Interesting things I now know

Living in rural Alaska affords me quite a bit of time to do, well, I guess I would call it nothing if I were living somewhere else. But of course I spend very little time doing nothing. So what am I doing? The simple answer is learning even more random knowledge from a variety of awesome sources.

The first is National Geographic. In my opinion, this magazine should be read by every single person on the planet. Or at least paged through by every single person. Where else can you learn about prehistoric crocodiles, the civil war in Somalia, and see a picture of grieving primates watching the burial of a beloved elder? And did you know that at the turn of the twentieth century 180,000 mummified cats were shipped from Egypt to Liverpool to be used as fertilizer for English fields?

I also spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. These internet packets of audio information have become my TV. To add to my list of things every person should do is to listen to the following programs. Both from the amazing world of public radio. Radio Lab is a bi-weekly broadcast that is amazing and covers many areas of science (parasites, randomness, birth and death), and This American Life is broadcast weekly and features about four stories on a common theme (price fixing, the Devil, the health care, children being cruel). The glory of these programs is their diversity of topics and they means of weaving them into the awesomeness of humanity. I highly recommend both. Here is a nice little video from a recent Radio Lab episode.


The last thing I will mention at the moment is a magazine called Good. The thing is, the magazine is just okay. It's aimed at the neo-greenies in America that frequent Starbucks to get their organic fair trade soy lattes in double walled carboard cups with plastic tops, but each issue has a series of graphics they call Transparencies . This little set has some of the more interesting manipulations of data into graphics I have seen. Here are two examples both on the topic of fuel efficiency. Another point for the efficiency of humans.







Click image for full size image
And add a point to biking - the most efficient form of transportation invented. By the way, they have a transparency up stating that Minneapolis is currently one tenth of a percent behind Portland at 3.8 percent for bike commuters. Booyeah.

I am not freaking out.

I'm not. Really. Know why?

Because last week:

• it got cold. Actually, that word should be reserved for a later time, but "cold" is, and always will be a relative term. Maybe I'll revise that to say that it felt cold. About 20 degrees. Fahrenheit. Really not a bad temperature, but then again, it is October. What really made it feel cold, what made it hurt, was the wind. We endured 35-45mph winds for three and a half days straight. My nostrils hurt walking from school to home.

• the planes stopped coming. For three days. There was no mail, or packages, or fresh veggies and fruit - for three days. The wind was too strong to land a small plane. So they didn't come.

• the river froze. Overnight. It froze. You could walk on it. People were. On the ice. And people were ice fishing. In October. On a river.

• the bay froze. It looked like the Arctic. The Bering Sea was frozen. Salt water, with a freezing point below freshwater, was solid. A seal climbed out of the water and sat on the ice.

• sunrise hit 10:00am. That would be midway through 2nd hour - US History.
  

And then this week:

• the wind stopped. Calm. It is wonderful. Planes land. Planes bring packages and mail and food. My nostrils can breath happy knowing that frostbite is still a ways off.

• the sun returned. Shocking how powerful a face full of sun can be regardless of the temperature. Shocking how it can warm your back as you sit awaiting a fish to bite your hook.
  

• high tide came and swept the sea ice back out to sea. Blue water is again my view. The river also lost much of its ice. Not all, but enough to put the ice fishing opener on pause.

• the sun was still shining when I left school at 6:00pm.

And so I am not freaking out. First of all because things have righted themselves. The weather became more Octoberly acceptable. But the main reason I am not freaking out is thus: like cold, I believe that phrase should be conserved for a time where its meaning is needed and it hasn't been watered down over weeks of me being overdramatic. So maybe I should end this with a caveat.
I am not cold...yet.
I am not freaking out...yet.

A sudden thought

I haven't seen a pair of UGGs since I got to Alaska. You may be dying to know, "How do girls in Alaska find appropriate footwear to go with their miniskirts then?" They don't wear miniskirts.

My life is so much less stressful having to analyze this one less oddity of the teenage girl thought process.

Thoughts on a Tuesday night

Today I received ten pounds of Peace Coffee. I made four jars of strawberry jam with frozen strawberries that got melty on their plane ride to me then froze into a brick. I coached robotics and played with Legos. I corrected some math homework and read some short stories. I listened to Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News on YouTube. I got YouTube less than twenty-four hours ago. It came with the internet - a two month process. I listened to a new Built to Spill song. It was okay. I watched Andrew Bird on the Current's website. It was awesome. I watched the rain fall - I think. It was blowing sideways. Maybe it never fell. I tried to call Citimortgage, but ended up in the automaton maze pressing numbers after the computer failed to recognize my a clearly enunciated "two"s. I listened to a podcast about Vlad the Impaler and what happens when you are impaled. I drank some peppermint tea with my neighbors. I got three postcards: one from the Phillipines, one from China, and one from Vermont. I got a piece of mail addressed to the math chairperson. That's me. On a Tuesday.

Tundra misconceptions - Pt 3/3

The last thought on the tundra is how little I know about the tundra. This should be apparent from the previous two observations, but this short story should cement my lack of knowledge. Over Labor Day weekend there was the annual Blackberry Festival in Toksook Bay, one of our neighboring villages. Toksook is the closest village to us, a little more than six miles away, across the tundra and up over a hill. We planned on leaving Saturday morning and were getting all packed and suited up for the journey. Our hiking party consisted of my two neighbors, Ben and Sarah, Heidi and her husband George, and me. Ben and Sarah are teachers from New Yorkegon (umm…they taught in both New York and then Oregon before moving up to Alaska). Heidi is a teacher from Michigan who married the fourth member of our team, George, who is Yup’ik and grew up in Newtok, another village on the delta. As Ben, Sarah, and myself were putting on our hiking boots George came by to check on our progress. “You guys aren’t wearing rubber boots?” Sarah and Ben didn’t have any, while I did but hiking in them is literally a pain. Needless to say, our minds were pretty much already made up. We politely responded, feeling maybe a little nervous now, but still pretty set on our previous decision. “Why, should we?” George’s response only supported our lack of concern and unwillingness (in my case) in our footwear situation. “Well, you don’t need to wear rubber boots.” We left it at that.

Our hike began walking through uptown. Tununak, being the size it is, has both an uptown and a downtown, and entered the tundra. From here we had about a two mile hike to the “bridge” then up and over the hill into Toksook. Everything started fine, but about ten minutes into the tundra we began seeing reasons why both Heidi and George were wearing rubber boots. We had been following the four-wheeler tracks across the tundra. Tundra is similar to grass; the more you drive on it, the less of it there is. And like grass, underneath is mud. Now mud is not a huge problem. We were used to mud. Walking the dirt streets (yes, I can say streets because there are two) of Tununak is a weaving, dodging, at times leaping activity, but rarely a wet activity. What we were beginning to experience out in the tundra was that while it was possible to go around the mud puddles in the four-wheeler road, the surrounding tundra had the consistency of a wet sponge. Wetness was quickly becoming an issue. Lessons were being learned the hard way – when someone native to the area questions your decision not to wear rubber boots, you should also question that decision. And when a person native to the area is himself wearing rubber boots, you should not only question your decision, but change your plans. Too late though. A mile from Tununak, ankle deep in muck (which, by the way, is the Yup’ik word for water – how’s that for double entendre), we were on our way.

Having George with us proved to be a great benefit that became increasingly apparent on the walk home, but more on that later. With George in the lead, he used his experience walking through the tundra to guide us from if not dry, drier, spot to drier spot. By the time we got to the “bridge”, which turned out to be little more than a plank over the stream, we were wet, but not miserable.

Our hike back home, however, was a different story. Without our guide, we needed to apply our new knowledge of tundra navigation. Everything was going fine. I was leading when suddenly I looked up, and we seemed to be at a dead end. The trail kind of disappeared into a muddy, rutted out quagmire. I thought I saw some supportive spots and made my move. Nope, wrong. About a foot deep. Cold tundra water rushed into my non-knee high hiking boots. The nice thing about waterproof boots is that they keep water out. The bad thing about waterproof boots is that they keep water in. I could feel with every step the half-cup of water sloshing around in my boots, but we made it through the first challenge.

Ben took up the lead now and was doing a fine job. We were beginning to get pretty confident navigating dry spot to dry spot, correctly identifying which spots of tundra were stable and dry, and which were neither. All was going well, I was watching my feet to make sure I didn’t slip in the mud, when I heard Ben up ahead. “Oh! Oh! Oh no!” then Sara “Get the camera! Get the camera!” I stopped walking and looked up expecting to see the thing that she wanted Ben to take a picture of. By this time in our journey we had discussed that you can only get so wet. Well this is true, but I guess we were only referring to our feet. Ben, knowing that his feet were already soaked, was doing what we had decided was the most expedient way to cross the tundra: charging it through the puddles. It was faster this way, and again, you can only get so wet. But what none of use were expecting was a three foot deep puddle. Ben had unknowingly stepped off solid ground and his foot found ground three lower. Sara’s yell meant to save the camera, not the moment. In the moments immediately following I am grateful that the puddle was not deeper because we were laughing so hard a rescue would have been impossible. Ben’s step into the sinkhole quickly redefined our idea that you can only get so wet. Watching Ben wade out of the puddle he had found Sara and I, not wanting to follow Ben, found a, while longer, significantly less wet. The next twenty minutes over the tundra passed quickly without incident and I was celebrated our return to Tununak with an emptying of the boots of tundra water and a warm shower. Here’s to paying more notice to the subtle nuances of a new culture. Cheers.

Tununak more remote than the Amazon

My good friend Christoph just sent me an article on a study done on the remoteness of regions in the world. The scientists studied how long it would take to travel by road, rail, or water from an area to the nearest city of 50,000 people. So if you live in a rural Minnesota it would be a calculation of drive time to that nearest city, let’s say Minneapolis. Things get interesting when either (1) you are very far away from a city of 50,000, or (2) you lack roads, or a combination of the two.
* picture taken from
According to this study a number of things jumped out at me. The first is that a vast majority (90%) of the world is no more than two days from a city of 50,000. That goes for the Amazon and the Sahara and every other part of the world (not including Antarctica). The next thing is that the most remote place on the planet, a spot on the Tibetan Plateau, is three weeks from a city of 50,000. Three weeks! The study says one day by car, the rest, all twenty of them, on foot. The last thing to stick out to me is that Tununak, where I live, is in that ten percent; we are more than two days travel to the nearest town of 50,000. That is crazy. We are more isolated than nearly all of Africa, including much of the Sahara. Than nearly all of the Amazon.

I haven’t really figured out what this all means. At the moment we are able to travel in and out Tununak of by plane. Really that is the only way. There are no roads linking us to any other town, not even Toksook Bay which is only six miles away. I am told that the true isolation, the true remoteness will kick in during the winter as snow and weather close our runway down for days on end. Last year they went nearly three weeks without a plane landing in Tununak. Food, mail, packages – everything stops, gets backed up in Bethel.

I don’t have a whole lot more on this topic at the moment, but I will follow up in a few weeks. I came to the realization today that I won’t be leaving Tununak until Christmas unless I travel chaperoning sports (which I may still get talked into). That would be about three months not leaving an area not much bigger than one square mile.

Read the article though – the graphics are amazing.
Where's the remotest place on Earth?

Tundra misconceptions - Pt 2/3

The second misconception that I am in the process of revising is that tundra is a solitary, monochromatic lifeform. What I have come to see is that the tundra is a solitary, monochrome lifeform only from the air; a solitary, but colorful lifeform from about six feet up (me standing); and an incredibly dense, diverse multitude of life and color when you are only inches from it. This conceptual revision came to me the first time we walked up the hill right outside of Tununak. We were heading up to the rock people. I had mentioned wanting to know where the berries were - I had heard they were everywhere and yet I had seen none. What I learned was that I was looking for something that does not exist - bushes. There is very little on the tundra that grows higher than a few inches, the berries included. I had not realized that I had been walking over berries for the last hundred feet. Upon closer inspection I saw that the berries truly were everywhere. Small blackberries, looking and tasting nothing like blackberries back home, were growing nearly everywhere I looked. I also noticed for the first time how incredibly varied the tundra was. I can't make a good estimate about the number of different plants growing in a patch of ground, but it has to be dozens of species in dozens of colors spanning the spectrum from deep reds and purples to all shades of green. The flowers come in bright blues and purples, yellows and whites, and then there are berries coming in red, white, orange, black, and blue. Hardly a monotonous place.

On food

I wanted to cover a topic rather close to my heart: food. Simply put I love food. All aspects of food, and it seems that with each year I become more in love with food. And maybe about now I should switch the word love to obsessed, but I must remember that I am trying to keep up the front of sanity.

My love with food began with eating it. As I grew, my experience in food expanded, and I found that I really like eating food and trying new kinds of food. I have been striving toward authenticity in my eating for a while now – getting experiences that most resemble what they are advertising. For example think of Taco Bell’s image of Mexican food and a legitimate taco at a small taco shop owned and operated by Mexicans. Authenticity. More recently my search for authenticity has evolved to search for ways to actually eat food. Too many of the things claiming to be food is really anything but, and as a result has begun to terrify me. I recently heard of a dessert made at a fancy restaurant that has for ingredients not a single actual food – it is all artificial ingredients (ie chemicals). Interesting science fair project – horrifying gastronomic project.

Then came my love for preparing food. This is tightly linked to the first love: eating food. People, for some reason, are surprised that I like to cook. But my response has been the same for a while. “I cook because I love to eat.” It’s a means to an end at times, but the more I do it, the more I am taking pleasure in the process. To combine the ingredients and to end with a mouthwatering, eyeball watering masterpiece is magical.

Most recently came my love of creating food. I recently began a garden back home in Minnesota with my mom. It was a modest 20’x40’ plot that we rented from the local garden center. It started out as a brown rectangle with considerable chunks of dirt and an intimidating amount of clay. I was convinced nothing I wanted would grow and the weeds would reclaim my rectangle. But, to my infinite surprise, food came. Slooowly at first. And then, out of nowhere I had zucchini the size of, to steal a comparison, baby seals. And beets, and beans, and beans, and beans, and tomatoes, that I heard are too prolific, and potatoes, and strawberries, and hot peppers, sweet peppers, peas, watermelon, cantaloupe, squash, and lettuces, and lastly (I think) carrots. All these edible items erupting from a previously cracked, clumped, clay riddled patch of dirt.

And so with all of these aspects of food present in my life, my move to Alaska involved a high sacrificing all three of these loves for an unknown amount of time. At our new-teacher inservice before school started they asked us to write a fear down that we had for the upcoming year. I am not lying: I wrote about eating good food. The thing is, Tununak is 125 miles from Bethel, accessible only by air (or boat), and Bethel is another 400 miles from Anchorage, also accessible only by air. Our food options are incredibly limited. Limited and extremely expensive. You have never really experienced sticker shock until you walk into Swanson’s in Bethel. Ten dollar bags of Doritos…seven dollar Oreos…good thing I don’t eat much of either of those. But nine dollar gallons of milk, eight dollars for five pounds of flour. Add that to the fact that the native culture doesn’t value fresh fruit and vegetables limiting further access to such in the two stores here in Tununak. I was a bit worried.

Saving graces began trickling in, thankfully. Most of the teachers out here order bulk through distribution companies specializing in shipping to bush Alaska. My neighbors tipped me off to a company in Oregon, Azure Standard, that specializes in organic and natural foods. Here is where I got my 50lb bags of beans, nearly 100bls of flours, and pounds of dried fruit in addition to a lot of other real food items. We also heard about a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm based out of Washington that ships to bush country Alaska. Kind of contrary to the typical CSA philosophy, but the Full Circle Farms has brought fresh, organic produce into my life again, and for that fully forgive any corruption of the ideal they may be causing. Love number one is safe – I have access to real, authentic food.

The second love – preparing food, was totally dependent on clearing the first hurdle. With that done, I could prepare world-class food. True, I am still terribly limited. Back home I could run (literally) to the store and pick up a missing ingredient, but here that is not an option. The reality is that it takes about two and a half weeks from placing a food order to receiving the food. Which means I have to plan my meals out at least that far in advance. This has required a total shift in thinking for me, one that is full of frustrating disappointments when my mind, still stuck in MN thinking, comes up with a great meal idea (Indian) only to remember that I don’t have any rice – or cumin, or cilantro, or lime, etc. The final result, though, is a positive one. When I plan accordingly, my life is awesome. A recent dinner consisted of roasted fall vegetables (potatoes and squash mailed from my MN garden, beets and zucchini from our CSA); chicken breast (that I acquired on a recent trip to Bethel); salad with red peppers, cherry tomatoes, and carrots (all from our CSA), and bread that I made. Life is okay thus far.

I am still working on the third aspect – creating food. It is possible, and in fact, our principal has a grow room in his house where he gets fresh greens and herbs. I am still trying to iron out the details. I first need to procure soil. I had plans of getting a worm bin (using a couple thousand earthworms to compost food wastes) to create compost, and it still may happen, but our weather is cooling off fast and I worry about having worms shipped and arriving alive. Any advice here would be appreciated.

Even without the last being fulfilled, I am incredibly happy about the first two parts of my obsession. Being able to attain and eat good food is a comforting fact. Seeing our box of fruit and veggies arrive in Tununak is such an oddly pleasing sight, but I should have expected as much. I love food.