Semantics: Naturist vs. Naturalist

My job title is Naturalist, which is defined as an expert in Natural History.
Not to be confused with Naturist, which is somebody who likes to go nude, i.e. wear no clothes.

Today's Anchorage Daily News has an article about Nude hiking in Alaska -- not exactly a trend I see catching on big-time, given our state's abundant crop in mosquitoes...!

But I better be extra clear, pronunciation-wise, when I describe myself as a naturalist. And specify that I do wear clothes, which naturists refer to as "textiled".

Picture Credit: http://www.dw-world.de
accompanying article that reports nude hiking has been banned in the Swiss Canton of Appenzell.

"Why would she work here?"

A mosquito landed on me recently while teaching outdoors. Kids can get very distracted by such things and it can be a challenge to get them refocused (forget teaching if they spot a squirrel!).
They often interrupt me with: "em, Naturelady, there's a mosquito on your forehead."
So I shoo away the mosquito, saying something like "it's just a mosquito, don't worry about it".
Soon another mosquito lands on me, and I hear the following exchange:

girl 1: Another mosquito landed on her.
girl 2: Mosquitoes don't bother her.
girl 3: Yeah, why else would she work here?
girl 1: what do you mean?
girl 3: It's a Nature Center, stupid! Mosquitoes are part of nature!

So there you have it.
If it only were that simple-- how about all the pollen that are bothering my allergies right now?

Dreaming of the desert flowers...

Spring is in the air, even in Alaska (nevermind that it snowed again just last week) -- and my tulips and rhubarb are up! Vicariously I'm enjoying the desert bloom, since my adventurous daughter on the PCT is currently hiking through the Anza Borrego Desert State Park, and the wildflowers are supposed to still be beautiful, especially after a rainy winter in Southern California.

These photos are obviously not mine (credit goes to the official Anza Borrego website, www.parks.ca.gov).
Many many moons ago, hubby and I did camp and hike there one spring, back when our now nearly-16-year old was still in diapers -- and yes, he did end up with some cactus thorns in his tender behind at one point....

It truly is an amazing thing to see a desert in bloom!

The bears are out!

Started seeing bear prints in the snow last week. I'm definitely carrying bear spray on the job now, but I got the best protection possible: 20+ loud school children behind me... Fat chance of actually seeing one!

Yikes, I was on the evening news!

I have to admit that I'm fairly camera-shy, but I did end up on the local evening news recently. The occasion was a story about the proposed expansion plans of the Nature Center where I teach.

Sooo -- if you're curious about what I look and sound like, and how taking a group of Middle Schoolers on a nature hike is a lot like herding cattle, go to KTUU and type "Eagle River Nature Center" into the search field on the upper right-hand corner (I hate to admit that I have no friggin' idea how to load a video onto this blog post).

And when you see all those bulges and are wondering if I've gained weight since you last saw me -- it's my uniform: I carry a first aid kit, radio and bear spray!

Aha moment -- an addendum to Crow Pass hike

Why did I not think of this BEFORE hiking Crow Pass?

Had a perfectly good solution to the problem of crossing an ice-cold glacier river, sitting right in the attic with the boating gear which we hadn't used in years: neoprene socks!

It was a middle-of-the-night revelation, and I promptly went searching for them (the next morning). I lent the socks to friends who were about to go on the Crow Pass hike for the second time this summer, and we had just compared stories of painful feet!

Here's the glowing report:

"The Socks made all the difference in the world -- my feet never felt uncomfortable, so less painful. Amazing technology!"

Crow Pass Hike

It's been 2 weeks since this hike -- the blisters have healed, laundry & work is caught up on, and I'm itching to do some more hiking -- so I better post these pictures and tell the tale:

CROW PASS: A Tale of Many Crossings

Two middle-aged women set out on an adventure: 24 miles from Girdwood to Eagle River over some spectacular Chugach Mountain terrain -- two nights of camping along trail, fording a major river, no kids, husbands, or cell phones -- relying just on ourselves!

