Licenced

Anchorage, Alaska

As the pace of new things slows down, work routine sets in, and the light diminishes, it seems I have less laughter and less to say.

Today the temperature is a high of 25 and a low of 17 farenheight. That is a high of -4 and a low of -8 degrees celcius. The sun came up at 10:09am and set at 3:40pm, giving us 5 hours and 31 minutes of daylight. In summary, it is cold and dark, and I don't think it becomes me. It's the tail end of a work week and in 15 minutes Brendan will pick me up and we will drive up the hillside, about 20 minutes away, and go skiing. There are some lights on the trail but we will also have head-torches. The snow this winter has been slim, to the frustration of all skiiers. We are doing what we can with the icy older white stuff, and trying not to talk about the naughty naughty 'R word' that happens when it gets warmer than it should be.

In general, I'm finding it difficult keeping ahead of the cost of starting up living here, expensive rent and car insurance. But the biggest challenge each day is getting out of bed by 7am, still 3 hours away from dawn. I suppose I must be on a steep learning curve of living in a freezing climate, and I hope some day to stop having to learn how to go about basic things, like starting a car (you have to plug it into a heater that warms the engine for 3 hours before you start it), driving a car (you have to run the engine for about 10 minutes to warm it up before you go anywhere), walking down the street (you have to wear soft soled shoes to stick better on the ice so you don't slip and break your neck), going outside(you have to wear layers - down is good, and put on a hat and gloves), leaving the house (you have to leave the heater on, with the thermostat at at least 60 degrees so that the pipes in the house don't freeze and break), and the list goes on.

I must have learnt something because I got my Alaskan drivers licence yesterday. I took my test at 9:30am as the sun was thinking about coming up, the roads were icy, and I was having trouble demisting my rear window (the instructor showed me the trick of how to fix this). I stopped suddenly on snow (pumping the breaks), I resisted road-rage and an accident when someone pulled out in front of me, I was the most anal driver on the road, and I PASSED!

I am looking forward to going home to Australia for Christmas. I will be there for almost a month. In fact, I am dying to get home and see friends and family and plunge into the comfort zone of things I know and love. See you soon Australia.

Thanksgiving in -35 degrees celcius

Fairbanks, Alaksa
Walking to the new Fairbanks Museum and Gallery

The Feast
The boys gigging under the name "The Pilot Cracker Playboys"

Exercising my democratic right

A highschool on E street, Anchorage

Today I voted for the first time in the United States. It felt really really good. It looks like not many people choose to do it here, but more should. I was amongst the political freaks, the retired who weren't busy today, and the consciencious. Even though I voted against them, this is Alaska, and I think the rednecks will win.

Footloose and Freeheeling

Flat Top Mountain, the Hillside above Anchorage

On top of Flat Top I lost my cross-country skiing virginity. I was out there, all wobbly and thrown by the wierd balancing act of having loose heels, being Alaskan in the wintertime. I worked up a sweat on flat ground, had a few stacks, and grew some icicles up my nose. Then a big full moon rose up over the hills and it got dark at 5pm. It was fun, thank god, because it will probably be my sanity this winter.

Brendan and Lucabelle (who got more excited than I have ever before seen her when we got to the hillside. I worried. I thought she was going to have a hysteria-induced stroke).

The biggest pot of gold in the world

Pebble Mine Proposed Site, North of Iliamna

The Site: Winter wilderness




















The Transport: little red helicopters

















The Task: trapping
















The Task: counting, measuring, taking notes (and trying to keep warm)














The Target - Salmon fingerlings. Here's some of this year's Coho salmon(above) and King salmon (below).

Electrofishing

Somewhere near Iliamna, SW Alaska

Who thought that getting a real job in Anchorage meant no more Alaskan adventures? I dreaded that. Next week I will get a chance to see and do wild things once more in this now-snowy northern land. I even get a chance to do a type of fishing not even my dad has ever done, and he’s done a lot of fishing. But not electrofishing.

Picture this. It’s snowing. You’re in one of Alaska’s huge wilderness areas, situated in the Southwest of the State. The ecosystem you’re standing on is the nursery to the most important wild fishing industry around – headwaters to Bristol Bay, the salmon fishing mecca of Alaska. This site, rich in natural bounty, may soon be the Northern Hemisphere’s largest mine. For the sake of gold. My company is doing the baseline studies for this mining company. We’re putting numerical figures to the natural wealth out there so then the mining company can put their case to the government about how they will do no damage to this wealth during their mining processes. It is currently the most controversial project in Alaska, along with the gas pipeline project.

