July, to about six hours now. It grows quickly, and the weather is changing too. I arrived at the start of high summer: upper 60's and low 70's, mostly rainless, no more bugs. Monday morning, in Anchorage, I felt a crisp touch in the air, and for the first time, left my jacket on as we headed out on the water. Tuesday it was more humid and somewhat cool--my fingernails were slightly purple (no big deal but a sign that it's not warm). It's still shirt-and-pants weather, but the clouds sit lower on the mountains, rain is increasingly common, and the nights are dipping into the upper 40's. Summer lasted a little less than three weeks, and we're now moving quickly through autumn. I'm not sure when the birch leaves will turn, but judging by the weather and the daylight, it won't take long.

I do have a slightly ominous feeling about it, though that's largely assuaged by thoughts that Katie and little EJ might be joining me in the darkest part of the year. Without my local Red Sox cable channel and the video recorder I use to save my cartoons, I've gotten more efficient with my time, but that makes consolation, love and companionship all the more important. I don't love being back in dormitory-type conditions, especially when I have so few options outside of the house. The local library closes at 6 PM, Palmer's coffee shop Vagabond Blues (itself a great little place, and only a 5-min. walk away) closes at 8 PM, and only the bars are left. And that's a great choice for a clean, quiet, well-lit spot where I can geek it up for a few hours and not be disturbed. Sure.

So it will be good to have a home here--an overdue comfort, for both Kate and me.