Fall is here, and almost past

If you go to the east coast of the USA, and especially the northeast, you will find all kinds of fall colors. Alaska, however, has only one fall color: yellow. The birches and the aspens turn yellow, and we have no maples to turn red. However, we have very pretty scenes.
I took this picture one cold morning (about 4C) by Little Lonely Lake. This is a mix of aspens and birches. They both turn yellow. A few bushes do go to red, but it is not obvious in the picture. Meanwhile there is little Lonely Lake itself:
I love shots with elaborate reflections, courtesy of Mother Nature, and this one has them all. Look at the cloud reflection!

As I write, the wind has been busy blowing off the leaves. Birches and aspens are ready for winter. My lilac tree is ignoring these warning signs. We will hope it is right. There are lots of things to do before winter sets in and I'd hate to be caught short. I am not quite up to snuff yet and my son has been helping, thank heavens.

Usually in Alaska snow does not come until the end of October. But again, you do not know. This is the "cold" season of the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), which should be caled tridecadal. There is a La Nina running, so who knows!

Termination Dust

In the old days of Alaska, there was gold mining and little else. The sourdoughs, as the old prospectors were called (what we call "newbies" were called cheechakos) would work a claim, panning or placer according to your means; it was all well as long as nuggets came out in the wash, as it were. But sooner or later you would get nothing but a thin sprinkling of gold dust. This meant your claim was worked out; the dust was called termination dust. No more gold; time to go somewhere else.

In modern Alaska, the term "termination dust" now means the first snowfall on the mountaintops. Fall is officially finito. Today I drove down to big Lake to do some grocery shopping; as I drove over the hill there it was -- termination dust. The storm that put it there didn't have enough horsepower (or wattage, if you prefer) to push over the mountains, but it left a new coat of snow. It means winter is here. Having put the snow tires on the car yesterday, I have completed the essential chores. I only regret I didn't take a picture -- I even had the camera, but didn't think of it. Blast. Maybe tomorrow I can return and do the picture.

Added next day: I did.
The light was awful -- flat and washed out. But you can see the Chugach mountains south of me. This was taken from about mile 60 on the Parks highway, which connects Wasilla with Fairbanks. My new camera needs a while to focus and the shot is not so good, but at least you can see t6he dust on the mountains!

Sun shining, fall coming, scenic shots

We have had two (count them, two) days of clear skies. I feel that I ought to call my doctor and report hallucinatory symptoms. "Er, doctor, the sky is this peculiar color, light blue, and there's this big bright ball up in the sky. I have to be going crazy."

Instead I took the camera and went out in search of likely victims. One such was Little Lonely lake at dawn.
I love the reflection of the lenticular cloud on the lake. I am a sucker for reflection shots! More seasonable was the birch tree in fall colors:
Right at the end of Bery road. Appropriate, because "Beryozova" means more or less "of the birches" in Russian.

It has been a very difficult summer for scenics. It has been dull and gray most of the time, and the colors just don't come through. So I'm glad to get these shots. I have news from the garden. Next post coming up.

Stihl Life

If you live in bush Alaska, you must go with the seasons. In spite of my fireweed poll, summer will soon be over and it it is time (and past time) to attend to the woodpile. The trouble with doing this in the fall is that it is too late for the wood to dry out during the summer. Thus you will be plagued with wet wood all winter. The ideal time to get you firewood in is the spring, but unfortunately this year there were a number of obstacles, not the least of which is that Lysander's battery went kaput and it's a long way into Anchorage.

Anyway, I did collect a lot of Road Kill. This is my name for wood that falls across the road in winter, and is cut up by snowplow crews and left lying by the side of the road.
Parsifal, the small chain saw, stands next to the sawbuck on which reposes my almost new Stihl safety helmet/earmuff/face guard, a yard sale find at $20. Behind sawbuck is roadkill tree.

It is not the chainsawing that is hard. It is muscling the victim up on the sawbuck. The road crews cut it into arbitrary lengths, say a meter and a half; these logs weigh 20-30 Kg each, and you muscle it twice, once up on the sawbuck, and then again to heave it into a pile. At the end of the program, I figure I moved half a ton of wood. The photo was taken during one of my save-my-back breaks. The official Chalupy droob is 45cm long, because the aperture on my stove is 50cm (it is a Canadian stove and hence thankfully metric), so the sawing isn't arbitrary. If you do not know what a droob might be, I must refer you to the celebrated comic strip BC.

All chainsaws are not alike. If all you're doing is cutting wood for fun, as in "suburban use," why any mass-market chainsaw will serve your needs, and remember that you have to sharpen the chain. Frequently. But if you are doing big sawing, there are but two names: Stihl and Husqvarna. There's not much to choose between them, but I happen to have two Stihls, big Siegfried and small Parsifal. Siegfried is running again, after I replaced his whole fuel line. He is older, and hence more temperamental, but much more powerful. So for really big cuts, Siegfried gets the nod. But no matter how big the chainsaw, you still (Stihl?)
have to sharpen the chain.

One of these days I will do a post on chainsaw sharpening. Just so you don't think I'm bigoted, I also own a McCullough electric chainsaw. I use it all the time, in fact I use it by preference. It is lighter than the Stihls, and starts every time. Unfortunately there are very few power outlets in the woods, so Black Mac's range is limited.

Mush! No snow? No problem!

Many people in Alaska enjoy driving dog teams in the winter. Indeed, when the famed Iditarod race is going on, nobody pays any attention to anything else. But dogs must be trained, starting right now. And there is no snow on the ground! What's a musher to do? Ah, no problem:
Simply hook your team to your ATV (or 4-wheeler, or quad bike) and you're set to go. This ingenious Alaskan solution to the no-snow problem could become a fad, come to think of it; you could even find an ATV with a bad engine on the cheap. Excellent gas mileage, too; but you do have to clean up after the dogs. Not recommended in urban areas.

The dogs, by the way, are started, steered, and stopped with voice commands. "Gee", "haw", "whoa", "let's go" will get you left, right, stop, and start.

More on dog racing will come later.