My job is to stand in streams for a week and stun fish with an electric-shock thingamy, pick ‘em up, count ‘em, measure ‘em, and put ‘em back. The fish are just the wee little fingerlings that hatched this spring. They will mostly be salmon but there will also be rainbow trout. Although it will be cold I have been through thick educating in warm layers today, we went and bought some mean neoprene waders with boots on the ends, and I will beg buy and borrow everything I need to survive the week. Although, as you know, I am an intrepid explorer, I am glad that we are staying in a lodge with all the creature comforts of beds and hot meals and goodness. During the day we will be zipping around in little helicopters from site to site, and we take a small plane from Anchorage to Iliamna where there is a tiny town with an airstrip.

I can’t wait.

First real snow and Girdwood

Girdwood, One hour south of Anchorage

It's snowing like a blizzard and I can't believe people can still drive on the roads and freeways when they're covered in this white fluff that turns icy and you can't see the lines on the road. I haven't done it yet, but intend to approach snow-driving with extreme caution and will avoid it if I can (at least until the roads are groomed - I think it might be snowing for the next 4 months). It's quieter now, and I don't recognise where I am in the city with the white cloak on. The heater in my little apartment is superb, and along with the little home improvements I've been achieving with the help of Brendan the Carpenter, I'm feeling snug enough at home.

On the weekend we drove to Girdwood, a town one hour south of Anchorage that becomes the local Anchorage downhill ski area in wintertime. The lure was a big pot of gumbo and a jam with the band-in-progress-as-yet-unnamed. I am not technically 'in' the band, but struggling with my status as tag-along-girlfriend, and still-student of the Oldtime style. The in-band fiddler sets a good example, and I play along in jams, and will step to the sidelines for gigs. I'm learning.

Meg (mando), Mike (banjo), Karen (bass), Jeff (fids), Nate (guitar)


The freeze is on

My New Life

Anchorage, Alaska

New desk and cube.

New car.

New house

Pouring Slab

Brendan's House, Talkeetna

More glamorous photos of my Alaskan life - "what I did on the weekend". This is the foundation for Brendan's workshop/garage/office. It's late in the season (cold) to be laying slab, and it was pretty much the last day this was possible, with snowflakes falling last night.


Somehow after 2 trucks of concrete poured into the framework, there just wasn't enough to finish the job, so we set about making our own in the wheelbarrow. Back-breaking work.

People have to work on this side of the world too

Midtown, Anchorage

My new job is shaping up well. I am really enjoying the private sector, with people striving to get work done and move projects forward, with deadlines, and a foreseeable end to projects, and goals achieved. These important things were so intangible in my government job last year. Everyone here appears to really enjoy working for HDR, which is really important too (and I thought impossible). People work hard at the office, but on the whole are pretty outdorsy healthy people who are playing hard outside the office too, which suits me. HDR works on some really interesting and controversial projects in Alaska - for big oil companies that are taking oil resources from the far North of the country, for mining companies that pose enormous threats to wilderness areas and the wild salmon fishing industry, for a big bridge out of Anchorage that will mean widescale development of a whole new urban area that is now wild. HDR does a lot of environmental impact assessment with scientists and biologists, as well as engineers. At this stage I am retaining a belief that an impact assessment will determine a true level for what environmental damage is posed by a developer, and that the public will then be able to have a say, and the project will be veto-ed if there's too much at stake. Much of the Alaskan community is passionate about the wild places here, and that is why they chose to live here, so people are interested in protecting it. I am interested to see how the most controversial projects that are currently in public debate will go, and to see how I feel about working for a company that is involved in this way. I don't work in the environmental section, but the water section. I'm happy about this because at this point I'm interested in staying in the water field, and coming back to Australia in this field. The projects I am working on at the moment are about poo - this makes me happy enough. I feel like I've got much more support and resources to work with than I did at Power and Water. I have direct audience with a number of more senior engineers here in Anchorage, as well as on the email in *** offices all over the USA if I needed them. So at this stage it looks good, and I will certainly learn a lot here.

