Fall Colors + Monster Truck + Mystery Tour

Wouldn't it be fun and festive to change color every season?  (Like way more than tanning.)  When you sense that change in the air, the forlorn sound of the wind, and want to eat soup all the time...what if those fall feelings thickened our skin, colored our hair aflame, turned our eyes/veins/fingernails purple?  I suppose it's just as well we don't dry out and blow away.

Nothing complements a contemplative, blustery autumn hike quite like a ride in the back of a pickup truck outfitted with monster truck tires and a cooler full of beer, etc.  'Lil patriotic flag -- check.  Lap blankets -- check.  Evidently well-known country music on a small speaker -- check.  I think we affected the course of the river, smashing over the gravel embankments too many times to count.  It was ten times more 'Murican (merkin?) than ATVing.

Ok, my Alaska travel plans are much less mysterious than they were five hours ago when I scribbled out that headline.  I will brave the Dalton Highway, a "high-speed gravel road," piloting a rented SUV equipped with spare tires (yes, plural), a CB radio, water and snacks, and cross my fingers that it goes better than that time I drove a rental van containing all my earthly possessions and sideswiped a delivery truck a couple blocks from the Holland Tunnel entrance (that would be leaving Manhattan, folks).  It's been over four months since then (that's almost 2 1/2 years in dog years), so I'm pretty sure I got that out of my system.

Why is this happening?  I'm not completely sure, but there's a good chance of seeing multi-colored auroras up north of the Arctic Circle, as well as pretty neat rocks.

-I only sold one oatmeal today, technically after breakfast hours.  #NeverSurrender #YouCantKilltheOatmeal

Help from the Grey-Eyed Goddess

She's a workhorse of a stove.  The oven runs hot and the door squeals something fierce, but you can put out a lot of food with four big blue flames and a few square feet of flat-top.  (Not pictured: deep fryer, conveyor-belt toaster, really old microwave.)

My breakfast days are an amalgam of hope and frustration, wherein fleeting moments of satisfaction akin to those of executing intricately contrapuntal piano exercises are followed by seeming hours of personal failure manifested as incompletely flipped eggs and mangled toast.  When the board is clear and you haven't run out of anything yet, the potential for a positive outcome returns: new eggs liquidly conform to their temporary circular habitat and gently, inexorably coagulate.  Manage to be there at the right moment and you can plate a thing of beauty and a joy for breakfast.

But sometimes all the voices' ruckus can't be addressed with merely two hands.  "I'm burning!" "Flip me, hurry!" "I need to be buttered..." "Buuuurp, excuse me, better clean that up."  Which leaves you smashing your hands across the keyboard, so to speak (ie: repeat "fuckfuckfuck" as necessary), drowning out the clamor of mistakes and inattention with your own cacophony.

So it's nice that only happens two days a week.  It practically feels like goofing off the other days, making chili and casesar dressing and candied walnuts and corn muffins.

Oatmeal update: Apparently the cereal grain gods disapprove of my shit-talking, and avenged themselves upon me with an unprecedented volume of oatmeal orders (like 30 bowls in an hour and a quadruple to-go order).  I hereby stick a spoon in the ground and offer up the finest joints of burnt toast in appeasement.

Also, I got to ride in a helicopter -- for three minutes!  The hiking guide happened to choose the closest mountain ridge to the the take-off point, but what we lacked in heli time we made up for in hiking and seeing of awesome landscape.  Hurray for fresh air and employee comps!

Bonhomie

On a rare night without (much) rain, the bus costume party became a ping-pong and bonfire party.  Pippi here shared her infectious joy, and enough margaritas to swim in did their part.  Despite trying to eggwash-and-sesame-seed myself, I was unable to attend as one of the baker Chelsea's buns.  I was also thwarted in my attempt to wrap myself in toilet paper, a la mummy.  And I didn't stand a chance against Dan(i) in gorgeous drag.  But it was fun, and being a responsible old person, I was in bed by midnight.

A long time ago, I started school, and liked some of the people and some of them liked me.  Then I went to another school, and didn't like most people and most people didn't like me.  Then I switched again, and made some of my best friends still to this day.  Partly, it seemed like a fluke, that I better really hold onto those good ones as previous experience wasn't encouraging.  I'm wary of meeting lots of new people and joining groups, but this summer's crew is widely varied and incredibly companionable.  I heart you guys.

