Ready For The Next Storm

We got a robocall from Municipal Light and Power about how to prepare for the storm due this evening at 8pm.  At the concert tonight they asked people to be ready to use the flashlight app on their iPhones if the power went out.

There was a little wind this afternoon and it's been raining on and off all day.  (Western Prince William Sound - Whittier and I guess Girdwood maybe - are predicted to have 3-7 inches of rain in 24 hours.)  

Issued by The National Weather Service
Anchorage, AK

Updated Sep 15, 2012, 10:40pm AKDT

... HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM THIS EVENING TO 8 PM AKDT SUNDAY...
* LOCATION... THE ANCHORAGE BOWL... HILLSIDE AND ALONG TURNAGAIN ARM.
* WIND... IN THE ANCHORAGE BOWL AND LOWER HILLSIDE... SOUTHEAST WIND 35 TO 50 MPH WITH GUSTS 50 TO 65 MPH. ALONG TURNAGAIN ARM AND THE UPPER HILLSIDE... SOUTHEAST WIND 70 TO 85 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 110 MPH. WINDS DIMINISHING TO 40 TO 60 MPH SUNDAY EVENING.
* TIMING... THE STRONGEST WINDS WILL DEVELOP INITIALLY OVER THE UPPER HILLSIDE AND TURNAGAIN ARM THIS EVENING... AND SPREAD TO THE LOWER HILLSIDE... EAST ANCHORAGE... AND EAGLE RIVER VALLEY DURING THE OVERNIGHT HOURS. STRONG SOUTHERLY WINDS THEN WILL SPREAD TO THE REST OF THE ANCHORAGE BOWL AS A WEATHER FRONT MOVES THROUGH THE REGION SUNDAY MORNING. WARNING LEVEL WINDS WILL DIMINISH EARLY SUNDAY EVENING... THOUGH WINDY CONDITIONS WILL PERSIST INTO MONDAY MORNING.
* IMPACTS... TREES AND POWER LINES MAY BE BLOWN OVER. STRONG WINDS CAN PRODUCE WIND DRIVEN PROJECTILES AND MAY DAMAGE PROPERTY. TRAVEL MAY BE DIFFICULT.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A HIGH WIND WARNING MEANS A HAZARDOUS HIGH WIND EVENT IS EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. PEOPLE ARE URGED TO SECURE LOOSE OBJECTS THAT COULD BE BLOWN AROUND OR DAMAGED BY THE WIND.

Last Sunday, by 10:30 pm our power was out.  While we got power the next morning, it took some people until Friday to get theirs.  And our internet was out until Tuesday.   So far tonight it's raining, but the high winds haven't made it into the Anchorage Bowl yet.   But everyone is paying attention to the warnings this week and I should put up a post now, just in case we lose power again before tomorrow morning.

Playing With Photos on Blogger - Clouds, Crabapples, and Photoshop

Life is basically about balancing tensions between competing options.  Making tradeoffs.  And I face that every day here on the blog.

It's my space to experiment, but it's also public.  In my own private journal I could experiment and not worry about people looking at my drafts.  Or I could write personal thoughts about my family.  But I want my family to talk to me, so they are pretty much off limits.

For writing, I've come to terms with getting something as good as I can in the time that I have.  Yes, it would be better if I labored over it for another week or two, but the trade off is that I get more stuff up and I can consider these notes jotted down.  On touchy issues I'll usually spend more time trying to avoid ambiguity and unnecessarily ticking someone off.  But there's always someone who will get offended.  Fortunately, not too many of those folks are reading here.

But photos are different.  There's the conflict between putting up a good photo versus putting up something that isn't so good but illustrates the story.  Yes, I know, I should do both, but sometimes a mediocre photo is all I have and it still tells a lot more than I could write.



Like that big cloud hanging over me as I came out of the John Cage talk at UAA Thursday.  I just couldn't get the cloud right.  It was way too big and too close.  But the picture tells you a lot more than I could write.  We don't have that many dramatic cloudscapes in Anchorage.  More often it's a pretty flat gray sky.  Or puffy whites floating near the mountains.

  By the time I got to Lake Otis and 36th, it was even better.  I was waiting for the light to change and shot this on the run as the walk sign turned on. I know, a real photographer would have waited for the next light.  A real photographer would have a real camera too.

 And then Blogger doesn't do me any favors when it interprets the photos.  You could read the Seawolf Shuttle on the bus clearly before I posted this.  If you click on the picture it shows you the slightly better version.


But sometimes I get bored with just uploading up a photo, or I think I can make it look more interesting if I fiddle with it in photoshop.  I'll show you what I mean.   The two cloud pictures I just posted up here from my photo files using blogger's upload photo function.  I don't have a lot of control.  I can play with the size and location -  on the left, right, or middle.

Sometimes I'll take two related pictures and I want to position them together better than blogger lets me. I'll just put them together in photoshop without otherwise doctoring them.   Like these two pictures - one of the crabapples on the ground and the other looking up at the crab apple tree.

 

But this was just too flat - the up and down perspectives don't work when the two are together like this.  So I tried playing with them more in photoshop.

OK, I have the apples looking like they are on the ground, but the tree and the sizes and relationships just don't work.  You can't see really see the apples in the tree which I wanted to catch when I took the picture.  Usually I won't burden you with my failures, but this is a behind the scenes post,  So I tried again.

 

I like this better.  It's got more life than the other two, but it's still too flat.  I should have lain down on the ground to take the picture.  But I wasn't thinking about putting the two together at the time.  Planning!  I probably should get back to Mariano's digital art class.  

Meanwhile, they are predicting more 'strong wind events' in the Anchorage area for tomorrow.  Other places have hurricanes and typhoons, but  we only have wind events,  even though the hillside and Turnagain Arm are supposed to get 100 mile per hour gusts.  We're getting the candles out and batteries for the old radio.  I have to say, it was nice having candles for light and not being able to use the computer.  I may be adding to the downed tree pictures I've posted this week.  Last week most of us weren't paying much attention to the wind warnings.  The storm got our attention. This week we're listening.  Probably nothing big will happen.

Mudflats, Rocks, Downed Trees, And More On Sunny Sunday on Seward Highway

It was too nice a day to stay home.

We drove down the Seward Highway.

Here are the railroad tracks looking south down Turnagain Arm.












Looking back toward Anchorage you could see the Alaska Range bright and clear in the distance. 

Our goal was a patch of rocky beach we like.  But it was pretty windy (I'd guess 20 to 30 mph) and J found a nice rock that blocked the wind and let her enjoy the sunshine while I walked down the beach.










The rocks go to the edge of the mudflats.  Here you can see a layer of mudflats, then the water, then the base of the mountains on the other side. 














 J didn't want to walk in the strong wind so we backtracked to McHugh Creek and took the path toward Potter.  Up there - on the other side of the Seward Highway and up a bit into the trees - there was no wind and it began to feel warm in the sun.

 But all those cottonwoods proved to be vulnerable to the winds we had last week.  (I'm assuming these were recent falls we came upon, though some - as you'll see - had been sawed to clear the trail.)

 It was a little messy, but we could negotiate the trail pretty easily here. 

















 The insides of the downed cottonwoods were pretty soft.  You could squeeze the pulp like a sponge almost. 

I liked the sun-like design where the chainsaw had cut the mature trees, with their ridged trunks.

While you could see the water through the trees for a lot of the trail, this was one of just a couple of spots where you got a view of Turnagain Arm and the Seward Highway below.

 This spider - well I assumed it was a spider, but I only see five of its eight legs - seemed to be enjoying the sun on the newly exposed cottonwood insides.  [Now that was a good case of transferring human feelings to animals.  Who knows what it was feeling out there?]

The body would have fit on a quarter easily.


In addition to cottonwoods, devil's club was everywhere and also some red baneberries. 

At first glance they look pretty similar, but the devil's club has much larger thorned leaves and their berries aren't translucent like the baneberries are.  Don't eat the baneberries!!


The US Forest Service has lots of information on baneberries:

NUTRITIONAL VALUE: Red baneberry's energy and protein value are rated as poor [21].  Red baneberry's name comes from a poisonous essential oil or glycoside (protoanemonin) found in all parts of the plant but most concentrated in the berries and root [43,72].  Symptoms of poisoning include gastroenteritis, stomach cramps, headache, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea and circulatory failure [72].

 But some bird species eat the berries and elk and other deer eat the foliage.

We hiked about 3 miles in (almost to the Potter Marsh end) but decided these two big cottonwoods across the trail was a good place to turn back. 

There were lots of people on the trail and lots of dogs.  We heard reports from hikers going to and back of four black bears sighted.  We didn't see them.  J wasn't very disappointed about that. 

We also saw this young agent of the devil's club.    Actually he zipped up the hood to show me that his sweatshirt turned into this neat Halloween costume. The eyes had a mesh covering he could see through.













These trees seemed to be dancing on the side of the trail.

Here's yet another fallen cottonwood, but it was high enough over the trail not to be a problem.


As we got near the McHugh Creek parking lot we passed a man in an electronic wheel chair making his way up the trail.  I'm not sure how far he would be able to get, but I was impressed he got that far. 


Finally, on the drive back home we stopped at Potter Marsh where we saw a pair of swans in the distance.  If I had a good telephoto, I'd show you.  This picture is much better than the one I got of the swans. 

Louv: "The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.”

Turnagain Arm Mud Flats - Near Hope

My daughter's roommate in college was from NYCity and needed to regularly escape to the concrete from their very green, wooded campus.  So maybe it's just what you're used to.

But I still believe that getting out into natural settings is good for the soul.  And I seem to be supported by Richard Louv who's speaking in Anchorage Sept. 6 (free) at Wendy Williamson at UAA at 7pm.  And Fairbanks Sept. 5.  Louv Alaska visit details here.

"[Louv's] Last Child in the Woods is the first book to bring together a new and growing body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. More than just raising an alarm, Louv offers practical solutions and simple ways to heal the broken bond—and many are right in our own backyard."

[I haven't read the books so I have to rely others for now.]

wet grass seed

Louv's seven reasons we need a New Nature Movement:

1. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need. 
2. As of 2008, more than half of the world’s population now lives in towns and cities. Adults have nature-deficit disorder, too. 
3. Environmentalism needs to hit reset. 
4. Sustainability alone is not sustainable. 
5. Conservation is not enough. Now we need to “create” nature.  
6. We'll need the true greening of America and the rest of the world. 
7. We have a choice. There is elaboration of each at the link above.

 This is fall skunk cabbage.  Go here for early spring skunk cabbage.

Six Mile Creek

These are left over from last week's trip to Hope.

“The future will belong to the nature-smart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.”

—Richard Louv

Hope Last Saturday Night

My book club met in Hope Saturday.  One of the members has a cabin there.  After the discussion (John McPhee's The Control of Nature) and dinner, we walked into downtown Hope.  Note, the 2010 Census says there are 192 residents.  Not sure if that counts the summer residents, and it certainly doesn't count the campers on the beach.

We walked down to the muddy banks of Resurrection Creek.  This is where it flows into Turnagain Arm.

The Super Saturated Sugar Strings was playing at the Seaview Bar.  I'd met some of the band at the Out North fundraiser earlier this year.

June Ends, July Begins - Cottonwood, Construction, Contentment

 A breeze blew the cottonwood seeds from our big tree in the afternoon.  Fortunately, we don't have cottonwood allergies.  (For a lot more on cottonwood, here's an old post on this untapped Alaska resource.)

Later we went got onto the Seward Highway at Tudor.  The highway is being widened and the four bridges over Campbell Creek are going to be raised and a real bike trail constructed under the roads (including the frontage roads on each side.)
This is the on-ramp merging into the highway.

We had dinner with old friends who moved to New Zealand but are back in town visiting.  They are staying above Potter Marsh and the time flew as we talked about many things.  It was after midnight as we went home and I stopped for this view of Turnagain Arm, Potter Marsh, and Mt. Susitna.

Another Anchorage-Seattle Flight

We flew to Seattle Monday.  Wednesday my baby gets married.  It's a very small family event.  But I'm supposed to keep family matters to a minimum here, so let's leave it at that.  There was rare thunder Sunday night and the big clouds were still hanging around when we left, but it was sunny and warm (pushing 70˚F). 

 There was a recent issue in Anchorage about the airport wanting to swap part of the coastal trail for some other land.  But from up here across the inlet, you can see how much land the airport already takes.  It's that gray blob in the center right.  It would be interesting to figure out how many times downtown or the university are would fit inside the airport land. 

For a few minutes clouds blocked the Chugach, then it was just snowy peaks and puffy clouds.  That's Turnagain Arm in the upper left.

The non-snowy land is Girdwood valley, again with Turnagain Arm in the background.

This is the east end of Prince William Sound, Whittier is at the end of the lower arm, if I had my bearings right.   And soon enough it was mostly cloudy and read and snoozed.

There were breaks in the clouds and here we're crossing back into the US from Canada. 

Seattle was covered in thick clouds.

Anchorage to Juneau

When the weather is so spectatular, I have no choice but to post a couple of pictures.  A little out of Anchorage, Girdwood Valley and Turnagain Arm in the upper middle. 

And then we flew into Juneau from the south, looping down and around and over downtown on the way to the airport.  Below is the northern, upper part of downtown and a view up Basin Road to the Perseverance Trail.  On the ground there was no snow and temps in the 50s. 

Giving the Gift of Alaska - To Seward On A Black And White Day

We met Moshe at Congregation Beth Sholom Sunday where he gave a talk about how his community of Jews in Ethiopia walked for three weeks through Ethiopia to Sudan where they were in a refugee camp for 2 years before being able to complete their trip to Israel.  He's in Anchorage because of the PACT (Parents and Children Together)  program - which helps Ethiopian Jews get pre-school preparation to be ready for school.  Moshe himself benefited from this and is now a PACT coordinator in his town.  He was here, in part, to thank the people of Anchorage who have contributed to make this program possible.  He mentioned after the talk that he very much wanted to see a glacier and we offered to help him find a glacier Monday.

See the whole strip at REOiv

We decided to try for Exit Glacier and left in a light snow.  The day reminded me of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.  Here are the key two panels from it.




                                                                                                                                                   Well, our world Monday was back in those old days when you could use color film, but the world itself was still black and white with only a few traces of the early colors showing.

Even without color, the drive to Seward is spectacular and our guest bubbled over with delight.  Sharing Alaska is such an easy gift to give. 

The roads were a bit tricky - and the drivers were getting used to the second day of snow.  And the clouds were really low as we left Anchorage.  Turnagain Arm was better, and things improved a bit as we went over Turnagain Pass.  Eventually, we saw our first hint of sun after the Hope turnoff. 

We took the turnoff to Exit Glacier, but didn't get very far and the road was closed.  That would have been a much longer walk than we were prepared for, especially in several inches of fresh snow.

So back to the main road and into Seward.  A stop at the harbor.

Then lunch at the Apollo.  (There was color still inside.)











Then off to Lowell Point to do a little beach walk on the world famous white 'sand' beach.

(Didn't I say up top this was a black and white day?)










We decided there had to be a lot of fish in this location.  Gulls were predominant, but there were cormorants and what appeared to be loons as well.

Then to the southern shore of Kenai Lake at Primrose campground.  We could see sun on the distant mountains.

And Moshe got a spectacular shot of a bald eagle that flew low over us before taking a tree top perch.  He was rightfully proud of the picture and I'll put it up when he sends it to me.  [UPDATE Dec. 26: I posted the eagle pictures here, but forgot to add a link here.]
 

A short walk through the woods from the Primerose campground trail in the fresh snow.  The trees seemed to be dancing.

A little reflected sun and even some blue sky on the way back. 

And then off to Portage to see if we can find some glacier.  You could see about 30 feet out into the fogged in lake.  So we took the trail to Byron Glacier.  It was after 6pm and the sun had set and the snow was coming down thick.  I hadn't been to Byron in many years.  There isn't much left.  But there was an ice cave on the lower right side of the dark front of the ice and other glacial shapes in the oncoming evening light and falling snow.

It was still not quite dark when we got back to the car.  But once the car lights were on, it was, for all intents, dark out.  And on the highway back, the snow was blowing hard toward us.  Reflected in the headlights, it made it really hard to figure out where the road was.  The rumble strips were great, but it wasn't easy to tell if you were too far to the left or the right.

I didn't quite get it from the back seat, but this does give you the sense of how hard it was to orient to the road.  For once, the headlights of oncoming cars were helpful.

I hope there weren't too many typos.  I'm tired.