Blog 1<\/p>\n
Selected log excerpts:<\/p>\n
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Day 1<\/p>\n
May 27th<\/p>\n
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This is Amazing.\u00a0 Leaving Anchorage, from sea level, fields of mountains rise .\u00a0 Out and expansive.\u00a0 Going north, an eastern sun checkerboards the slopes white and black.\u00a0 Sharps ridges and steep slopes provide the contrast.\u00a0 The sun is just rising.\u00a0 From 30,000 ft they are nothing but sheep.\u00a0 Mnt. Mickinley shepards the flock from far above.\u00a0 May still looks like winter.<\/p>\n
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The sheep disperse.\u00a0 Pebbled lakes star the flats, rivers add stripes.\u00a0 The hand that made these was not concerned with order.\u00a0 This feels<\/em> like the frontier.<\/p>\n \n I am changing my unknown to my discovered.<\/p>\n \n There are 17 people on my flight to Nome through Kotzebue, 1\/10 full.\u00a0 It’s weighted down with the necessities, food, goods, mail, someone’s new bike.\u00a0 There’s no other way.<\/p>\n \n We fly up, over the Yukon River, through the interior, just past Nome and into the arctic circle.\u00a0 Am I supposed to feel anything other than the novelty of so-far-north?\u00a0 Above the Seward Peninsula, the Kotzebue sound is still iced and cold.\u00a0 This is the Arctic Ocean.\u00a0 The land stretches out brown with frostbite.\u00a0 Kotzebue lies at the end of the longest coldest finger-no roads to the mainland.\u00a0 Few depart at the Alaska Airlines hangar, their breaths tell the temperature.\u00a0 US mail and cargo is unloaded.\u00a0 Only 11 continue to Nome.This is still winter.<\/p>\n \n Leaving Kotzebue I see the town’s length, shorter than the runway and only three blocks deep.\u00a0 I’m told Nome, just 30 minutes south and west, is a fraction larger.\u00a0 Before we get high above the clouds that have formed in the ‘warming’ of the day, we’re south of the circle and above the Seward Peninsula.\u00a0 A snow-blanket full of spring holes covers tundra, hills, mountains, and blurs the coastline.\u00a0 There are no trees, little life.\u00a0 I will get a second spring.<\/p>\n \n —————————————————————————–<\/p>\n \n Day 2<\/p>\n May 28th<\/p>\n \n I’ve been here in Nome for 36 hours.\u00a0 Like any experience that comes with a place it is hard to put to words.\u00a0 A first description I would give would only be a first impression unto you and thus temper the rest.\u00a0 Each detail is only part of the whole, and the order they come is no particular indication of importance or significance.\u00a0 That being said, I like Nome.\u00a0 The people I have met have been nice.\u00a0 They smile and say hello, wave from their trucks, shake your hand well.\u00a0 As a point of reference there are only 3,500 of them, most are native Alaskans.\u00a0 Children are everywhere, on bikes, playing basketball, walking unaccompanied.\u00a0 As for the adults, most are busy, walking here or driving there.\u00a0 Few sit and watch.\u00a0 There are tourists, not many of them but they come for the birds.\u00a0 I don’t know much about the birds but I’ve heard there are a lot of them, and there must be because this is a very long way to come.<\/p>\n \n The University of Alaska Fairbanks has a satellite campus here in Nome, known as the Northwest Campus.\u00a0 In some regard or another I will be working with their Reindeer Research Program and the BLM, but how is not yet clear.\u00a0 I’m living in the University Bunkhouse, 208A East Kings Plaza, for the moment alone.\u00a0 There are three bunk rooms and master bed room with, what I would suspect are, Greg Finstadt’s belongings (more on him after I meet him).\u00a0 There are maps on the wall, guns in the closet, couches, pots and pans and a fridge with, until today, little more than reindeer medicine in it.\u00a0 It has been well lived in and as long as there’s kitchen and a bed its good enough for me.I’m excited here.\u00a0 Now that I’m here there is nothing to lose by being fully here.\u00a0 Exploring town, discovering all of the new, living everything is fun.\u00a0 Nothing new is ever dull.\u00a0 I’m enthusiastic about being here.\u00a0 This is not just a work experience, it is an Alaksa experience, a too-far-north experience, a new-place-and-people experience, a learning experience, a living experience.\u00a0 The work I will do will constitute a significant part of my time here, but it is just a fraction.\u00a0 While I’m tentative to predict anything, I’m certain of this.<\/p>\n \n —————————————————————–<\/p>\n \n Day 8<\/p>\n June 3rd<\/p>\n \n And just now, finally, I’m starting to get an idea of what I’m going to be doing.\u00a0 From what Greg says it’s a terribly daunting task.\u00a0 Greg’s been here for ages;\u00a0 there’s no one better to introduce you to the herders, make you understand the place and teach you everything you need to know about the ecosystem than Greg.\u00a0 He lives this and loves sharing it.\u00a0 The BLM is responsible for assisting the reindeer herders in generating range management plans and it sounds like they’re having me start it because no one was qualified and felt up to the task.\u00a0 No one has made one before for this area so I’m walking on new ground, and no one wanted to make one which tells me I need to watch my step and look for all the help I can get.\u00a0 Laurie (BLM) has asked me to generate three plans for different herds but Greg says he would be more than happy with just one.\u00a0 \u00a0 With the amount of material that’s accumulated on my desk today alone, piles of pressed plants, Federal handbooks, textbooks, and other reading material that I have to get through and know and understand by the end of the month, I’d say my job is daunting and finishing just one plan would make me very proud.\u00a0 So, in short, I’ve got a hell of a lot of work cut out for me.<\/p>\n \n As for Photographs, I know family and friends would like visuals to put their imaginations to rest but they will be posted in some time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blog 1 Selected log excerpts: Day 1 May 27th This is Amazing.\u00a0 Leaving Anchorage, from sea level, fields of mountains rise .\u00a0 Out and expansive.\u00a0 Going north, an eastern sun checkerboards the slopes white and black.\u00a0 Sharps ridges and steep … Continue reading