Ring of Fire

We live on the Ring of Fire. Although, it’s not really a ring…it’s more like a horseshoe. But I guess Ring of Fire sounds cooler than The Heated Horseshoe.

Basically, this means that we have lots and lots of volcanoes. In fact, 75% of the world’s volcanoes are found along this relatively narrow strip of the earth.

PBS did a piece on the Ring of Fire. The first few lines read, “Alaska's frigid and remote Aleutian island chain, the towering Andes mountains of South America, and the tropical islands of Micronesia would seem to have little in common. In fact, these diverse areas are all part of the most volcanically and seismically active region on Earth, an area known as the ‘Ring of Fire.’” Apparently PBS thinks we are frigid and remote. How rude.

If you are the curious type and want to read more of the PBS piece, you can go to:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageearth/hellscrust/html/sidebar3.html

But my news (for those who haven’t seen it on national news yet) is that we have a volcano trying to wake up. Pavlof. Our personal village volcano is Dutton. But on the range just behind Dutton is the Pavlof volcano—and it is spewing out steam and lava like crazy. It’s about 20 to 25 miles away from us, so we are fine as long as we don’t get rained on by ash. And we’ve gotten some pretty cool pictures because we can see it from our village.

Taco (Jeremy) has been worried about it blowing its top because that would stop all flights, and he is supposed to fly to Anchorage on Wednesday for Youth Conference. But I’ve been telling him that I don’t think it’ll blow—I think it’s just letting off steam. I do that a lot, so I recognize the signs.  :-)  However, it turns out I’ve been wrong. All flights today were put on volcano hold. It is not a happy state of affairs here. One of our teachers was supposed to fly home today, and now he can’t get out of the village. And this may impact Taco’s Youth Conference trip. We’ll see what happens.

 Pavlof as seen from King Cove.

If you want to watch a video of the volcano, you can pull up here or go to the links below:

This is a video we took from King Cove looking at Pavlof. The clip is about 2 minutes long. If you can't watch it here, you can pull it up on youtube:

http://youtu.be/mvnCsp5ImYk

This clip has a bunch of chattering and nonsense in the background (we had two of our kids in the car with us). It is less than two minutes long. Or you can pull it up on youtube:

http://youtu.be/I2nRgsFlbLw

These are two videos we took at night. You can see the lava shooting out the side of the mountain. I can't remember which one we put on youtube:

http://youtu.be/5VGJOsqFdsU

We also have a clip that was taken by Dave Morris, a friend of ours. It is just over 3 minutes long. Because of its length, I am not downloading it here...but you can go to youtube to watch it:

http://youtu.be/E_nmmCpYajY

There's one thing you can count on living in the Bush of Alaska...life is rarely dull.

Fall, Sail, & Fly...Road to Cold Bay (part 1)

A few weeks ago I was walking along, blacked out, and keeled over. I broke the fall with my face. When I came round, there was a small crowd gathered, my nose was bleeding, and I looked like I had a golf ball implanted in my forehead. It was really embarrassing—not to mention painful.

Since it happened at the school during basketball practice, the coach and some of the players got me across the street to the clinic. (My husband was in Anchorage at a conference, so he missed the whole thing.) I was still kind of dazed and had no idea how it had happened. The P.A. (physician’s assistant) took over—we don’t have such luxuries as doctors here. Seven I.V. attempts later, it was determined that I was really dehydrated. It was also determined that because of the hard hit to my head and some other medical nonsense going on, that I needed to get a CAT-Scan (to start with). A simple CAT-scan meant a trip into Anchorage. The $1400 for the round-trip ticket wasn’t the only stressful part of this venture. The biggest problem lay in getting me out of King Cove.

To get to Anchorage, ideally, we take a bush plane from King Cove to Cold Bay where we catch a much larger plane that holds about 18 people and is shaped like a torpedo inside. This takes us the rest of the way into Anchorage. You see, King Cove is surrounded by mountains so we have a very short runway. The only aircraft that can make it in are bush planes or helicopters. Cold Bay, however, has a runway that can take any kind of plane, so the big ones land there. That airstrip was even an alternative landing site for the Space Shuttle.

