If you get my blog posts by email...

 ...a heads up that at some point this month that feature is going to be discontinued by Blogger. So unfortunately you'll have to check back here every so often for new posts. Sorry about that!

Evening walk

 The mosquitoes are out now, but with an evening breeze to keep them at bay, a walk to the Toolik Lake outlet area is still a thing of beauty.

More small wonders

 

Small Wonders series

Lake mirrors sky

 

A wee bit of pranking

Picking up where yesterday's post left off: 

So, after the construction crew guys walked by...  

....the science tech and I finished our measurements and went back to the truck to go back to camp.

And there, we found the construction crew had pulled their truck up to ours so close it was touching.

The day before, the science tech had done some art in the dirt on the door of their truck.

But they'd upped the ante so we did the same. Clearly their vehicle needed to be properly chocked. So we chocked it GOOD, front AND back of all four tires. 

Nothing as satisfying as a job well done and time well spent.

Imnavait revisited

One of the first non-dish-washing things I did after I got to Toolik was to go to Imnavait Creek, described in this post.

A few weeks later, I went back out with a couple of the science techs here to do the meltwater readings they had started doing every day. The place was almost unrecognizable! There was a boardwalk under all that snow that we snowshoed across last time!

And the trench I dug was now filled with slushy water.

Unfortunately, that was during one of the spates of winter-in-May we kept getting, and the creek had re-iced over too much for any measurements to be taken.

So then, in the second week of June, I went out one more time with another science tech. Sooooo crazy to see everything so melted out, now that it was solidly springtime.

Happily, this time we got to take measurements, and the tech let me do the honors. That was pretty fun. Plus I got to wear waders. Which I loved irrationally. 

This picture was taken by one of the three construction crew members who happened to be walking further up the valley to work on a windmill. Which doesn't matter for this post but which I'm sharing to set the stage for tomorrow's post...

Toolik backyard pano

There's room for stormy skies and sunny skies at the same time.

Porcupining

I just love porcupines.

I got to see one during my first trip to the aufeis...

...and after it scuttled away I was really appreciating its tracks.

Then I learned porcupines are pretty rare this far north so I wasn't expecting to see another.

And then five days later, tagging along on another drive with the camp naturalist, I did!

This adorable, bedraggled guy was just taking a determined walk north along the pipeline pathway. Maybe looking for the one at the aufeis for a little porcupine romance?

The naturalist got some awesome close-ups if you want to check out his journal for that day by clicking here.

Aufeis

For a few weeks when I got here, I kept hearing people talk about when it might be good to take a first trip to see the off-ice. I just nodded along and took my first opportunity to go see it, which is when I learned that it is actually called aufeis, a German word for this particular type of ice formation, which you can read all about here.

And it was pretty interesting! Afterwards I talked with someone who had fallen through the top of the ice one season and I realized it was maybe not safe for us to have been walking on it like this. But we were following the footsteps of other Toolik people who had already been out there earlier in the day, so we were relatively assured we'd be okay.

I'm really glad we did walk on it though, because the meltwater wasn't too high yet and we were able to actually climb down INTO the part that was melted out, which was SUPER cool.

A couple weeks later I went back to see how the melting had progressed, and it was clear I would not be walking on the ice or in the stream any longer, as things had REALLY progressed.

I'll have to go once more at some point to see how it looks when most of the melting is melted...

Plant's-eye view

 

Brooks Range brings the beauty

Most days, it's just plain breathtaking.

Wolf tracks!

I failed to put anything in the picture to give a sense of perspective, so I'll just tell you: this was a big one.

Toolik is a lovely little spot

If I do say so myself.

When we saw this chunk of caribou fur...

 ...attached to a hunk of hide not completely dried out, we definitely took a moment to nervously look around for a grizzly.

Lake ice

I've been loving watching the lake ice melt. It just kind of slowly recedes from shore, making these beautiful watery textures.

Spring sprung

 Winter really held on through May; we had our last snow on June 1st. But since then, spring has been taking hold. I think earlier in the season I posted this photo of my favorite walking path.

That was then and this is now, same road!

I'm told if I give it another month, the white that turned to brown will bloom all gorgeous green. Hard to believe, but I'm happy to stick around and see if it's true!

Arctic birthday party

Polar friends, take a look at this crowd; you might recognize a face or two!

All others, feast your eyes on a Toolik birthday party: some booze on a picnic table outside the birthday girl's weatherport, surrounded by a bunch of people she knows from years in Antarctica. And the gorgeous sunny skies and long shadows at 10pm.

Move over, Montana...

...because Alaska's coming in hot (well, mildly temperatured) with the Big Skies.

Polar Day

 I'm obviously very late posting this photo of a note left on the community whiteboard here on May 26:

I've had a few friends ask me what time the sun is setting now, and the answer is: it's not! The Arctic Circle is defined by the latitude at which you are far enough north that for at least one night per year (on the summer solstice, if it's only one night), the sun never goes completely below the horizon. And the farther north you go, the more nights there will be without sunsets. The same is true for the winter: at the exact latitude of the Arctic Circle, for one day each winter (on the winter solstice), the sun will not make it above the horizon. The further north you go, the more pronounced the effect gets. 

At Toolik, we are far enough north that the sun won't set for a nearly-two-month period every summer. If you went all the way up to the North Pole, the sun wouldn't set for six months, between the spring and autumn equinoxes--so, only one sunset (on the autumn equinox) and one sunrise (on the spring equinox) per year. 

The same is true for the southern hemisphere, substituting the word south instead of north, and with the seasons reversed in the calendar year. (Which is why, when I spent a full year at the South Pole, we only had one sunset, in late March on the autumn equinox, and then no sun at all for six months until the spring equinox, in September, when the sun came up again and stayed up for the next six months.)

Fun facts!

I think it's a vole?

 So cute, and rather skittish. (As I would be around a living being approximately 1,000 times my size.)

A few small tundra wonders...

 ...to balance the vast landscape shots I tend to post.

Ptarmigan / poop

Ptarmigans have the funniest calls and for some reason just tickle me in general.

Then, later, I saw this big pile of poop and learned from one of the scientists here that it is ptarmigan poop. I just cannot mentally accept that a relatively little bird like this can produce poop this enormous. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this volume of poop seems almost equal to the volume of the bird's body. How is this possible?!?

Feeling very Norwegian

I know I have already posted about the sauna. But it's remained one of my favorite things about Toolik. While winter kept revisiting us in late May, there were several SUPER atmospheric sauna nights where taking a break from the heat and pouring water over my head on the lakeside deck happened among huge, beautiful, falling snowflakes. Never have I so strongly felt the 1/8 of my blood that is Norwegian. So I just  had to post one more sauna photo. Well, maybe there will be even more in the future. I'm not going to make promises one way or another.

Lake walks

 Another batch of past pictures from my near-daily walks along the lake (all from last month):

Walking on ice

Before the lake started melting, I did manage to follow through on one thing I wanted to do: taking my usual walk alongside the lake as far as the road goes, and then putting on snowshoes I'd carried to that point and walking back to camp across the lake. It was really fun to approach from that direction and get the best possible view of the Brooks Range as the backdrop to the buildings of Toolik Field Station.

Atigun River Valley

 Oh, the beauty.