Bears Being Bears

This is when you wished you had a bit more of a camera than a point-and-shoot

A big part of my job when doing archaeological surveys is assessing the conditions of the sites.  The best case scenario is nothing to note - the site is totally stable.  But generally I find that most sites are getting damaged in one way or another whether by the elements, animals, or humans.  The most common site disturbance is erosion with either a flowing river or the ocean cutting into the site.   In an earlier post (click here) I showed how the Karluk One archaeological site was completely destroyed over the course of 30 years by the river cutting into the site.

In other parts of Alaska global climate change has resulted in increased storminess and rising sea levels and archaeological sites situated on the coast are disappearing at an alarming rate (click here and here for some articles that highlight this issue).

One site disturbance that is fairly unique to Kodiak is 'bear turbation' (click here for an earlier post on the subject).  This is when bears dig into archaeological sites.  On Kodiak's salmon streams bears and humans tend to focus on the best places to catch fish.  In addition bears are attracted to archaeological sites because they are the first places to green up in the spring, and bears love to graze on spring greens.  For the most part grazing and digging for roots does not do too much damage to sites.  What damages the sites are bear trails up and down the fronts of sites to the river and, most of all, bear beds.  This is when bears dig fairly substantial holes for their 'beds'.  Often they like to put their beds where they can watch the river. and this just so happens to be where prehistoric people also built their houses.  At some village sites the bears have done so much digging that they have destroyed the house depressions - the sites are pretty much worthless to archaeologists to excavate because the bears have already dug them all up!

Yesterday when I went to the outlet to Karluk Lake we were surprised by the number of bears we saw.  Lately less people have been using the river and less people means more bears.  The bears aren't getting chased off by people fishing or rafting the river.  And the bears seem to know there are less people around, and this year the outlet to Karluk Lake is a very busy place for the local bear population.  Ironically, less people and more bears means the archaeological sites are taking a beating.

This year I saw a totally new type of bear damage - the bear 'otter slide'.  I saw three of them, and basically they are mud slide tunnels down into the river.  Up on top there would be a bedding area in the grass and then a tunnel that the bears were using to slide down to the river.  Whoo hoooo the 'Karluk River Water Park' - or maybe 'Bouncing Bears Karluk'.  Patrick

Bear Fishing

Bear beds dug into an archaeological site

Matt checks out a bear 'otter' slide

Torn apart salmon bodies, feeding bears,  seagulls crying and the murmur of the river

Approaching squall coming down the lake

Life Cycle

Outlet to Karluk Lake

Some days I really love my job.  Today I got to re visit an area I know well to check on archaeological site conditions and help the landowner plan future activities in the area.  Basically I was showing everybody where the archaeological sites are located so that they could be protected.

While I know the area well, I had never been there in fall.  All my visits have been in the spring when the vegetation is low and it is easier to investigate and map archaeological sites.  I've never been there when the river was choked with salmon and bears lined the bank to feed on them.  This is when prehistoric Alutiiq people probably visited the area and you can still see the stone weirs they built to catch fish. Seeing all the salmon and bears totally changed my perception of the place.

It also was a strong reminder of the cycle of life.  Sort of like the medieval painting where the guy is gazing upon a skull - memento mori. All these salmon have come up the river to die, the bears are eating them, and their rotting bodies are providing nutrients to the ecosystem.  Whoa!  That's as basic as it gets.

And it makes you wonder exactly what those salmon are thinking.  Do they know they are going to die? And do they care?

Patrick

Red salmon getting ready to spawn

Underwater picture of the rocks that make up a prehistoric fishing weir - note shy salmon in background

Spawned out reds partially eaten by bears

Underwater photo of rotting fish parts - a major source of nutrients for the ecosystem

My traveling companions Matt and Nate (our pilot Keller not pictured)

Book Review~My Other Ex:Women's True Stories of Losing and Leaving Friends

Have you ever had the heart ache of a lost friend? Where your paths parted? 

