I'm excited for all the good times ahead with family and friends in other places, but I'm so sad to leave here. It's been a real, real joy.
It's so easy to find beauty in the small things here. The fireweed with a bumblebee approaching, mid-flight. The tiny blossom that looks at first glance like it's growing from pure stone.
Some of the scientists here have to go out onto the lake to collect specimens and data, which is the official reason for the Toolik boat dock and a ramshackle collection of canoes, motorboats, and even a tiny sailboat. The unofficial reason is...well, you've seen pictures of this gorgeous lake. Why wouldn't we go out on it?!? So one night last week, a bunch of us did.
Today is supposedly the day! The sun has not set since May 26 and I'm told it will finally set again tonight. I won't be awake to see that wee hours event, but I was up after midnight one evening last week and the low sun made for gorgeous, gorgeous skies....
Belatedly, have to mention that we did have a 4th of July celebration here a couple weekends ago. It was a bleak and rainy and mosquito-infested evening, but I was super impressed at how everyone in camp (about 75 people these days) rallied and showed up for the traditional skit parade/competition that happens here each 4th of July. There were costumes and a whole lot of silliness, followed by a bonfire that continued HOURS after I was soundly asleep in my dry, cozy bed.
I said that my third visit to the aufeis was probably my last. But then, last Monday evening, there was space on a truck heading over there and I found myself climbing aboard. Totally worth it, as yet again it looked totally different than the previous time I'd been there!
It runs through the Brooks Range...and involves amazing scenery as it does in soooooo many places from here all the way down to Chile.
A couple Sundays ago there were rainclouds to the north and rainclouds to the south, but a beautiful sunny sky over Toolik. A couple of the science techs and I loaded bikes into the back of a camp truck and drove some miles south on the Dalton to one of the access roads to the pipeline and biked along the pipeline trail a mile or so, up to a known marmot den in search of its inhabitant(s).
"Toolik" is the native Alaskan word for yellow-billed loons, so I'm very glad I got to see a pair swimming on Lake Toolik. And being VERY vocal about their territory. I really hope this video plays with sound for you.
The end of June was wayyyyyy more rainy than the first few weeks of it.
I didn't mind.
Particularly attentive readers may remember that a good bit ago I took a walk through part of the Atigun River valley and it was beeee-eautiful. On the summer solstice (June 20), I decided to get ambitious and (with two other friends from the staff here) went back for the full hike to Atigun waterfalls. I'd heard it was nice and was about a 5-mile roundtrip. Luckily, it was way better than just "nice," because if that was only a 5-mile roundtrip, let me just say that tundra walking IS NOT EASY. For those who have not had the pleasure: the tundra may look flat from a distance, but up close, it is littered with hard knobs of vegetation called tussocks that rise up to a foot out of the general spongy, bogginess of the ground around them. Like a grassy mogul field that's actively trying to twist your ankles and exhaust you. And then come the mosquitoes. But all that said, this hike was totally worth it!
The day was cool and overcast, which ended up being perfect considering the effort of the walking.
I am behind in posting pictures (and though the days of Arctic Alaska life are long, MY days here are running short in quantity) so am late posting about the bonfire we had last month in celebration of Pride month.
My coworker G, baker extraordinaire, whipped up this beauty of a cake:
And then everyone dressed up and got silly for the evening.
The night before the party, even the sky got in on the festivities....
