Children at play in Tikigaq

Given the task that will keep me busy all through the day, deep into the night and possibly all of the night, I am again going to post just one picture - this study that I took in Point Hope on May 4: Two kids at play in the snow by snowmachine and sled.

As for today, June 12, in Wasilla, it has begun beautifully. Although there are clouds over the mountains to the north, the sun is shining, the temperature is in the mid-fifties and it feels wonderful outside.

It is just the kind of day that I do not want to be stuck indoors, but I am. The whole week will be like this, I fear, and most of the next too.

Even so, I took my morning walk and, come night, I will take an hour break, jump on my bike and go pedal somewhere.

Seabirds, passing by Tikigaq

As we wait on the ice edge for whales, seabirds come passing by - including these three murres and an eider.

Hoping to finally finish my Tikigiq series and move on to Barrow, I pulled out 26 pictures for today's post, but that took all the time I have. I must move on to other things.

So for today, these birds are all you get to see.

But the photos are now selected. Maybe I will run them all tomorrow, or maybe over two days, three days.

I am in the midst of a huge task that must be done soon and I really have no time to spare for this blog right now.

So don't be surprised if it takes me at least two more days to post those pictures - maybe three.

Tikigaq: belugas pass by in the night

I did not have access to a snowmachine in Point Hope, and so this is how I mostly traveled across the ice - on a sled - in this case, a basket sled - towed by someone else. This particular basket sled was a real rough rider. It projected each bump and jolt right through the wood frame into me. At the back, there was a cross bar at shoulder level and another at the bottom and the space in between was open.

I carried two camera bodies and three lenses. I kept one camera body and lens slung over my neck where I could access it to take an occasional picture as I bounced along. I packed the other body and two lenses into a small backpack, which was then positioned directly between my shoulders and the top cross bar.

Out at the lead, belugas swam by in significant numbers. The people take belugas also, but they did not land any while I was with them, in part because when a large number of beluga passed right by the ice edge the umiak was in the water in pursuit of a bowhead. 

There were plenty of hunters left at the ice edge, but by protocol they could not fire as long as that umiak was in the water following a bowhead.

In the morning, somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 AM, I zipped two lenses and a body into my pack, slung the other body and lens over my neck and climbed back into the basket sled and then we headed back to the village.

As always, it was a bouncy ride but it was not long before I was dropped off in front of Jesse and Krystle's house.

Krystle was still up when I stepped in, so I greeted her and then went to sling my pack off my back, but was surprised by how light it felt. Then, in horror, I realized the pack was empty. The force of the camera and lenses repeatedly being bounced against the back flap had undid the zipper and somewhere between here and the lead my camera and lenses had exited the bag, passed through the space between the back cross bars and who knew where they were now?

I felt sick inside. If I could not get them back, the lenses and body were expensive and there was no way I could afford to replace them at this time. With just one body and a wide angle-lens only, I would be crippled for the remainder of my trip.

And then there were the beluga pictures in that camera. I did not want to lose the beluga pictures. In many ways, I felt worse about that possibility than about the loss of the equipment.

Krystle offered to go out with me and help me look, but first I had to duck into the restroom.

Before I came out, I heard a snowmachine pull up to the house. It was Jesse, who had been out at camp a short distance up the lead from the Rock's. He had found my lenses and the body and now had them in his pocket. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesse!

Now, a few beluga pictures, which I might as well make into studies, if for no other reason than to create a little separation between frames.

Tikigaq beluga study #1.

Tikigaq beluga study #2.

Tikigaq beluga study #3.

Tikigaq beluga study #4.

Tikigaq beluga study #5.

Tikigaq beluga study #6.

Tikigaq beluga study #7.

Tikigaq beluga study #8.

Tikigaq beluga study #9.

Tikigaq beluga study #10.

Tikigaq beluga study #11.

Tikigaq beluga study #12.

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Jobe's goodbye to Lisa; Back to Tikigaq, where a bowhead passes and a boat goes into the water

The whole family and Charlie - who is family - came out yesterday to throw a belated Happy Mother's Day party for Margie, since she had been in Arizona on that date. As anyone who knows me would suspect, I took a good many photos of the kind I usually do when I am with my family - including many fun pictures of Kalib and Jobe.

The problem is, I in no way have time to edit and post those pictures, so I decided I would post just one. But which one? 

As I was loading my take into the computer through Lightroom, I suddenly experienced one of those little computer glitches that happen all too often. Lightroom ceased loading the pictures well before they had all been transfered and said, "I'm done, that's all, there is no more."

