Elmo Report

Elmo did not get to go on the last two trips. He was baby sitting with Jeff and Tammy and their kids. He likes it there but still misses Annie. Tammy says that Elmo is emotionally aware. I have been watching him since she said that. A few nights ago he knew Annie was chapped about something. I should have been more emotionally aware; or at least been aware of the signals Elmo was giving me. If I had I might not have been smarting off when I should have been backing off.

Going is still Elmo's favorite activity; going for a walk, going for a ride in the car; going on a hike. For Elmo, going always beats staying. I have been reading Martie Marie's book, Two In The Far North, which I highly recommend. She talks about how the sled dogs are never happier than when they are pulling the sled. I guess Elmo has a little sled dog in him. I think Annie may also. She sure likes to go.

Around Hinchinbrook

July 13, 2006

With a little practice one can accept the rhythm of the wilderness easily. I have had a good deal of practice lately. Why not watch the sky molt or the grandkids become moles in the sand? Why not feel the air caress the hair on my arm? Why not swing? Why not lie in the hammock? Why not bathe in the little pool below the falls? Why not listen to gulls and eagles talk about food? Why not laugh at the silly plover dancing and scolding my approach? Why not marvel at the brown bear tracks next to mine in the sand?

David and I went clamming. We looked for little pock marks in the wet sand and dug deep under the pock with a clamming spade. Mr. Sunshine and I had watched an old man in Ninilchk clean clams. I told David what I could remember and David figured out the rest. We had fabulous clam chowder for lunch.

The whole family hiked North along the beach. We walked past the gull swimming hole where our creek made its own immature delta and dumped into the Gulf of Alaska and eavesdropped on gull gossip. We trudged next to the sand cliff where swallows dug their nests. We climbed over the log bone yard where the sand trapped a bleached forest; tangled, twisted, piled and scattered like tinker toys after the masterpiece is crashed. We hiked north all the way to the whale colored rocks stacked like a string of dominos the size of ships that had fallen, each domino leaning on the other. One end of the string splashed in the waves and squeezed shoots of spray into the air. The other end balanced great spruce above the beach like circus trees on a high wire.

The rock, exposed to the full fury of the Gulf of Alaska, flaunted miracles. Hair bells in full bloom, grew in tiny clumps on baby ledges. Queens crown clung to a chip of rock above the hair bell; higher still a yellow blooming flower and a white blooming flower. And why, I wonder, can’t I be like those flowers; that strong, that tenacious, that gentle, that accepting, that beautiful.

Next day we hiked south along the beach around Hook Point. The beach around the point is a boulder beach. Rounded boulders like giant gravel covered the beach. I felt like an ant traversing a pile of rocks. My mind was full of questions. How did all these boulders get here? Why this beach and not the one around the point where the sand is like face powder? Why so many different kinds of rock? Why can’t I remember how to identify the different kinds of rock? Where is Reid (my geologist neighbor) when you need him?

We were looking for an old ship wreck. Boulder beach was a series of points. I am sure that I turned back one point too soon. The wreck would have been around the next point; but the tide was calling me. “I’m coming, Tim. I’m running for the rocks at Hook Point.”

I think I was hearing things. By the time we got back to Hook Point the tide was still far below the rocks, so Birch (grandson) and I sat on the rocks next to tide pools and watched the fascinating universe of tiny fish, hermit crabs in borrowed shells the size of peas, miniature jellies and slimy green sea weed waiving and shimmering. The tide did come. We moved back to the beach for a picnic, and Burch and Cole skinny-dipped in big tide pool.

Earlier that day when we left the campsite, David noticed movement far down beach toward Hook Point. Binoculars revealed bears, brown bears. Brown bears are Alaskan grizzlies. David at first thought there were three bears, a sow and two cubs. They smelled us or heard us (we were not a quiet clan) and rumbled off the beach into the forest.

When we got to their tracks, we found the outline of a sea lion in the sand and bloody drag marks where the sow had dragged the carcass into the high grass. David studied the marks and told us the story. “The sea lion probably died in the ocean and washed up on the beach. The bears found the carcass and we interrupted their breakfast. What I thought was three bears was really two with the sow dragging the carcass. She is unbelievably powerful. That carcass could have weighed 400 pounds and she was running.”

I walked along the trail studying the tracks and taking pictures. “I wouldn’t go too far that way, dad,” David said.

wilderness Rhythm

July 11, 2006

Wilderness makes life better. Experiencing wilderness helps complete a person. I have believed this for a long time. I am still being completed.

