Sunday, October 28, 2012

Continuation of Life in the Arctic


10:30am sunrise
From a near 24 hours of daylight to now under 8 hours a day, the winter season is quickly setting in. The sky is pitch black and glittering with billions of stars well into the morning when I go to work. When the sun finally does rise at around 10:30am now, it comes in brilliant oranges, yellows, and pastel pinks, illuminating the white-blanketed buildings of town in a soft glow.

Mouth of the Nome River, frozen
No sea ice yet, but the mouth of the river is pretty well frozen over. On a short drive out of town last week I saw the first ice fisherman tomcodding behind some of the camps.
Fishing and hunting camps outside of town

Remnants of summer
While I haven't been able to try my hand at ice fishing yet, I have taken advantage of other opportunities to play in the snow. Namely, this involved a few of us driving out to Anvil Mountain and constructing a ginormous snowman.

Giant snowman building commences!

Snowman napping on the tundra
The snowman turned out to be too big to stand up (would have been around 8 ft tall), so he opted for a nap on the tundra. I was quite pleased with the finished product. :)

Nome Science Fair
Also this week was the local Science Fair at the elementary school. Naturally, the NPS had a table there, with activities for kids to make their own fossils and small archaeological excavations. I arrived a little later to take photos of the event, and was surprised how many people showed up!

The planetarium was a big hit
Other highlights of the event included an inflatable planetarium show, an interactive globe, opportunities to extract your own DNA, some sort of laser exhibit, microscopes, and some informational booths about arctic research.
DNA extraction activity

The NPS table was quite popular!
And finally, for a little local flavor this week, check out Pamyua (pronounced Bum-yo-ah), a tribal funk group from southwest Alaska that fuses traditional Inuit music with modern beats. They're coming to perform in Nome next weekend so I'm pretty excited to see them live. 

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Pictures from down south

South Alaska, that is. Two weekends ago now, I met up with my family in Anchorage -- it was cheaper for them than flying all the way to Nome, and more fun for me since I got to see a new part of the state. Needless to say, the southeast of Alaska compared to the northwest like night and day. It was a blast though, and I definitely foresee myself moving there someday soon.

For the most part, it was a lot of good old fashion family road tripping, even after 4 months of being a part and 3 years since our last vacation together. We kept south of Anchorage and explored the towns of Seward, Kenai, and Girdwood, where we were staying. It was fun to be with Ellie and Chris when they saw their first snow, and great to catch up with everyone. It was a good time for reflection as well, to try and figure out where I fit in with my family now that I'm out of school and leading my own life.

So without further ado, here are some of my better pictures from the trip. Enjoy!
The Seward Highway


Turnagain Arm, high tide

Heading south towards Seward


Frosty morning (26 degrees F) 

Tundra swans... not in the tundra

Driving in a winter wonderland

Lion's Mane Jellyfish outside Alaska SeaLife Center

Murre diving underwater at ASLC

Murre underwater

Happy duck is happy

Historic Mile Zero marker of the Iditarod
 (Quite fitting, since I just came from the Iditarod's finish line!)

Town of Seward. I could live here.

Resurrection Bay

Seward and Resurrection Bay

Seward Harbor

So Alaska

Bad picture of Exit Glacier

Picturesque

MOOOOOSSSEE

Reflections

Snowstorm 

Glacier spilling into the water

Mt. Redoubt


Juvenile-ish bald eagle

Alyeska Ski Resort

The trailhead

The fam

Blurry picture of Dad and Mom

Snowy reflections

Misty forest
Chris and I riding the hand tram over Glacier Creek Gorge

Glacier Creek

Snowy trail
 
Last but not least, love to the family. :)
Thank you all for a wonderful weekend, and for re-energizing me for another 5 months out here. I love you!

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Aurora Borealis

Last week I got to experience for the second time in my life one of the most beautiful phenomena on the planet: the Northern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis. I usually track the aurora forecast on the Geophysical Institute website, which rates the aurora activity level on a scale of 1-9; this night, it spiked suddenly to 7 (even though it was only predicted to be a 3), almost the highest you can ever hope to see it. Even better, the sky was totally clear.

Around 10pm, one of my housemates came in and said they were visible. Wasting no time, I grabbed the Nikon, a tripod, a coat, and boots and dashed outside into the bitter night air. At first faint but growing in intensity, the night sky was smeared with a grayish-green smudge right overhead as if someone had streaked it with glow-in-the-dark paint. My other housemate and I made our way across the street to the open field where it was a little darker.

Northern Lights over the back of town
I set the camera to a 30 second exposure at F2.5 and let it do its thing while I craned my neck to take in the brilliant display overhead. For over an hour we stood out in the freezing cold as the lights grew brighter and brighter. A relentlessly driving wind howled eerily through a chain link fence nearby, making the aurora seem even more ethereal, a full multi-sensory experience.

Lights over some old shacks
It occurred to me as I stood there that there really are no words -- at least in English -- to describe those lights. In all reality, they're just solar electrons colliding with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere, but the fact that such an ancient and mundane natural event can evoke a human feeling of such awe-inspiring power is impossible to fathom.

Had to do it... ;)
I guess that's why there are so many stories and legends about their existence. I was doing research at work about them the next day, and found that, not surprisingly, every northern indigenous group has its own beliefs regarding the aurora. Some see it as the spirits of dead animals, ancestors, warriors, or children dancing in the skies; many beliefs advise against whistling when the aurora is out, for fear they will swoop down and take you away; and still others try to attract the northern lights by banging pots and pans when they're out because they area sign of good luck.

Although I'm not superstitious myself, the lights in the sky that night stunned my every sense. At one point they were so bright, I thought they would come down and touch the ground as a spike of white, green, pink, and purple dipped and shimmered overhead.

I expect I'll be seeing a lot more of the Northern Lights as winter marches on, but I don't think I will ever get used to them.



Sunday, October 7, 2012

Photo and Film Montage

Although I have several posts backlogged that I need to finish, I thought I'd share a rough photo and film montage that I threw together this week. You've probably seen most of the photos by now, but hey, everything's better when put to music. :) Enjoy!