Time to talk about  life cycles of another sort…friendships that have run their course :(

I recently stumbled upon a post about a book on one of my recent favorite Facebook sites called "Literary Mama". The book is called "The Other Ex: Women's True Stories of Losing and Leaving Friends"by Jessica Smock and Stephanie Sprenger.

Its is a collection of non-fiction stories about women and breakups with woman friends in their lives. I immediately downloaded it to my kindle and have read over 1/2 of it with piqued interest.

The subject matter appealed to me because over the past several years, I have parted ways with several girl friends and found myself floundering around wondering how to recover. Having a break up with a close female friend is an experience that isn't talked or written about much in mainstream literature. And it can leave the parties in the friendship feeling discouraged, let down, disappointed that things didn't work out better.

Ever more, There is a sense that you "did something wrong" if a female friendship doesn't work out. And a societal expectation of sorts that as women we should nurture and care for everyone. But the reality is that just isn't true. There are some friendships which aren't positive, or don't help us become better people. Or they just expire and have run their course. And in the past several years I've experienced a dose of all of those and have been able to step away and realize its best to not put wasted energies into those relationships.  There is no shame in that. It was very validating to read the stories of women and their heartbreaks with friendships.

Heres to good friendships which fuel the soul!
And knowing when to surrender  in friendships when one person is holding on out of a sense of obligation. Letting go can be a very good thing…

Zoya

Spruce Cape Hike

Yesterday it was supposed to be sunny in the morning and then raining in the afternoon.  So I got up in the dark and went hunting with a friend.  As I was leaving the house on the way to the car I spotted Orion and his Belt on high and thought it would be a great day hunting.  By dawn I was high in the mountains and there were deer everywhere (I even passed on a spike) - and then the fog socked in and it started to rain - HARD.  Cursing the weather, we hiked back to the car with no deer meat.

However, once we got back to the car it cleared up and the sun came out.  And it stayed beautiful for the rest of the day.  Another typical Kodiak weather forecast gone wrong!

The lesson here is that on Kodiak one should always react to the weather outside and not the forecasted weather.  So yesterday afternoon when it was supposed to be raining our family took advantage of the sunny sky and went for a hike out Spruce Cape.

Clips in Hair

Making Red Currant Jam with Patrick

Nora has blossomed.

There is a  confidence to her long-legged steps; a lightness to her smile. And in the morning Nora places barrettes in her hair  so carefully along the crown of her hairline. I catch her posing in the mirror, angling her head to look at her hair design more closely.

I believe I've never enjoyed parenting as much as I am now.

It could be too soon to say, but I think perhaps a very hard time is behind me. Hard times where she would try to push beyond my parental boundaries of "No=No." Frusturation, hopelessness.
Wondering why everything had to feel so hard and why other kids didn't struggle like my Nora. It hasn't been easy. The unexplainable outbursts, crying, intense mood.

These moments are the very real, challenge of motherhood which all of us moms face in one way or another.

                                                                      ~

"No, Nora…we don't have any oreos left because I finished them all off" Nora says with a smile on her face today, imitating me as she comes into the kitchen after school today.

I laugh and reply, "oh, yeah…that would be me.  There were only two left...That's pretty funny Nora!"

Nora's got her groove on.

                                                                     ~

I"m not going to over think it and ponder the elements which came into place to see this switch. I'm just going to enjoy her and soak her in every chance I have.


For years Nora didn't care about her hair and she didn't appreciate that I cared about it. So I gave up caring and knew that with time, when the time was right, SHE would come around to caring.

And that moment is now.

Zoya

Our Black Pack! What sweet dogs they are. 

Harvesting Local

Campfire on the beach

Fall is in the air and here on Kodiak we are trying to fill our freezers before winter sets in.  Deer, goat, salmon, elk, potatoes, carrots, berries, mushrooms are all available and ripe for the picking.  It is the time of plenty before Alaska shuts down for winter.

