Scot-Fucking-Free

Holy..!

2009-01-29T18:50:00.006-09:00

My, how the time flies!

Updating more than once every 6 months is overrated anyway. SO much for Alaska blog '08.

That was an amazing experience and it definitely did some weird things to me. Now, I have to force myself to make time to squat on the computer. After spending a large chunk of time on it today I'm ok with it. I've actually felt pretty productive overall.
The strange thing about making distance from the computer is that somehow I feel less productive, which is very counterintuitive. A lot of inspiration can come from time spent communicating with people on the internet, and that's not always the case in the 2 hours after school when the roommates aren't home and the sun is still up. Today I've been able to visit some blogs I've been ignoring, make a listing on e-bay to sell some snowboard boots, upload some photos, and update this!

So instead of getting too carried away, here are some recent photos that need hosting anyway...

Totally sweet snow-hunt during the drought of '09

Shredding at TAOS over break (Before we got kicked out)

Riding my new SPLIT BOARD!

Total photoshoot, brah...

Mega super awesome photo update!

2008-07-23T15:18:00.014-08:00

Boredom has subsided, awesome has returned.

Unfortunately, I think I missed the opportunity to rant about what spurred me last week involving a camper. To sum it up, I had a conversation around the campfire with someone that put me off, but resisted the urge to respond so that I wouldn't create any waves. It's interesting being in a service position like this and trying to share personal conversations with people because when it all comes down to it, guests are paying to be on these trips and it would be unwise for a guide to aggravate them on behalf of some silly argument. As a college student I am in a position for constant 'advice-giving,' and apparently what it comes down to is reminiscent of the line from Little Miss Sunshine:

Chas, "Fuck a lot of women. Not just one woman, a LOT of women."

The line might be disguised with a phrase like, "smell the roses" or "god, I wish I was still your age," but in the context of the conversation it is apparent what the roses are.
I'm not saying all of the advice I've been given has been this bad, but there are three instances from seemingly respectable men that have really thrown me off. It's at the point where I want to give THEM advice, but being that I am in a position of subservience when I'm guiding I am forced to nod, accept it as a gift and move on. People will say some pretty messed up things when you give them the chance to...

But, other than that the trip was highly enjoyable, and I've got a few pictures to illustrate.

[More whales!]

[Fish Catchin']

[Solitaire]

Last night I stayed at our other camp to attend to an over-night with a couple coming off of a day-paddle to see the iceburgs and the glacier. This camp is over near the LeConte Bay, which is the site of the LeConte glacier that has has receded over the years. It's a colder, smaller encampment, but now that I've spent a night I'm hooked!

[Big Foot]

[Hella chronic, bro! Chpeeehhh!]

[Check out this sequence!!!]

I'll tell you more about it later when it hits me :) Tomorrow we are having a family day, and on Friday my REAL family is coming up for a tour which I get to guide all by myself.

...

2008-07-22T10:46:00.002-08:00

I
am
bored.

It's been a slow week. I spent last week out at Big creek with another group and I came back all hot and angsty about something, but now it's settled and I am beginning to miss Bellingham. I've been keeping myself busy with various projects such as more beading, duct tape creations, watching movies, reading (currently: East of Eden by Steinbeck), and spending more time down town.
I'm also getting a little bit annoyed with some people living in close proximity to me, and that just means I need to get out! I know it will pass. Living in a place like this makes me realize how much there really is to do in Bellingham, and how optionless I feel here when I'm not out in the field. For instance, at any given moment I could be doing many of the things I'm doing now, except minus the the glaciers and whales, but add skateboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking, road biking, or skim boarding...

I'm sure it's just a hump. I've been here a little over a month now, and I've got about a month left. But who's counting?

I've got some pictures, but will save them for the next post. Along with the angst.

