Bald Eagles

I am really bummed I didn't have my digital camera with me the other day when I was out on the Homer Spit. Two bald eagles were sitting by the side of the road, one on a dead tree, the other on the ground next to it. They were there for over 40 minutes, and people stopped and walked within feet of them and they didn't fly off. I thought at first the one on the tree was tied there, because I couldn't believe it would put up with people walking up to it, but it was free. Every so often it would stretch it's wings out as if to fly, then would tuck them back in. It was very alert, looking in every direction, almost as if posing.

Someone who visited Alaska once said that up here bald eagles are like robins. I would love to see a robin (I suppose there are some up here, but I don't think I've seen once since we've been here), but instead we get to see bald eagles everywhere! For some reason since winter has set in the eagles soar along the coastline and up and down along the Homer Spit. They're around in the summer, but not in the numbers that we see them now. In fact, as we drove down the Homer Spit last week an eagle was coasting about 20 feet above our car and just off to the side so we could see it's legs tucked in underneath it. We were driving 35 mph and it was keeping up with us (or we were keeping up with it, depending on how you look at it!) without a flap. And when I am working out in the gym they fly right by the windows.

These are glorious birds, and we feel privileged to be able to be around so many of them! If I get a picture of one, I'll post it here.

Mail to Alaska

Mail generally seems to take 3-5 days to get to or from Alaska (or at least to us, in Fritz Creek). Packages sent by USPS standard shipping take 17 days....or at least that's how long it took during the pre-holiday rush. I don't even pay attention now because I usually don't want to know how long it took! The fastest we have gotten anything up here was an LL Bean order that took like 3 days--and shipping was free! The worst shipping scenario comes into play when companies tack on fees on top of the usual shipping fees. TigerDirect, a technology mail order company we used extensively in Michigan, charges usual shipping, and then tacks on $25 on top of that! Other companies do that too. They know that we want the items, can't find them anywhere up here, and so we don't have much choice besides find another company that doesn't tack on fees.

My cousin lives out in the bush, and a package from her took 11 days to get here. They're out west of Fairbanks, and everything either goes out by barge down the Yukon River or by plane. If I think service is poor here, I would get a lesson on what it's really like if I lived in the bush!

Swimming Pools & Skating Rinks

Something we have noticed is that just about every school in Alaska seems to have an ice skating rink, and a large number of them have swimming pools. I'm not sure why they all have skating rinks, but some of them are quite impressive, with boards all around the sides, benches for skaters and bleachers for spectators. The kids came home from school in high excitement on Friday because McNeil Canyon School's skating rink was up, so the kids got to spend their 40 minute lunch recess ice skating. The school has 50 pairs of ice skates, so nearly everyone who wants to can skate. The principal hot mops the rink so it is nice and smooth. Unlike most schools where they have the nice boards around the rink, McNeil's ice is just held in by plowed snow.

There are very few public swimming pools. Since the boroughs own and build the schools (borough's are kind of like counties), they just build swimming pools in the high schools. Since so many schools are K-12, then there is a pool in the K-12 school. The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has one full time person in the district who handles chemicals for all the pools. At one point recently the State of Alaska was looking at requiring a swimming class for every high school student in the state. Luckily, that got nixed, but they wouldn't have even considered it if so many schools didn't have pools.

Dwindling Daylight Hours

This picture was taken Dec. 5 at noon from the Homer Spit. Obviously, the sun doesn't get very far off the horizon! At 3:00 the sun was the same distance above the mountains, just in a different place.

