Fly Away with Me

Never mind that it's -30 outside my door right now and almost Christmas.  I'm stepping out of season and a little summer color never hurt anyone anyhow.  (Taken at Pacific Science Center, Seattle, last week)

Snoqualmie Falls

Hankering for something to do in the afternoon and not wanting to be in a city, I hopped in the car and drove out to Snoqualmie Falls.  I'd been told that with the recent down-pour of rain in the area along with melting snow the waterworks should be phenomenal.

The thundering sound of water crashing 268' down into the basin could be heard long before walking into view of the falls themselves.  The wind driven spray drenched the observation decks with a fine mist.  Now and again the winds would shift and allow brief mist-free moments for onlookers to take photos then quickly stash their cameras into pockets or under jackets when the winds shifted yet again.

Signs posted in the area said "Trail closed until 2013".  Asking around I found out the trail goes down to the river and another observation deck and along the way you can look through the windows of the powerhouse to see turbines generating hydroelectric power.  There was a lot of construction equipment making upgrades to the hydroelectric production both at the top of the falls as well as past the observation decks.  (Normally I read the tourist info signs, however, this time did not.  Just enjoyed the Falls. Therefore, the link about the hydroelectric project is provided.  I hold no view on PSE or this project.)

On queue

On winter's Arctic stage, the moon gets the lead role.  The sun makes only brief appearances, sporting the most brilliant of wardrobes.  Perhaps the moon's attire is less colorful but it accessorizes with a few strategically placed jewels to sparkle and glint and grab some attention.

Not yet wanting to take center stage early this morning the moon hovered along the mountaintops.  It was barely luminous, veiled in a cloud the color of smokey amber.   Jupiter, however, was raring to go and hung above taunting Luna to come out and play.   In little over ten minutes, the horizon was smudged with shades of persimmon melting up into the cerulean blue atmosphere as night was soon to be pushed away by day.  The Sun was awake, about to make its grand entrance.  As if on queue,  Luna sprung to life and less than ten minutes later the above scene took place.  Making her own way across the sky, the moon appeared as a brightly glowing pendant hanging by an invisible thread from a sparkling jewel in the sky.  A red carpet just won't do when you're as beautiful as the moon and stars alighting upon the rich blue of a passing night.

The fire's out

Fireweed beginning to bloom.

Fireweed going to seed.

No wonder it's so prolific.  There are 80,000 seeds per plant!

  

Fireweed.  The metamorphosis from spring to autumn is cool to see.  It doesn't just bloom then shrivel up, turn brown, wilt and die.  It puts on quite a show as if to say "look what I can do".   

These three foot to four foot tall plants carpet entire fields and hillsides in Alaska, especially in fire ravaged or clear-cut areas where they're one of the first plants to take up residence.  The stems and leaves shoot out about six inches from the stalk.  Each of those stems is tipped by a four-petal magenta flower; they blossom from the bottom of the plant to the top.    

It morphs into an entirely different looking plant when fall arrives.  Those stick straight stems become curly Q spirals covered in white fluffiness that from a distance look like cotton candy.   Walk up closer though and you'll find the tiniest brown flecks of seeds interspersed in there.  How many seeds?  I wondered.  80,000 seeds per plant!  Impressive.  Those seeds apparently live in the soil seed bank for years.  When a new fire or soil disturbance occurs to open up the ground to light again, the seeds germinate and POOF fireweed abounds once more.  They also spread by root and quite often one plant becomes a large patch.


They, yes the same "they" whose names we never know, say fireweed is a good way to gauge the onset of winter.  The closer to the top of the stalk the flowers bloom then the closer we are to winter.  I've never remembered to check the correlation from year to year to test the theory.

So there you have it. Information you will never need.  I can't help it.  The little things in nature amaze me.  Oh heck all of nature is downright amazing.  And now....on to six months of winter.

Wordless Wednesday -- Pick a color, any color

Denali (aka Mt McKinley)

Fairbanks, Alaska

White River area in western Washington

Wordless Wednesday -- My, what big teeth you have!

