Where the songs of summer lead

by aramatzne@gmail.com | 2 Jul 2018 | Roads Taken

Part 19, the songs of summer

Alaska, Arctic Ocean, The Arctic Circle, Barrow, climate change

Black Guillemots enjoy the summer water, ice floes and all, off Cooper Island.

25 Aug July

I am now paying for the nice weather I so cheerily wrote about the other day. It rained most of the night and has been sleeting and snowing and blowing a gale all day. Ye-ha. I’ve been busy with chicks, they are rolling in fast and furious. It’s too cold and nasty to push anyone off the nest if I don’t have to so I’m not pushing them. It seems they all weigh the same and have the same length wing the first day anyway. It is probably I who is in need of shelter from the cold and wind, but I’ll still try not to push anybody.

The folks who brought pastries – Mike and Patsy – returned on their way back to Barrow. They left me a whole white fish – yummy. I cleaned it and filleted it then pan fried half and made fish chowder out of the other half. I sacrificed a whole can of evaporated milk to the cause. I would rather have good chowder than a week of coffee. I hadn’t expected such a delight, but it was welcome!

George is planning to be in Barrow on Sunday and will come out here, weather dependent, on Monday. I’m not sure how long he will stay, but I’m going to tell him that if he moves one thing from its current location and drops it in the sand, I will have to kill him. That’s all there is to it. 🙂 I’ve spoken regularly with folks at ARF. There was a round of Guess the Product yesterday (BBQ sauce) – it took me a while to figure it out since I never use the stuff – the first ingredient: modified corn syrup… Yuk. Other news from ARF: the king eider chick is eating like crazy but somehow hurt its leg. So it goes. Dave is busy with the fish folks- they got their supplies to Atqasuk but didn’t have any TP for the summer– oops. There’s no helicopter fuel.

I was thinking today about the songs that have randomly wandered into my head since I’ve been here – first it was Gordon Lightfoot’s “That’s what you get for loving me” – everything you had is gone, as you can see, that’s what you get for loving me. Then the Neville’s “Thank you, Miss Rosa, you are the spark, started our freedom movement. Thank you, sister Rosa Parks.” Then the title song from Oklahoma (egad!), “O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a (except I kept doing it as H-m-o-a-…) and the land we belong to is grand.” Then Bruce Springsteen’s “I ain’t nothing but tired/Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself/Hey there baby, I could use just a little help/You can’t start a fire/You can’t start a fire without a spark/This gun’s for hire/even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark/Message keeps getting clearer/Radio’s on and I’m moving ’round the place/I check my look in the mirror/I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face/Man I ain’t getting nowhere/I’m just living in a dump like this/There’s something happening somewhere/Baby I just know that there is.” Yesterday, I woke with Bonnie Raitt’s “Run like a thief” – How sweet the wine of desire. It’s both interesting and annoying to have one or two lines so solidly wedged in my mind that it occupies whole days (and weeks) and is the first thought when I wake. The worst stretch of days was when “Convoy” lodged into the deepest reaches of my head and filled every waking and most non-waking minute. “‘Cause we got a little convoy/rockin’ through the night/Yeah, we got a little convoy/Ain’t she a beautiful sight? …an’ Eleven long-haired Friends a’ Jesus in a chartreuse micra-bus.” Wow. That was painful.

I had another dream last night from which I woke startled and afraid. I only remember the end. We (me and several unknown people) were in a house; maybe I was supposed to stay there – I don’t know, but everyone went out. As I went back to turn off a light, I thought I should have someone stay with me; I was afraid. As I turned to ask, I saw the door close and everyone moving away. I couldn’t get to the door or say anything. I tried to call out, then tried to yell, and found I could neither move nor speak. The effort of trying to scream woke me. I jolted awake; I didn’t open my eyes (or maybe they were covered). I lay in the dark, awake, and startled. That’s twice in a week. Why am I feeling trapped? Trapped enough to be having such dreams. I am locked into nothing; I owe no one anything. I have no obligations. Perhaps that’s it. I’m trapped in my demands. This lack of stability, my boastful attitude of not needing any solid ground. No one would taunt me if I settled down for the rest of my life tomorrow. No one would be surprised, either, if I didn’t. So, why do I feel trapped? I have to face it all sometime.

I read a bit today and wrote a couple of letters. Too cold, raw, and nasty out there to be out and about. Too bad, I would like to check on the tern and Xena chicks. I haven’t been down that way in a few days. I also want to take photos of the freshy-bugger guillemot chicks, but it is too nasty to have them out of the nest longer than necessary. Maybe tomorrow I can flush somebody and take photos.

27 Aug [sic, actually July]

Where will I be in 10 years? Phew. I can’t even imagine where I will be next month. Well, OK. I’ll be on Cooper Island next month, but the month after that I have no clue.

The weather continues to be awful. Cold and raw, the wind switched around to the NE and picked up speed, remarkably. I spent today walking, in the colony and along the shore, it was pretty brutal, but I wanted to be out nonetheless. There is a lot of bird movement these days. The guillemot prospectors are in town, scoping out sites for next year. I thought I had pretty well eliminated the ranks of unbanded and cohort banded birds; there were a dozen or so left to catch. Then all of a sudden, numerous unbanded and cohort birds started appearing and sent me into despondency. I can’t band now as it is too late in incubating and too early in hatching. I watch and weigh and measure chicks.

This morning when I woke the sun was shining through the strips of cloud, heavy, dark, and 3-dimensional, crowding along the northern horizon and there was a dark, impenetrable wall of fog on the western edge. It soon moved in to obliterate the light and what little warmth there was in it.

