Bring on the Kiwi Birds!

            First of all, it’s official – I am going to be spending the winter in New Zealand.   Doing what, I’m still not sure - I’m hoping to find work for at least a few months of the time – but one thing I will definitely  be doing is enjoying warmer weather than will be found up here in Alaska.   I am leaving in a little over two weeks, and I am hoping to be able to sneak out of the Icebox before I have to do any shoveling, snowblowing, or chipping ice off of my car.  

            I originally thought I was going to be staying in Alaska for another winter; unfortunately, the job I had thought I had lined up with a former employer fell through.   Oh well.   However, the longer I think about it, the happier I am that I won't be spending another winter up here battling the elements and staving off cabin fever.   (Which was one of the reasons I started writing a blog in the first place.)   So, I figured as long as I was leaving Alaska for the winter, why not go to a warm-weather vacation spot - as opposed to the glacially-refrigerated rainforest I live in now.   Also, New Zealand has been on the list of places I’d like to visit for several years – ever since I took advantage of a similar temporary working visa arrangement in the UK back in 2006.   The organization that sponsored that program (the British Universities North America Club) also had a similar program in New Zealand (among other places – New Zealand piqued my interest mainly because they speak English, and they have kiwi birds.)   What I didn’t know until a few months ago is that if you just apply for the visa through the New Zealand immigration bureau directly, you don’t have to pay the agency a $500 fee.

            In fact, applying for the work visa was ridiculously straightforward.   Also, it was free.   As in, the New Zealand government is letting me come and live in their country for six months, and the only thing I had to do was to fill out a form saying that I’ve (a) never been convicted of a crime, and (b) do not have tuberculosis.  I filled out the whole form online in about thirty minutes, and they processed it in about three days.   (In comparison, for a New Zealand person to get a similar visa for the United States, it would cost a little under a thousand dollars in visa and agency fees alone – and you have to be in college, or have graduated within twelve months.   Lady Liberty, I think you’re hiding the welcome mat…)   

            Perhaps because it’s free, the visa is a little less spectacular than the ones I’ve got from the UK.   Getting a visa for Britain involved a whole process of sending my passport to a consulate somewhere and then getting it back with a huge embossed sticker and a lot of fine print in a tiny serif font, which the immigration people would minutely examine with a lens and some sort of blacklight pen every time I arrived in London.   

            In contrast, the New Zealand immigration people sent me an email with a number on it.   That's the visa.   All I needed to do was print out the page.   No serif fonts, security codes, or weird hidden passport microchips.   

            Something else I’ve been getting in order is various forms of travel insurance.   I’m changing my medical insurance to a company that will cover me both in the US and abroad.   What’s interesting about this is that I am paying the same premium as I did under my US plan – but I get a $2000 deductible, instead of a $10,000 deductible.   This is just one indication that health insurance costs over here are insanely overpriced compared to the rest of the civilized world.   Want another example?   I was advised by my doctor to bring a three-month supply of my birth control medication with me to New Zealand.   Which sounded like a great idea, except that my (current) insurance won’t approve me getting that much in advance.   Paying for it without their negotiated ‘discount’ would be $90, as opposed to the $45 that I’m usually charged.   However, buying the same amount of the same drug (even without insurance) in New Zealand comes to... about $18.   I ran into this situation in the UK as well – the sticker price of most prescription drugs in other civilized countries is usually well below the ‘discount’ price that my US insurance says that they are negotiating for me.   

        And this is why my friends in Texas stock up on pharmaceuticals every time they visit Mexico…

The End of the Summer

            We wrapped up another season at the lodge about three weeks ago, and Aialik Bay sent us off with three days of nonstop, pouring rain for our shutdown.   Due to bad weather in the Gulf of Alaska, we had to get everybody out a day early, which meant that not only were we cold and wet – we were cold, wet and in a hurry.   Everybody was just trying to buckle down and get everything done.   For my particular department, that meant a lot of time spent sponging a summer’s worth of glacial silt out of our kayak cockpits.   We never really clean them during the season – we just let it pile up over the season, until we get a boat that’s so embarrassingly dirty that we have to clean the worst spots before give it to a client.    Currently, most of our boats are sitting under the lodge building – and getting them under there can be a huge chore, as the things are approximately the same size and weight as an orca whale.   Or at least, they seem that way when you have to carry fifteen of them across camp.   

