The Moose and the Deep snow

It was March.  The snows had covered the ground entirely since early October in Anchorage and I looked forward to the warming weather of Spring coming around the corner.  But March tends to tease inhabitants of south central Alaska, especially those of us who are new to the area, as I had been at the time.

Typically March stays cold.  15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit on the average. In the evening before St. Patrick's Day, I had put the kids to bed and was settling into my own evening tasks before I too would go to bed.  I heard something outside and went out onto my snowy deck to investigate.  There, across the street, a moose cow was aggravated.  Upset.  She was snorting, tramping and totally agitated.  She seemed to be taking her bad mood out on a lone tree in the yard.  She went on her tirade for several moments circling the tree several times, then disappeared into the darkness between two houses.

I thought, "Well that was interesting!".  I went back into the house to finish cleaning the kitchen and getting ready for bed.  At around 11 p.m., I went to close the drapes when I noticed it was snowing.  It is Anchorage, and it is March. Snowing wasn't uncommon.

What was uncommon was the next morning.  I awoke to 24 inches of new snow. My 4 foot fence in the side yard was completely buried.  The cars in the driveway looked more like mogul bumps than vehicles.  The snow had completely blanketed the city of Anchorage shutting her down for two days while the plows tried to get the roads clear again.  Businesses didn't open.  Schools were closed.  Only medical, fire and police were required to venture out onto the roads to get to work.

So, I unburied my Suburban and drove my wife to work.  Her minivan would not be able to circumnavigate the deep snow on the roads.  Traveling was slow at best, and in some places bumpy.  We passed a Chevy truck that had somehow broken an axle in the process. 

After I deposited my wife to work, I made the same trip back.  When I got to my unplowed street, I discovered someone in his front wheel drive Nissan had gotten stuck in front of my house.  I got out to help push him out.  Then my friend the moose cow emerged. She ran up to our vehicles and circled us and ran back up the road.  I wondered if she had missed her mental health appointment and was off her meds.

The rest of March was basically clearing the driveway one shovelful at a time.  The kids dug snow caves big enough for me to fit into. April remained fully snowy and the "snow dumps" where they plows take excess snow could still see mountains of snows there in July.  Easter, the snow beside my porch was still taller than my daughter. And eventually in May, we'd see the ground again.

The Caldera and the Volcano

The lake is deep.

It's clear blue waters run deep and the reflection contrasts remarkably against the natural blue skies.

As a photo-journalist, I got to go up to Crater Lake National Park on assignment.  My job was to find out the tourist levels in a summer without smoke and extreme heat.  But it was also to find out how the mountain pine beetles are decimating the forests up there.

The winter snows held on this year keeping the park closed well into June, so the tourism had a slow start.  But the summer held mild temperatures and clear skies.  No fires reported so far (until a few days ago), so tourism was on the rise.  I could see it all around me.  Happy faces.  Families and visitors from across the world coming to see the blue.  It has been a beautiful summer so far, and things are looking up.

But climate change has set about a series of events.  For one, the summers are warmer and longer.  The pine mountain beetle has more time to infest the lodgepole pines, and possibly even reproduce more often creating a larger infestation.  The lodgepole pines have had a natural defense against the predator, but the longer summers are taking their toll.

And the white bark pines are now being infested by the pine bark beetle.  The pine, which is common around the rim of the lake at much higher elevations has never had to defend itself against the beetle. But with warming temperatures, the beetle is able to move higher in it's pursuit to eat and reproduce.

It is the sign of the times.

Tourists walk along the clear blue waters of Crater Lake.

I walk along the rim noticing the dead stands of white bark in contrast with the clear blue lake.  Everything is change.  And in geological time, we are but a blink of an eye.  Tens of thousands of years ago, Crater Lake was a volcano.   Mount Mazama.  Not much different than Mt. Shasta, Mt. Rainier or Mt St. Helens back before it blew its top.  When Mazama blew, it spewed granite and pumice for hundreds of miles.  You can see hummocks-those giant boulders from volcanic explosions in places hundreds of miles from Crater Lake--signs of a violent time.

In it's place, the deepest lake in North America.  It's called a caldera.  Supposedly, the lake does not drain at all but is filled entirely by rain and snow melt.  It's more natural and clean than most bodies of water we'll ever come across.

Change happens.  And perhaps mother nature will correct this warming climate.  Crazy storm systems are already apparent with record floods, violent hurricanes and extensive tornado seasons.

And a lot more fires.

Author taking a selfie before the lake.

The fires kill the underbrush and allow shade intolerant plants rebirth.  It also kills the pine mountain beetle.

The lake remains along with bleach white dead stands of white bark pines along a green forest that hasn't succumbed to the infestation.  And the blue colors will always bring about the beauty of nature and the illusion that the mountains, the forests and our world around us is perfectly fine.

Which is why we come.

Reflections in the Ice

Prince Willam Sound Alaska on an icy filled fjord

Something so profound speaks to me like the droplets of rain on the window of a boat looking out over an ice-filled ocean.  The clouds shroud the land in obscurity--so much so one could get lost in it.