Crossroads

2008-07-09T09:40:00.011-08:00

Feelings are difficult to describe, especially doing so as they are occurring as apposed to viewing them in retrospect. Usually, some time is needed to pass before they can be expressed properly, and I have this problem when trying to sum up what I've been doing and how I've been feeling about my current life. My time up here has given me lots of space to finally sit and think, free from the grasp of the internet and it's many social access points that feel overbearing at times. I'm not proselytizing here, trying to free any minds from a something as specific as the internet itself, but getting away from EVERYTHING for a last 2 weeks felt incredibly revitalizing. If I learned anything over the past couple weeks, it is a stab at the honest truth about what I need in order to feel content. Over the past 6 months or so, I've been overwhelmed with my social life, school, work, play, drinking, and setting the foundation for the best and most rewarding personal relationship I have ever been in.
Life is good, and the thought of complaining about anything before I came up here would have been completely absurd except that as a product of my surroundings, there is always the slight perception that something more is to come. We always want more out of everything.

I guess if I had spent the past couple weeks completely alone in the wilderness things might be a little bit different, although that wasn't the case. I had a couple days here and there that were spent completely alone at the campsite, but it never felt like it was enough time that I ever got bored of it. Each time guests would arrive, I could embrace them as some new people to talk to and get to know, but I can't say I was desperate for the attention. When guests were present, there always felt like there was something to do. This is common with most people I'm around where it's easy to feel like something must always be said, or something must always be done to cure the dreaded stagnation of doing NOTHING. It makes sense for the guests to think this way since they are paying for these trips into the great 'nothingness' of wild Alaska, but I am fortunate enough to be blessed with this position of limbo being that I am not getting paid with money to be out there, but with justified time to myself and some numbers on a piece of paper that amount to college credit. As much as an internship is about getting a good work experience, it is about taking the time to figure out not IF this career path is right for me but HOW I can make it work within the realm of my own aspirations. Lets face it; nobody (including myself) knows what the hell they want to do with their lives for sure, but time keeps on moving forward and the only way to avoid disappointment is to reflect on our experiences and understand what combination of things makes us feel truly fulfilled. Stating that I know exactly what I want to do with myself for the rest of my life would be to ignore my curiosity and stunt my personal growth, which honestly should never end. It has been said that knowledge is not something you possess, but indefinitely seek as something unachievable, which reinforces the concept that the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

For someone living in the lower 48, there's a lot of mysticism surrounding Alaska as the true Final Frontier, and as a sort of last resort for the emotionally conflicted. I was and still am a victim of that idea that you can simply vanish on up to Alaska as a way of escaping reality. Even the title of this blog comes from a song that romanticizes the concept of heading up to Alaska to get off "scot-fucking-free" for a while. I felt it before I came here, and I feel it right now. It feels good to get away from things, even if it's just the idea of it since obviously I'm still quite connected to whatever world I've built for myself in Bellingham, Washington.

So with that said, I've been spending a lot of my time up here rediscovering my own creativity, abilities, and potentials without the weight of other eyes deciding what it all might amount to if I really 'pursued' them. I'm not being watched by anyone, and I'm trying to personally redefine the way I look at myself in all of these 3 lights. I've always felt that boredom is a state of mind that is the product of hindered creativity because we have the habit of being too critical of our work. When someone sits down to play music, draw a picture, take photos, craft, write, build, destroy, think, and even speak, it's all too easy to squash these abilities by constantly asking WHY? What will this amount to? Will it be comparable to what I feel like is a good drawing? How many times a day to you hear someone say that they aren't good at drawing? Or that they are clumsy? Or that they don't understand something, so they disregard it as being less important that what they are good at? It's even worse when this gets convoluted and combined with the earlier question of, 'is this something that could help me decide what I want to do with my future?' or 'how could I make money off of this?'
Gross.

Either way, I'm happy to say I've been doing what I've defined as well up here so far. I finished a couple small craft projects along the lines of knitting, beading, and carving, and I've also rediscovered the joy in reading for pleasure! I've read a couple books for myself over the past year or two, but it was painstakingly slow going and it felt like I wasn't getting as much as I put into it. The first week I was here I finished up the Da Vinci Code, last week I read the Catcher in the Rye, and this week I've been reading this book that I thought was going to be completely ridiculous because of its cover, but turns out is almost TOO perfect for my current situation.

I was perusing the sci-fi section at the library and saw this:

If you look closely you might see a mountain scape with a cabin in the foreground with a native american, a ferocious bear, and a police officer all mashed together underneath bright yellow text that says PORTALS.

Totally awesome.