While I was out this morning, in the distance over the water, I saw a line of common eiders, 70 or 75 of them moving west, single file. They flirted with the fog and the waves, growing faint in the thick gray air and then standing out sharply again. The line flew ever forward but also as if the energy of a wave was moving through it – as the wave rolls through water. The line never broke, if the lead bird dropped to the water the others followed in turn; when the lead bird rose again the undulation flowed through the birds and continued as they passed. Eventually, they disappeared into the mists and were gone. There is something striking about watching so many birds in a single line. Eiders almost always seem to move this way and, when they are out of lines, it only takes a few minutes for them to regain their structure, never losing ground or speed. Just as shorebirds know when to turn, land, or take off in synchrony with the hundreds of other birds, the eiders always seem to find their order and where they fit. Amazing really, and pleasing to see that long row stretch out across the sky, across the water through the fog.

An Arctic Tern chick lays low on the Cooper Island gravel.

Tomorrow I will walk down to the tundra again – I went yesterday for a bit. The tern chick is getting fat and is hard to see even still. Its parents always give it away, if it weren’t for them hovering and harassing me I would never find it. There are a dozen or so long-tailed duck babies on Pasta Pond. Gosh, are they cute? The pintails are back, and the eiders are more noticeable. The long-tails are probably still down the island, but I haven’t gone to look. Lots of glaucous gulls, they seem to have increased. I wonder what early dispersers I might see over the next month – there are already lots of western sandpipers.

Tempeh Sausages with Pepper Spray on the Side

by aramatzne@gmail.com | 1 Jun 2016 | Musing, Roads Taken

A few weeks ago in a random historic-site parking lot in far-flung western Colorado I met a 60-something woman from Atlanta. “You’re traveling alone? Well good for you. I always wanted to do that but I just don’t have the courage. Some day I will. You’ve never had any problems?”

This is a common question when people see me alone. A few variables in wording, some more direct language about scary people and places to avoid, but the sentiment is the same.

I’ve worked alone in many remote places over the years. I have occasionally stepped out of sight when I felt unsure about what was coming my way. I’m more often worried about destroying an axle, not finding my way out of a random maze of canyons, or falling off a cliff than about other people.

A few years ago while traveling in Scotland with an old friend, we were ready to stop for the night; we needed food, Scotch whisky, and a place to stay. We found a pub with a few rooms for let on the second floor but they were already full for the night.

Explaining that we would like to have dinner and a wee dram or two of whisky, we asked for a recommendation on a B&B within walking distance. Oh, well, sit, eat, we’ll call around and see what we can find.

We sat, we drank, we ate.

“So, I found a place for you to stay,” the owner, a rather burly Scotsman, told us. “At ten o’clock I’ll take you out back to the walking bridge over the river. You can take your bags across with you; a man will meet you on the other side with his car, and take you to his B&B for the night.”

My friend and I looked at each other. In the US, this is a set up for an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

He continued, “There’s only one problem.”

We looked at each other again, clearly thinking the same thing: there’s only one problem with a man transferring two American women across a Scottish river to another unknown man in the middle of the night?

“The breakfast is vegetarian.”

Of course, we should have thought of that. A vegetarian breakfast could be a problem; those tempeh sausages just don’t set well with many.

An idyllic morning scene from a vegetarian B&B, rolling hills, the River Spey, and fluffy sheep.

Bad things can happen to men and women. Sometimes they happen in remote places, sometimes not, occasionally to people traveling alone, sometimes not. Obviously, some places are inherently more dangerous, more restrictive, or more stressful. Being open to situations as they unfold and using common sense go a long way toward staying safe.

Every culture, every country, has its idea of what is safe and what is acceptable for women to do. Pushing the envelope with vegetarian sausage is not exactly ground breaking. But being able to travel freely, especially in your own country and specifically in one that prides itself on individual freedom, must not be a privilege.

I am not completely foolhardy. I carry bear spray, not mace but real bear spray, as in, for grizzly bears. I keep it in the truck and take it into the tent/camper with me each night.

Last summer while camping alone in Oklahoma I had the sudden thought that I should check the new canister. It was already late and dark and I was cozy in my tent but had some odd feeling that made me want to be sure it was good to go. Apparently, it was more than good to go. Before I fully removed the glow-in-the-dark safety clip the canister discharged, just a small blast, in the tent.

The tent is pretty roomy for one person – it is, after all, a 2-3-person tent. But no tent of any size is sufficient to escape bear spray. I closed my eyes and gulped spray-free air as soon as I heard the spray escape. Unzipping the tent and staggering outside I could feel the pepper burning into my nose and eyes. Cursing, and laughing at my own stupidity (once again!), with my eyes still shut I wandered the 50 meters to the truck, found the spare key, unlocked the door, found the water containers, and tipping my head sideways, poured two gallons of water across my face.

Eventually I was able to breath freely again and my eyes stopped burning and watering but the tent took much longer to air (think: weeks) and every time I turned in my sleeping bag a little puff of pepper spray would hit me. There is still a cayenne-red stain on the tent wall.

Now, when I am asked about camping alone I think of this incident. The fears we may have about stepping into the world like this are mostly unfounded. And, I am here to tell you: we are mostly our own worst enemies.

2015 in the rearview

by aramatzne@gmail.com | 28 Dec 2015 | Roads Taken

Each year about this time I send a review of the year in photos I’ve taken along the way to people I know and love. It’s my annual Solstice letter without all the words, short and sweet. Below is this year’s installment. I offer this with gratitude for the people I do not yet know and love but who find the energy to spend time with me here. I hope it takes you on roads you have not taken enough this year.

Winter self-portrait