Thursday, October 05, 2006
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Termination Dust
On the two hour drive from Talkeetna to Anchorage
The first snowfalls at the end of summer. The yellow Aspen.
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 day before I started my real job I learnt to split wood. It was one way of curing the new-job jitters.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Saturday, August 26, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
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.
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. 
Friday, August 18, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
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
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 filletsThe 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
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
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.
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.
Karen hard at work filleting her catch
Finally I grasp the 'butterfly fillet' technique. It's a proud moment.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
'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.
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.
Friday, August 04, 2006
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.
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.