Volcano Watching

Kenai awoke this morning to bright blue skies and temperature almost 20 degrees below zero. The entire range of mountains to the west, including Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Illiamna, were stunningly clear and looked amazingly close. To an untrained observer like myself, Redoubt looks just as it always has. But volcanologists are watching it closely, and continue to believe that an eruption is imminent. One of the glaciers on the north face shows signs of increased heat nearer the surface, with an expanding hole emitting steam and gases. So far, the expected increase in frequency and magnitude of earthquakes beneath the volcano has not happened, according to the experts.



Redoubt is about 50 miles west southwest of Kenai, so our view of it is of the east northeast face. In real life it seems much closer than this photo suggests. Even with binoculars, Dutch and I are not able to see any plumes of steam rising into the air. Kenai is the closest town of any size to the mountain, and experts are gathering here to watch the mountain. Last week, Dutch and other city officials were approached with the request to set up monitoring equipment at some of the city's buildings which are located on a high bluff at the edge of Cook Inlet, and have a gorgeous unobstructed view of the mountain. They were happy to comply with the request. The volcanologists are working to establish a ring of observation points around the mountain so that they can monitor its activity from all directions.

The air around town is one of watchful waiting for the shoe to drop. There is nothing to do about it except wait, and hope that, like a watched pot, if we watch hard enough it will never boil.

Photos by The Tundra PA

Redoubt Ready to Blow

Alaska is once again making the national news, and not, this time, because we are the "Coldest State with the Hottest Governor", as the bumper stickers say. This lovely mountain, which I am so fond of posting photos of, may be getting ready to explode. In the last week, Mt. Redoubt has moved from green to yellow to orange on the volcano alert scale; the only thing past orange is an actual eruption. That would be red, I guess.

The last time Redoubt erupted was almost twenty years ago. I was living in Seattle, working at Harborview Medical Center, and several of the physicians I worked with were avid mountain climbers. For several days there was little talk of anything else. That 1989 eruption was nowhere near as devastating as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980, but it did blanket the town of Kenai in a thick layer of ash. Dutch's admin assistant, who has lived here all her life, remembers it well. She says it was like driving through a black cloud, the ash was so dense, and it lasted for days.

The volcano has been burping gases at an increased rate since sometime after Christmas, and there has been a lot of small earthquake activity around Cook Inlet in that time. Last Saturday we had a 6.1 magnitude quake, which is a lot stronger than the 1- and 2-magnitude shakers that have been occurring daily, but nothing like the famous Good Friday Earthquake of 1964, which was a 9.2.

If she blows, I'll do my best to get photos.

Snowy Moose

This morning I was out sweeping snow off the front porch when I noticed movement in the woods just across the small road in front of the house; a moose cow stepped slowly out of the trees and stood browsing the twigs and small branches at the edge of the road. I moved quietly to a bench near the door, sat down slowly and kept very quiet and still, hoping she wouldn’t notice me there. She was about fifty feet away. Moose don’t have great eyesight, but their hearing is quite acute. An old Native American saying is that if a leaf falls in the forest, Eagle sees it, Bear smells it, and Deer hears it. Moose is the largest member of the Deer family, and those big ears tell you that they don’t miss much, sound-wise.

When I sat down, she stared in my direction for a moment, munching and waiting. I barely breathed. Detecting no threat, she continued walking and stripping bark and twigs from the trees. I cursed the fact that my camera was inside the house.



She slowly crossed the road and walked directly towards me, peering in my direction frequently. She was now about thirty feet away. While her back was turned to me, I slipped in the house and grabbed the camera. The movement did not scare her and when I came back she had not moved far; I was able to shoot a few photos as she continued her peramble of the yard for several more minutes. Then she disappeared back into the trees.

The Alaskan moose is the largest of the species, and this one was a beautiful big animal. The bark she was stripping was about eight feet off the ground. There is something almost magical about being so close to such a large wild creature.

Warmer At Last!

This morning Dutch and I awoke to a welcome sight: the thermometer was reading a warm and toasty +18 degrees! And we got about an inch of fresh snow overnight--to frost the two feet that have been around for weeks--so everything looks clean and white, like a storybook winter. The air smells moister and it is great to be outside. The dogs feel it too; they want to romp and play instead of running back inside to the woodstove. After weeks of 20 to 30 below zero, this is divine!



While it was still Very Cold, I took this photo of the river with the fog moving down it just before sunset. It seemed worth sharing.

Getting Close

About noon yesterday the sky began to cloud up and the wind to blow. "Change is comin'!" I thought. Hooray! By mid-afternoon our thermometer almost said zero, and wow, was it feeling warm. I went out for armloads of wood to feed the woodstove without even wearing a jacket.

