NBC on the ice with the gray whales; Don Oliver interviews Van Edwardsen as son Vernon prepares himself for his political career; Billy Adams and Johnny Aiken help out

I hate like heck to do this, but I can tell - I have hit the wall for tonight. As far as this day is concerned, I am done for. So I am not going to put up the more extensive post that I had planned for tonight, but I am just going to keep it very simple. If I had a hard print deadline, I would just guzzle a bunch of caffeine and push myself through it even if it meant I had stay up all night, but I don't. I would describe the process that I went through today that ended up with me hitting this wall, but having hit the wall, I don't have the energy to explain it.

I right a little mistake that I made in yesterday's post. I wrote that, as Arnold Brower Jr., Geoff Carrol, Craig George, Ron Morris and the others set out to ascertain the condition of the whales and to enlarge their holes, no one from the national media had yet arrived, but NBC was on its way.

In fact, as I was able to figure out this morning, NBC had arrived that morning - they just did not make it out to the ice at the time the scouting - hole enlargement mission was happening.

Here is the NBC crew with correspondent Don Oliver, on the ice with the whales. 

Don Oliver interviews Van Edwardsen, who, along with his young son Vernon, had come out to see how the whales were doing. Vernon is not only all grown up now, but is an elected member of the North Slope Borough Assembly, a fact that his mother, Dorothy "Doe-Doe" Edwardsen is very proud of.

Among those who came out that same day after Arnold and crew to help out was Billy Adams and Johnny Lee Aiken. It was Billy, readers will recall, who first led me by snowmachine to the gray whale site, when it was still slush. And if you go back to my first post of this series, you will see Johnny embracing Claybo in celebration of the bowhead his father, Kunuk, had just harpooned.

What really strikes me when I look at this picture is... how young these guys look!

Really? Were you that young back then, Billy and Johnny? How young was I, then?

Billy feels the scraped-bare nose bone of the smallest whale - nicknamed "Bone."

I now have all the pictures "scanned" for my next post, the more extensive one I had planned for tonight, plus a bunch of extras. So I plan to put the post I had planned to put tonight by fairly early tomorrow.

Does this make any sense?

Perhaps I can get two posts up tomorrow and make up for lost time.

Perhaps not. Perhaps I should not even suggest such a possibility.

p> 

Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 3: Decision must be made - try to rescue the whales or put an end to their suffering; making them more comfortable

"When you see an animal that is trapped, you want to help it. There are basically two ways to help an animal in trouble. If you can take care of its problem, you do. If you can't, then you kill the animal and end its suffering."

The words above, spoken by biologist Craig George of the North Slope Borough Wildlife Management Department, pretty well summarize what the debate in Barrow was about. In the movie, Big Miracle, once they learned the gray whales were trapped, the Iñupiat hunters immediately wanted to kill them for food. The movie Malik seemed to feel this way, too, until he came to recognize that such a killing would be caught by the news cameras of the world, and the world would grow angry. Whereas if his people set out to rescue the whales, their efforts would generate good will in the world.

As previously noted, the Iñupiat of Barrow and the Arctic Slope had traditionally seldom hunted gray whales, for the reasons explained. If they could, the people, for the most part, wanted to help the whales. While they would not necessarily turn away from accepting a gift from nature, to kill the whales for food could have proved problematic. First, they had a bowhead quota, but no gray whale quota. Second, if they were to put a harpoon and bomb into one of the whales by normal hunting methods, that whale would almost certainly dive under the ice and disappear.

The action would almost certainly panic the other two whales and they would likely not have just stayed put waiting to be harpooned themselves..

The feeling as I ascertained it from talking to a number of different whalers was that if it were possible to rescue the whales that would be the first priority. If it were not, then they would turn their attention to solving the problems involved to carry out euthanasia.

National and international treaty law being what it is, the federal government, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admisitration, would have to approve such action and it might well have to be rationialized through the International Whaling Commission as well.

In the evening, a meeting of the Barrow Whaling Captains would take place under the direction of Arnold Brower Sr., captain of the ABC crew. Whalers would discuss the issue and then decide what they felt the best course of action would be. To help them make their decision, Brower's son, Arnold Jr., was coming out, along with NSB Wildlife biologists Craig George and Geoff Carroll, and Ron Morris of NOAA, who the feds had sent to check out the situation and to wield federal authority in the oversight of whatever would happen.

As of yet, no national media had reached Barrow, but NBC was already on a north-bound jet and the other major news networks would be following quickly behind. By the time the meeting began, NBC would be in Barrow.

I wanted to reach the whales before the group arrived so I could take a few pictures of them with no people around. I snowmachined out as fast as I could. I managed to get in a little bit of solitary time with the whales, but not much. The whales continued to move back and forth between their two holes, doing their best to keep both open by continually disturbing the water before it could freeze over.

Here he is: Arnold Brower, Jr. He had just spent a bit of time examing the whales and then had turned to walk away. Then he heard the blow of a whale behind him and turned to look.

