Hello Darkness My Old Friend...

Thanks to the recommendation of my sister-in-law, David and I binge listened to Disturbed singing "The Sound of Silence" for a few weeks in June  (Don't freak out Mom, it's okay.  You might even enjoy it.)  It opens with the line "Hello darkness, my old friend..."  Although I'm taking those lyrics WAY too literally, I cannot help but hum them to myself while I lay awake at night wishing it was dark outside so I could get back to sleep.

Anchorage (370 miles south of the Arctic Circle) has 19.5 hours of daylight in June around the summer solstice.  This is what the sunrise/sunset tables say.  I innocently thought that you could just add a bit of time to count for dusk after the sun set and more light just before the sunrise and that's maybe 20.5 hours of daylight and twilight, and therefore 3.5 hours of darkness around the summer solstice in Anchorage....right?

Wrong.  Wrong. Wrong.

ACTUALLY......there are 3 different types of twilight...civil twilight, nautical twilight, and astronomical twilight.  Civil twilight is when the sun has technically set below the horizon, but it's still plenty light to work and play outside.  Here's the kicker.....The sun never sets past civil twilight between June 7th and July 2nd in Anchorage.  So it is always light outside here in June, only getting slightly dimmer between about 1am and 4am while the sun is a few degrees below the horizon.  Stated another way....Anchorage has 1 month in June/early July where it is only ever daylight or civil twilight.  Never dark.  Even now that nautical twilight has arrived (real darkness...yayayayayay!!...hello darkness my old friend!!!), that degree of darkness doesn't arrive until midnight now, in late July.

And not to bore you with more (exciting to me) physical geography tidbits, but I recently learned that the parts of Alaska near the Arctic Circle get a whopping 828 more hours of daylight per year (including civil twilight) than at the equator.  EIGHT HUNDRED MORE HOURS OF LIGHT PER YEAR than at the equator!  That's crazy!  Part of that is because the sun sets at such a low angle here that even when it does eventually get dark at night, twilight takes a really. long. time.  The sun might be setting in Alaska, but you still have LOTS of time to play outside or finish up dinner outside at 10:40pm as we did on July 4th.

The view from our deck (in a shaded area) at nearly 1am on June 20th...still plenty of light outside.

This crazy amount of light has all kinds of implications:

#1: The first few nights here I really struggled to sleep in spite of being insanely tired.  We hacked a few things to block out every bit of light we could from our bedroom and bought eye covering things to use at night.  But still...when I wake up it's light out....which tells me nothing about if it's time to get up or not.  It could be 3am or 7am or 10am.  I have no clue and need to fumble for a clock.

#2: BUT Alaskans leverage this daylight.  A lady was over here at our property gardening at 1:30am taking care of her cabbages.  Leaving for a long hike at 7pm is no problem.  Jerami and Ele went out hiking most of the night to celebrate the summer solstice.  From talking with people, locals here are (generally) super active in the summer doing all-the-things, then they hibernate (or are "lazy and depressed" according to more than one person) in the winter.

#3:  We do not enjoy enforcing a bed time when it's still totally bright outside.  Matthew told us yesterday he's looking forward to it being dark when it's bedtime.  Amen to that buddy.  I'm a night owl, and fighting this instinct in order to get to bed at a reasonable time is harder when it's light outside.

#4: BUT, it was really convenient when we camped at Denali National Park and I got up at 2:30am to go the the bathroom and had zero need for a flashlight.  No scary thoughts wondering if a creep was going to jump at me from the dark woods.  No fumbling for jackets or blankets in the tent when I'm cold at night and can't see.  We didn't even bother to pack flashlights on our second camping trip.  With tent camping there was no way to block out the light (as we try to do at home) but mercifully we're usually happily exhausted at the end of most days camping and had adjusted enough by then to not care about the incessant light.

Lord willing we are leaving tomorrow for a trip down to Kenai, to go rafting and also meet up with one of David's co-workers who also works remotely.  How you raft with 3 little kids is not entirely clear to me, but Ele and Jerami said it's doable so we'll give it a whirl.