            The weather at the end of the season was tough.   June was amazing, July was even better, August was rough, September was worse.   And it wasn’t just the rain, either – we had some unseasonably huge storms moving through the Gulf of Alaska.   One or two big storms would have been bad enough, but towards the end it seemed like we were getting them about once a week.   They say that the ocean is always a lady, but sometimes, she’s a bitch.   That’s the side we were seeing for most of the end of the season.   The Iceberg Lodge usually average six days out of a summer where the boats can’t make it out mostly due to weather.  This year we got seven days where the boats didn’t come.   Not seven days total - seven days in a row.   The total number of boat-free days this summer was around a dozen – most (but not all) of which affected guests, and therefore, income.   It also affected my bottom line personally, because I wasn’t working for most of the week of weather – though considering how astonishingly heavy it was raining, I wasn’t complaining much at the time.   Theoretically, I could have done trail work – but the trail that most needed the attention was so muddy that carrying power tools up there would have been downright dangerous anyway.   This was monsoon-style rain – an inch an hour, at times.   Where I grew up in West Virginia, if it rained that hard, you could pretty much guarantee that it would stop in about five minutes – the cloudburst would run out of steam.   In Alaska, it can keep raining like that for three days.  There was so much freshwater pouring into the lagoon that it was even affecting the currents – the tides flooding into our lagoon weren’t strong enough to push against the massive amount of fresh water that was trying to flood out.

            The first week I was back in civilization (or what passes for civilization in a place where the nearest stoplight is over a hundred miles away) became the Iceberg Lodge reunion tour.   It started out with driving up to Cooper Landing right after getting off of the boat to see one of our boat captains playing music at the Kingfisher.   It seemed like everyone in the Alaska tourism industry who was still in the state two weeks after Labor Day (a smaller number than you might suppose) was at that bar.   It felt very, very strange to be around so many people I didn’t know.   After a summer in the wilderness, I think my brain forgets how to look at people and not know who they are.   At the bar that night, I would see a girl with her hair in a ponytail, and automatically think – that’s one of our hospitality girls.   It wasn’t, of course, and the two people didn’t even look much alike, but that was who my brain insisted that it was.    I think that since for four months I was around such a limited number of people – especially younger people, because our clientele is mostly older folks – that my brain basically rewired itself for the smaller number of people it was seeing.  Anyone who vaguely looked like Amber must be Amber, because out at the Lodge, there were very few other choices.   So my brain was matching up strangers with their most probable Iceberg Lodge counterpart – even if the resemblance was as sketchy as the right gender and approximate hair color.   It was a little like seeing ghosts out of the corner of your eye – you know that you saw someone right there, but as soon as you turn to look at them properly, they vanish.   Thankfully, the effect didn’t last for more than a few days.   Leaving a place like that after a season is always a little bit like losing a family; it felt better when I wasn’t constantly being reminded of people who weren’t around anymore.

            Granted, I was seeing quite a few Lodge people in real life as well.   The rest of the week, it felt like I was travelling all over the Kenai, visiting people and taking part in several end-of-the-tourist-season-and-now-we-get-our-state-back celebratory events.   It felt like it was the first time in close to two years that I’d been able to be a tourist in my own state.   I camped out in Hope, Alaska (population 137)  for the Seaview Bar’s last night of the summer (which really is the last official gasp of the Alaska tourist season).   I listened to the Denali Cooks do some good Beatles covers, and then hung out in the middle of the road, dancing in my Xtra Tuffs to keep warm after my friend was thrown out of the bar for trying to bring in beer she’d bought somewhere else.   I woke up the next morning to beautiful weather and hiked out to Gull Rock.   The trail has great views across Turnagain Arm, and I saw some of the Cook Inlet beluga whales (a bona fide endangered species) as I was walking back.   I actually heard the belugas before I could see them – whales are world-class heavy breathers.  I didn’t see them from very close - the trail was a few hundred feet above the water, but I was looking almost straight down at them.   I could see their Moby Dick silhouette in the water as they came up for air, big tails and tiny front fins.   It was very different from the side view of whales I normally see from the boats.   They passed through in about five minutes, maybe twenty of them in all, just cruising along about fifty yards from the shore.   I’ve heard that it’s more common to see the beluga whales in fall, when they follow salmon runs further into the Cook Inlet.

            This is just one example of why the month of September is possibly one of the best-kept secrets in Alaska tourism.   Not because the weather is necessarily better – and in the interior, it can already be snowing this time of year – but because the nice days (when they show up) can be some of the best in the entire year.   For one thing, anywhere you go on a nice day in September, there is a good chance that you will have the place to yourself, as opposed to sharing the spot with flocks of tour buses and rental RVs. Also, rates for motels are often cheaper, and most gift shops are discounting their remaining inventory in a desperate bid to sell off as much of their stock as possible before the last out-of-state wallets depart for the season.   