Being in this field of work in Alaska is very interesting. I went an saw Al Gore's doco 'An Inconvenient Truth' yesterday. Global warming is so visible here in this cold climate where a few things are going awry - the spruce trees dying from the spruce beetle that no longer gets killed off sufficiently in the winter, and of course the receeding glaciers.

My Birthday - too many mojitos and Superman's Devil's Food Cake

Mike and Karen's House, Anchorage

Termination Dust

On the two hour drive from Talkeetna to Anchorage

The first snowfalls at the end of summer. The yellow Aspen.

Training to be an Alaskan Girl

Brendan's House, Outskirts of Talkeetna

The day before I started my real job I learnt to split wood. It was one way of curing the new-job jitters.

The French Riviera

Around and about the glamorous Saint Tropez baby

It's hard to believe, but somehow I fit in a week trip to France to visit my parents and my sister. We spent half the time shopping at markets,



Looking at fancy sandles - Al bought the pair on the top right.

A cocktail by the rediculously enormous and expensive boats along the marina in Saint Tropez, a place that was 'discovered' in the 50s with the Bridgette Bardot film 'And God Made Woman'. I could not have felt less like Bridgette Bardot with the French ladies showing-up my Talkeetna chick, (see the legs in the background).


Shopping for Provincale plasticised tablecloths - lovely, we all bought one.



HMMMMMMMMMMMM Cheese. Tasting cheese in France made me wonder if I had ever really tasted cheese before.





...and half the time in the emergency room.

Prang

Fred Meyer carpark, Wasilla (on the drive between Anchorage and Talkeetna)

Agonizing over decisions and life direction can have bad side effects. Yesterday I left Anchorage in a state of confusion. I got in Brendan's car with his two dogs and started the two hour drive back to Talkeetna - merely as something useful to do as I mulled over my recent job offer and the general chaos that was my future outlook. Should I stay in Anchorage and take a good job as a water engineer for a big private consultancy? Should I seek highly paying, unsustainable, 2-weeks-on-2-weeks-off work for a petrol company on the North Slope (far North of Alaska). Should I continue to pursue a penniless existance of travel and adventure seeking? Should I ever grow up?

I decided to go to Fred Meyers, one of America's favorite, enormous supermarket chains. I bought tomato juice, swiss cheese, a can of beans. Back out in the parking lot it was dusk, the new-found autumn darkness was creeping over the daytime, a reminder of the coming winter, and dark nights. I put the groceries away as the bored dogs looked on. I grabbed the cheese and juice and climbed into the drivers seat, turning on the ignition. I opened the juice and took a sip. I took the packet of cheese and began to fuss away at opening the fierce plastic. I was spaced out. I was really thinking about work and life and alaska and australia.

WHAM!! Suddenly everything stopped. Or started. I looked up and somehow there was another car pressed up against the front of mine. I thought, someone's run into me! But somehow they'd managed to slide the side of their car into the front of my car. A rough young guy came over and asked if I was ok. I looked at him blankly. What happened? Hold on, they'd managed to slide the side of their car into the front of my car...I'd smashed into their car! So I started up the engine and backed-off my rammed inertia, and got out of the car. I confessed to the guy I had just spaced out and rolled through the carpark unknowingly, that I was an idiot, and that I was having a bad day. He left and I started crying.




Then came more tears and distress at my hopelessness, worry about my Australian drivers licence, the fact that Brendan hadn't got his car registration in the mail yet, and waiting for the owners of the car to arrive.

The owners of the car arrived finally, and were suprised that their brand new car had been violated while they were innocently buying their weeks worth of eggs and potato chips, but mostly they thanked me for staying! They thanked me! Lovely people. We called the cops and an affected, proud, self-conscious man arrived on his fancy motorcycle. Dismounted. Turns out fancy pants once had a wife who was Australian, and he appeared easy to charm even though his experience with the Australian had been unsatisfactory. He said, 'she woke me one morning and told me that she never loved me and that she had just married me for the citizenship. I rang a friend and got her deported.'

Needless to say, we got the paperwork filled-out, and I turned the car around and headed back for Anchorage not trusting myself on the roads with the moose all the way to Talkeetna. Within a day I had accepted the job offer, figuring life's expensive.

