Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Hiiiiii.  There are lots of boxes and bags happening right now.  And allergies (I still love you, Michigan).  How about an indulgent interstitial post to transition from Alaska to Antarctica?  And how about we include lots of unnecessary interrogative phrases and marks?

That drive up the Dalton Highway?  Not too shabby.  After reading warnings of basketball-chomping potholes, my already vigilant eyes and white knuckles shifted into DEFCON 2, and though my giant SUV got totally covered in mud, it wasn't hurt a bit.  But you don't want to hear about paranoid parallel pipeline propulsion, do you?  (Disclaimer: this is not the highway, but you can see the pipeline pretty well, right?)

Now you've seen what it looks like by the Arctic Circle.  Also, there were crazy auroras shimmering iridescent green and purple spanning the entire Milky-Way-bedazzled sky.  What, iPhones don't take great pictures in low light?

Chris and the crew at Coldfoot made me very welcome, complete with raging 20-foot bonfire, tour and talk with local off-the-grid-subsistence-hunter-log-cabin guy, and my first (last?) time shooting a revolver (guns are fun?).

A nice 12-hour train ride gives one plenty of time to contemplate the past, present, future...really, any thought you've ever had swirls through your brain when trying to pass the time.  To be fair, one hour was pretty spectacular, taking in the gorge near where I worked.  Isn't that nice?

Now, what trip to Alaska would be complete without a jaunt in a small plane to some remote locale?  More than twenty years later, I still have a healthy fear of living out the story in Hatchet, where a kid crash lands in a bush plane and survives alone in the wilderness thanks to his hatchet.  So I went on a small jet to Dutch Harbor, America's answer to Scandinavia's charm-packed, mountainous fishing outposts.

Is that a picture of an ancient Greek temple?  No, it's the view of Captain's Bay halibut processing boats from inside a WWII concrete bunker.  I'm sorry, what?

Let's move on, then, shall we?  The last leg of travel took me south to Cooper's Landing and more good company.  With little warning, Cat kindly hooked me up with my own tent, got me fed and watered and sauna'd and river dunked, and guided me to one of the prettiest hikes this side of a waterfall as well as to the Exit Glacier toe.  See how much it's receded since 2010?

And that's going to have to be enough Alaska to be getting on with for a while.  A new era has begun: I purchased a new backpack today.  How many dirty bus station floors will you scoot across, New Blue?  How many tiny travel bottles of shampoo will ooze into your pores?  Will you be too young to remember your first trip to New Zealand, innocent and free of invasive plant materials?  Reader, tune in to the next post to find out.

Last Hurrahs

It's September the 1st, time to get on the Hogwarts Express.  Tomorrow, actually, I'll step aboard the Denali Star and head north to Fairbanks.  From there, I'll start a long, arduous journey to visit some far-flung parts of the state, including Coldfoot (hi Chris!), Dutch Harbor, and Cooper Landing (hi Cat and Jams!).  After semi-solo-touristing, there's just time enough for a whirlwind visit to Michigan to procure new shoes and sock and attend my brother's wedding (YAY!), before continuing on to Antarctica.  For those of you in this only for the penguin photos and not the bitter vitriol, congratulations, there's just a few more weeks before the regularly scheduled program returns.

So many fun things happened this summer, I'm really happy two of the best were saved for (almost) last: I made it onto the catwalk under the big bridge over the river.  The views are stunning, and you can hang your feet over the edge and feel a little badass.  The other great thing I did was whipped-cream-pie one of my favorite coworkers in the face yesterday at the end of my last shift.  He is known for perpetrating this act, so I was simply acting in preemptive defense.  I even hand-whipped the cream.

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: