Farewell

Days remaining: 1 day

New bird count: 22 (northern shrike outside the office today)

So long, Bethel, and thanks for all the unsolicited salmon.

My time living in Bethel has been, let's say, bittersweet. I was not particularly happy here. I can't blame this entirely on the town itself - the bunkhouse has been a particularly nettling situation. But there were many things wrong with Bethel. The rampant alcoholism, and the subsequent lack of beer. The subtle and not-subtle racism between the natives and the whites, in both directions. The lack of suitable vehicles and roads (I'll be home soon, my lovely little 'Scort). The ridiculously expensive groceries ($9 for a gallon of milk) and terrible produce (I bought a brand new head of garlic and when I got home and peeled it open, it was moldy inside). The cancelled field work. The nearly constant sickness since I got here, and the emergency room trip.

But I can't be completely negative. Or, I can, but as many people tell me, I need to not dwell on the horrible things so much (especially after the migraine.)

The Delta is infamous among waterfowl researchers and enthusiasts. At Chico State, we couldn't think of one person who had taken the waterfowl class that had been to the YK Delta. Without Bethel, I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to live in the Alaskan bush for the summer, seeing geese and ducks during the other half of their life.

I got to go out onto the Kuskokwim River three times. Since I was little, I have always loved being on the water. Being on the river and the sights and smells were a real treat and very comforting to me.

I've gotten over 21 new life birds here, and nearly half of them were in Bethel! It was easy to start taking common redpolls for granted, and when out doing field work red-necked phalaropes became boring. Breeding birds behave differently than when they're wintering. and aren't spooked nearly as easily, and because of this, I got up and close views of familiar faces, like the white-fronted geese, and with new beautiful birds, like the emperors.

I met a lot of fun and fascinating people. Some were fellow biotechs with similar senses of humor (thanks, Zach and Nathan, for all the fairy ball, Thai food, and driving me to the hospital) and waterfowl heavyweights, like Jim Sedinger and Bill Henry (who I made chocolate chip cookies for). The refuge staff has been incredibly helpful while I've been here, including Brian, who got me medication after the migraine, and Tom, who had us over to see his young goshawk.

I don't know if I want to come back to Bethel again, but at least I can look back and find some humor and joy in the time here. Already the whole migraine incident is hilarious to me, and I'm sure at some point the bunkhouse hellishness will become a funny story. Probably not until after I'm home in my own bed, with my cats, where I don't have to worry about resetting the water heater everyday and where the water doesn't taste like metallic ass.

Tomorrow I fly out of here for the largest city in Alaska. You better be on your A-game, Anchorage, because I seriously need a beer.

Finding Beauty in Bethel, Part IV, and Storytime

Days remaining: 1 week, 1 day

I have one last set of photos for you, but first I need to share a story. Last night, right around 7 pm, I started developing a blind spot in the middle of my vision. At first, I just figured I had looked into the fluorescent over my desk for too long. But then it stuck around and started getting bigger. I tried to ignore it, and it did go away after a half hour, but then it was replaced by a loss of peripheral vision in my left eye. At that point, I was asking if anyone in the bunkhouse saw some distortion in my eye. I went and lied down for a little while, and my vision improved slightly, but as I sat up and moved to the computer, my left arm went numb.

At this point, I asked to be driven to the hospital.

By the time I got to the emergency room, my face was numb, and my cognition was a bit impaired. After I gave my information, my symptoms all began to fade, to be replaced by a massive headache. After four hours in the waiting room, nearly five on a hospital bed, three Tylenol and one shot of vasoconstrictor later, I was released at 4:45 am with the diagnosis of "just" a migraine.

That was my grand adventure last night. Now all I have left from that experience is a minor headache, and sensitivity to light and sound. This may have cost me my trip up the Kwethluk, but at least all it was was a migraine...

Anyway, pictures now.Some of our planes. Except the second one. That belongs to the state troopers.
The Beaver again. I love this plane. I think this shows you how ridiculously long the wings are.
A mama green-winged teal and her ducklings.
The fuel pump and gate at Hangar Lake, where we keep our float planes during the summer.
I hate salmon.
The (crappy) Suburban.

Field Journal: Days 11, 12, and 13

Days Remaining: 3 weeks, 3 days
New bird count: 19 (one I forgot to count previously, and one from this weekend.)

Day 11: Sunday June 13th
Day 1 of Worst Storm Ever

Like the above tagline suggests, this is the day a huge storm hit us. It brought plenty of rain and harsh wind, and conditions were such that we couldn't go do a plot, let alone fly. When its stormy, we avoid going out to plots. There's no need to flush birds off nests when the weather is bad, there's already a high chance that birds will abandon nests or lose them to flooding in storms like this.

This day was the start of me consuming books. I finished Neverwhere, which was the last of my personal books, and I started raiding the camp's bookshelves. I read Jurassic Park, and then I'll Go To Bed At Noon. There was one exciting thing today...
We were visited by moose! As George, our pilot, was brushing his teeth, he looked up out the window and saw the pair trot right past the cabin and out towards the dock. They walked on the boardwalk for a moment, and headed towards the landing lake. The three of us left at the cabin tumbled outside, cameras in hand, and started snapping. The moose were cooperative for a moment, but then the wind caught the door, slamming it. The moose spooked and ran off towards the river, along the slough.
It was truly amazing watching them run across the tundra and wetlands. After walking on that stuff, I can't imagine running on it. The fact that moose just bolted across it like I would skate across the rink at home was fascinating.

That picture above has to be one of my favorites. I just means Alaska to me.