            Plus, in September, snow is still doing what snow ought to do – hanging out at the higher elevations and looking beautiful.   In most places I’ve lived, during the winter you either had snow on the ground, or you didn’t.   Where I am in Alaska, the mountains are tall enough that the higher elevations start getting snow literally months before we start to see any here at sea level.   From my window (thirty feet above sea level) I can see Mount Alice (4800 feet) – its summit has been getting pummeled with the white stuff for close to a month now, while here at sea level some of my neighbors are still pulling carrots out of their garden.   The snow on the mountains looks beautiful, especially when the trees lower down are still yellow and orange.   Right now, most of the leaves have already fallen, but the snow is still staying put at around 2000 feet.   And over the next month, we all get to watch the snow on the mountains come closer and closer to town.

When Cabin Heaters Go Down in Flames

            A group of guests that I’ll refer to as the Flambé party came to us requesting to extend their stay at the Iceberg Lodge by one night.   Since more people staying in cabins means more revenue for the Lodge, we were happy to book them for a second night.   If we had known that by this point the Flambés had already set their original cabin on fire, we might not have been so eager to let them stay a second night.

            The guest cabins are all heated with propane heaters.   We're in coastal Alaska, and even in summer, it can get pretty cold here.   One of the perks of staying here is that our heaters can really crank out the BTUs on those cold, damp, rainforest mornings.   But when the cabin heaters are turned up all the way, the heater unit itself gets pretty hot.   After an incident in our first season involving a smoldering pair of socks, we put signs above all the heaters warning guests not to put things on top of the heater, as their stuff will catch fire.   We also repeat this in the orientation we give new guests, along with other crucial information, such as what time the lunch buffet is set out, and how to avoid being eaten by a bear.   

            Shortly after dinner, Mrs. Flambé finishes her drink, signs up her family for their kayak tour, and leaves the main lodge building to go back to her cabin.   About thirty seconds later, she sprints back to the bar, collars the manager, and tells him her cabin is on fire.   Armed with a fire extinguisher, our hero manager dashes to the cabin, and opens the door.   Billowing smoke pours out; the only thing visible through the smoke is the flames themselves, which are covering the wall above the heater, and beginning to lick at the rafters.   Geoff crawls through the smoke, and sprays the flaming wall until he’s choking.   He lunges towards his nearest exit –a closed sliding-glass door - and smacks into it like a bird hitting a picture window.    Eventually he gets out, and grabs another, larger fire extinguisher that had been rushed over from the lodge.   Geoff nails the fire again, and the flames disappear under a barrage of chemical goo.   

            What we were left with was a cabin filled with smoke, with portion of the south exterior wall burned completely through, water and fire-extinguisher-juice all over the carpets and the remnants of the south wall.   

            It turns out, Mr. Flambé took a shower right before dinner, and thought it would be a great idea to dry out his bath towel by draping it across the top of the heater.   We could still see a portion of the towel that had burnt itself onto the metal, complete with its little washing instructions tag.   

            The next hour was spent airing our the cabin, and pulling out all of the furnishings that could potentially be soaking up the smoke odor – bedding, pillows, mattresses, curtains, shower curtains, towels (the surviving ones), and lampshades.   In between carting things out of the room, we were all coughing like we had contracted the plague.   Aside from the fact that the cabin was filled with smoke, the stuff that they treat cabin logs with to make them weatherproof isn’t something you want to burn and then go around breathing, apparently.   

            The Flambé party showed rather less remorse than one might anticipate.   They didn’t seem particularly upset that they’d burnt out a wall of their cabin – in fact, one of the Flambés was recording the fire on her camera and cackling with laughter while we were still working to put the blaze out. 

            Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the cabin is still structurally sound.   Unfortunately, we had to chainsaw out a two-foot by eight-foot section of the cabin, and replace it with a 2x4 and plywood frame, which was put up the day after the fire, and hurriedly stained the next day.   (Did I mention that we needed to house clients in this cabin four days after the fire?)    We also disassembled and carried out the bed frames, and all the furniture,  and ordered a rug cleaning machine and ten new pillows from Seward, all the lumber needed to fix the hole in the wall.   Our maintenance man replaced the burned-out heater (which still works, but looks a little too crispy to put back in the cabin.)   Our Hospitality staff have been frantically washing the affected bed linens to try and get the smoke smell out.   The shower curtain has been sitting in a vat of bleach water in a corner of the kitchen; the mattresses are airing out in an unoccupied staff room.   Additionally, all other construction projects in camp have come to a grinding halt while we work to triage the burnt-out cabin back into a livable space.  

