Mountains

So this is kind of cheesy, but I will talk about it anyways. Its become kind of my morning routine to mentally say good morning to the mountains when I enter the kitchen to make breakfast and pack my lunch. The bunkhouse where I live have this nice open kitchen/living area, with these huge windows that open out to the bay and the Kenai range, which is across the bay. And those mountains are definitely one of my favorite things about Homer. They’re these huge, craggy, snow-covered peaks, but every morning, they look a little different. Some days they are shrouded in clouds. Some days the sunlight hits them at just the right angle, and the snow reflects the light in bright beams. Some days the sky is so clear you can discern every peak and bluff. I don’t think I could get tired of looking at them. At the same time, their beauty is so different than the beauty of the Blue Ridge. The Blue Ridge is so inviting – its covered in trees whose leaves filter light to softly illuminate the undergrowth. Leaves and organic matter cover the forest floor, making soft, padded footing. In contrast, the mountains here are formidable and awe-inspiring. They seem inhospitable, a constant reminder of the forces of nature. Peaks where nothing grows, deep fields of snow in the middle of summer, unpredictable weather…They’re beautiful, but on days when I’m feeling particularly lonely for my friends and family back home, they serve as a reminder of how far away I am. There is no comfort in their craggy peaks, only a reminder that nature is a power to respect.

Exxon-Valdez oil spill

If you guys follow the national news at all, one of the big headlines yesterday was the Supreme Court ruling on the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill. While this is national news, its particularly interesting to be here in the midst of it.

The 1989 Exxon oil spill dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, making the accident the worst oil spill in North American history. As an aside, it's sort of fortuitous to me to be here while all this court stuff is going on, because when I was really small, I had a book about this particular oil spill...I don't remember much of it, but I remember a little boy saved a harbor seal pup, and I remember the pictures of the otters and cormorants coated with oil. I'd completely forgotten about that book until now, but thinking back on it, I think that was one of the first environmental issues I was aware of.

At any rate, nearly 33,000 people have been waiting almost 20 years for the courts to come to a decision about this case. The Washington Post article covering the story says that they estimate that 20% of the plaintiffs on the case are dead by now. For one, I think it's utterly ridiculous that it took so long to settle the case. Not only was the spill so environmentally destructive, but the majority (if not all) the fisheries in that area were essentially shut down for at least one season. And when fisheries are such a huge part of the state's economy (the fish and seafood industry is the largest private employer), thats affecting a LOT of people. Not only fishermen, but packagers, processors, charter boat captains...I'm sure there are a lot more.

The Supreme Court's final ruling on the case cut Exxon's punitive damages from $2.5 billion down to $5 million. And actually, initially the damages were slated at $5 billion. And people here had definitely been looking forward to the case being settled. I talked to some people who were saying that even though they weren't going to get any direct money, so many people were that it was really going to help boost the Alaska economy. The WaPo article was saying that a lot of people were banking on using that money for retirement funds. But now, the damages Exxon is actually paying will result in an average award of $15,000.

But I think the most shameful thing about the whole case is that Exxon reels in $5 million in profits every 4 days. And apparently the company was arguing that "it had been punished enough" in paying the $3.4 billion in cleanup costs. Cleanup costs don't really cover peoples' livelihoods being ruined.

Before this court ruling, I didn't know what punitive damages were, so I looked it up on the ever-so-trusty Wikipedia. I found out that the purpose of punitive damage is sort of like a fine, essentially a monetary means of discouraging unfavorable behavior. But given this definition, shouldn't the fee be determined on a sliding scale? If Exxon can recover these punitive fees in four days, I don't feel like that is an effective enough price to pay. It's pennies.

Summer solstice

So yesterday was the summer solstice. If you all recall, the solstice is the longest day of the year, because it’s the point in the earth’s orbit around the sun at which the earth’s tilt is pointing directly at the sun (I hope that makes sense…I found a nice little diagram if it doesn’t). At home, Vienna is at 38.5° latitude, and I never really notice too much. But here, we’re so far north (Homer is at 59° degrees latitude), that its definitely noticeable, and its also a really big deal. Someone at work was telling me some of her friends celebrate solstice like Christmas – feasting, family gathering, presents.

I didn’t participate in any crazy solstice parties, but I’m quite pleased with how I celebrated solstice. Work has been really busy this week, and at the beginning of the week, I’d been staying late for various reasons, so today I got to leave early. I went out to dinner with two other girls that live in the bunkhouse, we all watched a movie, and then me, one of the girls, and the guy that live here went out to the beach in search of some climbing. The bunkhouse is about a block away from the beach, so we just walked down and headed north.

Most of the cliff is not stable at all - all sandy and clay-y. But when we found bedrock, it was
exciting. This way my favorite formation. As you can see, Nate is a more skilled climber then I - he had to give me a bit of a boost.

Then the tide was going out, and we got distracted by the tide pools. We weren't dressed for that (not that we were dressed for climbing), so I couldn't get really into the pools to find things, but I still saw some fish, anenomes, seastars and plenty of seaweed and barnacles.