One of the main things on my mind before moving to Alaska was dealing with the short days in the winter. We are nineteen days from the shortest day of the year, and we are definitely feeling it. It begins to get light out around 8:00 a.m., but the sun doesn't actually peep over the mountains until 10:00 (on good days, when it's not cloudy!). It sets right about 4:00 where we live, though it sets later in Homer. (I couldn't say how much later because I'm never in both places at sunset on the same day.) Just in the past week or so the lack of daylight has become more noticeable. A couple days ago my neighbor, who has lived here all her life, said, "You'd think I'd get used to this lack of sunlight by now, but I still hate it." In our family we're noticing our moods are a little rougher, perhaps. One never knows if it's lack of sleep or stress or something else causing moods, but when everything else stays the same, I begin to suspect it is lack of sunshine. On one hand, it is very noticeable, while on the other hand, it really isn't as bad as people think. I remind people that even in Michigan in November and December one can go to work in the dark and it is dark when you get out. Like one of my cousins up here told me, the lack of daylight affects everyone, just some people more than others. I take to heart the recipe for staying mentally healthy: take care of myself. That means exercise every day, get sunshine if the sun is out and I can, get a good night's rest (not difficult when it is dark so many hours), eat well. It's common sense stuff, but if we want to stay here and stay happy all winter, this is what we do. A couple other things I have learned: don't be afraid to go out in the dark (it's amazing how many people think that once it's dark you have to stay inside), and play games. I have learned more card games, board games, cribbage, etc. in the past few weeks than in the past 25 years combined!
P.S. You'd think with all this darkness I'd have seen the northern lights, but even up here the ideal times for viewing northern lights is 12:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. Like they say, drinking lots of water before bedtime helps in viewing the aurora's!

An Alaska Thing??

We have done many things up here that we would never have dreamed of doing in Michigan. I'm not sure why that is....except that life is just a bit different up here even for all the ways that it is similar. Here are a few things that I wonder if they are "an Alaskan thing":

• Haircuts: This past weekend while visiting my aunt and uncle in Ninilchik something possessed me to ask if they had hair clippers and scissors. They did, so I got Denver on the chair and started shaving. I've shaved him bald before, but never actually tried to cut his hair with any style, but this time I did. I think it turned out pretty cute; Denver has mixed feelings about it. He even added a prayer when we said grace the next day that "Mom learns how to cut my hair better!" Aurora was next, which was pretty easy since I have trimmed her bangs before. I even went at it with the thinning shears and I think I went maybe a little overboard with them, but bangs are bangs and Aurora's not complaining. Amazingly, I got Doug in my chair! I'd been badgering him to get a haircut for weeks, but he rarely gets to Homer (even more rarely during the day when salons are open), and even he thought $30 was too much for a guy's haircut. So I revved up the razor and away I went. I didn't think it was too bad, but you notice I'm not putting a picture here. My aunt kept telling him to give me a couple times to get the hang of it. Anyways, I would never, ever have done this in Michigan.
• Since our car was in the shop yesterday, and I needed to get to Homer, Doug took the 4-wheeler to work. He strapped on his bag of school papers, popped the kids on back to take up to the bus stop, and then zoomed off. He was able to go about 15 mph faster on the 4-wheeler than in his vehicle. He said it sure didn't seem any faster.
• Our landlord's parents grow cows for a few people they know. They get the calves young and grow them all summer and butcher them in the fall. When we moved here someone mentioned it to us and we said yes, we would definately want a cow. A month or so ago they butchered our cow and took it down to McNeil Canyon Meats for us. We filled out a form telling them what cuts we wanted and how we wanted them, and a few days later our order was ready to be picked up--prefrozen and packaged. In addition to the 1/2 moose we got (which was free except for processing), we got 219 pounds of young cow, every cut plus burger and stewing meat, for basically less than $3/lb. I learned how to pressure cook stew meat (another story: we had to get a chisel to pry off the cover of the pressure cooker!) and I am learning to cook meat too. We are all becoming conniseurs of what type of cuts we like best (so far, all of them!!), and rubs, marinades, broiling, grilling and all sorts of other things are becoming household words and activities. I never would have dreamed I would become a meat-eater, but up here meat is the cheapest food if you hunt (or have someone who raises a cow for you!)
• Since the bus stop where the kids get dropped off is 1/2 mile from our house, they like it when I can walk up to the stop and meet them when I can. Well, what with all this snow, I decided to ski up there. The roads are all covered with snow so my skis wouldn't get scraped up. The kids thought it was kind of cool, but they wanted to be on skis themselves. Plus I ski a lot faster than they can walk, so they spent most of their time running to catch up with me! Maybe I'll snowshoe next time??!!