Ladybugs and aphids are taking over, and the plants are burnished.  Summer is waning, and there's just enough sunshine to take in all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.

P.S. -- People who get oatmeal at a restaurant still suck.

Animals

So, I could happily turn this into a moss/lichen/fungi-related blog, but I'm not sure my rusty knowledge of the Calvin cycle (whoo, ATP power!) could really carry us through several months' worth of posts.  How about instead I catch you up on more macro-level biological happenings?

Most important, mom and dad are visiting!  And they brought rare clear(ish) skies with them.  We took a bus two-thirds of the way along the park road and saw Denali itself gleaming in sunlight, numerous caribou, a few groups of celebrated Dall sheep (whose near-extinction helped motivate the organization of the park), a couple moose, ptarmigan, a golden eagle, and pretty much everything but a bear -- though we did stop to look at recently impressed paw prints.  There were endless stunning mountains and river beribboned valleys.

Last week was basically dedicated to revelry.  The teen boy squad (our fabulous 18-21 year old troop of dishwashers) had been hard at work building Shantytown, their very own nest in the woods beside our dorm, complete with tarp awning, extra car seats, wooden platform, and high-rise triple-decker hammock.  They hosted a shack-warming party-cum-talent show, offering grilled cheese and jungle juice to all who came.  People kept their acts close to the chest, and we were all thrilled and chilled by the feats of intellect, artistry, and brute force onion eating.  If it had been my vote, I think my friend who perseveringly sat in a tiny chair and ate an onion for TEN MINUTES should have won, but, astonishingly, I won after singing a little song, and was ennobled with a lovingly constructed cardboard-and-beflagged-toothpick crown.  Then we all drunkenly harassed the bartenders next door.  Then we had our own little Drunk History night.  Then a group of us drove up to town for a real live bluegrass show with like 1,000 people, more than I've seen in weeks.

It's all a nice lead up to 33.  I aged a few extra years in the last twelve months, but maybe acting 23 will even out feeling 43.

All About Lichen

-And check out that moss, too.  I first became fascinated by lichen when my group (rock on, Aud and Steph!) took on the entire biological history of the Cretaceous Period in eighth grade science.  That's the 80 million or so years that followed the Jurassic, and whose end marked the mass extinction not just of dinosaurs but all kinds of life.  Flowering plants, ginkgos, mammals, and marsupials all ramped up, and true grasses populated wherever there was open land.  I had previously found these pseudo-plant-fungi* beings pretty, but my appreciation swelled as I learned about their mastery of the entire world.

*Lichen is a composite organism comprised of symbiotic algae (or cyanobacteria) and fungal filaments.  Lichens grow pretty much anywhere, on anything (inside rocks; blows around in the air), and are some of the longest-living beings on the planet.  They slowly pulverize rocks into fertile soil.

Now, this description is so nicely worded, I will copy it from Wikipedia: "Lichens may have tiny, leafless branches (fruticose), flat leaf-like structures (foliose), flakes that lie on the surface like peeling paint (crustose), or other growth forms."  Just reading the word "crustose" would throw me into a ten-minute giggle in Mr. Chapple's classroom.  

Without further ado, check this shit out:

Also, continuing my adorable mushroom photo trend, I did not compose the elements of this picture -- nature just put them there this charmingly:

Shaka Brah

Ok, this picture is just clickbait (haha! it worked); sure, ziplining was pretty fun, but I am smiling in surprise at winning my "race" against the guide, who assured me she was not just letting me win.

At any rate, as you can see, I went ziplining (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFIOTEyMT18).  It was kinda rainy, fairly cold, and the helicopter-ride-plus-land-on-a-glacier I thought I had scored that morning was sadly cancelled due to poor visibility.  So, after sitting in the coffee shop for a couple hours wondering what to make of my day off, two friendly coworkers and I decided, what the hell, let's zipline.*

*for free


Yesterday I hiked a semi-arduous path up 1,000 feet in the blustery rain and, after first sweating so much salt stung my eyes, I came home chilled to the bone.  The view was rather foggy, but I happily spotted all kinds of mushrooms, including many rather large specimens.  Like, eight inches across, some concave and filled with nearly a cup of water and forest bits.