Yesterday Yahoo News had an article about this hard cold snap throughout Alaska since Christmas. They said it was the third most severe period of winter weather in the recorded weather history of Alaska. I wish they'd mentioned what took first and second place.

My last thermometer check at 10:30 last night still said almost zero, and I was hopeful that we were on the way back up to the +20s for a nice rest from this bitter intensity of cold. Alas and alack! This morning we are back down to 21 below zero. But hey, that's better than 31 below! Two steps forward, one step back.

Enough Already!

Cold. Damn cold. Freezin’ ass cold (or FAC as Dutch, the retired Coast Guard Captain calls it). It was minus thirty-three degrees again this morning, as it was yesterday and the day before, plus or minus a few. It is as cold here as Fairbanks, and colder than Bethel! Where’s my maritime influence, for Pete’s sake? I don’t mind a quick dip into Really Cold—a few days, maybe a week. It’s been about three weeks since we last saw zero, and life is taking a beating for it.

The water pipes to the kitchen sink (on an outside wall) have been frozen off and on for two weeks. With a space heater on high under the sink, the pipes would thaw every few days, for a few hours, and then refreeze. I was hauling a five gallon bucket of water from the garage for dipping next to the kitchen sink.

On Saturday, for no known reason, all the electrical outlets in the kitchen lost power. Including the refrigerator. OK, drag out the coolers, freezer stuff to the front porch (no lack of freezing capacity there), refrig stuff to the garage. Turn garage thermostat down to 48 from 58, pour 3” of water in second cooler, set outside to freeze (two hours), then pack refrig stuff in with a thermometer and keep next to the car. OK, this works for a hopefully very few days.

On Sunday water returned to the kitchen sink about 3 pm. I had the faucets on so I'd know if water started flowing, and promptly turned them off. About 5 pm I heard water flowing somewhere. All water points in the house were off and dry. Not good. I opened the back door to the loud sound of water, not running but gushing. A six foot strip of wall under the kitchen sink looked like Niagara Falls. OMGOMGOMG!

I ran back in and turned off the water valves under the kitchen sink, which was dry. Of course, no change. I could hear it outside, gushing away and freezing into a rapidly-growing ice fall. I had no idea where the main water valve to the house is. What to do, what to do? I didn’t know anyone to call, Dutch was in Texas. And then another dread thought. The water is not all going outside the house.

Eeeewwwwwww, the basement. I had never been down there. The landlady retained possession of it, to store incredible quantities of junk. And a few weeks ago, Bear, the mighty hunter, killed a mouse that got into the house as it was trying to escape under the door to the basement (since stuffed with a draft puppy). I had no idea what I would find down there, and did not want to look.

The rickety stairs had my attention more than the low beam over the steps and I cracked my head good on the way down, which did not help anything. Despite the stars, I got to the bottom of the steps; at least it was well lit. And yes, water was pouring down the inside of the concrete wall, spraying cardboard boxes of junk, and standing about an inch deep in a widening circle on the floor. Boxes were stacked against the wall three deep and six feet high with various camping gear thrown on top. I could just see a water valve at the ceiling level; there was no way to get to it until I moved all the gear and boxes.

It went faster than I thought; adrenalin is an amazing thing. Once the wall was clear, the valve was still about five feet above my head and there was no ladder or step stool around. I finally found a chair under some other stuff and, standing on it, was barely able to reach the valve. It worked. The flood stopped. And what a beautiful silence followed.

I spent Monday calling plumbers and electricians. The plumber came Tuesday and said the hot water pipe to the kitchen sink was not just cracked; a three foot section of it was shattered. He replaced hot and cold pipes both, moved them further away from the outside wall, and recommended not closing the cabinet doors to the space under the sink when it is this cold. So I have running water in the kitchen again, and at this temperature, consider it pretty much of a miracle.



The electrician was to have come today, but now it will be tomorrow. At $75/hr, I’d rather wait another day than pay overtime. I’m just glad they can come this week. The frozen food is NOT a problem. And now I have no excuse to put off scrubbing out the refrigerator.

Everyone I see has a look of dogged determination about getting through this cold snap. And nearly everyone has heard that “it’ll only be a few more days” until we get back to our more normal temperatures of +10 to +20F. They said it last week and the week before. It has to come true eventually. The crystal blue sky outside doesn’t give me hope that it will be tomorrow, but maybe by the weekend. I’m ever the optimist.



Photos by The Tundra PA: sunrise on Mt. Redoubt, 10:20 AM; and moose at sunset, 3:56 pm. Are you tired of moose pictures yet?

