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As a friend put it, "when you live in Alaska (or anywhere in the far north), you finally realize that the Earth is a round object". The extreme change in seasons is wonderful, but the change in daylight is almost painful. It's hard to sleep during summer because it's too light out, it's hard to stay awake during winter because it's too dark. As we move toward the winter solstice I find the time I arrive at work gets later and later. It's just too difficult to get up before the sun rises, which nowadays is close to 10:00 am... Luckily I won't get "fired" for showing up late, as long as the work gets done it doesn't matter when and where I work.
It seems most everybody here suffers from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) to some degree. I wasn't prepared my first year here. I didn't realize how much the light was affecting me until spring came and I felt so good! Every year since then has been a little better, but the darkness isn't necessarily something you can get used to. Some people that have lived here their whole lives have a lot of trouble dealing with the darkness. The key seems to be staying active and getting out to enjoy the precious daylight hours, no matter what the temperature. Without much snow that can be difficult; this winter has gotten off to a slow start, but we finally have enough snow for cross-country skiing. I ski to school most of the winter, which takes about 35-40 mins each way. It's a long trip, but I think I'm happier for it. Besides, where else in the world can you ski to work?
Last weekend I played in my first "gig" with the Fairbanks Steel Drum Band. I'm not sure gig is the correct term, since we played at an elementary school for their family night. But on the other hand, you can't be too picky about your gigs in Fairbanks - there just aren't many opportunities. The concert was fun; I only played two songs: "Jammin' " and "Yu safe". The rest of the time I just watched or helped with the limbo stick. Those kids are crazy about limbo! After the show I had to "fight" with two of them to get the limbo stick so we could pack up and head home.
It was a somewhat humbling experience - some of the drummers are really good, and they played much faster than I was expecting. Something to work towards, I suppose. The sound of the steel drum is a little too shrill for my liking, but its fun to play. I'll probably continue playing with the band, but maybe focus more on hand drumming.
Winter has arrived (it was -20F at the cabin this morning), so maybe it's about time to stop thinking about summer and accept the fact that winter is here to stay. But before moving on, here's one last anectdote from summer.
During a field project in August, Inari, myself, and a professor from Juneau traveled around Southeast Alaska by boat to try to quantify rates of post-glacial rebound. (Uplift rates in Glacier Bay National Park are some of the highest in the world.) One day while traveling through Frederick Sound, we came across a pod of humpback whales, who spend winters in Hawai'i and summers in Alaska. The largest populations are found in Frederick Sound.
The whales surprised us at first - we nearly hit a couple of them while going 30 mph. Once we realized how many whales were around we decided to kill the engine and enjoy the moment. We must have been surrounded by 30 whales, each surfacing and "singing". One even jumped completely out of the water. (That's a 45 ton cannonball!) We got the feeling they were enjoying the wonderful weather even more than we were. Every being was happy, except for Tracy the dog, who was perturbed by the incredibly deep vibrations produced by the whales.
One thing to keep in mind about Alaska is that view of the world is a little different from here. For example, when people travel to Southeast they are not heading to Disney World. Similarly, what I used to call "out east" is now lumped into the expression "back east" since almost everybody in Alaska is from back east.Juneau is, in many ways, the cultural center of Alaska. Some refer to it as North Seattle because it is the most politically liberal part of the state, which means its pretty moderate. There is never a shortage of things to do in Juneau; besides the obvious outdoor activities there is a great bluegrass music scene, numerous good restaurants, some cinemas that show independent films, numerous art galleries and museums, and even an opera. Numerous sculptures, totem poles, and paintings can be found in the downtown area, which is the old part of the city.
And if you still run out of things to do you can always sit and watch the turistos who swarm the city by the thousands each day during the summer. Fortunately for the locals, the tourists usually don't venture too far from the cruise ships so they're impact on the city life isn't too great. Unfortunately, the money they spend on Persian rugs and Brazilian emeralds doesn't go to the locals.
Life at the moment isn't super exciting; I'm working my tail off on my thesis so that I don't feel as guilty about taking so much time off over winter break. Plus, we've entered the "shoulder" season: it's much too cold for summer activities, but there isn't enough snow yet for skiing. I've decided that for the next few weeks I'll start posting some photos and stories from the summer. I'm not sure if I'll keep updating the ol' website or not. This seems much easier.--------------------Being an Alaskan gives you certain privileges, such as an annual dividend from the government and the ability to go "dipnetting" in the famous Copper River near Chitina (pronounced Chit-na). Dipnetting is so many things rolled into one. But at its core it's basically the "Great Alaskan Get-Together". Alaskans of all sorts drive to the tiny town of Chitina, which is a couple hours from Valdez, which means the middle of nowhere, to stick their nets in the glacially-fed Copper River. And then you wait for salmon to jump in your net.
