urbpan | Alaska part 1 (Reply)

Alaska

Part 1.

My first images of Alaska are from the plane. We came down through the clouds over an endless vista of black jagged peaks jutting up through snow. I was struck with a sense of foreboding that made me wonder if I was in over my head on this trip somehow.

That sense was reinforced by a cab ride given by a very vocal, very conservative driver. I remembered back to the airport. When you are waiting by your gate, knowing that the hundred or so other people jostling for a position in line are all going where you are. Three men already dressed for fishing, each one fatter than the last were going to Anchorage too. The largest had one eye inflamed and angry, and they all had a look of swagger about them, like they were gonna show these Alaska fish a thing or too. Our cabby, the first person we spoke to in Alaska, railed against meddling environmentalists, and asked us if we were in town to "kill some fish." I began to suspect that people like me, ecotourists and birders, were in the minority among visitors to Alaska.

The city (or "municipality," as official signage leads me to correct) of Anchorage is quite pleasant. The town fathers take advantage of their short growing season (and short tourism season) with profusions of explosively colored flowers in the parks and in baskets hanging from the lampposts. The first (and as it turned out, only) Native people I saw were either street vendors or street people (in the 1980's sense), looking fairly disenfranchised and like everyone, making the most of the short summer.

That being said, Anchorage is extremely clean and tidy. It gives the impression of being a busy small town rather than the largest city in its state. Tourists greatly outnumbered locals every place I went, in or out of the city. I constantly wondered what the place looks like in winter.

I was surprised at the paucity of urban wildlife. One might suppose, in the city, in the summer, that there would be at least a concentration of many birds. But again, the city was tidy, and indeed, when I did finally see an abandoned sandwich, it was beset upon by gulls. The gulls were the most obvious animals in Anchorage. They perched high for the most part, squealing and whinnying in a higher, less disagreeable tone than the herring gulls I am used to. They themselves were clean and tidy in appearance, dark blue-gray wings and perfectly white throughout, with greenish legs and no marks on their rather dainty bills. These field marks, and the location cues in my Alaska bird guide, pinpointed them as Mew Gulls (Larus canus).

It wasn't until my dad and I wandered to the edge of the water that we found any other examples of Anchorage wildlife. A larger, dirtier gull I identified as a Herring Gull (Larus argentus, common throughout both coasts of Urban North America). Playing "now you see me, now you don't" in the trees and bushes of the residential area were large, long tailed, black-and-white birds. I was expecting them, the magpies, and they became more common as we became more aware of them. Interestingly, the Alaska bird guide conflates them with the European, or Black-Billed Magpie (Pica pica), while the Sibley Guide refers to them as American Magpies (Pica hudsonia) I don't know the reason for the split in taxonomy, but I'm always in favor of American birds getting their own patriotic designation.

Dad and I walked along a linear park. Looking down, I noticed that pineapple-weed (Matricaria sp.) formed a dense ground cover. This isn't unusual--back in New England many well-trod lawns have pineapple-weed (a chamomile relative that really smells an awful lot like pineapple)--but this was a little different. I'm used to seeing tiny flower heads of this weed, between the size of a bb or a caper. These Alaskan pineapple-weed heads were the size of individual peas, or the end of your pinky. I don't know the reason, and perhaps it means nothing, but it was the same wherever I encountered this plant while in Alaska.

We made our way to an inlet, a muddy arm of water that reaches into the city, to find it oddly empty: no ships. Where is this "anchorage" that the city is named for? A bike path ran along it, and we could see a facility for on- or offloading cargo, complete with huge containers and cranes, but no vessels to deliver or depart with it. This inlet, we later discovered, does not freeze; perhaps it's more useful in the winter, and another route is better for cargo in the thawed months.

Along the bike path was an embarrassment of wildflowers. I did not expect to find so many flowers in Alaska. Of course, in New England, our spring flowers have passed and our autumn flowers yet to open. Daisies (Arctic daisies, Dendranthema arcticum, though I found some online disagreement about the proper scientific name), toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) and especially yarrow (Achillea millefolium) were all found. I also discovered a new organism, probably deserving an article of its own. Looking at my notes, my naïveté is charming: I describe a plant with magenta flowers, somewhat phlox-like. Little did I expect how overwhelmingly ever-present this little weed, fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) is in Alaska. Suffice it to say I will return to the subject.

We walked until we were exhausted, which turned out to be early in the evening. There was no cue from the sky what time it was, however. From the moment we arrived until I collapsed on a hotel bed, the sun hovered at what looked to me like the four in the afternoon position. When I woke up at 2 the next morning, it looked like twilight, and by four in the morning, it looked like four in the afternoon again. We got an early start on a long drive, up to Denali National Park.