Northland News
January 2002
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
I learned a valuable lesson last night. I was finishing up a shift as copyeditor at the Anchorage Daily News and went out to get in my car and drive home at about midnight. Knowing that I had seen hoof prints in the parking lot when I had arrived eight hours earlier, and recalling that another editor had mentioned a moose strolling through the parking lot, I kept a careful eye out lest we meet unexpectedly (a sure loser for me!).
Mooseying Along
Now why would a moose come visiting the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) employee parking lot, you ask. Well, like the Bohemian waxwings, who are partial to the berries, moose like to munch on mountain ash trees, and the landscapers of said parking lot included plenty of them, interspersed with spruce trees.
The lesson I learned? Don't park by the mountain ash! I had to stand out in the cold for about 15 minutes waiting for the cow moose to finish chomping and move away from my car before I felt it was safe to approach. As it was, in the five or so minutes it took me to then scrape the ice off my windows, I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure my deer friend had really gone over the hill and wasn't coming back for an after-dinner snack.
In December, a rather good-sized bull moose brought his lady love to the ADN parking lot and spend a considerable amount of time dining on the mountain ash that surround the dining patio (which the humans don't use in the winter, for obvious reasons). Some of the news photographers went out to get some nice close-ups, and the well-racked bull appeared on the front page of the paper a few days later.
Meanwhile, I was noticing that the cow who accompanied him was standing further away . . . and right in front of my car! Of course, because she was long gone by the time I left work that night, I didn't think anymore about it. However, with the second potential encounter last night, I think I've got that lesson nailed.
Winter Scenario
This has been a bizarre winter. It began in the fall (see "Northland News" for November 2001) with a couple of heavy snow falls in October. Then November was mighty chilly. Temperatures dropped to the single digits, including those with a minus sign in front of them, and stayed there for the majority of the month. Broke some records, I believe, for duration of subzero temperatures in November. And, compared to last year (winter 2000-2001), when we didn't even have any snow in November, it really seemed like we were going to have a real winter this year.
The day before Christmas, that all went to hell -- or at least the fires of same made an appearance and started melting all the snow. For a little while. Then everything froze again, and we started playing ice hockey on the Glenn Highway, using automobiles for pucks. After a brief cold snap and then another cleansing (covers up all the ugly) snow fall, it looked really nice for a while. The snow clustered in the branches of bushes making the yard look like a cotton crop. And snow hung on the vertical trunks of birch for an exquisite white-on-white portrait, especially when the sky was clear and a full moon illuminated the yard.
All well and good until the first week in January. Then it started melting again (fortunately, with about two to two and a half feet of snow having fallen over all, it never melted all the way to bare ground). Then the wind blew. So my yard got redecorated with a whole bunch of birch and aspen twigs and some not so twig-sized branches. And one night I heard a mighty whoosh and thump; next day I discovered that the accumulated snow on the pitched roof of my home had all slid off in one big pile of frozen slush. Unfortunately, the eaves off which it all slid are right above the front walk and the garage doors.
I left it. Shoveling that stuff is a little like trying to move masses of half-hardened concrete with a gardening trowel.
Slipping and Sliding
And, given that I was again celebrating annual incapacitate-your- dominant-hand-and-arm month (actually, I've decided that it's in recognition of my daughter and my daughter-in-law, both with birthdays in December and both southpaws, that end up unable to use my right hand/arm each December), doing any shoveling was beyond me for the duration.
December 2000 was surgery on my right shoulder. This year's entry into the incapacitate-etc. was to slip at Fred Meyers and instinctively put out my right hand to break the fall. Well, I broke the fall, and fortunately I didn't break my hand; but I did tear all the ligaments in my right wrist. The only advantage a severe sprain like that has over a broken wrist is that I could remove the "cast/brace" to take a shower. I injured my wrist on December 4 and am still having some trouble using that hand for some things.
The other part of slipping and sliding that is kinda scary is when we have these freeze-thaw syndromes and people keep trying to drive on the Glenn Highway as if it were a dry summer day. Today when I drove into Anchorage (it's about 22 miles from my house to downtown, with all but about six miles of that on the Glenn), I passed seven serious accidents, including two with complete turnovers, in less than six miles of highway. And, of course, certain [censored] kept trying to weave their way, at 65-70 mph) through the traffic slowed to go around flares and emergency vehicles. I just hope none of them takes me along when he spins out!
More on Moose
When the moose were wandering around at the Daily News, I was impressed with how small their hoof prints are. For such large animals (the largest of the deer family . . . and we're talking five feet at the shoulder folks -- something like a Percheron with antlers), they have amazingly slender legs and small hooves. However, don't think they are fragile or anything. A moose can stomp another animal (or a human) to death faster than the eye can follow. It's happened. I don't mess with moose; I believe in mutual respect . . . and hope they do, too.