Just in Case

Salad bar

Yum, harvest time!  We'll just help ourselves, thanks.

Let me tamp this dirt down for you a bit.

Oooh, dessert too?!  Berries-on-a-stick, my fave!

Lady, if you're expecting tip or payment, kiss this.

Wordless Wednesday -- If they could talk, the stories they'd tell

6-E-21

Riding past the monuments and museums on a double-decker bus we saw the sights of DC.  Every place we went was packed with people from all walks of life from around the globe.  There was constant chatter, narrators, cameras, groups wearing like-colored shirts.  It was duly noted that the National Mall falls under the National Parks which explains why it's all so clean, neat and kept up.  It's good to see that the most visited area of DC is kept clean for all the world to see.

But on the second day of our visit my son and I decided to venture down to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.  For some reason I thought "memorial" preceded by "national" might mean that it, too, would be perfectly kept and clean like the National Mall.  Not so much.  Perhaps because I've been a police dispatcher for almost 16 years I'm a bit too critical of what I expected versus what I saw.   It wasn't dumpy, just less kept up than I had imagined.  Other than a couple street folks sleeping on one of the walls we were the only visitors.  They kept to themselves, lazing in the shade of the trees.  My son said, "At least they aren't laying on the side of the wall where the names are engraved."  Okay, I can live with that.  No one sleeping there at all would be better but he makes a valid observation.  We wondered if maybe they knew some of the names listed there.  Possibly not but one never knows.  We pushed judgment aside and went about our business.

At each of the four corners of the Memorial are podiums.  Each podium is stocked with papers and pencils in order to do a rubbing of an officer's name from the Memorial if you so desire.  Each station has a thick book listing all of the names carved there.  All 18,983 of them.  It's wrong that so many names need be listed there.  Each name belongs to a person who was near and dear to someone in this world.  The story of how they died is known all too well by those left behind and more importantly how they lived is remembered constantly.  Stories are told and memories passed on with smiles and laughter, tears and heartache.   My son found the name he was looking for then took a paper and pencil.

The Memorial was being renovated this year, restricting access to some of the panels.  There were two men working on this day; they were beginning to put materials away and clean up.  I noticed my son sitting on the grass, looking a little long in the face as I approached him.  "Did you get your rubbing, buddy?" I inquired.  The answer came as his eyes welled up.  "No, I'm not allowed over there", he said quietly as he plucked a few blades of grass and looked down to avoid eye contact.  My heart stopped with the realization that the panel may be unavailable.  One of the workers hollered over, asking if we needed into the area where they were working.  I told him "yeah I think so" to which he responded "it'll be 30-45 minutes if you feel like waiting".  He sounded exasperated.  We guessed the heat and long day of working in the sun had worn down his people skills.  We sat on the grass as time passed by.  We'd flown across the continent and were due to fly home the next day.  If we had to wait till midnight, we were waiting! 

Almost 45 minutes later, the other worker walked over to ask which panel we needed then motioned for us to come look closer just in case the name was accessible.  Wouldn't you know the panel was covered in resurfacing solution and was too sticky to do a rubbing!  Know what else though?  The man who had motioned us over is the man who engraved each and every name on the monument.  He said to hold on a minute.  He walked over to his workbench, got out a single razor blade, knelt down and scraped off the area covering the name my son needed to access.  He didn't have to.  He could easily have said "sorry it's not possible" but instead he took five minutes of his time to motion us over, find the name, scrape it off and stand by to be sure the rubbing turned out legible, unobstructed by the goo of resurfacing.

My son knows we already have a rubbing of this officer's name at home.  He also knows this officer is the reason he still has a dad in this world which is why it was so important to make this rubbing with his own hands.  Thank you to the man who took five minutes out of his day to allow a 13-year old boy access to Panel 6-E-21/John K Lamm (Kevin).  You helped make a memory that will last a lifetime, I assure you.  Thank you also for engraving these names in remembrance of all the officers who made the ultimate sacrifice.

And........thank you, Kevin.  Wish you were still here.  

Little guys of the forest

He thought I'd continued down the trail.