At the time of my fall, there was a storm going on. We were having winds of 60+ mph—a normal state of affairs around here—so the bush planes couldn’t fly in, which mean I couldn’t fly out. The only way for me to get out was by boat, so we started phoning around. We called the Harbor House and the Cannery (where they process fish), and found out there was the Island Trader heading out in the morning. So early the next morning in the midst of wind and rainstorm, I somehow, with a lot of help, got aboard the Island Trader.

There are no luxuries such as gangplanks on these fishing boats. Instead, the guys just leap across open ocean onto the deck. They are used to it—I’m not. When they built the dock, they sunk a bunch of pylons (telephone-pole-type things that go into the ocean) and those are the supports that the dock is built on. So I balanced on the top of one of those pylons with one guy holding on from the dock side and another ready to catch me on the boat. I timed the rhythm of the boat going up and down with the swells, said a prayer, and jumped across open ocean where the other guy grabbed me and kept me upright. I’m sure it sounds worse than it was…wait…nope, it sounds exactly the way it was. And the experience terrified me. After a two and a half hour boat trip, we got to Cold Bay. The captain wasn’t even sure he could tie up, because the day before they had tried but the ocean was too rough and he couldn’t have gotten in without ripping the dock apart, so they’d returned to King Cove without dropping their load. But this time, we were lucky—the ocean was still rough, but they were able to tie up at the dock. Getting out of the boat was even scarier than getting in. This time I had to reach out across open ocean and grab onto an icy metal ladder and hope that my feet found a rung to stand on below me. Again, I timed it with the rising and falling of the boat on the swells. Again, I was terrified. With my arms wrapped around the rung and my feet searching for the next rung, I climbed the frozen ladder one rung at a time. Someone was waiting at the top to help pull me up onto the dock.

I went through all of this for the simple reason that I had to get to Cold Bay airport and our bush planes couldn’t fly.

This story is too long for a single entry, so it will continue in Part 2.

Waves and Waterfalls

Life has been very busy! But I appreciate the many emails I got asking when I am going to continue our King Cove adventure story.

   

We had a fun and busy summer down south with our family. But now we are back in King Cove and loving it!

About the only obvious change that happened in King Cove over the summer is that they put up signs showing the Tsunami Evacuation Route. Personally, I think it is kind of silly because everyone who lives here knows that if there is a tsunami, you just get to higher ground, and there is really only one road that goes through town so that kind of limits the options. Basically, King Cove has two elevations—sea level, and “a little higher.” So if a tsunami comes through, I would opt to go “a little higher.”

King Cove is built kind of like a barbell with the two ends connected by a road. There is the original part of town that is down at sea level and has the harbor, the fish cannery, a couple of small stores, a few houses, two churches, two bars, and some other buildings…including the old school. Last year we lived in the sea level part of town. There is a ribbon of road about 1 ½ miles long that runs from that end of town, up along the side of a hill to the other half of town where we live now. Here is most of the housing, the clinic, and the new school.

There was really nothing wrong with the old school. In fact, it is still used for a variety of things. The gym is used every evening for kids to go hang out and play basketball. The rooms have been turned into businesses like a second-hand store, a daycare, and a coffee shop that sells java and soft serve ice milk. The old school was built much like the town…two halves with an adjoining hallway. However, the elementary half was recently sold to the cannery (I heard they needed more living space for their employees), so the adjoining hallway was torn down.

The reason the new school was built is the same reason the signs were put up…people worry about tsunamis. And since the old school was about 3 feet above sea level, that didn’t engender much confidence in the safety of the children if a giant wave were to crash through the town. So they built a new school on higher ground.

The main problem with the new school is that the people who built it were morons. They were building it in an area that sees monsoon-style storms with hurricane-force winds, yet they used a plan that had been drawn up for the deserts of Arizona. They knew from the start that the building would leak. And sure enough, when the rainy season hit, within a short time the place was dripping like crazy. Waterfalls developed. When the custodians crawled into the attic to figure out where the leaks were coming from, they discovered five-gallon buckets already hanging in strategic places. The people who built the place had anticipated the mess and were hoping to stave off the leaks until the one year “warranty” period was up. But they had grossly underestimated the Aleutian rains. They should have hung ten-gallon buckets. So the unethical morons returned, red faced and armed with about 30 cases of caulking. This caulk Band-Aid managed to help them creep past the warranty period before the building began its seasonal leaking again. So the district is now embroiled in a lawsuit.