C-c-c-cold!

When I awoke dark and early—well, dark anyway; it was nearly 8 AM—the deck thermometer cruelly told me that it was -30F outside. Yeah, minus thirty! That’s pretty darn cold. That’s when your nostrils slam shut and your hands go numb in about three minutes, despite gloves. I gave a silent thanks to the furnace gods for a warm house to wake up in.

No running water in the kitchen again (it came back yesterday for a few hours) and now the downstairs toilet’s water line is frozen. It will flush, it just won’t fill; so I have to do it manually with pitchers of water from the tub. Four pitchers per flush—I’m back to the Bethel maxim “when it’s yellow, it’s mellow”.



By mid afternoon we had warmed up to -12F, which actually felt quite noticeably softer and warmer. It is not painful to breathe once you get above minus twenty. Our perception of cold really is relative, and it doesn’t take long to reset your definition. Once we get back to zero it will feel balmy.

I was able to take some photos of the front yard where the moose have been visiting. The sign is cast iron, a Christmas gift from Dad and Stepmom. This yard is the perfect place for it. The moose have said so.

Happy New Year!

When the alarm woke Dutch and me at 5 AM, the thermometer on our deck read minus 25 degrees F. The sky was crystal clear, inky black and full of stars. This cold snap has lasted for a week, holding the big dump of snow we received in last weekend’s blizzard, and also causing our pipes to freeze up. I’m getting used to the sound of a space heater running underneath the kitchen sink.

The reason for such an early rising on New Year’s Day was to get Dutch to the airport. His plane left at 6:30 for a twelve-hour trip to Texas to spend a long weekend visiting with his boys. He hasn’t seen them in two years, and is really looking forward to spending time with them.

Younger Son, now 27 years old and in Special Forces training in the Army, got married just before Christmas. Dutch had plane tickets to be there, but Mother Nature had other ideas. His flight out on winter solstice never even left Kenai (but not cancelled until after a two hour wait at the airport), and after we saw the news reports of hundreds of travelers stranded in Seattle, we were just glad he was not one of them.

He was disappointed to miss the wedding, but glad he was able to reschedule the trip before Younger Son returns to his Army base to resume training next week. Older Son is also around; he is in his last year of law school, and just finishing Christmas break as well. Older Son and his wife (who is also a PA!) are currently in training for a triathlon; Dutch just laughed when I asked if he would go run/bike/swim with them.

It will be a quick trip—he’ll be home early Tuesday. At least he was able to pack light. It’s seventy-something degrees there. Hope his blood doesn’t get thin. We might make it above zero by then. And maybe have running water in the kitchen.

Christmas Eve Moose Visitation

Does anybody ever get used to this? If I live here for twenty years, I don't think I will. I know, I know, it is so common around here people just yawn and say, "Oh, yeah, another moose." It is a frequent occurrence for people who live in downtown Anchorage, for Pete's sake (and Anchorage isn't really IN Alaska, though, as they say, you can see Alaska from there).



This does NOT happen in Bethel. In my ten years of living there, I never once saw a moose within a hundred miles of Bethel. Occasionally one would wander into the area and you'd hear about it all over town for days, along with plenty of envy for the guy who saw it first and got it into his freezer to feed the family for the next several months.



With the five-year moratorium on moose hunting on the lower Kuskokwim River, now in its fourth year, the moose population in the area is coming back strongly. A few miles upriver from Bethel where there are stands of cottonwood and fir trees, signs of moose presence are everywhere: bark stripped from the trees at the six-foot level, snow churned up, big hoof prints, and lots of piles of moose turds. But they don't wander into town, and surely are not browsing the shrubberies around people's homes.

Yesterday this young moose cow and her calf were doing exactly that. Mother and I were inside doing something or other when Mother looked out the window and said "Oh, my goodness! There is a moose right next to the house!"

And she was, just about two feet from the back door. She turned and looked directly at me, and was completely unperturbed. I was snapping photos like mad through the window while she continued to munch down our bushes around the deck. She reminded me of the young moose on the opening sequence of the old TV show "Northern Exposure" (which, by the way, is available from Netflix if you are interested). Clearly, moose have not been hunted around here for a very long time. She had no fear, despite having a young calf.



We never got a good look at the calf. It was on the far side of a downed tree, eating the tips. As mom moved off slowly, the calf trailed her, and I could see that it was very young and small, probably only eight or nine months old.

What a Christmas Eve gift! Mother and I were both elated to have had such a close encounter, and one that lasted a good half hour or so. I do have to admit to having had a few thoughts about how tasty that moose would be, but I am just not a hunter. Short of my family's starvation, I would not look down the barrel and pull the trigger on Bullwinkle. But I'm happy to eat him when someone else does, and extremely good eating it is, too.

