Getting to Homer is hard. This is a known fact to Alaskans but not to me. My flight from Seattle to Anchorage was delayed before I even left the house, I was going to miss my connection, and there were no more flights to Homer til long after the Tiglax was gone. When I told Adrienne, the Visitor Services Manager and my contact at the AMNWR, she was nonplussed. This is how it goes - you get there when you get there. So I got myself on a flight to Anchorage the following day and bought a second ticket to Kenai (as close as I could get to Homer) from a tiny regional airline called Grant Aviation.
Let me tell you about Grant. Okay, I don’t know much about Grant and I’m too lazy to research them. (I’d rather research puffins.) But when I finally found their ticket counter in the bowels of Ted Stevens airport, it was one guy at a desk. He didn’t ask for my ID. He weighed my checked bag on the big scale, then told me to stand on the scale so he could see what I weighed. “Come back in 45 minutes to board.” He could’ve added “if you feel like it” and it would’ve fit the tone of the interaction.
I waited for our impossibly tiny plane with the three other passengers, one of whom was a business lady that seemed as giddy as I was. She was going to a hospital in Kenai. I told her I was an artist-in-residence on a research vessel. “You look like what you’re supposed to look like and I look like what I’m supposed to look like!” she said. I guess that’s reassuring.
The flight was short and smooth and beautiful. I sat directly behind the pilot and resisted the urge to pat him on the head.
In Kenai I said goodbye to my business buddy and was collected by Kendra, an educator with the Refuge. I spotted her by her ranger outfit and capable attitude. She drove me to Homer, telling me about the work she does in the community on the peninsula as well as in islands on the Refuge. She was supposed to go to St. Paul on the Pribilof Islands but couldn’t get a flight. Homer is hard but the Pribilofs are currently impossible - people have been stranded in Anchorage trying to get home for months, and there are folks on the islands that need medical care and can’t get it. Everyone is grumbly with Ravn Airlines right now.
On the drive to Homer we saw sandhill cranes in someone’s front lawn like a bunch of turkeys, possibly the same ones I’d seen in Sauvie Island. They stop in Portland, OR on the way here, where they nest. It was nice to see them again.
I also saw my first ever moose, which is kind of amazing given how many times I’ve been to Alaska. It looked… like a moose.
I met up with Adrienne, and it was great to finally put a face to the voice and many patient emails. She took me to buy a pair of Xtratufs, the Alaskan sneaker. Dry feet are a very big deal, especially with getting on and off of the islands, and they’re also just cool-looking. Surely my brand new shiny rubber boots will convince everyone even further that I know what I’m doing.
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I poked around the visitor’s center after hours and watched a beautiful video about the Maritime Refuge.
As I watched it started to sink in just how incredible this trip is going to be. I’m so used to nature through the safe framework of a park, with trails and interpretive signs and your car in a parking lot at the trailhead. The things I’m going to see are protected, remote, unspoiled (hopefully) and incredibly significant from a scientific perspective. I knew it would be cool, but I’m starting to anticipate just HOW cool, and it made me tear up a little bit. I can’t believe how lucky I am, and I’m determined to try to do it justice.
I spend the night at the bunkhouse, where biologists working in the area can pass through and rest. Sam was there taking pictures of some seabirds across Kachemak Bay, and there was a mysterious, silent girl whose phone was in a bag of rice due to a water incident. It’s also the home to grad students and interns at the visitor’s center, and anybody else who needs a place to stay.
The night I was there they had just celebrated the birthday of Ava, one of the visitor’s center interns. Emma, my bunkmate for the night and another intern, had baked a lovely raspberry cake and gave me permission to share the recipe, so long as credit went to her grandmother, Elizabeth Morse Bowker. Cheers, Grammie Morse!
As we sat around talking there was a 3.4 magnitude earthquake that shook the apartment. The Aleutians are the tips of active undersea volcanoes called the Ring of Fire, so seismic activity is nothing new and no one batted an eye. It was my first earthquake, though, and my eyes batted a whole bunch.
I feel shooketh. It’s still light out at 11pm this far north, which was fine with me. Sleep is for the weak.
This is definitely inspiring! I love your storytelling as well. Do you draw from photos you’ve taken (like the moose) or from memory or quick in motion sketches?
How did I miss this? So exciting!