Hinchinbrook Island is wilderness. Hook Point where we camped is wilderness, and wilderness demands its rhythm. We must be aware of the tide; land the plane at low tide; make sure we are around Hook Point before high tide; look for clams at low tide; keep the toys above the high tide line. Clouds, wind, rain, sun and bugs determine fashion, change plans, schedule activities, and ignore our desires and hopes. We have no computer access. Cell phones do not work; no TV, no electricity, no restaurants, no grocery stores; none of the “necessities” of western lifestyle. Our feet transport us.

We have no choice. We must accept the tempo of the wilderness. And that tempo is in part responsible for the impact of wilderness on the human. We are reminded of what is important in life and what is not. We are reminded of what gives us joy and how absurd are most irritations and frustrations. We realize how little we really control and how little difference that lack of control makes. Wilderness is where beauty lives, beauty that thrills and fills our souls with joy.

We are not in charge of wilderness. We have only two choices; protect it or destroy it. Humans are in fact wilderness. When we destroy wilderness, we destroy ourselves.

Cordova, Gail and the Beaver

The family on Hinchinbrook
Hauling gear
Gail leaving
Gail
Chenega
Hook Point------Don't ask me how these got on here twice.
This is Gail
The Chenega
Hook Point

July 10, 2006

Gail runs a flying service out of Cordova, Alaska called Fishing and Flying. She has to be close to my age. She came to Alaska with her three year old son in 1965, the year after the earthquake and the year after Arkansas was national champions (which was also a form of earthquake), to teach school. A few years later she was a bush pilot.

We came to Cordova from Whittier across the entire length of Prince William Sound on Chenega, the fast ferry. We passed glaciers, waterfalls and rocky islands; saw porpoises, sea otters, glaucous-winged gulls, and a tufted puffin; and, far away next to a blue glacier, a white twelve story Princes Cruise Liner. Near Bligh Reef, the place where the Exxon Valdez ran aground, we crossed the oil tanker super highway; the course the Exxon Valdez would have taken had humans not made another tragic mistake.

Chenega makes the trip in a little over three hours. The slow ferry takes almost fifteen hours. Chenega carried not only the four Banks adults and two grandkids, but also David’s Honda Pilot crammed with everything necessary and desirable for several days of luxury wilderness camping. We brought David’s car because the stuff wouldn’t all fit in my Highlander.

Gail got all the gear in the back of a Beaver, the workhorse of the Alaska bush pilots, and still had room for the family. They haven’t made Beavers since 1956. Gail got her Beaver for a great price after a former owner crashed it into the side of an icy mountain. Gail, her son and her “mechanic” (husband) rebuilt the plane so she could fly us and others into wilderness.

We flew low, low enough to stay under sagging clouds and low enough to see a brown bear and her cub. We were also low enough to see the rotting boats next to the crumbling fish processing plant in the Copper River Delta. The plant went out of business after the earthquake lifted the ground under the plant six feet. The sea moved several miles in the direction of Hawaii, changing all the channels in the delta, trapping the boats at the plant, and denying future access to the plant by the big fishing boats.

We flew over the Copper River Delta, across a sliver of Prince William Sound, around the rocks piled on Hook Point, and along a beach on the west side of Hinchinbrook Island. Gail pointed to a sign in the trees on the far side of a sandy beach that had to be as wide as the mall in DC. “That is where your cabin is,” she said. I couldn’t see anything indicating the presence of humans; no trails, no beach umbrellas, no reindeer hot dog stands, and no sign or cabin.

Gail made a low turn over the white foaming surf wallowing onto a beach as flat as snow on a frozen lake. The water pushing the surf onto that beach is called the Gulf of Alaska, which is connected to the Pacific. If we flew out to sea and had enough gas, a co-pilot, some wine and a place to go to the bathroom, the first land we would reach would be Hawaii.

Gail put the Beaver on the beach with out waking Cole and with out jiggling the fat around my middle. We unloaded, said good-by and Gail and her Beaver floated off into the thick salty mist. We were alone with the eagles, gulls, deer (Sitka black tail), bear, plovers and a pile of gear that had to be hauled to the little A-frame Forest Service cabin sitting back in the spruce trees over a half mile across the sand. The kids were already digging in the soft sand.

Off to Cordova

The Sunshines are back in Texas. We are leaving today with David, Joey and the kids for an island in Prince William Sound, not to far from Cordova. I will be without computer access for a week. I will give you a full report when we return.