This was the final picture that Lightroom had loaded. So I decided to chose it. I then started over and made Lightroom download the pictures it had left behind the first time.

After the celebration, Lisa was the first to leave. She had to get back to Anchorage so that she could see her cats and her boyfriend. As she drove away, she waved goodbye to Jobe.

"Damnit, Auntie Lisa!" Jobe shouted after her. "Why do you have to leave so soon?"

And then off she drove.

Now, back to Tikigaq:

When I left off, we were returning to the Rock camp from the site where Isaac Killigvuk had just landed his bowhead, so I will restart there - on the journey back to camp.

As we travel, Rex Rock Jr. locks his eyes onto something a bit further out into the Chukchi, off portside.

Bowhead!

But it is far out and there are further preparations that must be made before the crew can hunt again.

Soon, they are back at camp. The umiak is in place.

Eiders fly by by the score, the hundreds, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands... over the season... millions.

Butch Lincoln makes a cell call from atop a perch of ice while Rex connects from the ice edge. I was off-network in Point Hope with my At&t plan and I could only connect from up on the ice, where Butch is, but could not send text from that spot.

Butch, who hails from Kotzebue, is a famous Alaska basketball star. He starred at Kotzebue High and then became the first Alaska Native to earn a basketball scholarship when he played for the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Butch is short like me, but was blessed with talent, desire and drive and successfully took on the tall guys.

The umiak, with harpoon and darting guns ready.

The landscape.

The migratory bird...

Ripley watches for a whale.

A seal pops up and checks out the boat and hunters.

A bowhead blows. 

Another bowhead comes. The boat is launched.

Hunters, in pursuit of the bowhead.

The hunters paddle into the reflected glare of the sun, but this was not the bowhead that would give itself to the crew. 

Even as his crew continues to paddle through the water in search of the whale, captain Rex Rock Sr. arrives on his snowmachine, bringing with him the new harpoon shaft that had been working on.

The crew returns to the ice.

Later, after the sun took a short dip below the northern horizon, I noticed the image of an old ice man with an icicle beard. 

Next up, belugas will come swimming by.

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Hit with the ball, the big wheelbarrow race, the sign lies, Mahoney horse, looking back at Barrow through the water glass

Kalib and I played catch. His objective was to dash in close enough and throw the ball hard enough so that instead of me catching it, it would bounce off my head.

Quite often, it did bounce off my head. Today, my artificial shoulder is very sore from throwing and catching the ball. I suppose that is not correct. The artificial shoulder has no nerves. There is no feeling in it. It cannot possibly be sore. It is the muscles and connections around it that are very sore.

Twice, Kalib knocked the lens shade off my lens when he struck it instead of my head.

Jobe and his grandma engaged in a series of wheelbarrow races. Jobe won every time. "Damnit!" Margie exclaimed after the last one. "I can't understand it. I run as hard and fast as I can and the damn little kid doesn't even run, he doesn't even walk he just cutes away in the wheelbarrow and yet, every time, he crosses the finish line before I do!

"Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!"

I was shocked.

Margie doesn't usually swear like that.

And it got worse after he beat her in the next race - the race that followed the final race.

I would quote her, but I don't use that kind of language in this blog.

The road ahead is not really closed at all. There is merely a detour around a construction area. Here we are, paying taxes to our Borough government and they use that money to lie to us.

The weather, by the way, is about 20 degrees cooler than it was on that glorious Memorial Day weekend just one week ago. It is good, though. As much as I enjoyed feeling those temps in the upper 70's, I feared the country would soon catch on fire and burn up.

So the cooler weather and the moisture is good.

And there is a Mahoney horse, not caring whether the road is open, closed, or detoured. 

Yesterday, I stated that I was going to use the day to completely work my way through my recent Arctic take. I only partially succeeded. As you can see in the above pictures, I allowed myself to be distracted often and frequently. I did very loosely edit all of my Point Hope pictures and I got into the Barrow pictures, but not very far.

At one point as I edited the Barrow pictures, I drank a glass of water. Just before I put the glass down, I noticed the screen looked kind of neat through the glass, so I took this picture through the water glass.

Here is an assignment for astute readers:

Once I get to Barrow in this blog, try to remember this picture and then see if you can match it up to the scene from which it comes. I might use this very picture or I might use a different frame of the same scene.

Anyway, see if you can match the two up.

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