I was fortunate to take the journey.  I was even more fortunate to get lost in the moment--to take in the landscape and embrace it like a long lost lover.  It was a summer where I was hired to be aboard glacier tour boats for no other reason than to interpret the landscape as an interpretive ranger for the U.S. Forest Service.  And from these experiences, I've begun drafting a book entitled Reflections in the Ice.  The book has 20 chapters and is reaching 50,000 words, which was my goal.  I'm now mostly in the editing process and have already begun looking for literary agents and potential publishers.

The book is about change.  Primarily about a changing climate where the eulogy is the witness of retreating glaciers in a rugged landscape.  It's also a connection to both Alaska and something deep inside of me that had been pushed down, squelched into submission only to finally erupt and blossom with the world around me.  A personal journey into the world of glaciers, snow capped mountains, close encounters with bears both black and brown.  Living on the banks of the Pacific Ocean where Alaskan ferry boats, cruise ships and float planes pass by on lazy summer days.  A place where the cracking and calving of glaciers marks the dramatic element of nature changing nature in a world few people will ever see.

Full of color imagery, personal journeys, quiet reflections and abundant wildlife, Reflections in the Ice is a book one could get lost in...like the droplets of rain on the window of a boat looking out over an ice-filled ocean.

Update #3:  I have now reached 50,000 words and am going through my 2nd wave of edits.  I've had one publisher approach me for a contract, but it was a bad one in which I declined.  I believe in this project!  I'm not selling myself short.

I'm also adding a new layer of metaphor to the work that falls in line with H. D. Thoreau and his ability of parables and metaphors.  It's a way to handle the more sensitive issues of my past, but also gives me a tool for understanding regarding nature and preservation.

I hope to have the book completed in the next few months.  I will keep you posted.

Never Cry Wolf

Reflections and Farley Mowat.

I have been intrigued with Alaska for most of my life.  I can say that now because of the year and age that I've reached.  My earliest thoughts on Alaska came from a movie that came out while I was in high school:  Never Cry Wolf.  It was a film based loosely on a book written by Farley Mowat, but adapted to be about a biologist portrayed by Canadian actor Charles Martin Smith.  Although the location is up in Canada, the world is the arctic for which I've always related to Alaska.

In the film, biologist "Tyler" goes up to study the wolves and becomes very attached and even defensive toward the world of the arctic and the wolves that inhabit it.  The snow on the mountains.  The dwarfed firs.  The clear glacial lakes.  The carved mountain ranges.  The tundra.  All inspirational to me.

My desk with the film DVD.

For a long time I contemplated that world while living in the tame confines of the Wasatch Mountains (tame by comparison only).  But I romanticized the arctic for many years after I'd first saw Never Cry Wolf in the mid-80s.  It remains to this day my favorite film.

I then had the opportunity  to move to Fairbanks Alaska for work, but decided to keep my current position and head to Europe.  Family was there and I missed them.  But while in Holland, I spoke to an American who was stationed in Alaska and spoke of many adventures.  Because of my previous job offer, I felt in some way that I had missed a great opportunity back then.  Holland was special in its own ways, but every fiber of my being longs for Alaska.  The arctic.  It's in my blood somehow.

About 9 years later, while living in California, I began a mantra to myself and some of my coworkers.    Has the job offer in Alaska come in for me yet?  One day, it did.  It was almost like providence.  It came to me as a gifted present--one I'd longed for for many years.  And so about a year later, I moved to Anchorage.  My life has never been the same since.

But life takes you on many journeys.  Even though I loved Alaska, family and circumstance pulled me away from the place I called home and I found myself in many different places:  Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, Utah, Washington and Oregon.  Has it been that many?  It's baffling to contemplate.  But I am a wanderer.  Some of those were job related via transfer, some were chosen while others were to become a ranger.  I lived and died away from Alaska and longed to return.

In 2015, I was called back to south central where the basis of my book Reflections mostly resides.

I rewatched Never Cry Wolf again tonight, mostly out of inspiration to complete Reflections.  I realize more than ever what a completely well done and written film that was.  One of the most underrated films of our time.  What cinematography!  What scripting!  What acting!  So incredibly well down with metaphors and references, philosophies and imagery--simply by words.

I hope someday to see northern Canada east of the Yukon Territory for which I'm somewhat familiar. I'd love to go see where the wolves are, up north in a world seldom seen by people.

Maybe....

Someday....

Redwoods

Far south on the northern coast of California, a tremendous and special grove of trees have thrived.  The Redwoods of California.  We'd spent the day in Crescent City where seal had come to sun themselves on the rocks in the bay.  On our way home we parked in one of the pull offs along the Redwood Highway.  Towering Redwoods all around us, just taking one step up the trail made me feel we'd stepped into another world.

In fact, the Redwoods were used in the Star Wars film Return of t
he Jedi.

But they are also famous for something else.