Finally, we found some really awesome rocks way down the beach, and decided they were prime location for some cheesy family photos. Oh the joys of camera self timers...

Also, there’s this weird grocery store here in Homer called Save U More. Its in this huge warehouse, and it has literally everything you could possible imagine, but its impossible to find anything – apparently this is because the store allows all its distributors to stock the shelves themselves, so if you are in search an item, its likely in 5 different places. Oddly, this store carries Trader Joe’s brand items (among other things), despite the fact that Trader Joe’s doesn’t even exist in Alaska. Anyways, I’m excited because I was there yesterday and found the wholesale bulk sections of the store, and bought this huge box of granola bars – 48 chewy fruit and nut bars for $11 bucks. Oh man, granola bars are so key in the field, and now I’m totally stocked. Hopefully I won’t get sick of them before I finish the box…

Apologies for the graininess of the pictures. The light was not that great, and I think I probably got a ton of sand in my camera clambering on the bluffs. And I don't know why the pictures are all misaligned. Oh well, you get the point.

I have the best job in the world

Wow, today was the best day of work yet. And they've been pretty good.

So, backtracking a moment, I'm actually doing work while I'm here (no, I didn't just come up here for the mountains) - I'm working with Cook Inletkeeper , a nonprofit that does watershed management stuff. I help out the stream ecologist, which basically means I get paid to go hiking. Hahaha. What that really means is that I'm essentially her field assistant, and we have sites all up and down the Kenai peninsula where we collect data (temperature, turbidity, discharge, lots of delicious hydrology/water chemistry stuff). The sites we visited last week were all pretty easily accessible - park on the side of a road and just walk down a little path to a stream. But today, we drove east out of Homer to the very end of the road (35 minute drive or so) and hiked a bunch of switchbacks down this steep bluff to the beach, walked on the beach for maybe a mile and half, to find Fox Creek, which is a new site this year.

For one thing, it was a GREAT day for a hike. Its FINALLY warming up here (and by warm, I mean around 60 degrees...there have been very few days since I've been here thus far that its been above 50), and today was just a sunny, warm, clear blue sky day. Second of all, the site was really interesting - its right by a bunch of cow pastures, and you could really see the detrimental effects the cows were having on the stream. All the other sites I've been to thus far have been pretty healthy streams, and the difference here was really evident. For one, this stream was brown, the others had been pretty clear. The water was much warmer - 15 °C, rather than 9-11 °C which is what other streams we've visited have been and which also above the standard for salmon spawing (max water for eggs really is around 13 °C). Then upstream, someone had built a fence across the river!! Which is definitely not ok, because streams are government property. Anyways, all this stream management stuff is really cool to me, because it ties biology to hydrology, land use, environmental law...but I won't go on and on about that.

We found a cute pack of ponies when we were walking on the beach, who ended up following us curiously for at least half a mile.


And at the end of the hike back up those switchbacks (which was really thigh-burning steep) we were awarded with a lovely lovely view.




And I'd just like to remind you all again, I get paid for this :)

Alaska

I guess I can start with what I'm currently up to. If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm in Alaska. I flew in on May 30, and my friend Lauren (who goes to WM but is from here) was nice enough to let me crash at her place in Eagle River (about 20 mins north of Anchorage) for a few days while I got over my jet lag (Alaska is 4 hours earlier than east coast time). It was a pretty good introduction to this state - she lives right next to the third largest state park in the country. So one day we hiked through this valley to reach this glacial lake. The previous day, we hiked a peak about 10 minutes from her house, to reach the ridge that is featured oh-so-prominently at the top of this page in my heading. So, great thing #20304493 about Alaska? Daylight! Forever. That header photo was taken at 9pm. Its great to be able to go out and not worry about running out of daylight. The sun starts to set around 8ish...but at 11pm it looks like maybe 7pm. Its dusky around midnight. The other night I woke up around 2:30am and I saw "city" lights for the first time since I got here ("city" because Homer is pretty small). Even then, the sky wasn't black, just sort of a deep blue color. But its funny, it was kind of a jolt to get such a familiar sight, I hadn't realized that I'd missed night.

I have a ton of pictures already, and I'm behind on uploading them and putting them online. I'll be working on that this weekend, but I don't have internet access at my place. I'll certainly post the link to my photo album when its presentable. Right now I'm working from Homer's public library. Fun fact about Homer's library - it has a Silver level of LEED certification, making it 1 of 3 LEED certified buildings in Alaska, and the first LEED building to have been created to address community environmental sustainability. Incidentally, my boss here was one of the instrumental people in making this happen. She's pretty cool. I'll talk more about that later.

First post

So I have a public blog now. Basically, if you know me at all, you know that I tend to travel a lot. And I like sharing my stories and pictures, which is much harder now that I've graduated and most of my friends are all off on their own adventures too. So this is for you guys, who are curious about what I'm up to. Welcome!