Let's see...I'm going to try to make this installment's juicy kitchen tidbit a positive, life-affirming one.  Do you like butter?  Do you like eggs?  Do you wish you could eat like half a stick of butter on top of your eggs?  Make some delicious hollandaise sauce -- it's easy!  Over medium heat, whisk a few egg yolks, a pinch of salt, and a tiny blob of mustard until the mixture feels hot to the touch but the yolks don't scramble into chunks (we're shooting for 110 degrees here).  It will get frothy and thicken.  Remove from heat.  Melt a cup or so of butter, so it's a similar temperature (not scalding, not just room temp).  Now -- SLOWLY is the key -- add a little melted butter to the stuff, whisking constantly and incorporating the oil so it fully emulsifies before adding more butter.  Et voila: magic sauce that is way more delicious than melted butter or warm egg yolk alone, transformed alchemically into orangey gold.  When you make this, think of me eating a fucked up order of eggs Benedict, standing over the trash, sauce dripping off my hands and smeared on my cheek, hoping neither of my bosses will not turn the corner in the next 45 seconds.

Ever Northward

Apparently someone named Claire Veligcan flew over the Arctic Circle:

It was really sweet of them to make out a certificate, freeloader that I was.  And the nice shuttle driver drove me the extra 15 miles home so I wouldn't have to hitchhike at midnight with dubious truckers.

Speaking of truckers, I didn't realize until I arrived at Coldfoot Camp that it is a prominent feature of Ice Road Truckers.  It's one of a handful of places to refuel and get a bite to eat on the highway alongside the oil pipeline (Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay -- 500 miles).  The vibe was surprisingly similar to McMurdo -- lots of heavy machinery, trucks roaring down dirt roads, cafeteria-style buffet, aging utilitarian buildings, and a collection of odd, delightful people that don't want to be anywhere else.  I had to turn around after two hours and fly back as there was no guarantee I'd snag a spot the following day, but I'm determined to return.  The flight itself is fascinating, traversing endless miles of shallow permafrost lakes that mingle with thinning boreal forest before you reach the Brooks Range.  We passed a wind farm as well as a government anti-aircraft microwave test facility (our pilot calmly pointed out the dishes pointed away from us).  And it just so happens to be the time of year fields of purple flowers bloom up north, coloring the hillsides.

It was a very clear night, and Denali was visible most of the way back, pink in the lingering sunset, over a hundred miles away, catapulting above the horizon.  (It looked a lot more awesome with my eyes than this camera-phone-shot-through-the-window.)

  


I was all set to lay off the cafe patrons this week, but then someone ordered deconstructed halibut tacos with substitutes for wheat and dairy allergies (which = four bites of fish + cabbage pile + limp corn tortilla).  Would it be too scary to have us place your fish bites and cabbage pile on the tortilla for you?  You want to do that step yourself, or do you just like using extra dishes?  Thankfully, I had handed over the reins momentarily to another cook, took a moment to close my eyes and shake my head, and continued slicing onions while she dealt with this inanity/insanity.*

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*You could stop reading now, or you could proceed with caution and take in this footnote about the purpose of a restaurant.  I suppose I'm in the minority here, but I have always operated under the assumption that businesses, while providing courteous and thorough customer service, must have some sort of limit to what they do.  For instance, at the shoe store are a bunch of items with prices.  Do you say, "Gosh, I'm in the mood for suspenders, could you guys whip me up a pair?  Or perhaps you could dye these shoes for me, as I'd prefer them a different color."  I could see how an optimist/narcissist might be tempted to ask...but in fact, no, your typical shoe store does not have a secret cache of somewhat-related accessories, nor do they manufacture products at a moment's notice.  Perhaps what you're looking for is a cobbler, who, for several hundred dollars, would painstakingly construct your most detailed footwear desires.  And those of you who would like something not on the menu -- the list of stuff we just spent at least a day prepping and cooking and heating so you could breeze in and eat meatloaf without waiting three hours -- what you're looking for is a private chef.  They would be thrilled to stop everything and make a single serving of mac and cheese for your kid for the market rate of $50-100/hour.