Hugs to all,

Ann, for all of us
 

Bears.

Bears.  I have dragged my feet on this one, but it’s time to write a blog post on bears.

Before coming here, I knew Alaska was bear country.  And I looked forward to these innocuous experiences that we have indeed had:  

At the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center watching a brown bear eat its dinner.

Timothy and Matthew touching and comparing the skulls and furs of the three types of bears in Alaska: black, brown, and polar bears.

Joshua at a visitor's center learning double time all about bears.

And I thought, prior to our arrival, that the locals would be pretty chill about bears.  They would tell me how rare it is to see, much less be attacked or killed by a bear.  Only 6 people have been killed by bears in Alaska in the last 130 years, so really a slim slim chance and not worth stressing about it.  The locals would calm my irrational tourist fears, the logical part of my brain will take over, life would move on and I would not be freaked out by the bears here.  Right?

 

Not so much.  Instead, according to the local newspaper (the Alaska Dispatch News), recent bear encounters have “set Alaskans on edge” which I have totally observed around me.  I overheard a conversation at church of local people talking in surprised, horrified, concerned voices about the 2 people killed by bears in recent days.  I immediately go home and read up on what happened:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/black-bear-attacks-human-wildlife-conflict-alaska/

One of these victims was running a race maybe 20 miles from our house.  Plus there have been non-lethal attacks, like this mountain biker just north of Anchorage:  https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2017/06/25/two-injured-in-separate-brown-bear-attacks-in-southcentral-alaska-saturday/

And last Sunday there was a front page cover story about bears getting into trash cans and the recent spike in demand for bear-proof trash cans (with a latch that turns to lock the can):

Front page last Sunday.

So the locals are talking about bears, and they’re concerned.

When I attended a conference at a local church (Classical Conversations Practicum for my fellow CCers!) they repeatedly mentioned that parents need to CLOSELY supervise their kids when they play outside during lunch time because “this is Alaska!” with smiles and grins.  I happened to be sitting next to the C.C. state-level coordinator who helped put the conference together and she leaned over to me, knowing I was not a local, and told me a mother and baby bear were seen on the church property 3 days prior.  Hence the repeated warnings to keep your kids close.

When I get the chance I like to ask local Moms…what do you do about your kids playing in your yard at home?  Are you ALWAYS out there right next to them?  Is it safe to run inside to grab something?  And what if you actually see a bear?  Then what?!  Honestly, the answers I’ve heard are not reassuring.  One Mom said “I don’t know” because they live in the middle of Anchorage and there are no forests around, so she felt safe.  But she’s about to move to the outskirts of Anchorage and into a forested area, so she’s now asking the same questions I am.  Another Mom who does live in a wooded area (as we currently do) said the thought of seeing a bear used to freak her out when she first moved here, but now that they’ve had a few bear encounters and they’re still okay she’s adjusted to the fear/risk.  She’s just learned to live with it.  She encourages her kids to be loud when playing outside to avoid bear encounters.  And yes, she said she is always outside when her kids are outside, pretty close to them.  It’s important to not forget stuff inside because then you have to round up all of the kids and bring them in with you to get that one thing you forgot.  She told me that her daughter used to be afraid at night that a bear would come into her room at night and attack.  And this mother would calmly reassure her daughter that bears like to stay outside and would not come into her bedroom at night.  But she lost that line of reassurance when she heard this story a few weeks ago of a bear in Anchorage breaking into a kids bedroom at night.  And now she needs to teach her daughter what to do if that happens to her.

Then there are the two times that we have seen bears in our own yard:

David saw a mother and baby bear in our yard on our fifth day here.  He was out by the tiny house on the property and walking back towards our house when he saw the bear right by our living room window.  So he bolted for the door to get inside the house and told us to look out the window.  I never saw the bears, but I saw David transition from a casual walk to a sprint for the door.  (Thankfully the bears were afraid of David too and ran into the woods.)