To get from Chitina to the fishing holes, you have to drive down an extremely rough, one lane dirt road that is on the edge of a cliff. Eventually you come to a spot where the road has been "closed" due to high slope instability. Many people drive right past that spot, others use four-wheelers, or dirt bikes. We had intended to bicycle, but upon arriving at the closed road sign, we were informed that the fishing were running so hard that we wouldn't have to go to the better fishing holes down the road. So, at 12:30 am we scrambled down the steep slope (45 degrees?) to the water's edge, tied our nets to a tree so that we wouldn't have to continually fight the current, and watched the fish come. It was almost like they wanted to be eaten.
Each household is allowed to catch 30 fish per year - if the salmon are running hard you can get your limit in a few hours. By 5:00 am we had caught 64 salmon (for three of us), all of them about the size as those in the picture above. Anybody that's done any fishing knows the work has just begun. We then hauled the fish up the steep slope, drove a short ways to a clear stream and cleaned the fish. After putting them on ice, we started heading home. We rolled into Fairbanks sometime in the early evening, and crashed.
The next two days were spent filleting the fish, and then freezing or smoking them. We figured that we had spent something like $0.60 per pound of salmon. At a store, that same salmon would cost closer to $10.00 per pound. It was a lot of work, but well worth the effort.
The big downside to living in Fairbanks is that its so far from everywhere - except wilderness. Its really an isolated community. Anchorage is 6-7 hours away by car, and there is basically nothing in between. Just getting to the state capital (Juneau) is quite an adventure. If you want to get there you have two options: taking a 2+ hour flight (if you're lucky you can get a direct flight) or driving through Canada and catching the ferry from Haines. That takes about 15 hours, about the same as driving from Minneapolis to western Montana. And if you want to visit the U.S....Of course, the airlines aren't exactly trying to make travelling any more enjoyable. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the airline companies' current plight. About a month ago I purchased tickets to fly from Fairbanks to Minneapolis to Helsinki to Fairbanks over winter break. I recently decided to attend a geophysics conference in San Francisco that ends the day before I was scheduled to leave Fairbanks. Changing the ticket sounded like a hassle, so I asked if I could just cancel one leg of the ticket (2 months in advance). Turns out you can't do that without canceling the entire ticket and losing all that money. Somehow that doesn't make sense: I told them that I would just forfeit my seat, and that they could give it to somebody else (and charge them for it), but the airline wouldn't do it. My only option was to change the ticket - at first "they" tried to charge me $800 to do that, since the cost of the flight went up. The same flights, one month later, cost $800 more. Can you imagine if buses operated like that? Anyway, enough ranting. We got it squared away (minus lunch money for a couple months).I'll be in Minnesota December 11-15 (arriving early on the 11th, leaving midday on the 15th). Leave your calendars open, it's gonna be wild.
I've been told that a geek would have realized his computer wasn't connecting to the internet because his ethernet cable was plugged into the wrong port. But I'm trying!This has been the dreariest autumn since I've been in Fairbanks. It's rained almost every day, and today the rain is slowly turning into big, fat snowflakes. I hope it sticks! It must be time to wax the skis and make sure they're ready to go once winter hits.On Monday good friends and colleagues of mine moved back to Switzerland. They've known they were leaving for about a year, but its amazing how fast that time passed. Probably the best part of being in the academic world is that you get to meet a lot of great people from around the world. The worst part being that they all leave at some point.In other news, a paper I submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surfaces has been conditionally accepted. This means I need to make some major revisions to the paper within the next month, and if the revisions please the scientific editor (the person who ultimately decides whether or not to publish a paper), then we should be seeing my first manuscript in print sometime next year.
I've been convinced by two fellow geeks and travelers extraordinaire that I should join the blogging community. Alaska is still a blast and often an adventure, but many days my life consists of cursing at my computer and talking about geeky things that nobody else really cares about. So, for now I'll just post once a week unless something else comes up that inspires me to blab, rant, or show off some photos.------------------------
A busy weekend. Saturday was the Equinox Marathon and Relay, supposedly the second most difficult marathon in the U.S. It's often considered a graduation requirement for graduate students in the geophysics department. Each year I tell myself that I'm going to run it and then chicken out. This year I ran the 3-person relay, along with Inari and my friend Anthony. We finished at 4:09, good enough for 16th out of 62 relay teams and 4th out of 22 mixed teams. Full results, if you're interested, are at http://www.equinoxmarathon.org.
On Sunday we celebrated Inari gaining resident status by hosting an American party. This required dressing as an American and bringing American food, which of course, was open to interpretation. We had a redneck, a hippie, a jock, a cowboy, an American tourist, and everything from ding-dongs to chili. It was a real hoedown.
As a resident Inari is now able to remain in the U.S. indefinitely, which means no more stress and no more unnecessary bureaucracy. For now. She'll have the option of becoming a dual-citizen in five years.