But other than the problem of occasional indoor waterfalls, I like our school. It is beautiful and new and on “a little higher” ground. You know…just in case a rogue wave happens to head our way.

Bear Attack!

 

This sign is in front of the General Store (the brown building) and about half a block from the school. The first time I saw it, I laughed.

Not any more.

We have bears around King Cove. A lot of them. They should be hibernating, or getting darned close to it. But there is a problem. Bears don’t take their winter nap until they are full…and these bears are still hungry.

You see, as many fish as we had this summer, it was nothing compared to previous years. The season was a month or two shorter than normal. And there were fewer fish too…especially King Salmon. Last year, a friend of mine saw some idiot with a net across the river, and he was catching salmon as they tried to swim UP the river. That meant that the fish didn’t get to spawn. Stunts like that mean less fish the following years.

So, the bears are still hungry. And the other night, one of them came into town for a midnight snack.

Across the street from the school, there is an apartment building that houses four families. In the wee hours of the morning, these fine folk were awakened by the sounds of their building being torn apart…literally. A bear the size of Mt. Everest was outside their window, tearing the siding off the place and trying to get in. It ripped the phone box off the house and devoured a drier vent. It dug into the outside wall with its claws. It pushed and banged on doors and walls.

The bear walked round and round the building before finally settling on one particular apartment. Dave and Cameron and their three kids, about five to twelve years old, live there. Cameron was away at a conference, so she missed all the excitement. Dave didn't. He was wide awake. His family had just been targeted by a 13-foot bear.

When the bear started banging and pushing on their door, David banged and yelled back, hoping it would move on. But it didn’t. It just ripped off more siding and made more holes in the wall. It was determined to get in. Eventually, the bear slid its claws under an outside window and pulled, ripping the window right out of the house, frame and all.  And it started climbing through the gaping hole into the apartment.

Most people here (and especially the men) are avid hunters and heavily armed. Dave is no exception. He shot the bear in the face. The bear didn’t die, it just fell from the window and hit the ground. It was getting back on its feet when Brandon, a cop and a hunting buddy of Dave's, showed up and finished it off.

By law, they had to skin the bear and send the skin to Anchorage. Sounds silly to me, but those are the rules. They also measured it. That thing was 9 1/2 feet long from shoulder to tail. You add legs and a head to that, and it becomes one big bear. That thing stood about 13 feet. Brandon, who is an avid hunter, told Dave, "For years I’ve been looking for a bear that big…and you shoot it in your underwear!"

The attempted attack shook up the entire community. But fear of bears is nothing new to the area. The locals are terrified of them. I would imagine it is similar to the way an islander might feel about sharks. They are seen as dangerous creatures…because they are dangerous creatures. About ten years ago, a woman was walking on the outskirts of town here in King Cove with her three-year old daughter and six-year old son, when a bear appeared. They made the mistake of doing the natural thing and running. I guess they should have played dead. The bear grabbed the boy. The little guy was mostly eaten before the villagers got there and shot the bear dead. Now, just the thought of a bear showing up sends currents of fear through the community. And they show up a lot.

A couple of days after the recent attack, a mother bear and her cub were shot dead because they got too close to another house. Town is not a good place for these animals to hang out. They must be mighty hungry.

 The giant bear.

Brandon, the cop, is preparing to skin it.

Dave holding the bear's paw.

Have Gun Will Travel

People around here carry guns. You don’t leave the village without one. It’s called common sense.

The other day, my husband and I passed a guy with a rifle strapped to the front of his four-wheeler. I made a comment about hunting, and my husband laughed. The guy had a fishing pole tied on too. He was going fishing…the gun was just the usual traveling companion. Same thing holds true for berry picking, hiking, or strolling along the beach…you just don’t go unless you are armed.

The bears around here are plentiful, big, and not always shy. They look like giant adorable balls of fluff, but they come armed with long claws and sharp teeth. And if it’s a mama with her cub…watch out!