Ironically, when David had that bear encounter Timothy was off at “zoo camp” for the day.  It was at the Anchorage zoo and the topic of the day was, you guessed it: bears.  One of their activities was hiding peanut butter treats around an (empty) bear cage, then allowing the kids watch the bear find the treats they hid around the enclosure when the bear was returned to its cage.  Timothy loved it.  But David had a more legit bear encounter that had no registration fee.

As soon as David saw the bear in our yard we bought some bear (pepper) spray and now keep that in our kitchen and mudroom.  It’s not a fail proof idea, but something, right?!  We hike with the bear spray, and bear bells, and again tell our kids to just be loud when outside.  We read this article online…it’s about how parents can teach their kids to be safe in bear-country.

About 4 weeks have passed since David saw that bear and I was getting a little more relaxed.  One lady at church told me she just WISHED she could see a bear once…she’s lived here 7 years and never seen a bear.  And I could feel myself relaxing a little bit.  Until this morning when David saw two bears down in our driveway.  They walked up the hill to our backyard and I shot this video:

You can hear I’m a little freaked out in this video.  You guys…THIS IS WHERE MY KIDS PLAY!!!!

I like the signs that say “Be careful when recreating in bear territory”.  That’s nice.  But all I can think is…what if we LIVE in bear territory??!

So that’s the local scene around me and our two bear sightings.  Not super reassuring.  This has, honestly, led to a stressed-out-me at times.  I love being here.  So so so many adventures.   And I think next I should do one big happy fun-filled post of the super things we’re doing because we are NOT holed up in our house in fear.  But hearing about these attacks is stressful.  Not being able to just relax outside with the kiddos is a big loss in life.  When both sets of Grandparents came to visit it felt like there was a critical mass of adults around so we could recreate outside.  But if it’s just me and the kids?!  Much less fun to be outside.

In a related homestead update: 

We returned home from our most recent travels and saw that the electric fence around the chicken coop and chicken run area is complete (as you could see in the video above too…the electric fence zaps the baby bear in about second #4 of the video and scares it away).

Recently completed electric fence (and chicken wire fence) around the chicken coop and area where they run.

So now we can play outside in our new electric fence playland area.  We haven’t done that yet, but now I need to figure out if being surrounded by 3 active kids and 23 chickens and messing with an electric fence gate is more or less stressful than being outside the electric fence with the bears.

I leave you with this sign hanging in a bathroom while we were traveling:

Sign in a bathroom.

Moose and Wolves and Bears - Oh My!

So the most frequent question to date has been about bears and moose here in Alaska.  Have we seen any?  And, are there safety concerns?  Short answers: yes and yes.

But fear not!  For us ignorant tourists in Denali National Park there was this helpful sign:

If that’s too small to read, here’s the gist:  Try to avoid encounters with bears, moose, and wolves.  BUT, if you DO encounter one of these animals in the wild you NEED to keep your wits about you and remember that the appropriate response for each of these animals is different…

For moose: Run away (or hide behind a tree or car…they attack by clubbing you with their front two hooves and can’t do this if you get behind something big.)  They are protecting their territory and don’t see well, so they’ll ignore you once you leave.

For wolves: Be loud, shout at it, and throw rocks at it to show the wolf that you’re dominant.

For bears: Do NOT run away.  Get big, hands in the air, talk calmly to it, and slowly back away.  If it charges or is aggressive, use pepper spray.  (Also called “bear spray”, which people do hike with here, along with bear bells to make a jingle noise so they hear you coming and move away.)

Of these three animals, no one seems to talk about wolves, and safety signs about them are rare, and I have not yet seen one here, so I don’t think about them.   (One time a curious neighbor dog approached the chickens in our yard while we were outside and, not joking here, Jerami scared it away by using a sling shot to shoot paintballs at the dog.  Then he let the boys shoot paintballs at a tree for fun and they were thrilled.)  But moose and bears generate a lot of discussion even among locals, or in the newspaper, or at festivals, and feel like they are much more a part of life here.  And we have seen both moose and bears in our yard since being here.

