Icewind's Ramblings

As I sit here this morning it has been several days now since I heard about Lance’s passing and like many people we are trying to make sense of it all. It is strange how news of such an event can take the wind out of your sails and gives us another reminder of how fragile life is.   Today would have been Lance’s fifty fifth birthday. When I first moved to Alaska Lance was one of the first people I met when I started working.   He dropped by my office to talk with my boss about several projects we were doing and his company was providing the insulation.   We chatted for a bit and then Lance wanted to take us out to lunch to get to know me more since I had just arrived. We talked and shared stories about ourselves, some good & bad and I realized that I liked his attitude and how much he embraced the “give a guy a chance” in life.   He said we all need ‘second chances’ and he was grateful that after problems in his own life someone was willing to give him a br...

It’s that time again for the annual trek down to the mouth of the Kenai River in Soldotna to fill freezers with nice red salmon for next winter.   It is called the personal subsistence fishery or as Alaskan’s call it . . . Dipnetting. This year we have had a run of reds of biblical proportions with last weekend’s one day sonar count of fish passing the weir 19 miles up river at 230,600 fish in a single day.   The previous biggest one-day total was 218,000 salmon, back on July 21, 1987, according to a newly revised figure from Fish and Game.   The state began compiling its database on Kenai salmon counts in 1978.   The last several years we have been lucky to get over 100,000 fish in a single day. What the Fish and Game try to manage to ensure enough sockeye salmon eggs get spawned into the river for future returning fish is roughly 700,000 to 1,400,000 sockeyes.   The Department is projecting a run size in excess of 2.3 million late-run Kenai River sockeye...

This summer has been going in what feels a hundred miles an hour.  So many trips to different places for work with little time for doing the things that make this such a great place to live. The last month or so has been a series of trips to inspect and visits the many projects going on around the state.  I have several on Kodiak island and several more scattered around the state so it has been one plane ride after another going from project to project. Last week was to several jobsite visits on Kodiak and the weather was trying not to cooperate.  There were times of fog and rain showers in between times with millions of mosquitoes buzzing around my head.  It was something else wearing head nets while wondering if I should be in a full body “bug suit”. I need to upload some of the pictures about the villages and trips but my internet service while out of town is totally lacking.  The brief time at home has me playing catch up to laundry, finishing house pr...

Well weeks actually . . . as I was out of town last week on Monday to Kipnuk for a long “day” trip.  It is one of those where you leave the house at 4 AM to get to the airport for an early morning flight.  It just so happened that this was June 21 st which is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.  When I walked out the door at four the sun was already above the mountaintops to the northeast of town.  With our high latitude we do not have the typical sun rises in the east and sets in the west like most places further south.  During the long summers our sun rises in the northeast about 50 degrees from north not the “normal” 90 degrees “east” heading and sets briefly around 310 degrees not the usual 270 degrees “west”.  So much for the brief explanation as all I wanted to say was the sun was already heading up into the summer sky. I went with the engineers for a progress inspection since I took over these three projects just over three weeks ...

Many of us look for the end of the rainbow and sometimes a few of us may actually luck up and find it . . . Was it what we expected or really wished for? Sometimes . . . and we may find a few unexpected things along the way. Land of the midnight Sun . . . Alaska Scenes . . . Alaska , Bringing our Natural Resources to America A Quiet Place And a song . . . Ice

Yesterday was another one in a long series of days that seemed to go on forever. I had a job meeting for the new super Walmart we are building in Kenai Alaska at 9 am which meant that I needed to be out of the house by four in the morning to make it to the shop, load up items we were taking down, and make the almost three hour drive to the jobsite. We are still in our “light gain” period for another three weeks so we gain about three and a half minutes a day now as the sun slows it trek northward for Solstice on June 21 st . Sunrise is 4:34 AM and sunset is 11: 24 PM leaving the five hours between with a semi-full light for about 3 hours and twilight ‘dusk’ period for the other two. I went to bed Sunday evening just after midnight with the birds still singing their songs and when I awoke at 3:30 AM the light was on again with no clouds to block the soon to rise sun rays peaking out from behind the Chugach mountains to the east of my house. I was not tired as I ...

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was one of the largest oil spills in history. It took place in Alaska in March 1989, when the oil tanker ran aground, causing 10.8 million gallons of crude oil to spill into the pristine waters of Prince William Sound . While this was indeed a huge spill, it was actually only a small fraction of what the United States uses in oil in any one day. The United States uses about 700 million gallons of oil every day. That is a lot of oil. When an oil spill occurs, everyone works to help clean it up. Have you ever noticed a rainbow puddle on the street or parking lot after a rain? That rainbow sheen that you see on top of the water is actually oil from cars that has leaked onto the ground. For Steve Smith, the 20-year anniversary of the nation's worst oil spill is like a reminder that he lost a loved one. "It's like a death in the family," the 70-year-old fisherman said of the Exxon Valdez disaster. "With time...

Continuing my post from last night it has been hard to get the song Fishin’ out of my mind all day today. There were a few flurries but warmer temperatures in the twenties so not a bad day unlike a few weeks ago. Friday the 13 th had no bad incidents only the normal hustle and bustle that goes with a Friday. Too much to do, not enough time to get it done, and other things pulling me in many directions keeping me from the items I wanted to accomplish by weeks end. I apologize for the size of the pictures as for some reason the scale is not bringing them down to the size I expected. I hope it is not a pain to look at them. Last summer there were several trips doing all kinds of fishing which is pretty normal for me? My brother in law and me for the last several years embarks on a crazy 72 hour fishin’ marathon where we load up some food and first head out to a local river (Eklutna Tailrace) here in Anchorage after I get off of...

These last few weeks have gone by quickly in some ways as it has been busy with work and my daughter’s hospital stay (she’s out now and doing better) but in those few quiet moments my mind wanders to times past and the return of summer. Last weekend I was able to play a DVD concert of friends of mine from the South called Cullowhee. Most of the guys attended Western Carolina University in the North Carolina town called Cullowhee so their music is mountain rock with a mixture of all kinds of various sounds. Listening to the songs brought me thinking about one of my favorite summer activities, Fishin’ and I started browsing my photo’s to bring back the memories of past fishin’ trips all over Alaska. I thought I would share some of them with you and the lyrics of a song aptly named Fishin’ by Terry Edwards of Cullowhee. If I can figure out how to post the song so you can hear it I will shortly. I hope you enjoy part one of Fishin’ Fishin’ by Terry Edward...