It is an incredible feeling to have wild animals in your immediate environment. We have black and brown bears around here too, though I am a little less excited to see them next to the back door. Gawd, I love Alaska!

The View from my Deck

At the risk of boring you with tedious repetition, I just had to throw up this photo of the view from my deck yesterday afternoon. It is similar to the photo on Monday’s post, though that view was taken from the mouth of the river. This one does a bit more to convey the incredible vastness, though it still falls short of reality. The two volcanoes, Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Illiamna, seem much larger and closer in the actual view and dominate the scenery far more dramatically than these photos suggest. And that sense of wide-openness that falls away with the curve of the earth? Nothing captures that. The huge bald eagles soaring through it show up only as specks on the photos.

Lest anyone miss the obvious here, let me just say yes, I am totally enthralled with this view. It is mesmerizing. I can gaze at it for hours. Preferably without window glass between it and me, but at yesterday morning’s frosty five degrees below zero, I was glad to appreciate the view from inside. By afternoon the temperature had risen to twenty above, and with no wind blowing it was quite pleasant to sit in the sun on the south-facing side of the house and gaze into the endless distance.

I am now four weeks out from hip replacement surgery for idiopathic avascular necrosis. Overall, my recovery is proceeding quite well. I am off crutches and getting around much more easily, though always mindful of hip precautions: don’t flex the hip more than 90 degrees, don’t cross the body’s midline with that foot, don’t internally rotate that hip (point the toe in). I go to physical therapy twice a week and do exercises at home to regain strength in the leg and increase range of motion. It is slow going, but there is steady progress.

The pre-op I went through prior to the hip replacement included an MRI of the hip. Eighteen months ago I had plain x-rays of that hip which were normal; by this past July, x-rays showed essentially no joint left (which validated the excruciating pain I was in, but otherwise was not reassuring). My surgeon, Dr. L. (dubbed “the turtle” by Jody for his slow and measured approach), wanted the MRI to distinguish between incredibly rapid progression of arthritis and avascular necrosis. It indicated the latter.

It also revealed an incidental finding of an ill-defined mass in my abdomen. The MRI was followed by abdominal and pelvic CT scan, with and without contrast. The mass remained ill-defined, though appeared to be located in the retroperitoneal area (behind the abdominal cavity, not inside it) and appeared to be cystic (fluid-filled). Both are strongly encouraging that the mass is not malignant. But it does need to come out.

Dr. L called in a general surgeon he thinks highly of, Dr. M. Dr. M reviewed the studies and came and spoke with me while I was admitted for the hip. He said if he had any suspicion of malignancy, he would wait no more than two weeks from the hip surgery before taking me back to the OR. As it was, he was comfortable waiting six to eight weeks.

So as the hip heals, I’m preparing for the next hurdle. Tomorrow I drive up to Anchorage for ultrasound-guided needle biopsy of the mass. I’m not queasy, but I don’t look forward to that procedure. Hopefully the full surgical removal will follow shortly after that. Then another four weeks of recovery, and I hope to be back to work by early January.


And for those of you who are wondering in just what direction Tundra Medicine Dreams may be going now that I no longer live on the tundra, I have to tell you that I wonder the same thing. Today it sounds as though TMD is becoming a patient blog, though that is not my intention and I promise to keep this part short. I’ve become so erratic about posting that I felt some explanation was due.

4th of July in Kenai

It has been nearly two months since Dutch left Bethel to take his new post as Public Works Director for the City of Kenai. We miss each other dreadfully, but round trip air fare is a little pricey (just under $600) so we haven’t been traveling back and forth on weekends. Since the Independence Day holiday fell on Friday, it was all the justification I needed to make a trip over to see him. Besides, his birthday is four days later, so of course I had to go. And the best birthday present of all (besides me!) was that I could take him his big dog.

Bear and I flew out of Bethel Thursday evening, had a quick wait in Anchorage where my new cell phone actually works, and then made the very short flight down to Kenai, arriving just before midnight. Dutch was very glad to see us both, and Bear was crazed to get out of the man-made hell known as an airline kennel. Once out the front doors of the airport terminal he raced around like a mad dog and peed on every stationary object he could find; that done, he was ready to greet his poppa and proceed to the next adventure.