MOOSE

First…for sightings.  We have seen moose now at least 6 times, 3 up close and 3 from a distance.  One time we saw a mother moose and her two young moose on the road just down from our duplex…they were maybe 10 yards in front of us and ran away pretty soon after we saw them.   That was cute.  The other time a moose was in our yard and we stood on our deck watching it.  We were safe, but that was an eye opener for me…watching a moose walk where my kids play.

Timothy looking at a moose in our back yard.

Easy escape into the house if it moved closer to us.   And the third close up time with a moose it walked right by our window to the back yard when we were inside at our kitchen table.  So there was a window between us, but we were maybe 10 feet from the moose.  I didn’t get a picture as it happened too fast.

If you ask Matthew his thoughts on moose and bears here, he will enthusiastically tell you that “Moose kill more people in Alaska than bears!”  And he’s right, mostly due to car accidents.  We learned this from Alex, a friend who volunteers on the farm here.  I also heard a story from a lady in the church nursery about a kid who stepped off of a bus in the middle of Anchorage and by terrible luck stepped in between a mother moose and her baby, and the mother attacked and killed this kid.

Later that week Jerami joined us for dinner and told us this story of what we missed in our backyard when we were gone that afternoon…

By his account, he said the gate to the neighbor’s yard had been left unlocked, and somehow the baby moose found its way inside the fenced area, but the mother was stuck on the outside and couldn’t figure out how to get to her baby on the other side of the fence.  And the mother moose was clearly stressed about this.  SO, according to his telling, Jerami opened the gate wide into the neighbor’s yard. Then, he attempted to gently shoo the baby moose out the open gate and reunite baby moose and mother moose.  What could go wrong?  So while trying to shoo the baby moose towards the gate, the mother moose jumps the fence and starts to run towards Jerami so he ran away and hid behind a tree (see National Park Service advice above!!)  Eventually the mother turned towards her baby, Jerami jumped out of the fenced area to safety, and the two moose found their way out of the yard, happy ending.

Of course I am way too sophisticated to fall for a made up story like that.  I’m no dumb tourist and I didn’t believe him and told him exactly that.  Until he pulled out a video on his phone of the story and it all happened just as he told it.   Apparently he wanted a video recording of his death-by-moose-trampling if that came to pass.  So I had to eat my words and be both bummed and thankful we were not home for this incident….we would have had great seats at our living room window for this drama had we been home.

So…is there an extra layer of “excitement” when we go outside in our back yard?  Yes.  And I’m constantly looking around me for moose (and bears…but they get their own post later) and angling to figure out which house door or car is closest and where are my kids relative to me if a moose approached from a given angle.  Needless to say it’s a little hard for me to just relax outside if I’m also watching three kids.  I much prefer to be outside with the kids when there are also other adults around…for more eyes to spot a moose, but also more help if a moose did show up when we were outside.  Or it’s nice to go outside by myself when I’m not responsible for 3 littles…but that’s pretty rare.  So it’s just sort of a part of life here.  I can’t realistically keep three kids cooped up in our duplex (and I don’t want to)…so it’s an accepted risk given the circumstances.  It’s made me think about the psychology of fear, and how I assess risk...what’s a reasonable fear and what’s more hype that I should *try* to move past.  I love love love being here and wouldn’t trade it, but I am looking forward to some relaxed backyard time in Minnesota when I can stop thinking about moose/bears and escape routes for myself and three little kids.  After this I think I need to just post a happy picture from some of our  many awesome adventures…….

Top of Flattop Mountain.  Chugatch Mountains on 3 sides of us, View of Anchorage and the Cook Inlet to the west.  Very cool hike with a steep rock scramble at the end..

This morning we're packing up and hitting the road for a camping trip to visit the Kenai Peninsula and Kenai Fjords National Park.  I'll try to post again after our return.

Hugs to all,

Ann, for all of us

Jupiter Garden...our "yardie" home for the summer

The place where we're living in Anchorage is pretty interesting and worth its own post.  We found it on VRBO advertised as an "urban homestead" and that it's an "eco-friendly accomodation at the foot of the Chugatch mountains"  It's "a 1-acre hobby farm" the owner told us when we spoke on the phone before arrival.  And that's all true as advertised.  But also an understatement.  It's a community of "yardies" and we're living in a fishbowl in the middle of interesting projects and people and animals coming and going.  It's an experience as much as a place to call home here in Anchorage.  And we (mostly) love it.

Our home for these 2+ months is the lower level of a duplex, but since it's built into a hill we still feel high up, and actually have something like 25 steps to walk up to get from the driveway to our mudroom door.  Usually the owner, Jerami, lives on this lower level and rents out the upper level in the summer tourist season.  But he decided to rent out this lower half of the duplex as well, starting this summer.  If someone offered to pay me thousands of dollars to rent out my house for 2 months I'd consider that option too.  (I think we paid somewhere around $6,000 for our 10 week stay here.  And that was on the low end of our options for Anchorage in the summer time.  Winter is cheap though!  How we're affording this could be another post...)

So...we have a duplex to live in, but where does Jerami live now that he rented out both floors of his duplex?  The plan was that he would live in the tiny house that he built on his property.

View of the tiny house from our side deck.

BUT (a recurring theme), he just bought a flock of 25 chickens, and the chicken coop wasn't finished yet, so he moved an old bathtub into the tiny house, and the tiny house became the temporary chicken coop until the real chicken coop was completed.  So Jerami instead moved into the bright structure on the right in this photo:

You may wonder what that is.  One lady who came to visit said it looks like a UFO landed here.  Actually it's a workshop on the lower level, with a greenhouse on top.  And this thing is HUGE.  I'll bet three of the tiny houses could fit in here.  You walk inside and there's a massive ladder in the middle that still doesn't reach the top.  The plank leading up to the greenhouse is to keep the moose out...the plank is too wobbly and unnerving for them so they leave the yummy plants alone.  Bonus is it mostly keeps my kids out too.  So with the duplex rented out, and the chickens in the tiny house, Jerami set up a tent in this backyard greenhouse and called it home.

BUT...what about when Ele was scheduled to arrive?  Ele is a 20-something lady from California.  She enjoys sustainable gardening and met Jerami through Workaway.  She agreed to do 20 hours of work per week here on the property in exchange for free room and board.  So....(we wondered), if the tiny house is claimed by the chickens, and Jerami is living in a tent in a UFO (greenhouse), where is this free room where Ele will stay?  We waited in curious wonder.  So now Ele is here, and she calls the tent in the greenhouse home (the price is right!) while Jerami wanders and patches together places to stay between family and friends, and lives upstairs in the duplex when that's not rented out.

Not your average kitchen window view.  I love it.

Now that the real chicken coop is done (happily funded by our rent money as Jerami told us), the chickens have moved in there and the tiny house is empty.  BUT, the tiny house now stinks of chicken poop, and is uninhabitable until it's cleaned up.  That would seemingly be an urgent project (cleaning up the tiny house) to get Ele out of the greenhouse BUT there are a million other urgent projects.  The chicken coop needs siding.  The chickens need a fence so they're not pooping everywhere in the yard and on walkways and decks.  The property needs an electric fence to keep the bears away from the chickens (and my dear children).  And Jerami mentioned yesterday that the roosters are old enough and thus starting to crow now, and it's illegal to have noisy animals here in Anchorage.  So they'll need to be butchered next week in our back yard and we are all welcome to help with that, including Timothy and Matthew.  (They know that some of the chickens are meat chickens and will be butchered.  I am curious how much they will want to participate in it, or watch, or run away...)  Just put it on the to-do list around here.  Honestly this just starts the list of interesting projects going on around here...more on that some other time.

With all of these projects, Jerami said he considers himself a "yardie"  If you (like I was) are unfamiliar with this term, they describe themselves as "Alaska-based, outdoor-minded subsistence, gardening, permaculture and homesteading nuts."  You can check out the Alaska yardie facebook page, featuring our backyard and chickens: https://www.facebook.com/yardiesak/   or their website here.  I love it.
 
For now, Grandma and Grandpa O'Neill just arrived for a visit (babysitters so I can blog!) so we're off to eat dinner and go to Timothy's soccer game.