Picking Up My Car

(I am adding this picture of the canyon quite a few months later. The picture of the house across it is the neighbor with the gun, who took me up to Steve's place.) Steve, our car mechanic, lives across the canyon. His house is right there, not more than a few hundred yards away. When he called me this morning and said the car was ready to be picked up I flippantly said, "I'll throw on my snowshoes and be right over." I hadn't believed our landlord when she said our Steve lived "across the canyon." I thought she was exaggerating. Well, I discovered that a canyon it was, and I got quite a workout snowshoing across it. A few minutes turned into quite a few minutes later!
As I said, I put on my snowshoes and headed west towards one of the two houses that can be seen from our house. I had picked through the alder bushes this summer looking for leaves to compost, so I'd been that way. Just past the alder bushes, though, I came to the edge of "the canyon". I was startled. I wouldn't say it is more than 50 feet deep, maybe 100 at the most (hard to tell with all that snow). The sides were steep and bush-covered. I didn't like the alternative (walking up to East End Road and crossing where the canyon begins), so I plunged on. The snow was so deep that the bushes were bent over double so I was (mostly) able to walk right over the tops of the bushes. Cool! I thought. A small stream ran through the bottom, but I was able to step over that and then clamber back onto the tops of the bushes. Going up the other side was a little trickier. Luckily there were small trees I could use to pull myself up. When I got to the top there was a big mound of snow from the plows. I could hear a dog barking madly on the other side. I peered over the edge and saw my neighbor staring at me in amazement. She was outside trying to figure out what her dog was barking so furiously at. She'd been expecting a moose, patting her back where she had her pistol, and telling me about a mad moose that wandered into her yard three years ago. I wasn't a moose, and nor was I at the right house. She invited me in for tea, but I declined since I didn't want my mechanic worried, wondering where I was. She walked me up to Steve's, and when she told him I'd walked across the canyon he stared at me in astonishment. I think I am going to provide these native Alaskans with an entertaining story. And I have a lot more respect for canyons now!

First Big Snowfall

The first big snowfall has brought out an unsurpassed beauty beyond what I could have imagined. Even the unsentimental, pragmatic Doug ooohs and aaahs about how beautiful the drive to school is, with the road deep in untouched snow and the evergreen boughs laden with white stuff. Mountains that we look out the window and see daily suddenly have taken on new dimensions and we see them with fresh eyes. I took these photos Friday evening as the sun was setting, and the air was aglow with pink light. We got about 8-10 inches of snow during the day (it was just beginning as we headed out the door in the morning). The fascinating thing is that Homer had virtually no snow while we were getting dumped on. Just past mile 10 of McNeil Canyon School the road heads down off the bluff and the elevation cutoff is such that the snow becomes rain. Friday morning it was actually snowing all the way into Homer, but it didn't "stick". The snow "sticks", or stays unmelted beginning at McNeil Canyon School. The temperatures warm up more in Homer, so snow turns to rain and snow gets washed away or melts.

Along with the incredible beauty, the snowfall brings icy roads. Thursday night as I headed home from the Greenhouse Gardening class I am taking at 9:30 p.m. I had only a few feet visibility the last 10 miles home (past the point where the rain turns to snow). Unfortunately, the road in the last 10 miles is narrow with steep dropoffs and no guardrails, many hairpin turns and tight curves and generally challenging driving conditions in the best of times. With virtually no visibility I was down to a crawl since I never knew when another curve would be upon me. I know every curve of that road by now, but when normal landmarks are gone it is a little disorienting. I was guided home by the reflective posts on the side of the road.

Friday morning had its own challenges since the snow was accumulating quickly, so the roads were now slippery, or at least had the threat of slipperyness. Since the stakes are so high (if you go off the road in the dark, down one of the canyons or off the bluff, no one would ever see you down there), I err on the side of being cautious and opt to stay on the road but get places slower if I don't know whether the roads are slippery or not. The elevation change offers its own threat, since somewhere along the way there is often ice, between the snow and the rain. Three busses were sitting on the side of the road putting chains on their tires Friday morning as I headed into town. They have an emergency plan and the roads were bad enough for them to go into action that day.

Such tradeoffs. I love the beauty out here, and if I lived in town in Homer I would never know how different it is out here in the country. Homer is brown and drab to our glorious Christmas-card perfection. I really begin to feel I live in two different worlds as I drive into Homer each day. I am curious to see if the snow will begin to "stick" in Homer like it does up here.