          The fire's been a reminder about how fast problems can arise out here.   As isolated as we are here, if things go wrong, all we have to rely on is the skills of the staff, a duffel bag of medical gear, and big shed full of tools and leftover construction debris.  Thankfully, this time it was enough.

            If we ever name our guest cabins (as has been done at one of our sister lodges), we're unanimously calling this one the Campfire Cabin.   And its not because its close to the fire ring, although that’s the excuse we’ll use if the occupants mention a smoke smell...   

            We did end up letting the Flambé party stay their second night.   Through some unfortunate quirk of the lodge work schedule, I ended up being their guide on all of the tours they took over the next two days.   I tried my best to be suave, polite, and professionally congenial - and not think of them as the idiot arsonists who almost burned down my home.    

            Strangely, the Flambés had a really good time during their visit.   Just for the record, if I ever visit a fancy lodge and then accidentally set fire to my room, I will probably be too busy wallowing in mortification to actually enjoy the rest of my stay.   This was apparently not an issue for them.   The final straw was when the Flambés finally left, the whole group (five people, two-night stay) tipped us exactly $12.    Just to clarify, $12 for five people would be considered a bad tip even for a dinner at the pizza restaurant in Seward.   

            Also, since the Campfire cabin incident occurred, the hospitality team has already saved a pair of wet socks left on a heater, preventing a similar blaze from erupting in another cabin.   One of the reasons I love working here is that our guests, by and large, are great people.   Other guests amuse and terrify me by turns...  

What Happens When It Doesn't Rain

            Well, I said I would update my blog the next time it rained.   Strangely, it still hasn’t rained – we are going on a week now with no substantial precipitation.   This is good, but it also feels weird to have no rain in the rain forest.   Also, the mosquitoes have arrived in force, and have laid siege to the camp.   Hanging around outside the Iceberg Lodge is turning into an exercise in stoicism.     I’ve been sporadically using bug dope; even though I usually don’t – Alaskan mosquitoes don’t generally carry diseases, and I don’t like applying chemicals to my body -  but I’ve been getting so many bites on my hands that they’re now slightly swollen.   The worst places are the loading dock and the back deck of the lodge, where we gear up clients before going out on trips.    

Yesterday, I lead a trip with just two clients, and I just grabbed enough gear for them off the deck and brought it into the lodge, so we could be inside and escape the predatory incursions of the mosquitoes for a few more minutes.   The bugs on the trip itself weren’t too bad, because there’s usually a little bit of wind near the glacier, especially when its sunny.   (This bit of glacial air conditioning is called katabatic wind.   Basically, the glacier, and the Icefield it drains from, are big enough to chill the air above them.   Since hot air rises and cold air falls, there is usually a cool breeze blowing down from the Icefield and away from the glacier.   The hotter the ambient air temperature away form the glacier is, the stronger the katabatic wind will be.)   

            The kettle ponds on the trail to the glacier are very low, and the muddy parts of the trail have turned into rock-hard expanses of dirt.   The plants aren’t taking it very well – the salmonberry bushes and red currants look wilted.   And the lupine near my room in camp is withering.   I am wondering if this is going to affect the berries this year.   I am beginning to understand why this area needs all of the rain – when the plants don’t get it, you can tell they aren’t doing well.   

            News flash: with all the sunny weather, the daytime air temperature is now actually warm!   Unfortunately, I can’t take off too many layers of clothing, since exposing more skin to the mosquitoes isn’t a good plan.   (They can bit through my base layer; fleece or rain gear is the only thing that seems to stop them.)   I was in camp building a bookshelf for my room out of leftover scrap lumber, and barely got through getting the thing together before I had to get inside for a little while.   I’d been bitten so much that it felt like half of my face was swollen.   I went out to the beach later with a book, and enjoyed the breeze.   The one great thing about mosquitoes here is that they aren’t around at the beach – there’s too much wind coming off the water.   

            I’m having trouble deciding whether I like the persistently sunny weather or not.   True, it isn’t raining, so I don’t have to deal with the cold and the wet on every tour – but dealing with the mosquitoes in camp is turning into just as much hassle.   Last summer, we had perhaps two days with really bad mosquitoes – mostly because it was so unrelentingly cold that all of the bugs died before Solstice.   The guests definitely seem happy with the sun, and a TV crew that was here filming last week was ecstatic at the weather, and I’m certainly a fan of anything that gives the Lodge good publicity.   (They were filming for a show called Motion; stay tuned for information on when the episode will be aired.)   