The weird thing is, it's really good! Or at least, it's good storytelling sci-fi with philosophy mixed in. It turns out, the book is about traveling to Alaska, and trying to define the concept of Fate through multiple perceptions...which is a funny coincidence that I would end up choosing it. If nothing else, they reference a bunch of other classic books that I plan on picking up and reading this summer including:

Walden Pond by Thoreau
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Portable Emerson
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
and Confessions of a Philosopher by Herman Magee

Most of which I have meant to read for some time now, and a few new ones. I'm pretty excited.

How about some photos?

Big Creek Base Camp

Robin

A Rookery!

Whale Watching

Cool, eh?

Bald Eagles for Freedom

2008-06-27T09:18:00.002-08:00

I learned some interesting facts the other day concerning Bald Eagles. As an American, this concerns YOU!

As we all know the Bald Eagle is a large, majestic bird which is notorious for symbolizing the many freedoms that we enjoy in God's great country, USA (brother). Although this bird is may easily be one of the most recognizable creatures on the planet, I realize that few people have ever really seen a bald eagle in real life with the exception of the zoo. Before I moved to a Warshington, I was included in this category and all of my known images of eagles had come from brief sightings on the Television where glimpses of the bird are shown in either introductions to nature programs, evangelical propaganda, or messages from the white house. We see images of this fucking bird everywhere, yet it was listed endangered a mere 10 years ago and on the verge on extinction for more than 30 years before that! It wasn't until last year that the bird was dropped form the 'threatened' species list, and now it is on the level of 'least concern.' The couple times I had seen it in and around Warshington, the sightings were few and far between, and now that I am in Alaska the bird is as abundant as pigeons are in most cities. Unlike pigeons, this bird is still as majestic as it ever was if not more so, but in seeing so many of them I've learned some interesting realities about the bird that I might never have known having never traveled north.

First off I have always had this image of the bird sounding real tough, like Marahute out of Rescuers Down Under when it lets out that piercing screech that could scare off any razorback for miles around. I can even attribute those good ol' nature programs and Christian intros for reinforcing the idea in my head, and after spending years perfecting my eagle cry I've learned that the birds sound nothing at all like that.
Sleeping outside in a tent for most nights, I kept getting woken up by this obnoxious cry every morning that sounded like this: "kleek-kik-ik-ik", "kak-kak-kak"
When I asked what the sound was, I was very surprised to learn that eagles do not in fact sound epic like Marahute, but quite the opposite. After expressing my surprise, I also learned that most of those nature programs I had watched actually DUB IN a tougher sound in order to make the bird sound really fierce. Weird.
The other fact I learned about eagles (and most other birds of prey for that matter), is that their talons are naturally in a closed position and it takes a large amount of energy to open them up, which is why they are able to sleep perched in high trees. There are actually very common stories about eagles swooping down to get a fish and getting stuck in the water because they exhaust so much energy in the process, resulting in a very wet bird that has to swim all the way back to shore with fish-in-talons since they cannot release it in the water due to lack of resistance. So if it's a really big fish, these situations tend to end in a catastrophic struggle that leaves a dead eagle floating in the water.

Cool facts!

Anyway, I've been trying to update this thing and keep a weekly regiment going on, but it's tough being in and out so much.

Last weekend was spent out at one of our campsites named Big Creek, which is a completely comfortable place to be at any given moment. The other new guide and myself were in charge of organizing all of the food and making the preparations for a sort of 'test' weekend, which just catered to my supervisor, his wife, and another guide. We also spent the time setting up the campsite for the future guests, which are actually coming this weekend!
If there was ever a more comfortable way of camping, this site is up there on the list. The encampment includes a full kitchen area, fireplace, outhouse, supply tent, propane-powered shower, and dishwashing station to make things as easy as possible. Due to the changing demographic of guests purchasing these trips, Scott has made this site a pretty easy place to camp at, and after 22 years of operation, the campsite is pretty much a home. The hardest part of our work over the weekend was that we needed to put tarps up over EVERYTHING (with the exception of the outhouse and shower), but it's so awesome having shore access so that we are able to transport all the supplies over there via boat. (I took a few pictures, but can't locate a cable at the moment, so I'll get those out in the next post)

