In mid-September, Bob and I headed out to the Seward Peninsula in northwestern Alaska. The SP makes up the US side of the Bering Strait and you can see a map here. It's totally out there. There are not a lot of photos of us doing field work because we were too exhausted. Our four-wheeler broke down and we ended up walking to all of our sites...over 25 miles on tussock tundra! It sure was beautiful, though. The photos can't adequately capture the colors.In addition to working on the sites in the Kougarok area, we headed out the Council road, along the beach, past the fishing huts of Soloman, and finally inland to the community of Council. Just as we pulled up, the last handful of folks had pulled their boats out of the river there; a big Bering Sea storm was on its way. These storm surges can and do completely eliminate the road, situated delicately on a sand bar. If someone gets stuck on the other side they can be there for a long long time...until it snows (creating skidoo access) or the road gets rebuilt. It's a tough life out here. We weren't able to hitch a ride across the river, unfortunately, so we didn't get to one of our sites.
The arctic light was beautiful as we came back to Nome from Council. Lots of twisted driftwood from the Yukon River ends up in this lagoon area. Huge old trees from the boreal forests.Some old railroad junk from the gold rush days rots away on the sand. In the background an old gold dredge stands waiting in the marsh. These things are the size of buildings.
Finally, this old collapsed water tank reminded me of Serra's Torqued Ellipses.
2 comments:
honey chile, i don't think you quite grasp the blog concept. good pictures and commentary nonetheless.
oh really. well thank you very much, acmcs. i presume you are referring to my tendency to post ~10 blogs every 3 months? well, that's the way it is, sweetcheeks! too busey living life to its fullest.
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