One berry picking trip my husband and I started together, and just kind of spread apart.

Sometime later, I heard what sounded like a bear and her cub hollering. I looked around and realized that I’d been following a bear trail. And I happened to be standing in a flattened spot where a bear had slept. I had no idea where my husband was—and he had the gun.

That put an end to separate berry picking. I told him that either we stuck together or I get the gun. Since I’m a lousy shot, we decided it would be better to stick together.

A few weeks ago, we went picking blueberries with some friends. It was funny watching this big burly fisherman balancing a baby on one shoulder and a gun on the other. A modern-day Renaissance man.

Our friends Marvin and Sevilla and their baby.

 Our friend Heidi dumping water from her rubber boot after falling in a hole. 

 

 

Heidi picking berries.

 Our beautiful area

Keri and I picking berries

Mental Gymnastics

I’ve been doing some substitute teaching and tutoring while here in the bush. And it has actually been a lot of fun.

One thing I’ve found both frustrating and fascinating is that these poor kids have to do mental gymnastics sometimes to be able to wrap their brains around a concept the way it is taught everywhere else. It would be like the rest of us being expected to learn out of textbooks shipped in from a Star Wars planet…or Avitar. It just isn’t easy. Sometimes they are totally lost by an idea…but usually they come up with a very creative way to adapt it to their culture so it makes sense.

Some time ago, I was trying to explain the idea of “perimeter” to a boy. I said, “it’s like a fence around the square. How long is the fence?” He looked up at me and with total sincerity asked, “What’s a fence?”

I realized that most these kids out here have grown up without fences…anywhere. In Alakanuk they were unheard of. In King Cove there are a few…around the cemetery in an effort to keep the bears out…and the fish cannery has some for the same reason. But the houses have none.

One of the teachers was telling me about a test she gave her young kids. I think it was one of those standard tests that comes with a book. The question was, “How do you get to a hospital?” And the options were: by plane, by boat, by ambulance. Most of the kids circled “plane”; a few circled “boat”; no one circled “ambulance.”

You see, around here, if you are super sick and need to go to the hospital, they put you on a bush plane and send you off. If it is too windy to fly out of King Cove, they put you on the Island Trader…a boat that does emergency runs to Cold Bay. In Cold Bay, they have the fourth longest runway in the country—seriously. It was built during World War II as an emergency landing place for planes. It has been kept in great shape because it is now an emergency airstrip for international flights. Before they shut down the Space Shuttle Program, it was an alternate landing spot for that. In other words, you can land most anything there…which means that bigger planes take off from Cold Bay…planes that don’t have to worry quite as much about the wind like bush planes do. So if it’s super windy and travel to King Cove has been shut down, just hop on the Island Trader to Cold Bay. You can probably get out from there. So how do you get to the hospital? That's easy! By plane or boat. Ambulances are unheard of.

The other day, I was teaching an eighth grade history class. We’d had quite an active discussion about cave men, with the kids throwing out ideas of what they needed to survive. Towards the end of the lesson, I showed them a cave painting of what looked like hunters  with spears chasing bison. After a moment, one of the boys asked, “But why are they trying to kill the caribou with a harpoon?”

Mental gymnastics at work. I love it!

The Salmon Run...and Run...and Run

One of the most frequently asked questions we get about life here in King Cove is “What’s the fishing like?”

Answer:  IT’S GREAT!!!!

You can stand on the dock and catch cod and halibut. And Keri has even gone out on the ocean in a friend’s boat to fish. He’s also caught some salmon and trout in the streams. And we have a neighbor who is a fisherman by profession, and has dropped off fish, crab legs, and octopus. It was funny when his wife gave me the crab legs. She was actually apologetic because they were so small…and those suckers were over a foot long! We thought they were great! But more on crab in a later blog.

As for the salmon…WOW!

So far I’ve learned that there are actually several different species of salmon and they all “run” at different times.

The king salmon were here earlier in the year, as were the reds (named because, you guessed it, they are red instead of salmon-colored). The kings are by far the biggest…the record-holder was a whopping 126 pounds, although they are usually more like 40-something. How would you like to go down in history as the fattest guy in the river? There is a running debate on which one of them has the better flavor…the kings or the reds…but those two are definitely the favorites.