On the actual tours, we offer day-long paddles over to explore the creek at high tide (which looks more like the mouth of a small river), and then Scott takes people out in the powerboat to go whale watching. Today, I'm actually going out there to campsit until guests arrive on Sunday with another guide via floatplane, so my job is to paddle out to a little johnboat, start it up, dock on this huge log we anchored out there, meet the plane, and bring all the guests back to shore to the campsite having prepared coffee and snacks for their arrival.
Pretty sweet.
After those guests leave, I'll be at the camp for another week or so, because we've got some Russians coming in who don't speak English, and want to take some time off of their private yacht and spend two nights in the woods...weird!
After that, I remain at the camp until Sunday when another group arrives and won't be returning until the middle of that week.

So...see you in two weeks?

ALASKA

2008-06-19T09:24:00.001-08:00

I've done it! I'm here!

Petersburg, Alaska.

I left Bellingham at 8:15 AM on Monday morning, June 16th, and will reside in Petersburg until September. I am working for a company called Tongass Sea Kayak Adventures, which specializes in the exploration of certain areas in this region via kayaks, boats, and the occasional float-plane. Although I am not getting paid to work for this company, my food, living, and travel expenses have all been taken care of, and as you can believe I feel spoiled beyond recognition.

...this is what I told everyone before I got up here. (blah blah blah) The reality was that this is all I knew of my summer adventure, so there was a hint of apprehension leading up to it.

Now that I am here, things are a bit different:

My first travel day was a bit frustrating as I was battling with dehydration and a mild headache due to the risidual effects of graduation weekend and caffeine withdrawals. Oddly enough, I ended up in the first-class section for the trip up from Seattle to Juneau, and shared a 'plane' conversation with a man named Steve. He was a comedian on a cruise line, and apparently made the flight from Chicago to Juneau every other week to perform on the ship. Without delving into the details of our conversation, I'll just say that he was a character, and will be added to my mental li st of memorable plane interactions that all seem to end with, "Hey, have a good life alright? Maybe I'll see you again someday," and we disperse forever.

When I arrived in Petersburg I was enthralled by the fact that the airport consisted of a single runway where the plane had to land, make a full 180 degree turn, and travel the distance it rolled after touching down all the way back to the airport terminal, which was one single room of people waiting for the bipedal contents of the plane to stumble out. I was greeted there by Scott, my supervisor/owner of the company, who picked me up in the company van and drove me to the guide house. The trip was about a mile which took us all the way through town past the post office, grocery store, library, and...boats. What more does a small town really need?

[Come to find out, I'm not living in a tent right now, nor am I naked, perched on a rock whittling pointy sticks to appease the great salmon spirit like I had predicted. I'm actually pretty comfortable, in a cozy 2-bedroom house with a warm meal and whiskey in my belly.]

SO
The day I got here, I spent some time getting acquainted with my new roomies, eating a meal, unpacking, and taking the dog for a walk. Because of the travel distractions, I didn't really get a chance to take a look around before that, so it was a r eally good chance to take in some scenery for the first time. It is breathtaking to say the least.

Houston & Paloma

My second day in Petersburg involved a nature hike and glacier tour with some paying guests, which is a pretty standard trip that we offer. Scott has this secret way of being incredibly organized and putting us (the other new guide Lisa and I) through these little trials and tribulations while he observes from afar, and I'm guessing this was the first test in guest interaction and physical ability. Not that either of us had a problem with it, I really like his way of giving us the most dignity and respect as possible, while still training and teaching us at the same time.
The nature walk was cool because it was a good chance to see what the habitat of the island is like, and understanding what vegetation we may be dealing with, which really is not that much (about 20 different species of plant). Because it rains so much on these islands, there is not much real soil in the ground since the majority of it is about 15 feet of moss called Muskeg. For this reason, our "nature hike" was 3 miles of elevated planks that had to be put in place by hand! If that wasn't crazy enough, the scenery, again was astounding.
After 3 miles or so, we met Scott at the beach and motor-boated over to LeConte Bay where I got to see SEALS giving BIRTH on ICEBURGS! Any ONE of those three would have whelmed me, so goddammit I was overwhelmed!

In fact, it's overwhelming me just thinking about it.
So look at these photos, and I'll talk to you later.