When the Sunshines were here we went to Seward and stayed in a log cabin on a cliff overlooking Resurrection Bay. There was a small boat harbor just below the cabin. Off to the right was an RV harbor. We went to the sealife center and learned about changes in the northern seas.
Later we went to Exit Glacier outside of Seward. Signs were posted on the way in showing where the glacier terminated in years past. Some were on the road; 1900, 1932, 1950, The rest were on the hike to the edge of the glacier; 1960, 1975, still walking, 1980, still walking, on and on. We finally got to 2006. A beautiful glacier.

I think about the drivers and passengers in the RV's. Most are conservative. They come here for the beauty, the animals, the fish. If asked, they would all say they are pro-earth. I'm also pro-earth. All us pro-earth folks, conservatives, liberals, whatever, should get together and save the beauty, save the air, save the water, save the earth. Our children and grandchildren are worth it.

Mr. Sunshine Speaks

Halibut Cove

Halibut Cove, Wednesday, June 28, 2006

As Tim and I were sitting on the porch of our cabin drinking coffee and solving the problems of the world while looking down at the water of Halibut Cove sometime around low tide, Tim said, “I saw something out there and I think it was a whale.” To which I replied “your crazy, why would a whale come up into this little cove at low tide”. We began to watch. Sure enough a few minutes later we hear the unmistakable sound of a whale spouting. Now if I have learned anything from hanging around Tim it is that if you are outside and he says he sees or hears something you can bet on it. Now, I had never heard the sound of a whale spouting live before but I had never heard the sound of a rattlesnake either until I almost stepped on one at Perdonales falls last year and believe me you will know it when you hear it. This was unmistakable. Sure enough there was a whale just across the cove. We called Martha and Anne. After observing it for a while we determined that it surfaced about every 5-6 minutes and so we went about cooking a breakfast of sausages, scrambled eggs, and bagels and returned in time to see it again. Tim and I surmised that the only reason a whale would come up there would be sex or food (about the only true reason for doing anything, assuming wine is a food) and since there was only one whale it must have been eating. The whale hung around for about an hour or so but left before Martha and I could have our first kayaking lessons and go join it. The rest of the day it was the talk on the town. There were those that saw the whale and those that didn’t. And we had. The locals said that it was the first time that they had seen one come up in Halibut cove in 10 years. It was a Minkey whale, which we later learned is a smaller whale that tends to be solitary in nature.

While in Halibut Cove we saw many sea birds. The most interesting to me was the Common Muir, which is one of only a few birds that can fly in the air and the water. We watched them feeding at the Sea Life Center in Seward and they actually do fly in water. They can dive to 600 feet. We also saw eagles. On Thursday morning there was a harbor seal sleeping on our dock. We learned he had a name, Spot 99, and was rescued from the Exxon Valdez oil spill and lived in Halibut Cove now. He had recently become a widower and did seem sad. When we were Kayaking on Wednesday we saw Star Fish, Jellyfish, Sea Urchins and Otters. This was the best trip ever (so far).

Steve.

kayaks and Whales

Some pictures taken by Stevwe or Martha
The Sunshines on the high sea

June 28, 2006

This was the second day in a row of bright sunshine, something the locals say rarely happens here in June. Of course they didn’t know about Mr. and Mrs. Sunshine. We drank coffee on our porch and watched the cove.

There are few places on earth that are as much fun to photograph as Halibut Cove. There are few places where nature and human occupation makes both more beautiful. And it is best on a morning like this; bright sun, blue sky, flat water. There are two of everything running in opposite directions and just touching at the water’s surface: the kayaks, red, yellow, blue stacked on the dock next to the white house, and their picture perfectly painted just below; The red house hanging up and down on black pilings; The white gull flying by screeching, its image following in the water; and the silver and blue boat growling slowly along at the front of the ripple arrows, dragging its likeness.

The cove seems to just be waking. Sounds float crisp in the morning air. Gulls screech, someone down the cove laughs, the blue and silver boat groans into the distance, chickadees squeal, thrushes sing, and the whale spouts—WHAT? A whale? Whales don’t come into coves like this. But there it was, surfacing first to exhale a spout of misty breath and then rolling slowly to take in a breath of clean cove air. Steve timed the breaths; six minutes between inhale and exhale. Carl later told us that she (?) was a menke and that today was the first time that a whale had been in the cove in over ten years. Two days of sunshine and a whale—wow. We watched the whale most of the morning while getting ready to kayak. By the time we finally got into our boats, the tide was almost out and the whale had gone with the tide.

We paddled in the cove so that Steve and Martha could learn their boat. By afternoon the Sunshine’s had it mastered and we paddled over the bar that high tide had submerged and along the coast of Ismailof looking at star fish, jelly fish, and colorful houses built along the rocks. We made it all the way to Susan’s dock. It didn’t look any easier from the water.