You know, if I were a salmon, I would not want to be a favorite. I’d want to be the ugly third cousin with twelve toes…the one nobody wants. The uglier, the better.  It would greatly increase the chance of longevity.

Anyway, soon the silvers are supposed to start running; also pretty good eating.

Right now, it is the pink salmon (also called humpies…they have a hump on their back) and the chum, aka dogfish. Those two kinds are the runts of the family; they are smaller. Humpies are alright to eat. But dogfish got their nickname because they are the worst of the salmon family. They are considered the lowest of all salmon…garbage meat…the bottom of the totem pole. In fact, locals refuse to eat them. So apparently, all salmon are NOT created equal. Kind of makes you wonder which kind is sitting in the grocer’s freezer.

There is a stream about 1 ½ miles from our place that is teeming with fish. What amazes me is how nuts salmon get during spawning season. I still don’t get why a fish would be so darned stubborn…or driven…or anal…or OCD…that they would insist on swimming upstream to deposit their eggs. Determined little things. And they all come at the same time…hoards of them. There are so many salmon in that stream, it looks like the water is boiling.

Swimming upstream would be bad enough—but to trying to do it with a crowd would really get on my nerves. If I were a salmon, I would seriously look for a nice little spot downstream to lay my eggs. A little shade, a little shelter, and I'd be in business. Let the crazies fight it out upstream. I’d have better things to do. I’m not quite sure what that would be in the salmon world, but almost anything would beat fighting a crowd for the privilege of spawning. 


I took a video of my husband, Keri, trying to catch a salmon, bear-style. It also shows a little of how packed the salmon are...the "boiling water" effect. To see it, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fPLfGohjjc 

Here he is with a couple of humpies he caught.

King Cove Rules!

I am in the Aleutians and I LOVE it! King Cove, to be exact. It’s on the Aleutian Island chain in Alaska. You know…that chain of islands that comes off the bottom of the state and stretches west over the ocean all the way t0 Russia.

There is SO much to tell! But I’ll have to do it in bits--otherwise, this single entry would turn into a book.

It took 4 ½ days of travel to get here. (This included a 2 day / 3 night ferry trip, which was adventure in itself. But I’ll tell you all about it in a later blog.)

My husband had been here for about a month already, and kept raving about it. I was only half believing him. The ferry docked at King Cove when it was still dark as tar outside. But when the sun came up...Wow! What a place!

Here are the highlights:

There is a stream about 1 ½ miles from our place, and there is so much salmon running up it that it looks like the water is boiling. The salmon swim UP stream to get to where they are going to spawn. Determined little things. Swimming upstream is bad enough—but to try it with a crowd would really get on my nerves. If I were a salmon, I would seriously look for a nice little spot downstream to lay my eggs. A little shade, a little shelter, and I'd be in business.

We have our own active volcano. Actually, in this part of the country, it isn’t all that impressive. I’ve been told that there are more active volcanoes in our little stretch of islands than anywhere on earth. We are part of the Ring of Fire.

And the island is green! Everywhere! There aren’t many trees around…probably because of the severe winds that come through here. They are mostly shrubs, bushes, and mossy spongy ground cover. But what we’ve got is dense greenery.

I got here exactly a week ago, and every day we've gone exploring. It is great!

We went berry picking, catching salmon (with bare hands…bear style), and went as far as the roads would take us.

Here is what I know so far:
- There is a LOT to do here!
- Spawning fish are CRAZY!
- There are a lot of bears...Kodiaks.
- The berries are huge, seedy, and S-W-E-E-T!
- It rains a ton.
- I’m going to like it here!

All of that will have to wait for later blogs. For now, here are some snapshots of our new home.

 Yup...it is B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L here!

 ...and more beauty!

 The view out our window. 

Notice the trail coming down the mountain between the buildings? 

It's a BEAR trail. 

You know how deer will create a trail in the woods that they follow? 

Well, this one was created by Kodiak bears.

This is a closeup of the bear trail.

 The other part of the view out our window.

This is a fresh water lake. In the background, you can barely see the bottom part of the volcano.

Life is good.

More to follow.