Observation No. 18: It's raining in Anchorage

The New Girl must keep the posts short this week as she battles the lions of work and a Graduate School Final Paper (threatening music, play here.) Why do professors (oh, Jeremy, are you reading this?) always weight the final papers so heavily? What happened between, say kindergarten, and now that things have changed? Anyways.

It's raining in Anchorage.

I'm okay with rain--but this has been a lot. Not a lot by Anchorage standards. But a lot for a former Colorado resident. I was warned that no one should leave Alaska in the summer because you run the real risk that you'll miss the really, really nice weather for the whole year. I didn't believe it because it's been a great spring and early summer in Anchorage with temperatures hovering in the low to mid 70s and sunny skies abounding.

I had heard some bad talk, though, about last year's dreadful summer... Last summer, apparently, was the stuff of legend in Alaska--something that you'd tell your grand kids when they complain that they have to take the garbage out. You'd tell them all about the summer in Alaska when it rained every single day, a summer without flip flops, without tank tops, without cool beers on the outside deck. Here's an ADN story. It follows the writers adventure on a soggy rafting trip.

We heard about it all winter as people hoped, tentatively, that this summer would be better. And this May, their hopes came to fruition. The sun fell brightly on our shoulders--it was beautiful!

That is, until we broke the sacred rule of "Thou Shalt Not Vacation Outside Alaska During the Summer." It's rained every day since we've been back and the temperature has not even flirted with 70 degrees.

The New Girl in AK has learned her lesson--but she still may be tempted...

Observation No. 17: Artificial Sun

Since moving up from the Lower 48, the New Girl in Alaska has discovered a true joy that she never knew before—that is, the joy of the tanning salon.

I know this is ridiculous. But the power of the sun, or anything that resembles the sun, beating down on you when there’s about 5 hours of light outside in January cannot be understated. There’s plenty of reasons to tan, right? It helped me get through my first winter in this crazy climate. Vitamin D is totally necessary. A little color prevents a bad sunburn. Even Sarah Palin has a tanning bed in her house, for goodness sakes.

But you can get addicted—I knew this was happening to me when the teenage girls working at the salon started complimenting me on how brown as was getting. These girls are typically the color of toasted nuts, the color you have when you return from an 8-week jaunt in the Caribbean. Not the color of a long winter in Alaska.

So I gave up the salon for a few months and returned to my normal milk-colored self—or as a reporter I know once described her untouched skin—the color of uncooked halibut. I’ve remained that way for much of the spring and early summer.

But I wanted to get a good base tan going before vacation so I hit the tanning booth again for the last several weeks. To brown up again. Like any addict, I just can’t go once. Vacation has come and gone now but I’m still tempted to return to the tanning salon—I keep thinking that I could get a little browner. Vitamin D is good for me right?

More on bears...

Okay, I know I'm getting a little bear obsessed. This from someone who's only seen a couple animals since arriving in the state nine months ago. But I found this interesting safety video from Glacier National Park about hiking in bear country. It's good for us novices. Check it out.



By the way, the ranger in this video was not the one that rousted us from our tents at 7 a.m.! But the video did give me more guilt pangs for endangering bears who they've managed to insulate from human behavior for this long.

Observation No. 16: The Problem with Bears

The sound of the park ranger’s irate voice rang out in early morning, last week in the Glacier National Park. From inside our tent, which was soaked by the previous evening’s heavy rainstorm, we could hear the women walking through the camp that we’d hastily abandoned when the drops began to fall the night before. With the storm coming down, we’d quickly tossed everything into our truck in an attempt to honor the campground’s strict rules dedicated to reducing bear-human interactions and protecting the park’s bears.

Evidently in our haste, we’d missed a few things. “What’s this red cooler?” she asked, finding the cooler with a couple of floating bottles of soda, beer and water we’d forgotten. “Bears can get in here and eat the glass —you’ll be fine but it will kill a bear.” My husband called out from the tent that we must have missed the cooler as he wiggled out of his sleeping bag and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “You missed a RED cooler!” the ranger admonished, scathingly. “And what about this bottle of sodapop in the back of the pick-up?” Duly chastened, we set about cleaning up camp—and were thankful we didn’t get the $50 ticket the ranger had waiting.

Bears in Glacier National Park are serious business and the officials are diligent in protecting the bears that inhabit the 1.4 million acre park. A federal study found in 2008 that endangered grizzly populations have rebounded slightly in recent years, with an estimated 765 grizzly bears living in northwest Montana, in places like Glacier National Park. To protect this endangered population, the park rangers have the power to hand out a hefty $50 fine for doing things like leaving out grills and coolers, keeping toothpaste in your tent, burning trash or food waste and other bear-attracting activities. The park website talks extensively about how to be prepared for recreating in bear country without endangering the bruin inhabitants. The method has worked—since 1995, there has been only one human-caused grizzly mortality in Glacier National Park, which hosts 1.7 to 1.9 million visitors every year.

All this came to mind as I read this morning’s ADN story about a man who shot four bears in his front yard (three cubs and a sow) on July 6 and then denounced the misdemeanor charges brought up against him by Alaska Division of Wildlife as “frivolous.” He shot the sow through window, then two cubs as they attempted to enter his cabin. The fourth cub was shot as it stood over the sow. The man said he felt in danger for his life.

I obviously don’t know the circumstances of this incident. It could be that he left out a cooler accidentally like we did and paid the price of four bears attempting to break into his home—a truly frightening experience.

But it also leads me to something about Alaska that I truly don’t get—on one hand, we venerate these animals. You’d be hard-pressed to find an example of Alaskana without the grizzly bear featured prominently on it. These animals are the symbol of the state where untamed wilderness is what appeals to so many of its residents. On the other hand, many Alaskans treat animals like bears as disposable if they’re inconvenienced—like getting rid of trash that would attract a bear or putting away the cooler. There’s a weird refusal by residents to recognize the lessons learned everywhere else in the world—that animal populations can be made extinct by the actions of hum an beings.

The lesson wasn’t learned in Montana and now there is careful stewardship to maintain their bear populations in places Glacier National Park. Will Alaska bring its own bear population to the brink of extinction before federal officials mandate that we pay attention?

I hope we’re smarter than that.

Gone Fishing: Part 3

We found warm (100 plus degree!) weather in Eastern Washington and have the burnt noses to prove it. Back in Alaska on Sunday and we can't believe how quick the week has gone by.

Here are some more "postcards" from our travels.

Wish you were here!

The New Girl

Gone Fishing: Part 2

We're in Beautiful Montana today where 60 degree and rainy weather has shocked everyone. I could have gone to Sitka for this! But we're having a good time with friends who we haven't seen since we moved from Colorado.

Yesterday, we've visited Whitefish, which I've heard is the new Crested Butte, Colorado--the New Girl's most recent hometown. To me, it seems more like Telluride or Aspen-lots of condos, high end retail and happy real estate agents (or they have been happy up until recently.)

Today, we've found a nice cabin to dry our stuff out and we'll take a hike this afternoon. Thanks for your patience and we'll be back to our regular programming next week.

Observation No. 15: Gone Fishing

The New Girl in Alaska is...not in Alaska this week!

We've made the sojourn south for a week of relaxing in Washington and Montana with friends and family.

Of course, visiting another wild and wacky places is the perfect way to understand the wild and wacky place that you currently call home. Since arriving, we've had dozens of conversations about Sarah Palin, land development, permafrost, global warming, guns, fishing and village life. I'll fill my dear readers in later this week.