Not Enough, and Too Much

We go for hikes in the forest, sunny, cloudy or drizzling, and see no squirrels, no frogs, no snakes, no butterflies, maybe a bird or two or three, maybe an insect or two, in a dense forest with running creeks, open areas, and muskeg.  There are sitka spruce and western hemlock and alder galore, and occasional alaska yellow cedar and western red cedar.  The underbrush is filled with ferns and devil's club, bunchberry and blueberry bushes.  It's a beautiful mosaic of many different textures, shades of green, browns and other colors, mushrooms and other fungus, a circus of botany.  How strange it is then, that in the official desert of San Diego, I often went for an hour walk from my house in the suburbs, and observed no less than eight, and often more, birds.  Squirrels, rabbits, and even occasional snakes and raccoons.  Strange that, in a place where a basic biologic need is so scarce there is so much wildlife, at the same time, in a temperate rainforest, there is so little. For me, this lack of wildlife, especially birds, leaves me wanting.  This forest is just not enough.

One of the many mushrooms popping up now.

Some of visitors, just passing through.  We even hear them honking overhead at night sometimes, maybe taking flight to avoid predators?

The scenery is drop-dead gorgeous, as I've written more than one and will probably again.  We often remark that this is most likely the most beautiful place we will ever live.  Glacier National park is a close second, and Bellingham, too, but they didn't have the surrounding water.  The scenery by itself, it's not enough.  

The people are friendly, which always makes a real and positive difference in ones happiness.  We love the habit people practice of waving to each other on the road, whether they recognize your car or not.  Really nice people are a treasure, but they alone are not enough.

The water everywhere, from the Klawock River just blocks away, running under the big Klawock River bridge right near Kathy's SEARHC, the many creeks, the big Klawock Lake, to the coastal waters all around us, the water is just beautiful, ever-changing, a fascinating magnet for the few birds and mammals who call the rainforest home, but it's just not enough.

Kathy bought a Barbie to entertain the kids who sometimes come with their parents to her counseling sessions.  A co-worker stitched a Tlingit regalia rob and hat, very cool


















She has other Alaska Native pieces around her office, too.  


Labor Day weekend behind us, and a Tuesday becomes a Monday:  no Internet, welcome back.  How can this be?  Oh, we didn't pay the bill?  Well, let's get on that, except the bookkeeper is out today, and the credit card holder is on leave.  Okay, well, time for Plan B.  Hey, our shuttle buses have arrived in Thorne Bay, an hours drive away, cool!  My co-worker Tom and I have to recruit a third person to drive us their and drive that car back, so he and I can drive the two buses back.  Success, adding someone who can be, well, trying.  Great, an hour in the car with this person.  

My expectations are far exceeded:  Tom and the third person trade fishing stories all the way over, very entertaining.  My favorite is the man who took his grandmother out on his boat fishing often, and she always caught a lot more fish than he did, and wouldn't tell him her secret.  25 years later, she revealed that it was Chanel No. 5!  I'm guessing it wasn't the real thing, still a funny story.  

Sunshine and Two Bears

Before I share our weekend, I need to post an update.  From what I had read before we drove away from Sunny San Diego, this island was literally crawling with black bears.  We were excited to be able to see them so easily and often.  Well, we've seen them, but not nearly as often as I expected.  I still believe there are many bears here, but I have another view of sighting them.  As one Alaska Native recently told me, grizzly bears may eat your arm, but black bears will kill you.  I didn't realize they were so dangerous.  I do know the cities won't put up with them marauding through their boundaries.  So, if you were wondering either why I haven't written more about them, now you know.  


While I'm on the subject of wildlife, the river otter picture in a previous post, well, that was actually a seal.  I've seen lots of seals, only a few river otters; guess I jumped to a conclusion.  Hey, these were well up the river, too, so that helped fool me.
See a closeup of the head-only pose at:  Seals of Alaska


This weekend was spectacular, with nothing but sunshine.  We had a crazy low pressure on Thursday which brought winds gusts of more than 30 mph, then left as abruptly as it came, so we were spared the much higher winds that Anchorage experienced.