Alaska State Fair

Palmer

Digital Umbilical

Anchorage

In the bustle and hum of travel - jumping from one car to another, yoga camp to hiking to fiddle camp to fishing trip, I lost my digital umbilical - the cords and wiring and dressings for my wonderful little camera. For days I languished in denial, making phone calls to all the places I'd last been, but it is now two weeks on, and I must admit that I left a bag of important items in a bear box adjacent to the Polar Bear Tent Campsite at Fiddle Camp. Sure, I'd stayed up until 8am on the last night of camp singing old country songs and drinking Guinness and Mike's Hard Lemonade (why oh why the lemonade?) and smoking the best cigarette of my life (and one of the only I assure you mum and dad), and it appears that such a good time (what a bloody good time) could only be had at a cost. The cost was not only being too hung-over the next day to remember all my belongings as I left the Scout Camp grounds, and losing my digital umbilical, but I also paid for the night with that familiar near-death nausea and frequent emergency stops on my eight hour drive into the Alaskan wilderness with a new, bemused friend Brendan at the wheel. One hour into the drive found me lying on a pallet by the roadside, groaning. After two hours I woke from a disturbed nap to ring my mother at a roadside stop and tell her I'd just had the most wonderful week at fiddle camp and that I was heading into the wilderness again on a fishing expedition with a new friend I didn't know very well but probably would by the end of the trip, especially if I spewed on the floor of his new car. Lucky for me, the car was already dubbed 'the barn' due to its box-shape and already-doggy smell. This car was sold to Brendan on the fact that it can be hosed out. That was great news to me also. I told mum I didn't know where I was - I had just woken up - but there was, curiously enough, a Canadian flag flying. Not reassuring words to a mother I am sure, but she took it well and reminded me to warn Brendan of the 3 second rule, which in our family, is known as the amount of time it takes between me warning the driver that I need to spew, and the actual spewing. Those were sage words of my mother's because before too long Brendan was putting into practice the 3-second rule, and the barn did not need to be hosed down at any point in the journey.

I had the most scenic spew of my life that day, looking out across mountains, a river, color, twin eagles diving above. Brendan was understanding, and after eight hours of driving we finally made it to Kenticott, and Karen and Mike's newly wed cabin. The point I wanted to make by this long-winded story is that the blog has been very slow, and there have been no new photos in the last weeks because I cannot upload them onto the computer until I get the replacement technology. This will arrive next week, FexEx to Talkeetna. Needless to say I've been having a ball and there is loads to tell. Stay tuned.

Dipnetting - The Smoking

Brendan's Cabin, The outskirts of Talkeetna

For two days during torrential rain in which the Susitna River in the township of Talkeetna overflows and residents are evacuated from their homes, we smoke fish.

Brendan cuts Alder branches and burns them down to coals

The coals are placed under the salmon fillets that have soaked in a brine overnight, and rest on racks in the light wooden smoker house. This is cold smoking, a technique that is slower than hot smoking (where the fire would be built directly under the meat), but produces a more succulent result without the drying of the heat.

The Simpletones - a local Talkeetnan band

The Fairview (historical) Pub, Talkeetna

Dipnetting - The Process

Brendan's Mum's House, Anchorage

The production line - we separate the fillets from 30 red salmon into piles of three different quality levels: best for freezing and eating as straight fillets, mid-quality for smoking, and lowest quality for preserving in jars.



Skinning the fillets


The domestic-use vacuum-packer has dramatically changed the way Alaskans can preserve food for the winter. This nifty gadget allows fish fillets to be frozen and kept for up to eight months.


Mike vacuum seals his fillets

Dipnetting - The Catch

The Copper River, McCarthy (8 hour drive from Anchorage)

Each 'permanant resident' Alaskan not only get paid each year to live in Alaska (this year each Alaskan will get $1,300US of the 'permanant fund' that comes from oil money), they also get a quota of natural produce to harvest that will last them through the winter, if they should be that way inclined. If you want to be eating Red Salmon in mid-December, you are entitled to take 15 each year, or 30 if you have more than just yourself in your household to feed, by the relatively easy technique of dipnetting - a process that is reserved solely for Alaskan permanant residents. Here follows incriminating photos of me helping out.

