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.

View images as slides

They will appear larger and look better

A bug moves in, takes Margie down, then me too

IPhone photo of the cat warmer Chicago beneath the red and black blanket.

Yesterday, Margie ate only a few bites of her breakfast, then announced that she was strangely full and could eat no more. Shortly afterward, she announced that she was not feeling well and her tummy hurt. She then descended into a state of misery. Except for a few saltine crackers, she has eaten no food since and she basically spent the remainder of the day on the couch, looking miserable, able to do nothing at all.

I had three hopes: one, that she would soon get better, two, that my body would fight off whatever bug had got her (and Caleb) and that if it didn't the illness would be short-lived and would not affect me so badly as it had her.

I have too much to do to be sick.

Often, bugs hit others around me and do miss me. When they get me, they do not generally take me down as far as they do Margie. I might feel miserable, but I can generally function whereas she had been rendered unfunctionable.

When I woke up this morning at about 7:30, I felt a little queasy. I hoped it was just an early morning thing and would soon go away. I set some coffee to brew, then came out here to my office to skim through the beluga pictures from which I planned to make today's post, to check emails, do a comment respond, etc., and then I went back in to cook my oatmeal.

But I did not cook my oatmeal, for I knew I could not eat it if I did and Margie said she still couldn't eat. I knew I needed to eat something, so I got one of those little pre-packaged half-cups of applesauce. I took one teaspoonful and it felt like it was about to rip my stomach out. I did not take a second teaspoon.

I forced myself to drink a glass of water, which I feared was going to rocket right back up but it didn't.

I then found a red and black blanket near the couch-that-is-good-to-nap-on and summoned two cat warmers to join. I lay down upon the couch with one cat warmer beneath the blanket on my torso and the other atop the blanket on my shins and there I stayed in a state of immobile misery with respites of dose until after 1:00 PM.

So that's it. This is all the blog I can muster today. I feel horrible, as though I am about to lose all the food that I am not eating, as though there are tiny knives in my gut, stabbing at the lining from the inside. My head aches and I feel weak. No energy. I cannot do today what I had planned to do.

The belugas have waited quite awhile to make their appearance on my blog. They will just have to wait for at least one more day.

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.

View images as slides

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.

View images as slide show

Standoff with skinny moose; buried truck, the train rumbles past Subway, etc. and so forth

I photographed this truck in early May in Point Hope. I include it in today's post just to assure interested readers that, although the rest of today's post will be devoted to Wasilla, I am continuing on with my series from my recent Arctic travels.

I spent two weeks on that trip and by the time I put yesterday's post up, I had made my way through just a little bit more than a day-and-half of that two weeks. I have been moving very slowly on that edit, because I have a different project that I must have proof ready by June 15, so I would do a little bit of editing on the Arctic trip, then put it aside and get back to work on my project.

But I want to get this blog series done, so I decided that today, Saturday, I will put my project aside and see if I can make my way through the entire take, then hopefully do a bit better job planning for the remainder of the Arctic Spring 2011 posts and get them ready so that they can appear through next week while I do nothing but concentrate on my project - and maybe drop in a picture or two from Wasilla here now and then, just to make it clear where I really am.

Despite appearances, it does not really snow that much in Arctic Alaska, where annual precipitation is about the same as Phoenix, Arizona. But once the snow falls, it does not melt for a long time and the wind blows it all about, so, whenever it finds anything to drift up and pile against, or even bury, it does.

And so it buried this truck. Looks like someone decided it was time to start digging it out.

Now, here I am, solidly back in Wasilla, driving home the long way after stopping at Metro Cafe. I see a kid on a bike out the window, so I quickly lift the camera and take a blind snap to my side through the dirty glass as I look straight ahead at the road. A moose could walk onto the road.

Yesterday morning, Margie and I decided to have breakfast at Subway, where it is pretty cheap but still good. As we were eating, I was thrilled to hear the whistle and rumble of the train, coming down the tracks. So I got my camera ready and.... sure enough, the train rolled into view! And, employing all my skill, talent, and experience as a hard working photojournalist, I caught the exact moment that the train rolled into view.

The exact moment! People will now marvel at this photo from now until the end of the world. Hmmm... according to some, folks won't get to marvel all that long, so look at it now and enjoy it while you can.

I love the train and yet, you know what? I have never ridden on the Alaska Railroad - not one time. I have never even been on a passenger car or in an engine, either. Nor has Margie.

Someday, this must change.

As it turned out, the Alaska Railroad engine was towing passenger cars, operated by Princess Tours. I could only wonder what these people were talking and thinking about as they rolled through my now famous/infamous home town.

I suspect some were basking in perceived glory and glowing in adoration. Others were probably discussing US history, Paul Revere in particular, and wondering if our schools could really be that bad.

They're not. It's an individual thing.

On my walk, I came upon this adolescent moose. As I approached, I was searching for its mom. One never wants to step between a mom moose and her calf. I saw no mom. Maybe the adolescent had been turned out on its own.

Maybe the mom had died.

Who knows?

Then the moose came walking toward me, looking at me. I looked at its bristles and they were up, but not dramatically so. I was not quite sure what to think. My first thought was that maybe somebody had fed this calf and now it was hungry and coming to me in the hope that I might give it an apple or something.

Or maybe it saw me as threat and was warning me to back away or it would stomp on me. Or maybe it was saying I am one mean moose and I am coming to get you and I will jump on you and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

It can be very hard to know with a moose.

And, despite all our bear stories, in Alaska, moose afflict more damage upon human flesh than do bears.

"It is okay, moose," I calmly told it. "I mean you no harm. You have nothing to fear from me." I started to walk slowly to the side. I did not back up or retreat in the opposite direction, because I did not want it to think that I was afraid of it, either. I just moved away to the side.

Finally, the moose turned away. See how skinny it is? I felt badly for it. I did not feel optimistic for its future. I doubt that it will make it to hunting season, but I could be wrong. Maybe it will eat, thrive, and grow strong.

In the afternoon, Margie drove to town and brought Jobe and Kalib home with her. Once again, they are spending the weekend with us in order to allow their parents to work on their house.

Jobe wants to be friends with Jim.

Jim is still trying to decide if this is a good idea.

And for all my readers who have become fond of Charlie - who has not been in this blog since before I went traveling - his family dog, Rowdy, who was a genuine smiler, died this past week.

Condolences, Charlie, Jim and Cyndy.

Kalib bounced on the bed.

That plastic is up to give better insulation against the cold of winter.

I suppose we could take it down now.

Margie did open it up at the bottom, to let fresh air in.

View images as slides