the incredible beauty and bounty of Southeast Alaska

A friend invited me to join him for an early morning paddle on Mendenhall Lake today, just a couple miles from my house.  I am not known as a morning person, so when the alarm went off at  0730, it was tough to get in the shower and start getting my stuff together, but I am very happy that I did.  

This shot is taken looking north towards the glacier, with the visitor center back off my starboard quarter.  It was a beautiful day, and there were some other folks kayaking or rowing around the lake, but as you got close to some of the big chunks of glacier, you felt like you were the only ones there.

These little Arctic terns fly up here from as far away as Antarctica, where they spend the winter.  They breed here during the summer, and fatten up on lots of salmon fry before heading back south.  There are some incredible pictures of these guys in flight with their freshly caught food that can be found at this link.  

If you are interested in a short video taken during my paddle within the realm of these beautiful birds, please click the link below:

video of terns, glacier, icebergs and Matt

I like how this shot has this incredibly blue iceberg chunk with a lot of dark glacial silt mixed in.  I paddled around a bit to line up the peak of the iceberg underneath that of Bullard Mountain in the background.

If you click here you will see and hear the droplets of melting iceberg hit the surface of the lake.  These icebergs are chunks of the face of the glacier that have broken off as it retreats northward.

The structure on the right is the visitor center, which has a nice circular viewing area that you can see in the middle of the building.  They charge admission during the spring and summer, when busloads of cruise ship tourists get dropped off every day.  In the fall and winter you can get in for free, and they have story nights in front of the big fireplace (gas, unfortunately) and a good lecture series on Fridays.


This video shows you the view from a place you can only access from the water, a small beach just to the east of a waterfall that first appeared in the past few years.  There were reportedly garnets found on this beach, but my eyes were not attuned to those red gems -- I failed to find any.  As we paddled closer to this location, it got much windier and more choppy.  This is generated by the winds coming down the glacier and funneling down the waterfall.


I will miss the community and the beauty of this place, but I am sure that I will love Michigan as well.

The effects of watching too much depressing news about the Gulf of Mexico

  

photo borrowed from  Oiled SeaBirds: To Kill Or Not To Kill? What Is The Ethical Thing To Do?

I have been very stressed out lately from watching too many news related broadcasts about the catastrophe in the Gulf.  The pictures of the birds coated in brown goo have got to be the worst.  This fellow in the picture above may have a good chance of survival, depending on how stressed he is, and how much oil he ingested trying to clean himself before he was caught, but if you want more info on the process, check out the "oiled sea birds" link above.  It has links to a lot of the scientific research on survivability of cleaned birds after spills.  Unfortunately, most of the studies are not from pure scientific experiments, as our desire to extract these resources from under the ground/ocean provides lots of opportunity to clean oiled wildlife.

When I see video of boom that is not properly protecting some of the little barrier islands, and as a result there is oil washing up on shore, I feel personally responsible.  Part of that is due to my overdeveloped sense of Catholic guilt, since I know that the USCG is supposed to verify that booms are protecting sensitive areas from the impact of the spill.  The other part is that I drive my car almost every day, travel quite often in airplanes, and generally participate in the oil economy almost as much as the next person.  (Hubby drives the hybrid to work, while I prefer my trucklet.)

I hope that this disaster will wake people up to the fact that we need to move faster towards making alternative fuel sources an affordable reality for the average american, but I'm not going to hold my breath!