Originally it was going to be my 22-yr old daughter, some of her friends and I, but Eldest ended up doing research in the Shelikof Strait, West of Kodiak. So instead of a mother-daughter trip, it became a 2-girlfriend trip. My long-time friend C flew in from Fairbanks for the weekend. My worried husband dropped us off at the trailhead in Girdwood: reports of the ford site being waist-high made us all uneasy -- we promised that if the water was too high, then we'd just turn around!


We had a wonderful trip! Both of us lamented that we had not done anything like this since before our children were born, and now for each the oldest child had graduated-- where did the time go?

The first 4 miles lead us up and over Crow Pass (picture above) and back down, climbing and descending 2000 ft elevation, right past Raven Glacier (see picture on left).




The weather was perfect.

It had been really hot (for Alaska-standards) and the glaciers were melting gang-busters. Therefore we had to cross several smaller creeks, such as this crossing here of Clear Creek at its confluence with Raven Creek. We each carried a separate pair of river-crossing shoes. Take a look at those COLD feet!








We camped in a meadow along Raven Creek, waking up the next morning to over 100 runners passing: this was the weekend of the Crow Pass Marathon. Incredible athletes -- this year the 3 hour record was broken (see ADN news article & pictures here) -- to think it took them 3 hours what took us 3 days!
The last runner was somebody I knew, and she called out to us leisurely eating our breakfast "That looks like a lot more fun" -- she had just climbed and dropped those 2000 ft in something like 1 hour!!!





We reached the ford site at mid-day. The Eagle River was impressively high when we got to it -- raging full of gray glacial melt water. Nobody was around, and we decided to go for it. We debated whether we should ford together or separately, and on acct of our heavy backpacks decided to go solo (unbuckled, ready for ditching in case of falling). We were worried about making things less stable holding on to each other, plus we each had picked up an alder walking stick along the way. In retrospect, we would have been better off crossing as a team.

So intrepid C went in first, and I followed after a little while. If you've never forded a river, let me tell you, it's an amazing and scary experience! The cold of that icy water hits you like you can't imagine. But what was even tougher is the tremendous force of that water, and how hard it is to get a steady foothold -- or shall I say numb-hold? My feet felt numb after a few minutes, and it was a challenge not panic, but just keep telling myself to "keep going -- you can do it!"

I don't know if it took 5 minutes, or 10, but by the time I got the other side (only an island, there was more icewater to go!!!), I ripped out my sleeping back and put my icecube feet inside. Ohhh, did they hurt warming up! But soon I was warmed & fed (chocolate helps!), and we did the 2nd crossing of the braided river, which luckily wasn't as deep or wide as the first part.

We hiked a few more miles and made camp for the second night. Vigilant about encountering bears, we carried bearspray and cooked & ate away from our campsite, plus I carried all the food in a bear-proof container (just for kicks, here's a NY Times article about a NewEngland black bear who figured out to open bearproof containers). All we saw of bears is this and other lovely piles of scat.












We had about 11 miles to hike on our last day, without the elevation extremes or wet crossings. Plenty more creeks to cross, but there were lots of bridges. I admit I was a little worried when we got to raging Icicle Creek (picture below), but luckily there was a log for crossing with a rope just a little further upstream.
Here's my favorite when it comes to creek names: Yakedeyak -- just say it real fast!

About 5 miles from home, there's a spot named the perch, with a good view of the "mighty" Eagle River, which we've come to call it. The river may look peaceful from up there, but we're here to tell you it's nothing like that.

We did it!
We were proud of having done this hike, and talked about getting together and doing another one next summer, perhaps somewhere in the interior (where the rivers are warmer...?)

When we got home, the kids cooked us a hearty supper of basghetti and meatball, we drank some wine, and slept like babes!

Ashfall from Redoubt Volcano

Yesterday evening the ash started falling on our house and truck, and the air had a distinctly sulfury smell -- it wasn't much ash: officially only a "trace" amount. The snow turned gray, and we could feel the granules of ash under our feet as we stepped out on the deck. The first picture
was taken right after blowing at the ash on our friend's truck (also notice all the ash piled up above the windshield wiper) -- turns out if you use your wipers your windshield can get pretty scratched up...

From the National Weather Service last night:

...LATEST INFORMATION ON REDOUBT VOLCANO ERUPTIONS [UPDATE 0130 AM
SUNDAY MORNING]...