10-foot long dipnets - just put it in there and let the salmon swim right in.

The state of the salmon varied as some were further along in the process of dying, that begins as soon as they enter the fresh water of the river from the salty ocean, and ends soon after spawning and the laying of eggs. All meat was acceptable for consumption and mostly we took what fate put in our nets.

Take the fish out, bludgeon it with 'the whumper' (the stick), and string it on the cord with the other catch to go back into the river until we're ready for filleting.

The catch. We took our quota of 46 red salmon in four hours of fishing. Luck was with us on this day because many folks had come in the weeks preceeding our visit to the copper to be disappointed and unable to get their quota. For all salmon species this year, the runs were late - salmon returning to the rivers later than predicted. Further South, in the Kenai Peninsula, the Department of Fish and Game had closed the season before the Reds had returned in numbers that allowed locals to get their quotas. We were lucky.

Dipnetting - The Clean

The Copper River, McCarthy (8 hour drive from Anchorage)


Karen hard at work filleting her catch


Finally I grasp the 'butterfly fillet' technique. It's a proud moment.

'It be in G"

Carlquist Boy Scout Camp, Chugiak (30 miles North of Anchorage)



The Stuart Brothers Trevor (on the right) and Travis. These identical twins fresh from Ashville, North Carolina, brought me endless joy for the week of fiddle camp. Here they teach us 'Booger Man' - a hammer and tongs tune in G.

Denali Backcountry Hiking

Four day hiking trip into Unit 28, Denali National Park


Setting off on our hike, ready to ford Teklanika River and do some heavy bush-bashing through the bear-infested woods.


Although park rules stated: No Guns, Damion felt unable to go into the woods without his pistol. I had left him at the car earlier to make his decision, after lecturing him on the benefits of feeling vulnerable now and then. A few minutes into the walk I looked over to see his gun sticking out of his pack. I had mixed feelings about it, but can appreciate that people who know how to use guns and are accustomed to hunting with them would find the idea of leaving home without one idiotic. All park rangers are trained to use and carry firearms at all times - in Alaska it is believed to be common sense to carry a gun as self-defense against bears, with the footnote; 'but it should not be an excuse for irresponsible behaviour in respect to bear awareness and safety'.


On this trip I was once more faced with dehydrated food. I am growing accustomed to it, but scrambled eggs is going too far if you ask me. I stick to porridge.




Luckily nature provided bountiful snacks along the way.

Beryl Bender Birch

Talkeetna Lodge, Talkeetna


For a serious yogi, Beryl is warm, funny, and deeply human. Thank god. Back at her Long Island (New York) home she has a team of sled dogs and a passion for mushing. Beryl is largely responsible for the popularity of Astanga yoga in the USA - having brought it to the New York running club by calling it 'Power Yoga'. She has outstanding charisma.


For five days we stretched ourselves. Morning meditation at 7am, a light breakfast, then two sessions back-to-back of yoga. We took turns practicing and giving adjustments, or watching Beryl (the master) give adjustments. After lunch there was a discussion session on a variety of teaching-related subjects.

Wholewheat Radio House Concert

Wholewheat Radio Headquarters, East Talkeetna

On the Friday of the yoga intensive, we had fun. I herded two young mums, who were away from their babies for the longest time since conception, off to three separate and wonderful gigs in little Talkeetna town. The first gig was a 'house concert' I'd heared about on the local grapevine. We arrived at the address to find a small cabin, full of people on fold-out chairs, a stage set-up, and a concert about to begin. A woman with a microphone up-front called out to us, 'Welcome! Make yourselves at home you three, there's beer in the fridge and some seats up the front here, and there's even a bed up here if you want to get really comfortable!' What a welcome. I was instantly sold on the house concert idea.



We got a beer from the fridge and squeezed our way to the bed, through the opening chords of the first of the three musicians, who took turns playing their songs, and occassionaly accompanying one another throughout the gig. Sitting right up front and cosy, I was amazed at our luck in stumbling across this community event that had brought muscicains from around America. The gig was being broadcast across the world, by way of direct streaming onto the internet www.wholwheatradio.com. Later, when I became friends with Ester and Jim, the creators of wholewheat, I learned what it was all about.





The creators of Wholewheat Radio - Ester and Jim. Quirky, warm, and creative. As all good people should be.