Timothy protecting this chicken from Joshua.  All of the boys adore the chickens and love to hold, chase, feed, and/or pet them.

An Alaskan 4th of July

Hi all,

Time to blog!  Time allows for only snippets that do no justice to our time here, but something is better than nothing...

David was off of work now for a week (a week!!) so we've had time for lots of adventures.  Yesterday we went to the main 4th of July celebration in Anchorage, starting with their parade.  There were a greater percentage of military-related floats than the standard MN parade, and lots of motorcycles revving engines and spinning their wheels for the crowd.  Dogs are THE pet to have here, and were also well represented in the parade.  This included an "imaginary dog training" section of the parade, with people holding leashes with imaginary dogs and doing commands with said imaginary dogs.  People bring their dogs (imaginary or not) everywhere here.  The guy (Jerami) whose house we're renting brought his dog (Isla) along to pick us up from the airport.  And Isla rode shot gun in the van whenever she came with us, which was whenever Jerami went anywhere.  So dogs are a big deal.  Even anqique cars in the parade appeal to the storied history of sled dogs here in Alaska:

After the parade we made our way through the crowds at this festival and enjoyed watching this awesome elderly Native American lady dance with the jazz band music.

And we enjoyed some reindeer hot dogs...

This was notable for us because we recently listened to the audio book of "The Impossible Rescue" by Martin Sandler where in the winter of 1897/1898 some brave people (and sled dogs) drove reindeer herds across northern Alaska as a food source to help rescue some whalers who were stranded for the winter at Point Barrow in northern Alaska.  Good read if you like the survival-against-the-odds books.

We came home and the two loaves of sourdough bread I made were ready to bake.  The house we're living in has all kinds of sustainable living projects going on, which inspired me to learn to make bread from a real sourdough starter with wild yeast, instead of commercial store bought yeast.  I honestly didn't even know this was a thing that people did, only to put it together that this is how bread was made for thousands of years until about 100 years ago when commercial yeasts became an option.

Jerami also bought some more fish and plants for the fish tank in our house, so we pulled up a bench to study the new additions.  We've enjoyed having fish without the commitment and cost of it.  The boys have learned that this fish tank is part of the bigger sustainability system here...the nutrients (fish poo) in the water make it great for watering the lime trees in our living room.  So the boys have enjoyed helping with that "chore".

Ele (an awesome young lady doing a Workaway stint here) and the kiddos enjoying the new fish.

While I was making the bread yesterday afternoon I let the kids play in the yard.  When Jerami returned home later he saw the yard and asked (seriously) if a bear had been on the property.  There were flower pots all over.  The recycle bins were disheveled, and logs and boards strewn around.  But no bear.  Just my kids.  So it was time for clean-up-the-yard fun.

While there are technically fireworks at 11pm in Anchorage, they were poo-poohed by a number of people we spoke to.  Still too much light outside at 11pm to really enjoy fireworks.  Anchorage does their serious firework shows on New Year's Eve, when it's nice and dark outside:-)

Instead of fireworks, our 4th wrapped up with dinner...salmon that Jerami had caught (last year, and then froze it), then cooked it for us on the fire this evening.  The boys loved it.  I don't enjoy fish, but this was edible (a raving review in my book...)  That, along with a watermelon (which each cost $7 here in Alaska, so this was our first watermelon of the season here), and the bread I made earlier (dirt cheap!) made for a perfect meal.  We ate outside and finished up in the broad daylight at 10:40pm.  Joshua threw a fit when I took him out of his highchair to be done eating.  But at 10:40pm...it's just time for bed no matter how light it is outside.  Joshua has been up as late as midnight here.  Hard to convince him (and myself) to sleep when it's light outside.

Our 4th of July meal, starring Alaskan salmon

The 5 of us, plus Jerami

Immediately preceding the tantrum...

I'm hoping to blog more...not sure if anyone other than my Mother will read this but feel free to ask questions in the comments section if there's something you're curious about...

Love to all,

Ann, for all of us