REDOUBT VOLCANO ERUPTED TWICE YESTERDAY. THE FIRST WAS AT 329PM AKDT
WITH A PLUME ESTIMATED TO 35000 FT. WINDS AT THAT TIME ALLOWED THE
LOWER PLUME TO TRAVEL EAST WHERE ASH WAS REPORTED ALONG THE NORTHERN
KENAI PENINSULA...THROUGH ANCHORAGE...AND AS FAR EAST AS VALDEZ. AT
723PM AKDT A SECOND ERUPTION WAS CONFIRMED TO A HEIGHT OF 45000 FT.
WINDS AT THAT TIME HAD SHIFTED TO MORE OF A EAST-NORTHEAST TRAJECTORY
IN THE LOWER LEVELS. ANCHORAGE DID NOT SEE AS MUCH ASH AS THE FIRST
ERUPTION...ALTHOUGH THERE WAS ASH CONFIRMED FROM EAGLE RIVER THROUGH
THE VALLEY... WHICH SHOWED MORE OF A NORTHERLY COMPONENT TO THE WIND.

AT THIS POINT...ALL ADVISORIES HAVE BE CANCELLED. RECENT ASHFALL THAT
IS ON THE GROUND AND SULFUR SMELLS MAY LINGER THROUGH THE NIGHT...BUT
NO NEW ASHFALL IS ANTICIPATED FROM THE PREVIOUS ERUPTION.

Mt. Redoubt volcano erupts

Last night, Mt.Redoubt volcano erupted, and again tonight. Don't worry about us -- it's far enough away(about 100 miles) that the main thing that might happen is that the ash starts blowing this way, and then we can't go to work or school, or use our computers!
The biggest concern is for airplanes -- volcano ash is terrible for engines! I have a jar of volcano ash collected in Anchorage from when Mt.Spurr erupted in 1992: it is a fine gritty sand, quite dark.

Read more at the Alaska Volcano Observatorywebsite, including webcam pictures. The picture I'm posting now is from the last major eruption, which was around 20 years ago -- this time around there's not been as much ash as in this picture.

The National Weather Service website makes daily ashfall predictions. For now, the Anchorage area is not predicted to receive any ash, but the Susitna valley North from here has an ashfall advisory in effect at the moment.

Winter Sunshine -- and nearly all is forgiven!

A rant, of sorts, about the weather

The sun is shining! This may not be news-worthy where you live, but to me, this is BIG. You see, since mid-November I've not seen very much of the sun at my house or my workplace. This is a beautiful valley, but valleys have mountains, and they do have an annoying tendency to block out the sun.

I've often thought about getting a petition getting going where either the month of January or February is abolished -- I'm not asking too much, am I?

This weekend I taught an outdoor class at the Nature Center, and the sun ACTUALLY shone on us during the whole walk. Even though it was barely above zero Fahrenheit (-17 Celsius) when I went to work, the sun managed to warm the air up to the teens! One month ago there was NO sunshine in the low-lying areas, and daytime temperatures did not vary much from the night.

I saw a coyote crossing the road on my way in, a bald eagle was perched on a tall cottonwood when I took my group outside, and the snow just sparkled in the sun! It felt great!
Later I'm sitting on the couch in the living room, and sunshine is streaming in and illuminating all the dust bunnies. Dust - Schmust! Right now I'd rather have sun than a clean house!

This winter has been cold (duh, it's Alaska!) But really, here on the coast there are some years where we get rather mild temperatures, AND, our bane, warm winds and rain!
We did get some of those warm rains briefly in mid-January, right when we returned from out vacation to sunny California. We had left right after New Year's Day and it was something like minus 20 degrees F, but when we returned to Anchorage in the upper 40's with wind and rain. As you can imagine, all that rain over snow and the road were TERRIBLE. Like most Alaskans, we have 4-wheel drive and studded tires on our cars, but we still could not get up our driveway when we got home. I took a picture of youngest pulling a sled of groceries up the driveway a few days after we got back. Not to complain, but it was impossible to walk on that driveway without some sort of grippers or crampons!
But then, thankfully, cold temperatures returned, and we got some snow to cover the nasty ice, and now I can walk and drive up and down without risk of injury. Sooo, as much as I can complain about the lack of warmth in Alaska during the winter, when we get unseasonably warm weather in the middle of winter, then I complain about that even louder!