This evening we walked the boardwalk to the Saltry for dinner. We recognized the locals and most of them recognized us. It is possible to meet almost everyone in Halibut Cove within twenty-four hours; with the possible exception of the folks renewing their creativity across the cove at the Creative Renewal Center. Most of the other tourists stay for a couple of hours, eat at the Saltry and go back on the evening run of the Danny J. We scooted our chairs closer to the fire and had another cup of coffee.

Spot 99

I didn't get a picture of the Danny J, so I borrowed this from an advertisement

June 29, 2006

The Sunshines power over clouds and rain finally showed some weakness. We road the lovely Danny J back across the bay under low overcast skies and into to the face of a cold wet wind. Annie, Martha and I hid in the cabin. Steve toughed it out on the foredeck with the other locals. Of course most of the locals were just wearing t-shirts and Steve had on at least five layers of fleece under his rain jacket. His bottom lip was blue when we got to Homer, but he was still smiling.

Earlier that morning, Steve took some bags down the steep ramp (tide’s out) to our dock and almost stumbled over a harbor seal that had climbed on to the weathered wood to take a nap. At first Steve and I thought it was sick. It totally ignored us no matter how close we got. Then Katy, a young lady wearing Tough Skins (the rubber boot brand of choice for Alaskans) who cleans cabins for Tammy when she is not running her commercial salmon fishing business and who carried the heavier bags down the ramp said, “Oh that is Spot 99. He’s just taking a nap.” This dock had been his favorite place to sleep since his girlfriend died of unknown causes a couple of weeks ago. Spot 99 and his friend came to the cove right after the Valdez oil spill, probably looking for food not seasoned by oil. They were lucky. Some of the Halibut Cove people cleaned the oil off both. They ate salmon from the nets around Halibut cove and sunned on the floating boat docks.

Carl came in his boat to take us over to the Danny J, and we said good-by to the seal, and good-by to Katy, and Carl’s son, and the whale, and the folks with their creatives renewed who were standing on the high deck next to the little cabin across the way, and good-by to Halibut Cove.

Halibut Cove

Picture by Steve or maybe Martha

The Stormbird took us across the bay to Halibut Cove. The Danny J that usually makes the fairy run from Homer to Halibut Cove had a slow leak and was parked for repairs on the gravel next to the Saltry Restaurant in Halibut Cove. The Danny J is a beautiful boat. If the Danny J was Brad Pitt, the Stormbird would be Brodrick Crawford. I know; he is dead. Mara, the Danny J captain, told me that when the weather is too bad for the Danny J to make the run, The Stormbird can always make it.

The lady who owns the Danny J and the Saltry Resturant is the daughter of Clem and Diane Tillion, the patron and the grand dame of Halibut Cove. The daughter was the first female in Kachemak Bay to get her one ton Captain’s license. She captained the Danny J for many years. When she retired, she decided that the Danny J should always have a female crew. Mara is now the captain.

Clem, the patron, homesteaded Halibut Cove right after WWII. He got there by walking from the rail line that runs between Seward and Anchorage. He was looking for the perfect place to settle. When he found Halibut Cove, he knew he had found it.

Ismailof Island forms one side of Halibut Cove and the mainland of the Kenai Peninsula is across the cove. Little houses and some not so little are scattered along the edge of the cove and over the hills of Ismailof. Many of the houses along the cove are built on pilings; above the water at high tide and over the rocks and gravel at low tide. Close to the Saltry and to the Tillion’s mansion and Diane’s gallery, the buildings are connected by boardwalks.

If you look at the real estate records for Halibut Cove, you will find The Tillion name somewhere in the history of most. We stayed on the island in a cabin on a bluff overlooking the Cove. Our hosts, Tammy and Carl, had lived on the island most of their lives. Carl’s parents bought the land from Clem in the early fifties when Carl was three years old. Only eleven people live in Halibut Cove during the winter. Clem and Dianne, now in their eighties, are two of them. Tammy and Carl still have one child in school and live in Homer in the winter. Tammy says they will stay year around as soon as the last child graduates.

We took a hike in the jungle. It is really rain forest, but that name doesn’t give the feel of what we walked through. Think of old Tarzan movies with someone at the front of the line with a machete. Maybe not that bad. We were looking for the property of a friend, Susan, who is building a house on the island. She gave us four typed pages of instructions on how to get through the “jungle” to her place. And we made it. There is no road. In fact there are really no roads anywhere in Halibut Cove. There is at least one wide trail where bikes and four wheel mules can run. The rest are for walking or maybe for a four leg mule. The folks building Susan’s house bring the construction materials in the easy way, by sea at high tide and up an eighty foot cliff by pulling it up an incredibly steep ramp from the little dock in a big wooden wagon with fat rubber tires.