This little guy is about 4"-5" long beak to tail.

Wordless Wednesday -- Seward Sea Life Center

Fowl weather

Happy trails

Max and Me; he's eating grass can't pose for a picture

Seward, Alaska, is about 500 miles from home.  It's on the coast of Alaska amongst beautiful mountains, lush green with glaciers and bits of snow still visible from town.  Sea otters frolic, seagulls abound, cormorants dive down for a fish lunch and porpoise leap in the bay.  It's a great place for salmon fishing but that's not on the agenda during this visit.  We're going on a horse back ride.  This sounds fun!

My sister, Marcy, has gone riding with this company two other times.  She tells me the lead horse is named Max.  He's 1700 pounds of horse, part draft horse, absolutely a gorgeous animal.  The trail guide is a tiny woman who rides Max.  She carries a .457 in case a grizzly stops by for a visit during the ride.  However, Marcy tells me, the gun has never been needed because Max has no problem taking on a grizzly.  In fact, he's trained to do so;  he's huge and kicks at the bears.  The bears leave.  Hmm, okay.  I'd love to see a grizzly!  Preferably on the far side of the bay or field or as a speck on the mountainside though.  Or a postcard.  That works, too.

We arrive at the corral at 2:30pm, rides begin at 3pm.  We check in and sign the waiver of liability.  There's also a helmet waiver to sign if you so desire.  For those of you who know me, it's a given that I did NOT waive the helmet.  For those of you who don't know me,  I have had six concussions in my life and don't take chances with my noggin meeting the ground or other hard objects.  There's enough loopiness upstairs here and I prefer to remain status quo.

Our trail guide is Mariah.  She asks who's been on horses before.  A couple hands go up including mine.  She asks how many times we've each ridden or how much experience we have.  Well, heck, I'm a seasoned veteran at this horse riding stuff!  Truly I am.  I always choose the black horse with his head held high as he trots around, jumping up and down as the music plays.  The wind whirls past as I reach for the brass ring.  You have to lean off the horse to do that you know.  Skill I tell you.  Skill.  Really,  I've got the carousel thing down pat.  Haven't been thrown from one yet.  Real, live horses though?  One ride under my belt in my entire life.  Rather sad actually.  So experience?  None.

Okay now we're each given our horse assignments.  I get up onto my horse, Gus, with no problem.  Didn't even need a step stool.  Only problem is the stirrups which are already at their shortest point are too long for my short legs to reach.  Mariah assigns me to a different horse named Max.  Max?!  Mariah tells me he's very docile, knows the trail and is very easy to handle. Uh huh, okay.  Naturally I take her word for this because I know for liability reasons she'll not allow an inexperienced rider on a crazy horse.  In the back of my mind, I'm remembering what Marcy told me about Max.  Paula in nature translates to bear bait, right?  Oh well, live it up I say.  Standing beside Max it appears the stirrups hang just below shoulder height to me.  Step stool please.  This should be interesting.

About twenty minutes into the ride, I realize I forgot something very important back at the camper.  My bike riding shorts.  You know the ones with the padded butt.  Because right about now I'm wondering how the hell anyone can do this for any length of time.  It's gonna be a race to the ice packs when we're done two hours from now.  The only other physical problem is human knees are not meant to be in this splayed position for any length of time.   Aye sheewawah!  Ouch.

Max knows the trail all right and requires no steering at all.  This is easy.  We're in the forest and I'm ducking under branches, leaning back when we go downhill and forward when we go uphill.  It's gorgeous out here.  Kawam!  Knee meet tree, tree meet knee.  Okay now I'll remember to steer this humongous horse whose girth is wider than the trail especially when in the heavily forested area.  Dang trees don't move when you run into them.  Eeeesh!

