Mud Flats and Fish Camps: 800 Miles Around Alaska's Cook Inlet
By Erin McKittrick; Mountaineers Books; 226 pages; 2017; $18.95 paperback
What it's about: Author and frequent We Alaskans contributor Erin McKittrick of Seldovia, author of "A Long Trek Home," chronicles the journey of her adventurous family as they hike and paddle the 800-mile coastline of Cook Inlet. Swirling tidal currents draw the family's inflatable kayaks into a pod of spouting belugas; 4-year-old son Katmai transforms himself into a woolly mammoth during a spring blizzard and endless tidal flats pose a serious risk with their quicksand-like mud.
Excerpt: Current bent waves around the sharp corner of the East Forelands. The other side of Cook Inlet seemed so close here, we could almost taste it. A few miles north of the Nikiski oil docks, the houses and bluffs gave way to a backdrop of woods — a lighthouse reserve. This was the narrow spot. Only about 10 miles to Kustatan on Cook Inlet's west side, but more than 200 miles the way we were going. Who would walk all the way around to Anchorage rather than risk that paddle? Only us moderns. The Dena'ina paddled it all the time, and maybe more than one terrified Russian got toted along in the middle seat of a bidarka, wondering how the boat would thread those currents. Silt and fish rushed through that gap.
Whales opened their mouths beneath the waves. We watched them slowly push against the current, the round white backs of the adults followed by the round gray backs of the babies. Belugas. They posed between us and the oil rigs. They strung out in ones and twos and threes, and seemed to pass us constantly, until I wondered if there were dozens of whales or just the same small handful, circling in an endless loop to feed in the riches of the fastest water …
Blocks of granite rose from craters of mud. Five feet tall, 10 feet, 20. Boulder after boulder, thrown down on the shore, in the tide flats, out into the inlet until the water curled around their blocky edges and the lines of rock blurred into nothing in the fog. You could imagine setting a tent on the flatter ones. You could imagine some god of the sky throwing down a handful of pebbles, or a mythical creature bounding the many yard gaps from rock to rock. Stepping stones of giants.
Rivers carry sand and pebbles. Glaciers carry whatever they want. Person-sized, house-sized, the rocks had been only a smudge on the ice that filled Cook Inlet. They flowed with the ice and fell, erratically, wherever they happened to be when the ice melted out from underneath them. Hig set his next fire right on top of one of these glacial erratics and shooed the kids away. "Don't topple the fire!"
The Matter of the Deserted Airliner: Alaska Disappearing Crew and Passengers Caper
By Steven C. Levi; Publication Consultants; $17.95; 238 pages
What it's about: Unicorn Airlines Flight 739 with no pilot, no crew and no passengers lands at Anchorage International Airport. As the authorities are wondering what happened, a ransom demand is made for the passengers: $25 million in diamonds. Chief of Detectives for the Sandersonville, North Carolina Police Department, Captain Heinz Noonan, is visiting his in-laws in Anchorage when he is summoned to help. He has 36 hours to determine how crew and passengers disappeared off Unicorn Airlines Flight 739 before the $25 million in diamonds is paid to the extortionists. But can he solve what appears to be an impossible crime, free the hostages, arrest the perpetrators and resolve The Matter of the Deserted Airliner before the ransom is paid?
Excerpt: Thus it was with great enthusiasm Captain Heinz Noonan, Chief of Detectives of the Sandersonville Police Department and one of America's top crime fighters, hiding behind the white lattice of his mother-in-law's gazebo was pleased to get a phone call. Any phone call. At the very least it meant he would not have to converse with the walking catalog of trivia of his mother-in-law. Speaking of which — at this very instant — he could see her cutting her way toward him through the clover. It would only be a moment before she lumbered into the gazebo full of enough advice, concern and suggestions for a year of newspaper columns. "Hello."
"Captain Noonan?"
"I hope so. Otherwise I've got someone else's ID."
"I hate to break into your vacation, Captain."
Noonan looked through the trellis at his approaching mother-in-law and said with gusto and volume, "Not a problem. What can I do for you? Or rather, who are you?"
"This is Ayanna Driscoll. I'm the head of Airport Security here at the Anchorage International Airport. I've got kind of an odd story but I can assure you …"
"OK, Ayanna, every story I get is odd. Give me what you've got."
"Your name was given to me by the Anchorage Police Commissioner Charles Dabenshire. I know him casually and professionally. He suggested I give you a call. He knows you're on vacation at your in-laws here in town but …"
"Crime doesn't take a vacation. Yeah, sounds like Charlie, work first." He paused for a moment, looking at his retreating mother-in-law. "As it happens: he continued, "I've got nothing but time today."
"This might not take long. Actually, at this point it's more of a 'what's going on here?' problem."
"That's the way the big problems always start. Tell me what's happened."
"OK. At about 10:15 this morning Unicorn Flight 739 from SEATAC landed in Anchorage after routine instructions."
"Meaning?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm talking jargon. Before a plane lands there is a flurry of communication, mostly about local weather conditions, wind speed and direction, if there is any ice on the runway, which runway to use, at which gate to dock and other routine information."
"Go on."
"Unicorn 739 landed without incident. It rolled into Gate A-17, shut down its engines and then just sat there."
"Just sat there?"
"Right. As in nothing happened. The ground crew cranked the walkway out to the fuselage door and waited for it to open. It didn't. The ground crew assumed it was jammed on the inside so they tried to raise the pilot by radio and intercom but got no answer. Then they tried waving to the pilot through the terminal window but there was no pilot in the cockpit."