Our new house in Kenai sits on a tall bluff above the Kenai River with a gorgeous view—clouds permitting—of the Alaska Range and the big volcano shown above, Mt. Redoubt. A bit further away to the south in the Range is Mt. Illiamna. Both are over 10,000 feet tall. So far in my brief experience of being there, all six days of it, the clouds have not been terribly cooperative. Dutch says the mountains come and go suddenly; now you see them, now you don’t. I was happy to get this quick view of Redoubt on the fourth of July. It wasn’t visible for very long; most of the weekend was cloudy and rainy.

Despite a late night on Thursday, Dutch and I managed to get to the Fourth of July parade in downtown Kenai by 11 AM on Friday morning. We found a good parking spot and then were amazed to see huge crowds of people trudging up from further away carrying all manner of portable chairs. By the time the parade started there was a gallery of chairs two and three deep lining the parade route.

The parade started with just about every fire truck the city owns, all with lights and sirens going. It was pretty loud there for a while. We were close to the start of the route, and fortunately they turned the sirens off after a few blocks. It served to get people’s attention that the parade was under way.

The civic and charitable organizations were well represented, there were a few floats, people throwing candy, lots of flags and folks dressed in red-white-and-blue. The VFW drove a real-looking (probably is) train engine on tires with a coal car behind it. A Dixieland jazz band performed from a large flatbed being hauled along. There were antique cars and tractors dressed in bunting, a dance school performing as they walked, a guy on one of those old-fashioned bicycles with a six-foot-tall front wheel, a very tall stilt walker, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle division (potato-potato-potato), rollerbladers in formation wearing Uncle Sam hats, and local candidates for public office shaking hands and passing out vote-for-me flyers. The crowd loved it all.

My big hope was for a marching band, the thing I most miss in Bethel’s Fourth of July parade. Having cut my parade teeth on Mardi Gras in Mobile and New Orleans, it just ain’t a great parade without a marching band or two or three (big, incredible floats don’t hurt either).

Kenai’s parade didn’t have a full marching band, but they did have a “drumline”, the percussion section of the high school band. There were more than a dozen drummers and cymbalists (?) marching in uniform, creating very intricate percussive rhythms that were great to listen to. Just made you want to dance right there on the street. And easily heard for several blocks.

After the parade was over, we discovered why so many people walked in with their chairs. So many roads were blocked off for the parade and the festival afterwards that we had a hard time getting out.

In my two brief visits to Kenai, my most dominant visual image is of moose. It seems like they are everywhere. A day rarely goes by that Dutch doesn’t see several. Usually it is cows with one or two calves grazing beside the roads. They are obviously unmolested, as they seem to have little fear. But they are in some danger from the cars whizzing by at 60 mph paying no attention; I saw one sign that said “151 moose road-killed this year.” I don’t know if that means since January of 2008 or some longer time, but it seems like a LOT of moose to me. I also don’t know what they do with the road kills. People here in Bethel would go crazy if that much yummy moose meat is being wasted.

Bald eagles follow closely behind moose in terms of wildlife prevalence. They seem to be all up and down the river. From our deck on the bluff we see one flying over or sitting in trees at the river’s edge every few minutes. Sunday morning we awoke to one sitting in a tree at the edge of the yard. He (she?) perched there for about two hours as we drank coffee and watched. At first I was concerned that the big bird had been injured, as s/he sat for the longest time with the left talon stretched in front of the branch and all weight borne on the right leg. Through the binoculars I could see the left talon clinch and unclench repeatedly. Eventually the bird shifted weight to the left leg and went through the same routine with the right talon, so I guess it was just a stretching exercise. When I came back later the eagle had flown.

The weekend was filled with chores as well as fun. Some combat shopping for household goods for Dutch. Establishing a Bear-restraint system in the yard for the big dog. Ditto the back of Dutch’s brand new truck, after repairing the chewed seat belt where the big dog expressed his displeasure at being left in the cab when we went out for breakfast. His life nearly came to a premature end on that one. And, on the fun side, going to a minor league baseball game to cheer for the Peninsula Oilers, the local team.

Of course the three short days went by in a flash and all too soon it was time to come home. In the effort to extend the visit as long as possible, I made the rash decision to catch the early plane on Monday morning and go straight to work from the airport. That meant being on the 5:10 commuter flight out of Kenai, which meant getting up at quarter till 4, and no time for coffee before racing to the airport. Painful.

In my sleep-deprived state as I was checking my bags in, I found the airline’s sign taped to the counter somewhat humorous. The murderous treatment of English in signage is one of my pet peeves. The sign said:

One carry-on bag allowed, weight not to exceed more than 20 pounds.

Am I just weird, or what?

83 days until October 1^st; one more visit planned before then. Photos, as usual, by The Tundra PA; sorry I have no shots of the parade. For once I forgot my camera.