Day 12: Monday June 14th
Day 2 of Worst Storm Ever

Trapped still. This day was possibly the worst of the storm. We had wind gusts up to 50 knots, and rain that was practically sideways.

My morning was spent making a package of medicine for Jenn, who was deathly ill out on one of the boat crews, and making brownies, which George then air dropped . I managed to cut my pinkie finger deeply while cutting the brownies. It's not camping if I don't slice my hand open. I also started Lonesome Dove today, which was surprisingly enjoyable and at 900+ pages, it took me plenty of time to get through it.

Day 13: Tuesday June 15th
Day 3 of Worst Storm Ever

Still stuck. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

In other news, there were a lot of Cajun Man jokes today.

Kelly and I got to help with an airdrop to the camp crew that was stuck on the Kashunik River. That was an incredible amount of fun. George would get at least 10 feet over the tents before we dropped the packages, and then he would have to punch it and turn quickly. We were doing this in the little Cessna 185, and it was like being on a rollercoaster. Afterwards, Kelly and I turned to George and said, "Can we do that again?!"

Airplanes!

Time remaining: 9 weeks
New bird count: 7

So here are some photos of the refuge's airplanes as I promised.

The first of which is the de Havilland Beaver.
Note how the trailer is tipped over? It wasn't my fault this time. I think this is my favorite one. Not only is it the classic bush plane, but the orange and black color scheme is a reference to the paint job on Clarence Rhode's Grumman Goose airplane. Clarence was an important part of the development of the Service in Alaska, and went missing in 1959. The plane wasn't found until two women hiking in the Brooks Range came across the wreckage in 1978. I also got to "hold the leash" on this plane, i.e. keep the plane from floating away until our pilot got to the launch site.
This is one of our Cessna 206's. It's actually a U206, a utility model. It's the favorite plane of our supervisory biologist.
And here's our Piper Super Cub, a cute little plane. As I found out, the body is NOT made of metal, but of painted canvas. A few of the biologists told me they've seen it crumpled and crushed a number of times, and I said that if I was ever invited to ride in it, I would say, "No thank you."

We have at least two more planes I didn't take pictures of, including the Husky and the blue Cessna, which I will be flying in regularly during my field work.

The work we were doing on the planes yesterday was launching them into the Kuskokwim River, and then our refuge pilot flew them over to Hangar Lake, an appropriately named body of water where we store our float planes over the summer. My main duties were just generally assisting in launching, watching the planes while the pilot was ferried back to the launch ramp, and then small maintenance around the Hangar Lake facilities. I'm excited that I will eventually get to ride in at least one of these planes after doing all that maintenance!

What Exactly My Job Entails

Time remaining in Alaska: 9 weeks, 3 days
New bird count: 5

I'm afraid I don't have any of my pretty pictures today, but I wanted to update despite that, before everything I wanted to write an entry about overwhelmed me.

Let me tell you specifically what I'm doing in Alaska this summer. Starting next Thursday, I'll be out in the field for approximately 2 and a half weeks, at a remote field camp. The whole purpose of this field work is to look at nesting birds on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The majority of the nests we'll be looking at are waterfowl nests, but we'll be looking at shorebird, seabird, and other nests as we find them. The point of this research is to keep track of breeding activities in this very important area to sustaining the populations of these birds, including birds that only nest here, including the handsome bird to the left, the emperor goose (not my picture).

For the remainder of my time here, I'm working on environmental education. Originally, I thought this would be involving education of elementary school kids, but a local school teacher was hired to work on the curriculum for the local schools. My job is to develop some "canned" PowerPoint presentations on conservation issues to be used with the native populations out on the refuge. Relations between the refuge and the Yupik are interesting, and a bit delicate, and I hope to go into more detail about the situation later. When I first arrived at the bunkhouse, there were a number of special law enforcement agents, who had come to the refuge in assisting in delivering a ticket to a native individual using lead shot. This is just an example of the kind of issues involved, and actually added another presentation for me to prepare - one on the dangers of lead shot.

There are, of course, "other duties as assigned" as the Service puts it. Today was one of those other duty days. During this time of year, the refuge's airplanes are switched from typical landing gear to floats. Since the refuge is absolutely speckled with bodies of water, its easier to use the habitat as a natural landing strip. Today was the first day of the process of switching to floats. Since I'm here, and kicking around until my field work starts next week, I was sent out to work at the hangar. I was hesitant at first, since I agree with Jeremy Clarkson's statement of "My greatest fear is manual labor, you know that," but the aviation crew was so grateful to have me there and so excited about teaching me about the planes, I actually enjoyed myself. My job was to first to scrub off the mineral staining on the sides of the floats with bleach, then wash and polish them. After that, I had to pump the antifreeze out of the floats, which had was there to prevent any water from freezing and damaging the pump. In my usual style, after one embarrassing accident I performed my duties with speed and accuracy. The accident in question was when I sat down on the edge of a trailer to scrub floats already attached to a de Havilland Beaver (which you can see an example of on the right), and my meager weight managed to tip the trailer and plane backwards. I scrambled to brace it, and the plane very slowly came to rest of on the back of the floats, with no damage to the plane. This, of course, was within a few minutes of starting to work at the hangar. Fortunately tipping it back up right and holding the trailer in place with some boards was easy work, and I was very wary of tipping over trailers the rest of the day.

This week, I hope to go back to the hangar to finish up my handy work, and I'll take some pictures of the Cessna, Husky, and de Havilland that the aviation crew was so eager to teach me about.

As a reward for all my hard work, my boss took me out on a boat ride around the Kuskokwim River. But that will have to wait for another night, since my hard work today is catching up with me.