I should probably start from where I left off, I will try to muster some eloquence for the half-month-long overdue update.

I will begin with the late arrival of summer (August 16th): The clouds cleared up and the sun shown brightly and consistently for almost a week. The blueberries ripened, the long sleeve shirts were shed and we ran around in sandals and bare feet! We basked and blossomed in the sizzling 65-70 degree weather! I was very lucky to have a weekend right in the midst of Alaska's short summer!

I went fishing for Sockeye salmon at the infamous Russian River and was immediately successful. I am beginning to understand and become more competent in the process of fishing. I am more adept at casting. I rarely catch the hook on foliage behind me or on the other side of the creek. I am also more composed when a fish is on the end of the line. I still holler "fish on" and my heartbeat quickens. I am also better at landing the fish.

Salmon fishing is not complicated once you know the basics. Sockeye salmon are only good to eat if they are chrome colored. (As the salmon swim upstream to spawn, they begin to change form and color. Each species of salmon has a different color that they turn as they slowly begin to die. Sockeye go from silvery-chrome to a bright green head and bright red body) The fish are at different stages of spawning and therefore, the river is stacked with chrome and red colored salmon. The flesh of the red salmon is beginning to rot even as they live and they have developed ugly humps on their backs. The reds are a scary fish to deal with indeed and I quickly learned to discern whether or not the fish I had hooked was chrome or red. If it was chrome, I kept the tip of my pole high and gave the line some slack. Then I reeled in the line as I backed up to the shore to land it. If the fish was red, then I put the tip of my rod down and gave the line a lot of slack, hoping that the fish would work free in the current.

That day, the first chrome fish that I hooked pulled my rod apart at the second joint. It was imperative now more then ever, that I land the fish. Losing the fish meant losing the top third of my rod as well. Thankfully, I did manage to land the fish and salvage my rod. All I had to do was shove it back together more tightly at the joint. Killing fish makes me incredibly squeamish and I am not going to go into the details of gutting and filleting. I am still unsettled by the process of killing animals for food. While I have no issues with other people harvesting animals for their own use, I am still struggling to balance my vegetarian tenets with my desire to eat locally and provide food for myself to whatever extent possible. Living in a place that does not produce a lot of local produce and is far away from any that might be shipped has made me reconsider my values and how my vegetarian lifestyle might not be living up to those values. (It takes a lot of energy and resources to barge fruits and veggies all the way up here). In addition, trying to provide for myself through fishing and picking berries etc. has also brought the circle of life into sharp focus.

The salmon are amazing creatures and I am in awe of their life-cycle. Salmon an integral part of the food chain and are a keystone species. The entire Alaskan system (from humans to bears to micro-organisms to plant life) depends on these creatures and their ability to swim upstream, spawn, die and then decompose.

I hiked to Harding Icefield on the next day of summer with a friend from the district named Josh. The hike was about 7 miles of a fairly steep slope through high alpine tundra and across slick snow fields. We saw a couple of black bears and ptarmigan as well as marmots and eagles. The hike parallels Exit Glacier which spills out from the Harding Icefield. The icefield stretches for miles and miles and has the tops of mountain peaks emerging from its vast whiteness. From a distance, it is difficult to make out the terrain of the icefield but as you draw closer, steep slopes and rises and dips become apparent. The icefield is especially intriguing to me because it covers some of the only remaining unmapped parts of the earth. It is impossible to know what the terrain under the icefield is or will be like because the ice is constantly changing and cutting at the rocks beneath it. I was standing on the brink of the unknown and unpredictable!

I hiked up to Mount Alice with another friend of mine, Michael. We had a bit of a false start when we attempted to hike up the wrong drainage through prickly devil's club and dense aspens. We quickly reconnoitered and found the actual trail head, unmarked though it was. Mount Alice is on the brink of Resurrection Bay and overlooks the Snow River valley and the town of Seward. The hike was mostly straight up and then meandered through the alpine which quickly gave way to craggy rock and ice. We spent a lot of time ogling the amazing views of the bay and city of Seward as well as Harding Icefield in the distance. We spent some time orienteering and triangulating but quickly realized that my compass was woefully inadequate for such a task, especially with the northern inclination being so large. We also made snow angels in a snow field and scrambled up a rock scree to get the highest point possible. Once there, we spotted a black bear nosing around in a field beneath us. A glacier glittered across the ravine with a lacy waterfall trailing out beneath it. The clouds closed in, parted and misted time and time again. I felt like I was in Avalon or some other ancient mystic place. We glisaded down a snow field and tumbled down the gravel trail. I slipped and cut the meaty part of my palm on the sharp slate. I had a small but deep cut that didn't bleed too much because my hands were so cold and had little circulation.

I took a sick day from work the next day to allow my hand to heal. I rode Katie's bike to Victor Creek trail head and made a day out of picking blueberries, watermelon berries and raspberries and scaling a fairly large snowfield in an avalanche shoot. The snowfield was so steep and treacherous that I decided to abort my bid for the top. Even though I didn't make it to the top of the snowfield I still had excellent views of a glacier and the rushing roaring Victor Creek. Later, I learned that I was going to leave the next morning for Oregon to fight fire with a 20 person inter-agency hand crew for the next 16 or so days. I spent the rest of that evening closing up my affairs and packing up. I was so relieved to finally get the fire call. I felt like my life had been on hold or contingent upon the fire call. I was, however, a bit disappointed about having to miss out on a John Prine concert in Homer as well as more fun hikes and the onslaught of real "summer" weather.