Recently I read an article about how eating meat equates with a higher 'carbon footprint' than eating vegetables and grains.  And I bet this is true if the meat you eat is farm raised and brought to a city by truck and airplane.  But here on Kodiak local protein is abundant while vegetables and grains tend to be brought in from outside by plane and barge.

In my opinion it was a silly article because it was trying to generalize for everyone in the world when in reality everyone's particular circumstances are different.  How about trying to gather whatever you can locally regardless of whether it is a plant or animal?

I certainly know that eating locally harvested deer meat is better for the planet than eating tofu bought at a store and made from soy beans genetically modified by Monsanto ('A sustainable agricultural company' according to their website).  Patrick

Silver salmon for canning

Stuey and Lars casting for salmon

Canning the days catch - 3 1/2 fish fit into one load and we ate the rest of the fourth fish for dinner

Our canning set up - pressure cooker and crab cooker burner

Salmon leftovers from the canner on the fire for dinner

Hedgehog mushrooms collected near camp by Ray

Ray cooks up the hedgehog mushrooms

Our carrots won first place at the local Kodiak State Fair!

Collecting raspberries in Old Afognak Village

Ray and the deer he harvested

A packload of tasty mountain goat meat - But watch out Brooks those horns and hide will not be good eating

More Mountain Goat

Another view of the photogenic goat

The scenery where we went goat hunting was spectacular.  Fall is in the air and the vegetation is starting to change colors.  On day one it was bright and sunny and hot and the photos I took came out a little washed out.  It clouded up a bit on day 2 and the atmospheric conditions made for better photographs.  But it seems I had a dirt smudge on the lens that I did not wipe off until I took pictures of Brooks' goat - note ghost of brown at the top of the images.  Oh well, I'm sure if I tried I could fix them in photoshop or iphoto.  Patrick

Looking back towards the ocean at the start of the climb to the alpine - there are lots of bears down there!

Fog forming in the valleys as a front moves in on day 2 of the hunt

Brooks picture of me glassing for mountain goats

Back in the day, these are places where I used to summer ski

29 Hour Goat Hunt

Brooks and his goat

I just got back from a 29 hour mountain goat hunt with Brooks H.  The short story is that we took a float plane to the head of a nearby bay, hiked up into the mountains, camped, woke up and harvested a goat at 9 AM the next day - and then slogged back to the sea burdened down with meat and camping gear. We just beat the rain and got back to Kodiak in time for dinner.  A hard hunt to be sure, but, for the first goat hunt in a long time, nothing went dramatically wrong.

But of course there is much more to the story.  The hike in was 6 miles and almost 3000 feet up there, and the landscape was stunning.  There were bears everywhere along the river near the bay where we started our trip.  Salmon heads littered the banks and we could see fresh tracks in the sand.  It was so hot we saw a bear just hanging out in the water to cool off, and Brooks even took his shirt off for the climb to the alpine.

Brooks sporting his 'stream-crossing' slippers

Once we got up to the alpine we set up camp.  We decided not to hike any further into the mountains because we did not want to spook the goats out of the country.  Brooks headed further up the ridge to scout for goats while I set up camp.  I was relieved to find plenty of dry wood for our woodstove, and this at 2000 feet.  By the time Brooks got back from scouting (no goats nearby but some on a FAR ridge) I was cooking a rice and beans dinner on the woodstove.  Earlier a HUGE deer had run panting by camp (I swear he had his tongue hanging out) - clearly spooked by Brooks on his scouting trip.

The next day, we woke up in the dark, and lit the stove.  Brooks later confessed that there is no better sound than the clinking of pans while lying in bed and KNOWING that soon the woodstove would be lit and there would be coffee.  After a leisurely breakfast we were off as soon as it was light enough to hike without headlamps.  We were not sure if we'd get a goat and carried our entire camp with us so that we could deal with any contingency.

