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Photos 2
The cardboard boxes got a bunch of genuinely cool photos, but how to get those old 35 mm slides on this screen is just too much for the photo guy, yet. Instead he got one of those fancy new digital cameras, and took practice pictures on the Koyukuk River trip, and was so impressed with figuring out how to transfer them to the computer, that you get stuck with these pics instead of the outrageous ones.
And furthermore, he could not figure out how to get them down to a low file size, even after using the lowest setting on the camera, then reducing them on the computer photo program, so you gotta wait for these 20 - 30 KB pics to download. At least you are not suck at some party, after the wine is gone, and having to politely look through Uncle Olfry's whole pile of boring vacation pictures from historic Midville USA, including the fire station. You can click on Astronomy Picture Of The Day, and be where the real adventures are.
These pics are from the first part of the Another Wild Moose Chase story on the Stories 6 page.
The Koyukuk River trip....
The usual quintessential river trip photo for a long trudge lining a kayak and canoe up a typical interior Alaska river in the autumn. The farthest little peak on the right side of the hills is where we went. If I had knowed we would not see a moose before then, and not even then, I would have spent the time going through those old cardboard boxes for some old pictures, and just told a new story.
If this was the only picture of interior Alaska, it would be adequate, until the place turns white.
We took this guy, despite his many noticeably unsocial attributes, just to think-up the stories we would tell. That is him thinking up another story, something about an arms shipment to an obscure bay in Cuba. When he told the story, a nearby beaver kept slapping his tail on the water, and laughed to tears. The story was deleted by the editorial staff, and replaced with some cockamainy thing about finding gold.
While we kept the story guy in the camp, there at the lower end of the oxbow, to think up a better story, we sent the photo guy up the hill to look for a better photo.
This is a typical view of an interior Alaska valley, with the perfunctory lakes and hillsides, with zero, count them, 0, less than one, moose anywhere in view, or around the corner, or over the hill.
Here we see proof of the overwhelming obstacles that impeded our progress. Yet another luxuriant carpet of soothingly soft lichens spreading through a glade inhabited by gnomes, forest fairies, chickadees and a few chattering squirrels inviting us to blow-off our great and weighty responsibilities, and just kick back for an early camp. We did. Notice that this barren wasteland is void of moose and thus of no discernible value.
A typical Gnome road, not to be confused with the more often discussed road to Nome. Squirrels also use the Gnome roads. Nobody uses the road to Nome. Forest faires do not use these roads, because they fly, of course.
The Gnomes, and sometimes the squirrels, often build these arches over their roads, to inform the larger animals who cannot get under the arches, to go build their own roads somewhere else. And it works. There were no moose on this road.
This is the less than ideal tent site, where it rained a bit, encouraging an abrupt departure, with apprehension over the rapids we did not want to go back through with that much water. When you hear the old Alaska stories about how fast and high glacier rivers can rise, do not get too comfortable on a non-glacier river.
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