Here's a children's book by Elsa Beskow, an author I remember fondly from my childhood. I was so tickled when I found a couple of her books at the local Waldorf School.
This one is called "Ollie's Ski Trip": after Ollie received a pair of skiis for Christmas, he wants to go out and use them. He meet King Winter, who's responsible for nice cold snowy weather. But along comes Old Mrs. Thaw, who threatens to melt all that snow away. King Winter manages to chase away Mrs. Thaw for now, and Ollie gets in some more skiing. But eventually, when Spring comes, Mrs. Thaw is welcome to chase away Winter.

Wolf has felt a bit like Ollie under house arrest. When he injured his lung in December, he was told not to exercise for at least 6 weeks, which included no skiing in Tahoe! Poor kid. By the time the doctor cleared him for skiing, we had had that visit from Mrs. Thaw... It did eventually snow again, but not enough to build up much base until this weekend. So my Ollie will finally be able to strap on his Cross-country skiis and get out there -- and hopefully it will still be a while before Mrs. Thaw shows up again in our part of Alaska.

And I guess we don't need to abolish February --it's a short month after all!

How did a Kraut end up in the Taiga?

Why "Borealkraut"? And exactly how did the Kraut end up in the Taiga (Northern or Boreal Forest)? Here is my story, told amidst the landscapes that shaped me:

I was born in Germany, to German parents. My dad finished his PhD when I was a year old, and started to look for a job. Long story, but he ended up with a teaching job in Chile. By the time I was three, my mom, baby brother and I boarded a big Oceanliner and sailed across the Atlantic, joining my father and settling in South America.



We absolutely loved Chile -- it was a great place to grow up! The climate is very mediterranean, similar to California: coast, mountains, semi-arid deserts. My little sister was born in Chile. We spend tons of time in the outdoors, and I remember the people and surroundings as a wonderful and friendly world. Little did I understand about the political maelstrom that was brewing there in the 1960's, as I was just a kid! I remember vaguely that my dad's university was occupied by radical students and he didn't teach or work for months -- all I know is we just got to play more with him! In 1970, Salvador Allende was elected (to be overthrown after 3 years by Augusto Pinochet) -- well, my family still had German citizenship and enough ties to Germany to make a beeline back. Our departure felt very sudden: one day I came home from school and somebody had just bought our couch and was carting it out the door. It was a difficult goodbye to a beloved landscape that felt like home.


My father found a job in Saarbruecken, and we started over -- a little bit like refugees: I literally slept on the floor until we gradually furnished a new house. I was 10 years old, and it was a tough adjustment for me. Although I spoke German fluently, I did not fit in well, and perceived Germans as harsh and unfriendly. It didn't help that I did not know how to use the formal "Sie", and said "Du" to my first German teacher! Plus I wrote left-handed, and it was way too late to force me to switch to using the right hand, marring this teacher's record of not having a single "leftie" in her career until I showed up! Not a good start! This teacher did not think I would ever amount to anything, but when I finished 4th grade, my parents enrolled me in the Ludwigsgymnasium (a college preparatory school) over my teacher's strong objections.

Gymnasium was definitely better, and I did well in school. But 5 years after our family's return to Germany, my father was looking for teaching jobs abroad again (we wanted to go "home" to Chile), but we ended up in the Philippines instead.


Vietnam was falling in 1975, and our Lufthansa flight was making a big detour around Indochina. Our family arrived in the Philippines to a completely new life and culture. First I had to cram and learn English. Tagalog, the official Filipino language, was not used for school instruction other than the one subject. So even though at first I could not tell any of the languages apart around me (the people of our region spoke Ilocano, not Tagalog) -- but after a while I caught on. We were first enrolled in a local Filipino school, but after we kids came home with heads full of lice, my parents decided to consider the American-International School where most of the foreigners sent their kids (at first they'd been warned against it because of, you know, those Americans and DRUGS!) But actually, I managed to graduate from High School without ever smoking (or even smelling) a marihuana joint -- the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos were under a strict Martial Law! I witnessed some schoolmates getting caught with marihuana, carted off to jail and thrown out of the country -- that'll teach you never to touch the stuff!

