Around Alaska

AROUND ALASKA

Climbing Denali in the tracks of Belmore Browne

This winter on the lagoon ice behind Kotzebue and in the hills and mountains, local residents may have witnessed a bizarre sight: a white guy on snowshoes, dressed in bright orange bibs and a blue Gore-Tex jacket, carrying a heavy pack and dragging a log lashed in an orange plastic kiddie sled.

SETH KANTNER

What did the manufacturer do to my Pilot Bread?

I'm allergic to a lot of things. So allergic, the FDA should hire me to test food additives. The last time my daughter bought sour cream I scratched all night -- something new they put in, I guess. I'm not alone; food allergies are on the rise in America. That's one of the reasons I'm a strong proponent of food from the land -- what people now are calling subsistence food.

SETH KANTNER

Worf was a tough dog to love -- but boy, was he worth it

A dog bonds with an Alaska family and leaves behind memories of one unique animal.

AROUND ALASKA

Shutting the door can be a major project in the Bush

This Saturday morning I had a long list of things to do. I finished my coffee and jumped up to stoke the stove before getting started. "What about the door?" my wife Stacey said. She was still drinking her coffee. "Nome is already blowing."

AROUND ALASKA

It's caribou time on the tundra, which delights photographers

Caribou are flowing down the coast, from as far as Kivalina or farther, coming across the ice, and up over the tundra near Kotzebue. There's fresh snow on the ground, good enough for traveling, even if many creeks are still impassible thickets and the ice not entirely safe.

HEATHER LENDE

Through bugs, wind and wrecks, just keep on pedalin'

It rained last night and is still raining and that is a fine thing, because here in Southeast -- even the drier northern tip -- we are cloud-loving people. We get a little anxious when the sun shines too much. Also this rain is a good reason to take one more day off after the bike race and my calves are thanking me.

AROUND ALASKA

Wedding brings another world custom into Alaska town

We all got dressed up for Tina's wedding. "No jeans," I shouted up the stairs to my teenagers. "It's a Gregg wedding, so it will be formal." Or as formal as Haines gets.

HEATHER LENDE

Alaskans double as tourists

On the alpine trail through the spruce and hemlock forest, next to the full river rolling down in foamy waves before dropping over a ledge, it was dry.

AROUND ALASKA

Kodiak residents take stormy Crab Festival in stride

In Kodiak snowstorms usually make winter's arrival hard to ignore. It's a subtler shift from spring to summer. Except for this year, when May blazed in with several weeks of sunshine.

AROUND ALASKA

Last living territorial governor honored at UAF

Now a sprightly 90 years old, Alaska's penultimate territorial governor is a major reason why Alaska became a state. When he was appointed to the position the prospect of statehood remained uncertain.

Photos: Life as Alaska's governor

HEATHER LENDE

Graduation is a good kind of craziness

I would like to report objectively on the Haines High class of 2009 graduation. But I can't, because my youngest daughter was one of the 21 students who eventually received diplomas and because, if you had asked me in December, I would have placed the odds of her wearing that white cap and gown at 50-50 -- and I am perpetually optimistic.

AROUND ALASKA

Transition from the Bush to big city a raucous affair

When I tell people I moved to Anchorage from Eagle three weeks ago, they gasp. What used to be a relatively unheard of village in the Bush is now known to everyone, thanks to the huge flood that splashed photos of waterlogged, ice-choked Eagle across the pages of the Anchorage Daily News.

HEATHER LENDE

Last graduation leaves more time for the raspberries

Haines almost made the news again this week but happily dodged another disaster after a fire started by a road-building crew jumped into the brush and began to run up the hill below a neighborhood.

HEATHER LENDE

Tragedy interrupts pleasure of Southeast sun

I can't remember if the sun has been shining for 18 days or 28 days. Of course by sun shining I don't mean Arizona style, I mean southeast Alaska style, as in not raining. But even so, we have had so many bright days that I'm dizzy. It is hard to concentrate. As one high school honor student confessed, while explaining a suddenly slipping GPA, "I don't know how kids do any schoolwork in sunny places like California."

HEATHER LENDE

Courageous Klukwan elder passes into history

I learned of Mary King's death at the coffee hour after church when my friend, judge and attorney Linn Asper, asked if I was writing her obituary. I didn't know who Mary King was and he couldn't believe it. But that is how the history of Alaskan small towns works sometimes, we don't pay as much attention to our past as we should.

SARA LOEWEN

Gulls in tap shoes welcome spring with dance

Kelp, sea anemones, jellyfish, waves and gulls. Add multiple blizzards and you could be on any Kodiak beach this spring. Except that I was at a dress rehearsal for the Woodland Dance Studio spring recital. These seagulls were wearing tap shoes.

HEATHER LENDE

Spring makes bike ride a lot longer

On a rainy fall day I can ride my bike to town in a relatively miserable 10 minutes. But on a sunny, warm spring morning, after one of the longest winters in years, (there is still snow in shady and north facing yards) it took me about forty-five minutes to go two miles.

AROUND ALASKA

Village burial is a 'bring your own shovel' affair

An old-timer died in Eagle City on April 6. One of the last of the old breed, they say. A poker-playing raconteur who was never without his pocket knife and a piece of diamond willow to whittle into a slingshot, a bow and arrow or a walking stick.

HEATHER LENDE

After 89 years, lively local history lesson is laid to rest

Before one of her last medevacs, my friend Isabell Katzeek was lying on the gurney as volunteers loaded her into the ambulance for the ride to the airport. She appeared frail and ill. She had suffered a heart attack. But then she suddenly sat up, looked around and said, "Now wait a damn minute, where the hell do you think we're going?"

HEATHER LENDE

Avoiding disaster while enjoying Easter fun, frolics

This year spring has been sneaking up on us like an afternoon nap. Every day, it seems, about mid-afternoon, winter lets go for an hour or two. The ice melts, the sun shines, the snowlines on roadsides, yards and beaches recede. My hens come out of their coop, fluff their feathers, scratch and cackle.

HEATHER LENDE

Fleet helps navigate life

A dozen of us had a ski race on Saturday at the snowmachine track at Mile 25 mile Haines Highway. It had snowed all night and was still snowing when we began. The storm didn't quit until a few hours before the Blessing of the Fleet after church on Palm Sunday.