But as luck would have it we did find a goat before 8 AM and Brooks had it down by 9 AM.  That is quick work!  Best of all it died on a flat place and did not jump over any cliffs. He shot it perfectly through the lungs and clipped the spine, and there was very little in the way of spoiled meat.  But the goat was pretty darned big.  I'd sort of been hoping that Brooks would harvest something small, and easy to carry back to the sea.

That's me contemplating a BIG goat and the beginning of the REAL work

Soon after the euphoria of the harvest ended we realized we had a big job a head of us.  Our packs each ended up weighing 120 pounds and it was six miles as the crow flies to the ocean.  And we had a time crunch.  Rain was in the forecast and if we wanted to get back to town before the storm we had to be at our pickup spot by 6:30 PM.  So off we trudged.

Near the end there it got pretty ugly.  As usual I have already sort of blocked it from memory, but I vaguely remember a period of constant pain.  I think the worst parts were the steep downhill, and then the unending river plain to the sea. At one point I was struggling to get up after a short rest and my pepper spray fired off a burst that soaked my thighs in burning hot pepper sauce.  By the time we got to the river flats my thighs were on FIRE.  It sort of took my mind off of what was happening with my glutes, waist and shoulders.  And then it started to rain.

At this point who cares if you get water in over the tops of your XTRA tuffs!

Brooks slogging it out to where the floatplane could pick us up

But we got there and the plane picked us up on time.  We beat the storm back to Kodiak, and got to cut up our goat meat in town the next day while it stormed outside.  There is some primo goat meat in the freezer and later this fall we'll be making up a batch our favorite Italian mountain goat sausage.  All and all a successful hunt - as good as it gets for a goat hunt.  Patrick

Sea Otters & Surf

Theres no denying it- fall is here. With stronger breezes off the ocean, leaves falling from trees and later sunrises and earlier sunsets, its really here. My favorite season. 

Our friends, Julie and Ray arrived from Anchorage  and we went to Afognak to fish, hike, pick berries and visit. A trip that we've been planning together for nearly 5 months.  Patrick and Ray skiffed over with gear  in the Whaler and set up camp~bless their hearts!   

Julie, the kids and myself took a float plane and enjoyed a silent trip over to the adjacent island from Kodiak. The plane was short one set of headphones, so I just plugged my ears for the short trip over.   After the flight I was happy to learn from Julie that the kids hadn't spoken a word on the headsets! Often the trip can be fraught with "evil eye" looks from me when they do silly talk in the headphones so it was a treat to enjoy the views without any concern about how the kids were or weren't behaving. I was in an "in-flight" bubble. 

Arrived!

The only things that we leave on the property between visits are the
-cast iron bathtub
-broken red firewood basket (a beach find)
-1 small elk antler (found by Katelyn earlier in the summer, I believe)
-Square slate stones on which to assemble to the cookstove upon inside the Kifaru Tee-pee.



On the prior trip out to Afognak in July, we left a bottle of 1/2 consumed liquer nestled in the tree trunk right near  where we set up camp. When we returned this go-around, it had been consumed. Not a drop left. I am so curious about who consumed and feeling very glad that we set up and take camp with us on our trips.

Sawing wood+good conversation=excellent Afognak times!

On this trip, Julie introduced us to the world of camp cookies! She brought a few packs of pre-made Nestle cookies and they baked up well in her special camp oven. 

tent scenic

Nora's new seaweed 'do' :) Silvers caught on the beach by Patrick. 

Every time when we are packed up and ready to return back to Kodiak, I return to the emptier piece of earth where the tent used to stand. My heart is sad for a moment, not ever quite ready to go. Taking a deep breath,  I envy the sea otters which get to float around the point every day, or the eagles which nest in the trees.  Or the fox that frequents the land.  All of these beings are what make our experience rich.

The breeze blows through the trees and the salmon berry bushes and I realize that I've never cared about a piece of land as much as this one.

Zoya