We cross a creek and the river a couple times and come out onto the flats near the ocean.  From here you can see the only building to survive the earthquake of 1964 in Seward.  The ground dropped 10' in this area after the quake.  Mind boggling to think of that kind of power and the changes that occurred in just a few minutes.  As we go across the sea grass, Max breaks into a trot.  Oh, God, I'm gonna die!  Fairbanks woman last seen running into Pacific Ocean on a black horse....story at 11.   Just a slight pull on the reins brings him back to walking.  Whew, one crisis averted!  He knows we'll be stopping soon so he and his equine buddies can snack on the grass.  That's why he sped up.  Good thing there's grass around because he's already bitten the butt of the horse in front of us twice!

military building survived earthquake of 1964

 We cross the river a couple more times.  Mariah points out bear scat along the shore as we cross.  Looks old, that's good.  Looking for bear tracks I find several sets at different points along the way.  Pretty sure they don't look too recent.  Yeah, I'm sticking with that thought because I actually don't know if they're old or new.  Several minutes later we're on black sandy ground and there two different sets of moose tracks.  Okay, dinner for the bear whose tracks we saw earlier, right?

bald eagle nest, approximately 1000 pounds; see the eagle chick

The bear tracks, eagles, 1000 pound eagle nest and beautiful scenery distract me from the discomforts of my knees and bottom.  I can see the corral once again.  This ride has been wonderful but I'm ready to get out of the saddle, stand up on solid ground.  I never thought the sight of a step stool would be so welcome.  Mariah says the stool is wobbly and to be careful.  I can guarantee my knees are more wobbly and my backside isn't sure what to think of this whole adventure.  I now know why cowboys walk the way they do.

My niece, Naomai; my sister, Marcy; moi

Wordless Wednesday--Sleeplessss in Sssseattle....zoo that is

Not the Marriott

STANDARD ROOM:  Blindingly bright lights.  Curtains on metal rings that zing along a metal rail near the ceiling.   A thin mattress void of support or cushion.  Crisp sheets too small for the mattress.  Towels woven from a cotton/sandpaper mix.  Pliable object approximately 18"x30" covered with a vinyl-like casing which is inside a white cotton bag.  Object resists all attempts at fluffing.  Rumor has it this is a pillow.  Restroom has large entry, motion detector light and faucet, non-absorbent paper towels and strategically placed bars on the wall to grab should you attempt to meet with the floor prior to actually wanting to do so.  There's even a pull-cord for room service in there.  Pass on that for now, thank you.

AMENITIES:  Silver tray on silver legs adjusted for bed occupant height.  Not user friendly as it has no wheels for sliding it closer for actual usability.  Need second set of hands in order for this to work.  Blankets, made of slightly more cotton than sandpaper, come preheated.  These appear upon demand, score!   Large, easy to read remote control device for entertainment.  Depending on your mood this can apply to the television or other humans in the vicinity.  Pressing the "on/off" button gets the t.v. with about twenty channels to choose from.  T.V. volume comes out of the remote so be sure to keep it within earshot.  Pressing the "call" button activates centrally located humans.  An audible "beee-boooooop" sound will be heard from the device followed by a  "beee-boooooop" echo heard down the hall.  A voice will converse with you then the room service mentioned earlier shows up with a blanket, water, pillow-like thing or whatever.  Sliding glass hallway entry doors to each room unhinge from the top rail to become swing out doors for easy access when returning roll-away bed to the room.

BEWARE USER!  Room service may show up unannounced with large amounts of blue fluid, requesting you drink it within a certain time frame.  Staff may also come equipped with poky needles,  syringes and vials.  It's a give and take world though.  They'll take blood.  You get anti-nausea stuff and some pills and only minimal argument from them when you refuse pain meds.  Their billing department receives an inordinate amount of cash from the insurance company for the night's visit.  You walk away with a diagnosis, follow-up instructions, Rx for your enjoyment over the next ten days and an expensive pink flowerpot.  The nurse worried the car ride home may turn me a little more green than normal, saying she didn't "mean to be the glass half empty type but better safe than sorry" as she handed it to us.  So technically, it wasn't a flowerpot.....just a pretty expensive pink plastic pail paid for by Premera.  

Friday night in the E.R.  Seems in younger days there were better things to do on the weekend.

Wordless Wednesday -- Magnolia

Thar she blows!

