Maybe it's the sudden glut of Vitamin D after the long dark, or maybe it's the toasty 40 degree temps, but I am so twitterpated with Alaska right now.
Our lovely teenager moose who's been hanging around lately.
We took the chance to go to Creamer's Field, a local retired-dairy-farm-turned-bird-sanctuary-and-set-of-hiking-trails. It will shortly be covered in birds--geese, swans, ducks, sandhill cranes, and little tweeter birds. Some will just be taking a breather on their way to their breeding grounds in the Arctic, but others too old or young or lazy to fly north and breed will hang out for the summer.
Ski-joring--when you strap on skis and make the dog do the work.
We've never gone during the winter before, but nobody has to be carried any more so we suited up and headed out. We deliberately went early before the sun could make everything sloppy. There was easily a foot of packed hard-crust snow on the path. It was weird how far you could see through naked trees. We took the Boreal Trail, a mile-long hike through a seasonal lake and birch forest. The girls were troopers. Aeryn packed snacks and they took turns carrying the bag, including Echo.
When we went there weren't too many critters. Only one pair of over-eager swans had arrived at that point. Otherwise, there were a couple of haggard, tweaky squirrels and some bossy little chickadees. Chickadees are one of my favorite types of bird. I mean, they're basically a mouthful of feathers, but they've got chutzpah. There was a trio that was fighting over territory; when we walked through they continued fighting with each other but also started chirping at us about how badly they were going to mess us up if we didn't keep moving. Fluffy little thugs.
The swans are the little white dots in the middle.
*Update* This is Creamer's two weeks after our trip. Less white, more wet.
The days are getting longer. The sun is up at an unholy hour and parties waaaaaay past its bedtime. (As of this writing, sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset is 10:04.) It's only going to get longer. And brighter. It's exhausting and invigorating at the same time.
The longer days mean the snow is melting fast. In two weeks we've gone from almost two feet of snow to piles of slush with the delightful crunch of Sonic ice. This means that everything is flooding. The rivers are in the middle of break-up, and thanks to the longer winter and sudden warmth, it's been pretty dynamic. Ice jams have caused some minor flooding in Fairbanks, with the river riding high due to the jams and the extra melt-water. The one in town has cleared, but there's still one on post.
Aeryn with some of the chunks of ice from the Chena after the jam cleared. It's so clear on the bottom! Some of these were over two feet thick.
The ice jam on the Chena where it runs through Ft. Wainwright.
The rivers aren't the only things flooding right now. The school trail by our house is inundated; the girls have christened it The Enchanted Lake a la Anne of Green Gables...and have gone kayaking.
With break-up underway, it's also time for the Nenana Ice Classic--the town of Nenana (about an hour south of Fairbanks on the Parks Highway) sets up a tripod on the frozen river. A line runs from the tripod to a clock; when the ice melts and the tripod falls, the clock stops. People all over the world place bets on the date and time the tripod will fall for $2 a shot. The person (or people) with the closest right time split the pot with the town of Nenana and the charities of Nenana's choice. As of today, it hasn't fallen, but we're getting *really* close.
Once the travel restrictions were lifted, we got out of Fairbanks for the first time in five months. We took a socially-distanced trip to Salcha and got ice-cream from The Knotty Shop. The girls approved. Bren drove back, and we all lived. She's learning.
Our last adventure was tapping a birch tree. We've never done it, so we thought we'd try. It was kind of a wild hare idea, therefore we didn't have the proper gear (a cord-free drill and spile, the tube you shove into the tree). Rick recommended a video of a bushcrafter tapping birch with a knife, so after a quick watch I grabbed the KA-BAR and a cup. First, we found a tree with a diameter greater than 8 inches. I made my initial stab and had to hammer it in a little bit to get an inch deep. Then I cut an upside-down V into the bark and folded it down to make a little drip-spout. I had to use the knife to pin it down, but it worked.
While the sap dripped, Brenna and I gathered some of the pitch that had crystallized on nearby spruce. We melted it and set it aside. After two hours we checked our set up and found we had nearly a whole cup. Since we weren't collecting to make syrup (it can take more than 100 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup) we called it a day. Using the melted pitch, we covered the cuts I made in the birch tree--it works like a band-aid to prevent drying or infection.
Inside, we filtered the sap to get rid of the little bits of bark and other debris. Since we weren't making syrup, we opted to drink it. Scandinavians (and Alaskans, I assume) have been drinking it for countless generations. It's full of amino acids, antioxidants, vitamins B and C, proteins, a little sugar...all the things a growing tree needs. It's a decent source of water if you're lost in the wild during the right season, and safer than drinking out of beaver-laden rivers.
I don't know what I was expecting--maybe a thinned down maple-syrup flavor--but I was pleasantly surprised. It tasted like watery tea, with a powdery aftertaste of marshmallow. I really enjoyed it. So did most of the girls.
That's all for now. We'll return with new adventures soon.
The two little blurs are parachuters landing on Birch Hill.
Sunset. So freaking bright.
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