There's a sea bird called the Marbled Murrelet.  In the wake of the 1970s when forest management, ecology and nature were reaching new heights, biologists had a puzzling problem.  Where does the Marbled Murrelet nest?  They've seen them on the ocean water where they spend most of their time.  They've seen them fly over the old growth forests such as the Redwoods or the rainforests of the Hoh in Olympic National Park.  But no one knew where they nested.

Then one day, a ranger was way up in a Redwood tree trimming what he thought would be a dangerous limb over the camp ground.  He stepped onto another branch to get better footing when he almost stepped onto a Marbled Murrelet chick.  The moss created a nest of sorts and feathers from the chicks parents could be seen as well.  It was then that they discovered these sea birds won't nest anywhere but in the high canopy of old growth forests.

I love the Redwoods.  They are one of my favorite places to visit.  Where else can you find such a special grove of trees, but then drive 10 minutes further west to a sprawling California coastline?  But I could literally get lost in the Redwoods for days.  No two trails are alike, and yet the trees remind me how small we humans are.  It's dizzying just looking upward.  Patches of sky appear here and there, but mostly, all you see are towers of red and green.

And the forest floor is covered in mosses, lichens and ferns.

And it's home to the Marbled Murrelet among many other animals.

I pointed out the nurse log to my son who was visiting me from back east. I explained that in the Pacific Northwest and up in Canada and Alaska, when a tree falls over, mosses will grow on it and create a living environment for other plants to grow.  Seedlings from the Redwoods themselves will gather on that moss and eventually start growing in what appears to be right out of the fallen log.  But really it's taken root in the moss and dirt that's gathered.  The log will nourish the new growth and eventually decay away giving itself back to the earth.  The new growth will take over.  The Redwoods are full of these.  Nature has a way of taking care of itself in cycles, and the process is happening all around us while we stand in the forest.

Reflections in the Ice update2

I'm now sitting at 40,000 words and all the chapters have been drafted.  My approach now is to start editing the chapters in order, and approach getting them polished for publishing.  My current goal is to be ready to submit by February 1.

This has become quite the experience and I have to admit to you as my readers, that this has been a journey of sorts.  For those of you that don't know me, I have always wanted to be a nature writer since I first ready Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey back in the 1980s.  I now own a hard copy latest edition of the book.  The problem was, I didn't have the true experiences of nature for which to fully turn into a book, my life limited to raising a family and the years I spent in Anchorage, Ketchikan and Juneau.

But when I had to leave the University of Alaska  early, where I was pursuing a degree in Environmental Literature, I changed my major to film and television because I had to redo most of my English credits at the new university.  For a time I thought I was meant to become a nature environmental documentary filmmaker.  That could still be true...

But something awoke in me in 2017.  For one, I spent a summer in Olympic National Park and the winter at Mt. Rainier National Park, both as an interpretive ranger.  Coupled with my experience as an interpretive ranger in Alaska, the training and experiences there gave me two elements vital to writing my book:  fodder for stories and experiences, and the interpretive training for which to approach story telling.  Both of these elements have totally changed my approach to writing and made it essential in my completing this book.

And I discovered something within me sometime in 2017 a short time after I had totally lost a close friend to disagreement.  I found I was living my life for everyone else and it was time to live life on my own terms.  Something deep within me needed to come out.  I needed to tell the story.  And if I were ever wanting to read about Alaska and nature, I would want Reflections in the Ice to be an option.  Of all my books both bought and sought for (Arctic Dreams:  Barry Lopez, A Place Beyond and The Glacier Wolf by Nic Jans, Dominion of Bears by Sherry Simpson, Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Solitaire and The Journey Home by Edward Abbey, A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, Travels in Alaska by John Muir among others), I have found that I'd like to read about the experiences I had held and the insights and philosophies I had discovered in my journeys as an interpretive ranger.  I would have looked for Reflections in the Ice.

And so I am just a few months away from submitting this book to publishers.  I need support!  Please advertise this book far and wide and get the word out.  I'm confident it will be a wonder work of literature.

Reflections in the Ice - Update1

Reflections in the Ice:  Glacial Seasons in Alaska.

I've been working on a book for the past few months.  Currently I'm sitting just shy of 40,000 words.  The book is a personal nature book about the seasons I've spent as a ranger, especially focused on the season I spent on glacier boats.  Some of the essays in this blog have in inserted and modified into the book.

The book will touch on all things Alaska:  glaciers, mountains, bears, fishing and special places.  It'll take you from Ketchikan to Barrow, but focused mostly on south-central Alaska and the Kenai Peninsula.  I also have a few essays I'm including from Olympic and Mt. Rainier National Parks.

It's a reflective piece, thus the name.  It reflects upon my journey into the wild, my witness to receding glaciers and the effects of climate change.  It's also a reflection upon myself.  Much like the writings those of you have read here in my blog.

The difference is the format.  Everything will be connected and themed together into a long read--the kind of book I would have wanted to read if I had interest in Alaska.

I'll keep you updated.