AUGUST 29th

"Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquence."
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451

The possibility of going to fight fire on a 20 person type 2 hand crew in the states has been hanging over my head for what seems like months. It began as a small thorn in my side or a hot spot on my heel as the documentation of my certifications got lost in the governmental circular file - some glitch in the transfer of information from one district to another. Fire festered as July rolled on and the trail crew supervisors admitted they did not have any projects for the crews because "fire in August was a sure thing." Instead our crews fumbled through several minor projects that didn't have much worth and only took hours of the day. The rest of the days we spent hiding from the overhead-going to Claire's house for coffee, sitting on logs near the trail, going to Seward on small errands etc. So you can imagine how much I was counting on a 2 week fire assignment to save me from the idleness and monotony of work and really challenge my muscles and mind. Crew after crew from our district left but still a few of us remained in Alaska, idle and in the rain. I actually passed up a trip to Denali with Matt and Wade, thinking that I would miss my chance to go on a fire. However, as I mentioned earlier, I got the call and headed off to Oregon the next day at 4 am!

My crew was composed of people from all over Alaska and from all different backgrounds. There were trail rats from Cordova, Flower Sniffers from Denali, Fire Dogs from Homer, ecologists from Fairbanks and a hand full of us from the SRD. We all had different flights into Portland and I spent most of the day waiting for all of us to conglomerate in the airport. We rented four six pack rigs and drove to Detroit, OR where we set up camp in a school field in the pouring rain- bad sign. Our crew boss divided us up into modules. Module A, my module, was a saw team with 3 sawyers and their swampera. Module B was a line-digging force.

The next day, we reported for duty at 5:30 am and spent most of the day waiting in the rigs in the compound parking lot. My rig-mates happened to be the Crew Boss, Matt, and the Crew Boss trainee Torey, as well as Riggle, a cabin crew worker from Girdwood, and my fellow SRD trail rat, Chase. We had three i-pods between us and we listened to tunes through the radio with the help of an adaptor. At around 15:00, Module A was summoned to a .4 acre ex-fire caused by a lightening strike. We gridded and mopped up the area as well as dug a line around it and sprayed any hot spots with water from a backpack pump. We got drenched by the rain in the process and spent most of the evening trying to dry off at the compound.

The next day we staged all day in the rigs on the brink of an ex-fire caused by another lightening strike. The Incident Commander and his underlings had decided that the rainy, windy and foggy weather as well as the steep terrain and the prolific amount of dead snags made the situation far to dangerous to engage in. So we sat and listening to music for 14 hours.

To explain: The Willamette National Forest received over 100 lightening strikes in a thunder and lightening storm just prior to our arrival. The powers that be didn't want a single fire to burn because it might burn onto private timber company land and wreak havoc and disaster on the their business. Therefore, about 5 hand crews, 5 engines, a helitac crew, several professional tree fallers and about a dozen other resources were ordered to form a giant fire fighting and suppressing force. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the rain began pouring the day we all arrived and all of us resources found ourselves woefully in lack of the adrenaline-rushing-hazard-pay-overtime-invoking fire we had all been dreaming of. Instead, we found ourselves on the mop-up-line-around-and- staging ex-fire fighting force of doom. While this may all sound dismal and disastrous, it was, in fact, quite a riot and I found myself quite tickled by the insanity. I found my situation as swamper particularly hilarious. I was tasked with being Riggle's swamper. As a swamper, I am supposed to carry a Pulaski and a dolmar full of gas. I am also supposed to move all of the things that Riggle cuts with the saw out of the way so that the way is clear for the module digging line behind the sawyers. My first problem: how do I move things with my hands when my hands are full of dolmars and Pulaskis. My solution: given the incredibly steep terrain, I just sat down and slid pulling all the cut brush down with my body, arms and legs and when the pile got big enough, precariously perched the Pulaski and dolmar and moved the brush pile. My second problem (minor but highly laughable)- cold-trailing: We are supposed to take one glove off and feel in the ashes for hot spots that might be lingering. Again, my hands are full of Pulaski and dolmar. Hmm, I'll get right to that. I laughed so hard. My solution was to kick around in the ashes a lot and hope I would notice a not sopping wet muddy section if I came to it. My third problem was not really a problem as much as it was a hassle-three belts to undo every time I had to pee. That's right three. My pants, my line gear, my chaps and not to mention my shirt needed to tucked in and sometimes I was wearing rain gear too. My waist was really crowded.

On my birthday, we got to go find an ex-fire. We were given rough directions and we set out along the ridge to find it. A helicopter actually flew over the fire to give us more specific directions and I happened to be peeing at the exact moment that it passed over me and hovered for a moment-caught with my pants down! We found the ex-fire, which actually was smoking and over the course of our being there, actually had a stump that was visibly flaming. We only spent about an hour there because it was about to get dark and they didn't want anyone getting hurt in the dark. Safety first. We decided to call the fire the Rachel fire in honor of my birthday and I felt strangely satisfied that I got to see some open flame on my day.

At some point, the sun did come out and we all engaged in some really fun staging pass times. We played jump rope, jerk off, picked berries, twirled poi, played cards, hackey-sacked, read, made forts, whittled and did extensive statistical analyses of the contents of skittles packages. We also got super creative with our pack lunches and had some fun juice drinking contents. I got to listen to some really good music and hear some really interesting fire stories as well hang out with some pretty fun Alaskans. After about a week of the insanity, however, the Detroit Ranger District decided to demobilize the forces and we were sent home. A crew from Texas and our crew stayed at a ritzy ritzy place in Portland with an open bar from 5:30 to 7:30 so we lived it up. Then we lived it up some more at a brew pub called McMinnamin's and everyone sang me happy birthday and the bar tender gave me a free beer!

We were supposed to be gone for 17 days but were only gone for 11. So I decided to take the next week of work off and go to Denali National Park with my friend, Michael.