A few photos of the two transient Orca pods seen during the day spent with Island Adventures Whale Watching.  Captain Carl, Naturalist Mike (also a Captain) and Naturalist Brooke were wonderful!  The tour lasted 5.5 hours and I for one didn't want the day to end.  If you're ever able to get to Anacortes, WA for a day of whale watching this is the company I'd recommend.

We followed the first pod for what seemed like a couple hours. They frolicked around and even showed us their bellies. Seeing a second pod was a bonus. When they started hunting a harbor seal between our boat and a sailboat, well, that was just down right amazing!

Meet Captain Hook

This is Captain Hook, also known as T40.  He's part of a transient whale pod in the San Juan Islands near Anacortes, Washington.  And, yes, that's the corner of our whale tour boat in the photo.  Absolutely the most amazing day of whale watching EVER!  More photos to come. 

Wakey wakey

Small snow berms hide in the shade covered with dirt, insulated from the sun.  Road dust clings to trees, inhibiting their bloom.  Brown grass lazes around, too tired to be green.  Alaska sleeps then awakens only to hit the snooze button, not quite ready to come out from undercover.  Perhaps a dowsing of water will end this slumber.

Freshly fallen rain.  Splitter-splatter, kerplop and kadoink!  It falls from the sky to wash the Earth clean.  Gently at first but Winter's drudgery needs a stern scrubbing and soon a deluge pours down to scour the sleeping beauty of the North.  

Wind whooshes through the corridors between buildings.  Flags whip around high on posts.  Trees sway with the ebb and flow of the unseen force, bending in hopes of not breaking.  The lonesome howl of the wind careens past like otherworldly spirits on an express train to the next town.

Nature unleashes a minor tantrum then subsides.  Satisfied to have been heard.  Gleeful that Winter has been sent to its room to allow Spring and Summer to come out and play.  Nature has said her piece and is now at peace as night arrives.
 
The warmth of day still radiates from the ground and is met by the cool, damp air of night.  Over the field and marsh, a fog hovers silently.   Its delicate tendrils extend out with a life of their own and swirl with the slightest disturbance in air current.

The air.  Oh, how fresh the aroma that permeates the air after a rain!  Breathe it in deeply!  Let it fill your lungs.  You are at once relaxed and rejuvenated by the crisp, clean air.  Life giving.

It's midnight and there are no other cars around during the drive home.  Tiny water droplets spin off the tires creating the only real noise, almost soothing in its monotony.  A few stars twinkle in half the night sky.  Enough light comes over the horizon to keep the other half of the sky illuminated in a deep, azure blue.  A small reminder that in the Land of the Midnight Sun nightfall will soon be non-existent.  

The North is washed clean.  Fresh.  Ready to start anew when the sun next rises.  In the blink of an eye, the Earth will wake up and green leaves will appear seemingly overnight.  The cold, harsh Alaska that has survived another winter will find a reprieve in the upcoming months.  A beautiful sight to behold.

No red-nosed reindeer here

 

Lightning and her newborn calf (only a couple hours old) 

Born April 22, 2010 @ UAF Reindeer Research Project

On the day before my own birthday, I witnessed the birth of a reindeer.  If that's not one of the best presents ever then I don't know what is.  The opportunity came along quite by accident.  After spending the early afternoon photographing migrating birds at Creamers Field in town and driving around the back roads, I soon found myself on UAF Campus.  Driving alongside the enclosures at the Reindeer Research Project, a female reindeer plopped onto the ground on her left side.  She swayed her head back and forth several times and was moving her right leg around.  She certainly looked uncomfortable enough to be in labor but I really had no idea if this was calving season or not.  Sure enough the contractions came on strong and about half an hour later voila a baby reindeer entered the world right before my eyes!

The Mom's name is Lightning and the baby as of yet is unnamed though I did find out it's a boy.  This year UAF participated in an Artificial Insemination program for reindeer using frozen/thawed sperm.  The donor sperm traveled frozen from Canada to UAF where it was thawed then injected into seven reindeer.  Lightning was the only one to carry to full term.  This was the first documented birth of a reindeer using this insemination process.  A birth that made world agricultural history!