            However, this is supposed to be a rainforest, and after a week of no rain, it’s obvious that the plants aren’t doing well.   Also, the bears are on strike.   Bears do not like hot weather, and on very sunny days, they apparently retreat back into the forest and hang out in the shade.   They’re easier to spot as on cooler or wetter days, when the bears nonchalantly wander around the shores of the lagoon.   (This is great, because guests can see them from a building, or a canoe.   I’m a big fan of bear sightings from a canoe.   Since I’m steering the boat, I have a comforting amount of control over how close clients get to the bear.)   Several groups of clients have come and gone and not seen any bears at all, which is unusual.   Even more unusual, I haven’t been seeing any bears lately, either – and even when the guests aren’t seeing bears, the guide staff is often still running into them when we’re setting up boats, or just walking through the staff area.     

            So, I’m working somewhere warm and dry, that’s infested with mosquitoes, and has no bears.   This is not the Iceberg Lodge I remember from 2010…

Things Your Forget While You're Away

            I am back at the Iceberg Lodge after spending a whirlwind three days in the bustling metropolis that is Seward during the summer.   I went in for a friend’s wedding, and was planning to do some shopping in town; this plan was complicated by the fact that I forgot my wallet back at the Lodge.   My friend’s reception was at a local watering hole; fortunately I wasn’t carded.   I borrowed money from a friend to buy food and to pick up some things around town – essentials such as toothpaste, soap, hand cream, and used books.   I feel like forgetting my wallet is a sign of how easily one adapts to living off the grid - it never occurred to me that I would actually need cash, credit cards, and ID until I was back into the gift-shop laden heart of Seward’s downtown.

  

            I visited the aquarium, and happened to run into a co-worker who very kindly invited me upstairs to see the new seal pup.    Atuun, one of the aquarium’s resident seals gave birth last week – last I heard mom and pup are doing well, though they are still off-exhibit for the time being.   (The seal pup is tentatively thought to be female; her name hasn’t been formally announced.)   The pup looked frisky; she was lying on her back, waving her flippers in the air, and chewing on anything in reach – fence, foam mat, Mom, own flipper.   Atuun looked very tired; but she was definitely keeping an eye on her pup – and us. The pup is tiny; her flippers look disproportionately large to the rest of her.   She’s grey mostly; I can see a bit of her dad Snapper in her coloring.   Huge thanks to the Mammal staff for letting me take a look at her.   I think she’s going to be charming the pants off of aquarium visitors as soon as she goes out into the seal tank.    

            There is also new art in front of the aquarium, which was nice to finally see – though it was neither as pretty nor as exciting as seeing the baby seal.   I also saw Woody, the aquarium’s 2000 pound male Steller sea lion – who saw me approach his tank, and immediately jumped onto his rock and started looking around for his trainers.   I don’t know if it was coincidence, or if he actually recognized me as the person who interprets some of his feeding sessions.   It’s touching to think he might remember me – even if he only associates me as a person tangentially connected with his fish buckets.   

            Also in town, I tracked down two packages – one of which was a package of two pairs of new Helly Hansen rain pants, which turned out to be too large.   I would figure that if the medium size were small, the natural solution would be to order a large?   In fact, no – the large is enormous.   And because I purchased them through a pro purchase program, I can’t return or exchange them, which is a little disappointing.  I might end up giving them to my mom – which you also are not supposed to do with a pro purchase program.   Unfortunately, since I can’t return them, my options are to sell them, give them away, or let them mildew in my triplex room for the rest of the summer.   And, I’ll probably be placing another order with Helly Hansen to try and get rain pants that are the right size.  Yes, it’s worth the hassle.   Here in the Alaskan rain forest, you live and die by the quality of your waterproof gear.   At last count, I have five different pairs of rain pants (counting the two that don’t fit), and three different rain jackets.   I will probably be buying at least one more of each before the end of the summer.   And that’s not counting the various waterproof backpack covers, dry bags, pelican cases, XtraTuff boots, neoprene gloves, and rain hats.   

Other things in Seward don't change - there are still retired couples with giant RVs double parked in the Safeway parking lot, boat trailers on the highway swinging into the oncoming lane, and feral rabbits devouring my friend's garden.   (He's trying to eradicate/relocate them; they, in retaliation, have given birth under his porch.)   Woody the sea lion still bites his girlfriends; and emergency calls about stranded seal pups still interrupt plans to visit with friends.     Also, my cousins are still remodeling their kitchen - the only appreciable difference between the kitchen last month and the kitchen last week is that the water is back on in their house.