So I managed to graduate with Honors etc., applied to US Colleges and managed to get a scholarship to Duke University in Durham, NC. That was my ticket to avoiding having to go back to German Gymnasium with its competitive Abitur system, so as a result I never returned to Germany!


I became a Southern Gal instead: I spent the next 5 years at Duke, earning my BS and Masters in Forestry. But it was still a ways before I found my way to Taiga...

My first job fresh out of Forestry School was based in Appomattox, Virginia (where the "War of Northern Agression" ended, as the locals are fond of pointing out). This was during the 80's with a bit of a recession going on, and I only had a temporary job and work visa. What to do with myself? I did not want to return to Germany, and had an interest in working in a Third World Country in a natural resources project, but without work experience, I could not find anything. Peace Corps would have been perfect for me, but alas, I wasn't an American citizen!


Around that time I somehow managed to hook back up with my old boyfriend, David, from Duke, who was headed to graduate school in New Mexico, and I thought that maybe I should try going back to school. So, I ended up at UNM in Albuquerque, but that lasted only for a year. The PhD advisor for both David and I had left, and we both decided to leave UNM. I realized that I did not really belong in a PhD program then and wanted to work, while David was accepted at a PhD program at our Alma Mater, Duke University. I thought it was all working out beautfully: we got married in Albuquerque by a Justice of the Peace -- for love I thought, but an added factor was that my student visa would run out... David told me years later that he had not felt ready to become a husband and later a father, but felt "rushed" into it, afraid that I would leave the US if we hadn't married...

So back across the US in a U-haul to settle in North Carolina, but first we flew to Germany for the wedding ceremony at my parents' home in Saarbruecken. That was a bit of a disaster too. Not immediately obvious, but my husband experienced enough culture shock (he'd never been outside the US) that he never really warmed up to my family or my German side -- he got to where he hated my accent, and thought I should work harder at getting rid of it.

Back at Duke University, meanwhile, life was good. I worked as a Research Associate for the same professor who was David's PhD advisor. We both got to fly to Interior Alaska for a research project in the summer of 1986. For his PhD thesis, David chose Alaska, and he returned for 2 more summers. But I was back at Duke with a brandnew baby. I was not to return to Alaska for another decade!

David's advisor, who was also my boss, accepted a job at Colorado State University, so we followed him across the country to the Rocky Mountains. The next few years were difficult ones: David left me; I was a single mom. I eventually decided to go back to school for my PhD, met my husband Peter, who was finishing his PhD in Atmospheric Science. We had a baby boy (Wolf), never did finish my PhD, and in 1996 ended up in Fairbanks, Alaska. Amazingly enough my ex, David, got a job in Fairbanks in the same year, and Eldest daughter was able to continue to grow up with both parents living in the same town.

Our youngest (Liesl) was born in Fairbanks, and then Peter accepted a job at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. We moved to Eagle River, a bedroom community North of Anchorage, where I found a wonderful job at a Nature Center. This is our 10th year of living here, and Alaska truly feels like home.

I've lived in the US for 30 years now, and it is my home. My family used to wonder why I never returned to Germany -- and I have to point out to them that I really have not spent much of my life in Germany (really only 5 years outside of infancy). As much as I was shaped by Germany culturally, I was also very much shaped by the people and landscapes of the other countries I have lived in.

Our yearly Thanksgiving Cabin Trip

We wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving!



The sun is now hiding behind the mountains all day, but we do get beautiful pinkish Alpenglow.


Every year our family takes a Thanksgiving Holiday by skiing to the Nature Center's rental cabin: it's a great way to give thanks to what we have -- the simple life revolves around keeping warm and fed: hauling and splitting firewood to keep the woodstove going, getting water from the pond (or melting snow), and dry socks are the basic necessities of the simple life.

Darkness comes early, and by candlelight/lanternlight/flashlight we spend much of our time reading aloud (whole Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl books have been heard by these log walls), and crafting: mom is usually knitting while kids are whittling wood or drawing...
Here are some pictures of our 2 youngest at the cabin from years past: