A few nights ago a moose took out one of our strings of outdoor Christmas lights, and I was reminded of this story from several years ago. It’s in Walking Wild Shores, but it seemed like a good time for a repeat appearance. As I first tried fixing and then wound up replacing the lost string a few days ago, it suddenly occurred to me that the moose must find it odd that us humans will occasionally light up the buffet so nicely.
Author Archives: kwinker
Power to the People
We had a nice snowfall last weekend that ended in time to clear the driveway on Sunday afternoon. It was a good, 8-10 inch powder that had the skis rattling in the racks in anticipation. But a late warm front blew in mid-week and wreaked havoc in the Fairbanks area. On Wednesday morning I got up early to do some writing before having to give it up and go in to work. (It’s not possible to get any serious writing done at work, unfortunately.) Rose had gone in but had come back shortly afterwards—her trusty CRV’s defroster couldn’t keep her windshield free of ice. Although the temperature was in the teens, a very fine drizzle was falling and freezing on contact. It took me almost 20 minutes to chisel the incredibly hard accumulation off of my windshield, but the drizzle had turned to snow, so I had no trouble getting in with a clean windshield (though I kept the heat off and the window open to keep it cold and prevent any melt-and-stick). Not many people were in at work, and meetings were being cancelled. One of our dedicated staff described an hour-long commute on the way in, stopping often to manually clean the windshield. Yuck.
Zero-inch Club
I didn’t go moose hunting last year. Rose had said that I could hunt all I wanted, but that I’d better not get one or we’d have to buy a new freezer. I went to check, and, sure enough, we still had a lot left from the one I’d gotten the year before. It seemed a bit disrespectful to go out after fresh moose when there was so much still left from the last one, so I didn’t go. And I really missed being out.
The Stump of Happiness
During the past decade, things have been stressful for some of the trees in the boreal forests around Fairbanks. On average, our growing season is getting longer. Data from the Alaska Climate Research Center show that the growing season has increased from 85 to 123 days in the past century. But rainfall has not increased accordingly. In fact, data suggest that we’ve gotten about 11% drier over this same period. It is rather surprising that we have trees at all, given that we live in an Arctic desert, with average annual rainfall today of only about 11 inches. But our growing season is rather short, and therefore transpiration by the trees is brief enough to make that much water suitable for their growth and reproduction before a long period of dormancy each winter. However, coupled with our climatic changes we’ve also had some bad pest infestations. For about the past decade, aspen leaf-miner moths (Phyllocnistis populiella) have run rampant through the region’s trembling aspens (Populus tremuloides). Aspen leaves, normally green, have been silvered each summer for the past several years by the foraging trails within them of leaf miner larvae. These moths had an explosive arrival, population-wise, in the Fairbanks area, expanding rapidly into our area and inundating our rich aspen forests. Researchers at the university have found that this intensive leaf damage does have a negative effect on aspen growth. Oddly, this spring’s unusual weather seems to have knocked them back so much that we’ve enjoyed our normal green aspen leaves all summer. But, just eyeballing things, more trees than seem normal look stressed and are dying. And there also seems to have been an increase in the winds here. A decade or more ago winds were rarer; it was usually calm. Now, when the winds pick up it is not uncommon to hear a tree come crashing down in the forest. The aspens especially seem to have become vulnerable, and they tend to break off just below the ground, as though some form of upper root rot has weakened them intolerably.
Supplemental Reds
I had wanted to go fishing for king salmon with hook and line earlier this year, but they’d closed it all over the state again due to poor runs. So I juggled deadlines at work with the dip-netting reports coming in from Chitina on the Copper River, and I finally threw things together and headed out on a Tuesday in late July when I could get away for a couple days and the report sounded like it was worth a chance. It was a beautiful drive – conditions were excellent. Driving as quickly as these ideal conditions permitted, I made it to O’Brien Creek just before 7:00 p.m. and dropped my life jacket in line to hold a place for the morning launch. It looked like I’d be on one of the first boats out. In speaking with folks to learn how the day’s fishing had been, things sounded so-so. A few of the dip netters had done well, but fishing was supposed to get better as the water dropped. As we spoke, one netter working the shore nearby pulled in several nice-looking fish, whetting everyone’s appetite.