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