Halibut Cove is a wonderfully different world.

Pro-earth

Dixon Glacier
Looking across at Bear Cove

June 26, 2006

In Homer with the Sunshines at a B&B about fourteen miles out East End Road. Steve’s GPS says we are about 1400 feet above the surface of Kachemek Bay. I wonder if that is at high tide or low tide. Today the difference between high and low tides in this bay is over twenty-two feet. Steve’s book says that Kachemek Bay has the second highest tidal change in North America.

It rained on us on the drive to Homer, but Steve and Martha Sunshine came through. We are sitting on the deck looking across the bay in the direction of Bear Cove. The glacier behind Bear Cove is Dixon and the glacier to the right of Dixon is Portlock. The tops of both glaciers above the cloud whisps just blazed white, reflecting the sunshine.

Don, the B&B owner who is from Syracuse, N.Y., stopped by to bad mouth “wacky environmentalists” that believe global warming might be melting some glaciers. He probably didn’t know what my kids do. Also I didn’t like the name he chose. I prefer to think that there are only three kinds of people; those who are pro-earth, those who are anti-earth, and who don’t care. We need more pro-earth people.

Salmon and Sunshine

Mrs. Sunshine, Annie and Elmo
Salmon art in down town Anchorage (photo by Martha)
Combat fishing on the Kenai River

June 25, 2006

It is Sunday, and the sun was shining on the volcanoes across Cook Inlet when we got up, and still shining when Martha had “church” on the steep trail from Eklutna Lake up to Twin Peaks. We didn’t go all the way. A young guy in shorts and a t-shirt zipped by. He said he was going to the top and expected to be back by around 10:00 P.M. We might have made it by 10:00 tomorrow morning.

When we got back to Anchorage, we stopped by New Sagaya, a really good specialty grocery store and bought salmon and veggies for dinner. When we got home Annie told grandson Birch, who is three years old, where we had been. “What kind of salmon did you get?” he said.

We have learned that in Alaska, salmon is not salmon. It is king salmon, red salmon, silver salmon, dog salmon, pinks, Chinook, sockeye, chum, humpies, coho, and even kokenai and char. In the restaurant, they even brag about the river where it was caught. “We feature Copper River reds on the menu tonight.”

David, after eight years experience, now believes that the name of the salmon and where it was caught is less important than how long the fish has been out of the water. The reds we got at New Sagaya had not been out of the water long, and Steve cooked them perfectly on the grill. Drizzled with a sauce of simmered garlic, shallots, white wine, grapefruit juice, and thick cream; accompanied by a half pound of good wine and the Sunshines, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Sunshine Report

June 24, 2006

Steve and Martha “Sunshine” from Denton came to Alaska. They brought 3 home grown Texas tomatoes and sunshine. They got here around 9:00 last night with the sun still two hands off the horizon. We took them out to eat, but it was difficult to find a place that was not filled with tourists. We finally got our food around 10:30, ate and made it back to the house in time to watch the end of a beautiful sunset around midnight.

Steve and I road trails today in Kincaid park. The hills almost killed both of us; then we road the coastal trail into town and met Annie and Martha for gourmet reindeer dogs at MA’s in front of the Federal building on Fourth Street. Later Annie took us to the fair at the Anchorage Botanical Garden. I was sleepy; not used to going to bed at midnight; and didn’t really want to go.

Annie was right as usual. I felt much better after the flowers, butterflies, red lichen on a birch tree, music floating through the woods, weird homemade garden stuff, a girl selling herbs and wearing a UNT sweatshirt who is going to school at North Texas in the fall, and t-shirts covered in prints of Alaskan flowers.

I think the flowers are what surprises most first timers to Alaska. Streets in town are lined with lilies, dahlias, geraniums, tuberous begonias, lobeilia, orange globe, petunias, delphiniums, and hundreds of others; all in full bloom. The roads are lined with wild daises, wild roses, forget-me-nots, and lupines; fields of white like bleached linen, splashes of pink like a baby girl’s pajamas, clumps of sweet blue like movie star eyes, and strips of faded purple like mountains just after sunset. Later in the summer the fire weed will blaze twice, once when it blooms and again when cold fall nights suck the fire into its leaves. Alaska has a short growing season, but long days of light that squeeze blooms from all the flowers.