Shuyak Island

Kodiak Island, on which the town of Kodiak is located, is only one of many islands in the Kodiak Archipelago. This large collection of islands is about as big as Connecticut. In addition to Kodiak city, the archipelago has six villages. All but one are located on Kodiak island, and all six are off the road system. 

Most of the archipelago is uninhabited by humans and untouched by marks of civilization such as roads, electricity, and cell phone reception. This includes Shuyak Island, located at the northern end of the Kodiak Archipelago. Most of the island's wilderness is part of Shuyak Island State Park, which T, Rainbow, my parents, and I visited this week. 

So how did we get to such a place? Well, we chartered a six-seater float plane to take us there. Both on the way out to Shuyak Island and on the way back, we flew low enough over the land and ocean that I could see individual seagulls flying over the water. 

It's a strange feeling watching an airplane fly away after dropping you off on a remote island. 

We stayed in Deer Haven, a rustic State Park cabin located about 100 feet from a calm rocky beach on Carry Inlet. We were the first guests of the season and had to do a bit of housekeeping to get the dusty cabin inhabitable for our three-night stay. 

Amenities on the premises included an outhouse (with a door that had rotted off its hinges); an outbuilding equipped with a hanging bucket that could, at least in theory, be filled with hot water for a shower; a stocked wood shed; a metal sink connected to a bucket outside the cabin that could be filled with water; a wood burning stove; and two sets of bunk beds consisting of thin, dusty foam pads glued to wooden boards. The cabin's fresh water supply had been mostly cut off by the local beavers, so we were glad T had thought to bring 10 gallons of drinking water with us.

I suppose we would have been surprised if we HADN'T seen deer from our cabin, given its name.

This picture doesn't do justice to the golden evening light. 

Somehow, miraculously, we had four warm, spectacularly sunny days and spent most of our time on the beach near our cabin. We gathered sand dollars and looked for crabs and jelly fish in the clear water of the inlet. We made a fire on the beach each evening. We cooked our suppers on the open fire and roasted marshmallows while we watched fish jump and listened to Canada geese, oyster catchers, and loons call to each other. 

Marshmallows!

We went for walks in the woods and saw lots of signs of bears but, luckily, never came across one. It wasn't quite the right season for fishing in that area, but my dad still gave it a try for the first time in his life. 

All in all, the trip was everything a vacation should be. T and I were delighted to get to see the more "wild" side of Kodiak and to share that with someone else. 

On the beach with all of our wilderness gear, waiting for the plane to pick us up

Easter

Since my daughter has turned two, I have felt more pressure (coming only from myself, mind you) to do more traditional activities during holidays. This presented a bit of a challenge at Easter time, since Rainbow's food allergies essentially prevent her from eating eggs or candy (other than the expensive "allergy-free" sweets you can get at health food stores). This did not deter us from going on not one, not two, but three Easter egg hunts and from dying eggs (I can't eat them, either, so she didn't feel quite as left out as she would have otherwise). 

Sunshine? No coats? Yes, Saturday's weather was that awesome.

The city-wide egg hunt at Baranov Park (within walking distance of our house) featured 5,000 eggs. Even timid kids like Rainbow actually stood a chance of getting a few eggs.

Unfortunately, all of the eggs had chocolates in them which Rainbow couldn't eat, but she didn't even seem to mind giving  them all away to other children. 

Our eggs didn't turn out very bright because  we used organic, cage-free brown eggs (yes, we are those kind of people), but Rainbow still had a lot of fun coloring them.

Easter Sunday's weather was more typical of Kodiak and of what I expect Easter's weather to be like--cold and wet. 

Almost every egg hidden in our yard was covered with slugs. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get Rainbow to pick them up at all. 

After hunting for eggs in our own yard, we went to another egg hunt at a friend's house. We didn't have an Easter ham or any of the other traditional foods, but we had a fun day anyway!

A sunny day and a snowy day

I keep hearing people who have lived in Kodiak longer than I have saying that this has been a difficult winter with an abnormal amount of rain and even less sun than usual. So last month when we had a "warm," sunny day one weekend and a snowy day the next, both were unusual, and we got out and enjoyed the weather as much as possible.

We had a picnic at the end of the road at Chiniak. It only takes a little over an hour to drive out there (well, longer if you have a recently potty-trained toddler who is obsessed with peeing outside).

There are always wonders to be found on the beach.

It may surprise you to know that Kodiak gets very little snow. March 20 was our first real snow of the winter--and our very first opportunity to take Rainbow sledding. She loved it!  

It was a good thing we went sledding in the morning, because even by noon much of the snow had melted. That's very typical for Kodiak. 

XTRATUF

Before I moved to Kodiak, I had never heard of the word "XTRATUF." When I first saw it written, I thought it was an egregious spelling error. Now the word is a part of my everyday vocabulary, and I think of Xtratuf boots as a totally legitimate, year-round, all-purpose footwear option. 