We had a two-bear Sunday, pretty rare.  First, our neighbor came over and told us there was a bear up a tree between our houses.  This explained why the dogs were acting strange.  He told us he was keeping his dog Daisy inside.  He wanted to give the bear a chance to wander off safely and stay out of trouble.  Of course I had to go check this out.  At first I couldn't see or hear him.  Then I heard loud huffing and claws on bark, and there he was, six feet up a tree in the middle of a small grove, about 20 feet away from me!  He seemed to be very agitated, so I backed off and hid behind a bush, hoping he would soon come down and run away, with me snapping pictures like crazy.  That didn't happen.  He stayed put, occasionally huffing and puffing, but staying up the tree.  I got impatient, and went back around to our yard, on the opposite side of the grove of trees.  I was getting a good look at him, but it was dark in the trees, so getting a picture was going to be tough.  Finally, he came down the tree and took about three steps in my direction!  He hadn't noticed me standing there.  As soon as I took off at a dead run up the path, it startled him, and he quickly turned around and climbed back up the tree! I decided to leave him alone, and that was the last I saw of him.  

An anxious bear gets trapped between our house and our neighbors, in broad daylight.

Later in the afternoon, we drove to Balls Lake Picnic Area.  On the way, we caught sight of another bear crossing the road.  Once at the picnic area, we had a nice warm walk, out in the sunshine for much of the time, and made it about half way around the lake.  There was plenty of boardwalk on the trail, this being a rain forest and so plenty of muddy trail.  There were several bridges across creeks, too.  There was one couple having a picnic at the trailhead, and a couple came in as we were returning, and so the rest of the time, we had the trail to ourselves, pretty nice.  Kathy let the dogs go for a swim, which they need very little prompting to do!  About the only wildlife we saw were several dragonflies, which were very interested in our furry beasts.

Update:  Terrible when one writes a blog post and then never posts it.  The story above was from last weekend.

We had a 'summer' all this week, gorgeous warm sunshine!  Wow, it was soooo nice!  Today, Saturday the 22nd, it's back to full cloud cover.  At least it's not raining.

Hope a fun weekend is in store for everyone.  Happy first day of autumn.  I know Henry is starting it out with a field hockey game.  Have fun, Henry!  

Summer Past, Fall Ahead

Summer, such as it was, is behind us, and Fall is here.  The overnight temps are cooler, the rain has returned, and the sun, well, hopefully we will still see it occasionally.  

The weeks fly by, we both agree, even if we can't figure out why.  Maybe just because it was technically summer?  

Most of the commercial fishing fleet of Klawock

   

A different 'fishing fleet,' just up the Klawock River from the harbor.

We took the dogs down to the Klawock River today, and they had a fun time swimming.  As usual, the river otters kept a watch on us, from about 50 yards away:

This is all you see of the river otters, for just long enough for a good look, then they dive.  There were about ten of them watching us.

Not much else going on up here.  Oh, we did finally get a sign for the building.  Before this, there was no sign at all.  Pretty sharp, eh?

Oh, and one more building picture, of the Mink Clan House, also very cool.

More Than His Share, and What Happened to Summer?

I'm going to guess that no one reading this blog will recognize the name Dan Peek.  I wouldn't have, before about two years ago, when an email came to the Ronald McDonald House where I was working.    

I was listening to Pandora the other day, and a song by America came on.  I had a minute, so decided to read the bio they had listed for America, having more than a casual interest, as you will see.  I liked some of their hits, but wasn't a huge fan.  Getting to the end of the bio, I was shocked to read that Dan Peek, a founding member of America, had passed away.  How did I not hear about this?  Wasn't he way too young to die?

I switched to Wikipedia, and found he had passed away in late July of last year.  That explained why I missed his passing:  we were on our week-long trip up to our new lives in Southeast Alaska, so not getting much more than major headlines for news.  Wow, I just couldn't believe he had died.  The article said he was only 60, definitely too young.  He had passed away in his sleep, most likely a peaceful and probably painless death.  May you rest in peace, Dan.

I was working at the Ronald McDonald House in San Diego, and my boss got an email from Dan, out of the blue.  He forwarded it to me, asking that I find out if it was legit, and go from there.  It turned out it was very legit:  Dan had several guitars that he no longer played, and had decided it was time to do something with them besides just store them. He wanted to donate them to us, to do with as we saw fit, to benefit the families served by the Ronald McDonald House.  Wow, how cool is that?!  

Between one thing and another, and another, it took about four months to get this wonderful, thoughtful donation finalized.  In the mean time, Dan had posted his offer to donate his guitars on his blog, and a few fans had responded that they would love to purchase one or more of them.  Some of these guitars had appeared on America album covers, so had a little more cache.  

Finally the day came when the guitars arrived at the House.  Dan had even donated the materials and labor by his handyman to carefully crate them up for shipment, who then drove the crates to the nearest Fed Ex facility, which, if I remember right, was about 80 miles from his home.  The only hiccup in the whole process was when his wife saw the list of guitars Dan had chosen to donate, one of which was her favorite.  Dan was so apologetic about having to switch it out for another, while we completely understood of course, and would have been just as happy with four instead of five.  He was a very generous person.

We were just about to put them on ebay when one of the people who had contacted Dan months earlier finally responded to one of our many emails to him.  He wrote that he really wanted the whole collection, and would pay a bit of a premium over what our research had shown the guitars would probably bring at auction.  Accepting his offer would also save some costs, so we accepted it.  Dan's thoughtful gift resulted in the Ronald McDonald House of San Diego getting $50,000!  Wow, we were pretty excited!  What a wonderful donation!  We invited him out to participate in a person-to-person thank you event, and introduce him to some of the families staying at the House.  He politely declined, saying he didn't travel anymore, but thanked us for the invitation.  He was so accommodating throughout the whole process, it was nothing but a pleasure working with him.  

You may be wondering why he chose the Ronald McDonald House for such a generous offer, and why San Diego's, out of the hundred's of wonderful Houses across the U.S.  When Dan was very young, around six maybe, he had to be hospitalized for a while, and the nearest hospital was 200 miles from his family home.  His family couldn't afford to stay in a hotel, so for periods of time, he was in a hospital in a strange town, alone.  When he thought about donating his guitars, he thought of the one organization that is dedicated to overcoming just that situation.  As to why San Diego, we had recently updated the website, and at the same time taken advantage of a service Google offered nonprofit ads   high on the right hand column of a search page, and that was how he found us when he searched on "Ronald McDonald House."  Wow, that really paid off for the House!  

A deer family out for a morning walk

Viking Lumber in Klawock is the last large lumber mill in all Southeast Alaska

Last week it was sunny almost the entire five days!  Before that, we had several sunny warm days lately, a very nice change from most of the summer.  The seawater turns so very blue when the sky is clear, and the sun reflects like magic off the ripples from the jumping salmon, the breezes playing along the surface, and the currents flowing underneath.  

The Tribe put on their Second Annual Sockeye Salmon Festival two weeks ago.  This is an all-day event, with events for kids and adults, a salmon dish contest, a dessert contest for youth, and a free salmon fry.  The weather cooperated, and it was sunny nearly all day.  We had a big crowd and everyone had lots of fun.  Kathy was in Sitka for training, so missed out.  

View across the ballfield to the Klawock Inlet

KCA Tribal Council President Nick and co-worker Tom

Lined up for the three-legged race.

The sound of the purse seine boat engines idling at the dock outside my window always tugged at me, as if a good memory was being tickled.  They rubble with lots of power, even though muffled by the water and the boat surrounding them.  They sound nothing like the higher, sharper, loader rumble of a 302 in a Mustang.  Only after hearing them many times, and taking a few minutes to explore my memory, did I realize why the sound was familiar and positive:  it reminded me of the Jungle Cruise boats at Disneyland!  Ha, that's it!   That has always been one of my favorite rides.  The Boat Guides do a great job of using double entendre's, etc., for the adults, while also making it fun for children.  Those boats sound the same, low and rumbling.  Too funny.  

The dog and coho salmon are jumping in the channel, right outside my window and across the bay, seeming to have contests, and to yell at us, ‘come and get me,’ are fun, and big, but it’s not enough.

Patches of snow remain in the mountains, a true indicator of how cool and cloudy this summer has been.

Hope everyone has a fun Labor Day weekend.