The other morning, I looked out my bedroom window (second story) and saw very widely spaced footprints marching across the snow in my side yard. Looked like the abominable snowman or relative had paid a visit. Then I realized these were moose tracks. Although the individual hoof prints are small, the length of the stride for this animal is about four feet (well, four feet between where each of the four feet falls . . . . oh, to heck with it; either you get it or you don't). Sure enough, when I went to put more black oiled sunflower seeds in my backyard bird feeder for the black-capped and boreal chickadees, I found a nice pile of moose marbles left as a token by my midnight visitor.
Ever wonder what the cow catcher on the front of the engine for an Alaska Railroad train is called? Why, moose gooser, of course!
Solstice
One of my friends (yup--that was you, Maria) asked about solstice up here, commenting that December 21 was the shortest day and now days would start getting longer. Well, not exactly. Here's how it works, at least here.
The winter solstice was December 21. Many people think that's when the Earth is farthest from the sun. Not so. Technically, in the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice is the point on the celestial sphere -- an imaginary, infinite sphere with Earth as it center -- where the sun is farthest south of the celestial equator, a circle formed on the celestial sphere by the plane of the Earth's equator. Got that?
It's also the date associated with this annual event on which the sun appears to stand still, hence the word solstice, which comes from the Latin word "solstitium," meaning "standing sun." Our winter solstice coincides with the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere (and vice versa).
Alaskans like to think that every morning after the winter solstice will get a little brighter a little earlier, however minutely.
Doesn't happen that way. The Sun did not get up a moment earlier on December 21. In fact, it actually slept in a minute more. Didn't even peek over the theoretical horizon until about 10:15 a.m. (And for those who live in the shadow of Highland Mountain on the other side of Eagle River, old man Sol didn't rise at all!)
It gets worse, if you happen to suffer from seasonal sun deprivation. The sun didn't come up any earlier on the 22nd either. Nor on the 23rd . . . or the 24th. In fact, it didn't rise one minute earlier until December 30, more than a week after the official solstice.
What's this? Is the Earth lagging or the Sun loafing? According to the best minds in the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Earth rotates at a constant rate, essentially. But for other reasons, the solstice -- the shortest day -- doesn't coincide with the latest sunrise. Sunrise times are affected by the Earth's tilt, the eccentricity of its orbit, and its speed around the sun, which unlike its spin, changes throughout the year.
There are other contributing factors for this seeming anomaly. The sun is a disk, not a point, and sunrise is defined as the first appearance of the sun's surface over the horizon -- not when the entire sun is visible. Earth's atmosphere also bends the sun's light so it is visible before it otherwise would be. Those last two factors alone can add almost 15 minutes of sunlight to a day.
Bottom line is that December 21 was the shortest day of the year . On December 18, Anchorage had its earliest sunset of the year at 3:40 p.m. Local sunset actually started nudging later by a minute every day since then.
Okay, so it's a looooooot lighter longer now that it's January. Why, tomorrow (January 19) we will have six hours, 40 minutes, and five seconds of daylight. Amazing! Time to break out the shorts and tanning lotion.
One more bit of techie talk about sunrises, sunsets, solstices and the like. I heard this one on the radio: Civil twilight is defined as when the center of the sun is six degrees or less below the horizon. Ya gotta know that so you'll know when to turn on the headlights -- if you're not smart enough to keep 'em on all the time while driving.
Eagle River and Fog
I haven't seen all that many eagle scrounging snacks at the Eagle River fire station this winter, but I still get a kick out of watching the ravens gather and circle, then fly off in small groups up Eagle River Valley to wherever it is ravens roost for the night in the Chugach foothills. I also enjoy seeing the river of fog that hangs about 100 feet above the river in a narrow path above the river's course through the valley.
When ice fog descends on the town, we end up with a most beautiful display of winter magic -- hoar frost. The moisture in the air settles on every surface and coats it with a fuzzy layer of frost that sparkles in the sun after the fog lifts. Every twig, wire, dead flower stalk and fence chain link wears a fluffy winter coat. Kids will write Suzy loves Sammy (or whatever) in the frost on a chain ink fence; ravens stopping to perch on a branch will dislodge flutters of frost. The stalks of a hibernating summer garden come alive with new beauty.
Speaking of gardens, in the winter we also grow things: icicle radishes, snow peas . . . .
That, my friends, is a the look of the Northland from my perspective for January 2002.
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