These boots are such a part of Kodiak's culture that the theme of

Crab Fest last year was "Xtratuf Small Town." The boots themselves are an emblem of the informal and egalitarian values of our community, as they are worn by everyone from hard-working local fishermen to immigrant cannery workers to teachers to doctors. Xtratufs are worn to the grocery store, to the beach, to church, and to work. They are worn with fishing gear, with workout clothes, with church clothes, with work clothes. And they are worn by young and old. 

Now they are worn by my two-year-old daughter, who got her first pair about a week ago. She was delighted when she realized that the boots allowed her to splash in deep puddles and even stand in the ocean like Daddy can. I was delighted watching my child--born in Maryland but for all intents and purposes an "Alaska baby"--enjoy her new boots. 

I know there are things that Rainbow is missing out on by growing up here. We don't have a children's museum, or a zoo, or a water park. We don't have a Waldorf school, or a Montessori school, or a foreign language immersion school. We only have one stop light, one move theater, one high school. But we have eagles, and sea lions, and otters, and starfish, and sea anemones. We have tide pools and lakes and rivers. We have forests and beaches and mountains. And we have our Xtratuf boots that help us keep our feet dry and warm as we explore that great outdoors.

Finally, a sunny day

It's been a while since I've written a post, and that is due mainly to three factors:

1. A ridiculous series of illness in members of my family beginning in November
2. Gloomy, cold, rainy weather 
3. Full-time work

That is not to say that we haven't been enjoying ourselves up here on Alaska's Emerald Isle. It's just that we haven't been doing much that is "blog worthy." 

Today we went on our first real outing in months, to nearby Anton Larsen Bay. There was no wind, the sky was a glorious cloudless blue, and we were quite comfortably warm in our winter layers. 

It almost made me like February.

Almost.

Female common merganser

View of the quiet and calm bay

Picnic in the car before our hike

Frosty rose hip

Walking along the trail--the plastic grates help keep it accessible for off-road vehicles even when muddy.

Fall

I don't know exactly how many minutes of daylight we are losing each day right now, but it's enough of a difference from day to day to be noticeable. It seems like one day I was walking to work with morning sunlight; the next I was walking to work as the sun was rising; and the third I was walking in the dark. There will come a time when I am also walking home in the dark.

But that time has not yet come! For now, as our time allows, we are trying to enjoy the fall colors. Last Sunday, when we woke up to an unexpectedly rain-free morning, we took some time do a family photo shoot with my talented friend Jessica. Here are some of the pictures she took. 

 

That point in our relationship

If Kodiak and I were dating, we'd be at that point in our relationship now where all of those personality quirks that you find adorable and endearing at the beginning start to lose their appeal or even become a little annoying. 

At the beginning of our relationship, I would have thought things like You only have one grocery store? That's so cute, or You only bring out the sun once every two weeks? I love how you do your own thing! or Your road system only has about 100 miles worth of roads to drive on? Oh, so daring!

Don't get me wrong; I still love Kodiak. I'm just starting to wonder a little bit about why. I keep trying to remind myself that a lot of this has to do with the time of year and the weather. I haven't seen the sun since last Tuesday (today is Wednesday). I've lived in places where the weather is glorious, sometimes even hot, in May. But Kodiak isn't the first place I've lived where I've wanted to punch Mother Nature in the face by the end of this month. (Powell, Wyoming, for example, was intolerably dreary in May every year that I lived there.)

For now, I'll try to focus on the fact that dreary weather doesn't mean I have nothing to look forward to. My last day of work before summer vacation is this Friday. Crab Fest, the biggest Kodiak event of the year, is this weekend. Next month, we'll go on a trip to the mainland to visit T's parents in Anchor Point and to go to Anchorage. I'm hoping that, by the time we get back to Kodiak in mid-June, it will feel a little more like summer here.

Spring

It's been a while since I've blogged. I have a lot of excuses, but none of them are particularly interesting. Suffice to say that it's been a long winter so far in 2015. 

Despite T.S. Eliot's claim that April is the cruelest month--and my general tendency to agree with him--I am feeling cautiously hopeful that things are taking a turn for the better. Our signs of spring here in Kodiak may be more subtle than in most other places where I've lived, but they are here. Temperatures are inching up above 40 degrees Fahrenheit/4.4 Celsius (yes, that's warm here). Crocuses and hyacinths are blooming, and tulips are coming up from their gentle beds in people's yards. Salmonberry bushes are sprouting green buds, and today I even saw a few bright pink salmonberry flowers.

Yesterday we had a brilliantly blue, cloudless sky all day (I can't remember the last time that happened), and while the sun made itself scarcer than that today, it wasn't raining, which in Kodiak officially makes it a good day for a hike.

We went to a place called Women's Bay, a few miles outside of town. It's a very calm bay near the Coast Guard base that's a great place for bird watching. The tide was low, and we were able to walk out on a small strip of rocky beach that's usually underwater, and up a gently sloping grass-covered hill with great views of the bay. We're hopeful that the weather will hold out tomorrow, which is Easter Sunday, so that we can go for another hike and watch for more signs of spring.

For several yards, there were dozens of walnuts lined up on the shore. I can't even come up with a theory about how or why this happened.

Ice on the beach