No salmonberries

 

My potatoes are blooming!

I still have not found a ripe salmonberry to eat. I fear it is an awful year for berries and the bears are going to be hungry. I did find one semi ripe blueberry in the park to eat but that's it. There are just very few berries around. I spent the last week on my hikes looking for a ripe salmonberry to eat and did not see a single one. Wow!

That said the fireweed is in full blossom and seems to be doing fine. The fireweed might actually be blooming a little early.

Patrick

Fogged Out

 

Over the weekend Stuey and I went hunting on Afognak with our friend Ryan. Right off the bat at dawn on the first day we found a herd of bucks and Stuey wanted to shoot the first one we saw. And we probably should have done so. But the buck was not very big and was at a bad shooting angle at the bottom of a steep slope. The next guys were not very big either. With so many deer around I wanted to get something big.

And then just as we were off after some big boys the fog came in and covered up everything below in a mantle of white. Only the very tops of the mountains stuck up above the clouds. And that was that - you can't hunt when you can't see the deer. And so we waited and waited, and took naps and hoped the fog would burn off. 

The fog did not burn off until late in the afternoon. And by then it was very hot and all the deer had bedded down for the day. We looked and looked and just saw one doe. And then the next day we had more fog and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. Despite getting up at dawn again we only saw one doe.  Lesson learned - 'a buck in hand is worth a big one in the bush'. I actually should have learned this last year!

But the trip was not a bust. We got to camp and hike in some beautiful country. We did some exploring where I have never hiked before. If we had harvested the first deer we saw I would never have had the glorious nap in the sunshine, nor would we have done so much hiking.

Patrick

Nap time waiting for the fog to burn off

Nap back at the beach - waiting for the ride home

Karluk Lagoon

 

Karluk Village and Lagoon with old Karluk on the other side of the lagoon (to left)

Last week I went to the village of Karluk for a work related trip. For the last 15 years or so I have done a lot of archaeology up on Karluk Lake and along the river.  But I had not visited the village in over 20 years - maybe 25!

The village of Karluk is on the lagoon at the mouth of the river and it is where I spent my first summer in Alaska way back in 1985. I was a part of the Bryn Mawr College excavation at the Karluk One site. This is the excavation that basically created the Alutiiq Museum where I now work. The site was a 'wet' site and had amazing organic preservation - grass and spruce root baskets, wood masks, painted box panels, ulus with the handles attached - All sorts of amazing stuff  Today most of the artifacts on display in the gallery are from that excavation.

Since then the entire site has been destroyed by erosion. The river draining the lagoon has been slowly migrating to the southwest and it completely destroyed the site by the early 2000's. Now it is cutting into the hillside and threatening the old Russian Orthodox Church on the hill that was once behind the site (see bottom photo).

Spending a day back on the lagoon brought back many memories. I walked the same road that I had once walked every day from the village to the site. I saw the old Russian Orthodox church. But one thing I did not see was Karluk One the archaeological site I helped excavate. Where the site once was is now under water or beach gravel. The erosion since I last visited is utterly amazing. 

Patrick

River erosion threatening the Karluk Church

It was a tad buggy

Ugak Bay from the plane home

'CC 1,2,3' - the old ski route from Crown to Center

The church in 1995

me on the slope below church above river in 1985

Aerial view of Karluk from 1983 - it's eroded a lot since then

House on the water

 

This is the last Maine vacation blog post and it is all about the house where Stuey and I stayed. It is my grandmother's old house - granny 'Thurby' - and began life as a warehouse on the water. You can still see the old rock dock piling in the intertidal zone in front of the house. I've actually thought that maybe we should resurrect this old dock - it certainly would make it easier to launch the paddleboards and kayaks that we currently drop over the porch railing at high tide.

In any case, it is a huge old house with many bedrooms. And it still looks very much like it did when my grandmother lived in it. It still has all the old posters, art, photos, and maps on the wall. Many of them sun faded from more than 60 years of UV damage.

This year as sort of a documentation project I went around the house taking pictures of all the old rooms. Looking back at the photos I just realized that I captured what many of the old rooms look like but that I completely failed to document the hallways and stairs. The stairs have maps on the walls that show sequentially the entire coast of Maine and into the Bay of Fundy.

Patrick

The house on far left back in the day when it was a warehouse

Levitating

More Lobsters and Another Shell Midden

 

When I picked up lobsters at the bait barge for my roommates, I talked to the lobsterman and they agreed to keep and hold some large crabs for me. We agreed that I'd drop by again in a few days and they would have the crabs. Amazingly enough in Maine it is incredibly difficult to purchase live crabs. Anyway, I showed up a few days later and none of the lobstermen had kept any crabs for me. So instead of crabs I grabbed some hard shells for Stuey, my mom and I. Stuey got 2 big lobsters just for himself. With my roommates we had purchased soft shell and it is amazing how different they are from Hard shells. Soft shells taste sweeter but Hard shells have much more meat and the body and legs are meaty enough to be worth eating.

On a gloomy afternoon Stuey and I went exploring up Perry's Creek by kayak. I had flashbacks to my archaeological surveys on Kodiak by kayak. And I even found a shell midden - Just like when I was back in Uyak Bay this past May (click here for post). I took pictures and recorded what I saw and will try and report them to an archaeologist in Maine. But I don't know the archaeological scene in Maine so it might be difficult to find anyone interested in I found.

Patrick

Kayak trip to the very head of Perrys Creek

Eroding shell midden

A couple of flakes I saw on surface

More Sailing

 

This year while on vacation in Maine we went sailing practically every day. In years past the weather often did not cooperate and rain and/or high winds kept us off the water. But this year it was generally clear with light southwest winds that gained strength in the afternoons - perfect for sailing.

For me the sailing highlight of the trip was a sail with my mom. She sailed the first part to windward and we had a nice breeze. Then we sailed over under the lee of Crabtree Point. I wanted to check out the houses and docks. My mom warned that 'there is never any wind over there'.  And she was right - we got over there and the wind totally died. It was flat calm and we even called my sister for a tow. But just as my sister got there the wind picked up again and we sailed on home under our own sail power.

Patrick

sister arriving to offer a tow we no longer needed

Stuey returning to shore after a sail