Geoff had brought a small chain saw out. They also had ropes and hooks and a rake and so set out to make the holes a little larger, to give the whales a little more breathing space... literally. That's Arnold Jr. to the left, of course, then Ron Morris, Geoff Carroll, Craig George and Geoff's Iñupiaq wife, Marie Carroll, who worked with the North Slope Borough Public Information Division and would be hosting some locally produced TV broadcasts to inform people about what was happening and then Jens Brower.

I am certain I know the two people to the far right, but from this picture I cannot tell.

They set out to enlarge the holes.

Geoff reaches out to touch a whale, but it jerks its snout down into the water.

He tries again. The whale remains.

NOAA's Ron Morris touches a whale.

Geoff puts his chainsaw into action and begins to make the hole bigger.

As Geoff pries at chunk of ice he has just cut off, Arnold Jr., Craig and Morris pull.

Two children who had come with the group watch the whales. Sharene Ahmaogak and Eben Brower observe the whales..

To some, this may seem incongrous, but it doesn't matter how cold the weather gets - if one is bundled up and is doing hard, physical work, one gets hot and works up a sweat. So Geoff cools down and rehydrates himself with a Coke. In the Arctic, the common way to carry Coke, Pepsi and other drink and food products that one does not want to freeze is in an ice chest.

Geoff had earlier contacted the US Coast Guard to see if they might have some kind of ice-breaking ship nearby that could come in to help set the whales free, but they didn't. The only ice breakers anywhere near Alaska were Soviet. The US and the Soviets were engaged in a cold war - although a slow thaw had begun.

Geoff, by the way, once traveled to the North Pole as a member of a dog team expedition.

Marie will return to Barrow by snowmachine ahead of her husband. Before she leaves, he hands her a slug-loaded shotgun in case she should encounter a hostile polar bear. The end of the barrel is taped to prevent it from becoming plugged by snow.

Tomorrow: the Barrow Whaling Captains meet; rapidly freezing ice overpowers the efforts of whales and humans to keep the holes open - two Minnesotans come with a bubbler.

p> 

Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue

Editing and figuring out gray whale piece; moose bunks with us; I go for a bike ride; two more moose stop by during Super Bowl

Just as I stated last night, I had too much editing and plotting facing me today, plus the Super Bowl, and so I am unable to put up Part 3 of my gray whale series just yet. As I also stated last night, I must go to Anchorage Monday morning to return Margie to her babysitting duties and it looks like I will linger there long enough to make it unlikely for me to get full Part 3 up tomorrow night, as well... but maybe. Yet, I have so much yet to do just to figure out what I have yet to do.

Anyway, just to assure interested readers that I am still hard at work on the rescue story, I am running this one innocuous photo. I chose it specifically because it is innocuous and so gives nothing away.

I got up fairly early this morning so that I could get the oatmeal cooking while Margie still slept. Caleb appeared right after, then went out to bring in some firewood. He also brought in the news that a moose had bunked down in our front yard.

Here is that moose. There was very little light when I took this picture. I pushed the ISO to 6400 and then underexposed it by two stops, which makes an effective ISO of 25,600. That's why it looks a little ratty, but I don't care - I was able to take it. Someday not too far in the future, I expect to have a camera that will shoot ISO 25,600 and the image quality will be so smooth and plastic that I will not be able to stand it.

After I took the picture, I finished cooking the oatmeal. Margie came out and we ate it. It was good. I had cooked apples into it, added walnuts and sprinkled it with cinnamon.

After we finished the oatmeal, I went on a bike ride and took a picture of Shadow Me disappearing into a shadow. Shadow Me was pretty damned upset by this, but I was fine with it. "I completely disappeared for awhile!" Shadow Me complained after he reappeared. "I didn't even exist for that while."

"No big deal," I said. "After I go to bed, you won't exist for awhile, either."

"Really?" he sad.

"Really."

"Please, please, please," Shadow Me pled, "Please don't go to bed tonight!"

I am going to go to bed anyway.

As it happened, it was only Margie and me here for the Super Bowl. Jacob, Lavina, Kalib, Jobe and Lynxton had all planned to come, but Jobe got sick today - upset tummy. So they stayed home. Even so, my mind had been set on pizza since yesterday, so I ordered a medium with Canadian Bacon, onions, mushrooms, pepper and olives from Fat Boys Fattery, which is back in business in a new location.

That medium was as big as large at many places, and better than most.

As we ate the pizza and watched the Super Bowl, this bull moose came by and joined in the feast.

A bit later, after the moose had left, this moose came strolling past the kitchen window, sometime during the third quarter. I thought maybe it was the moose that had eaten with us, so I stepped out onto the back porch to greet it.

It wasn't. It was a different moose, as anyone can clearly see. It was hungry, though.

It stayed awhile to have a meal of its own. As I have noted before, this has been a hard winter for our local moose. On Channel 2 News last night, they showed some folks in Anchorage butchering a road kill moose for charity - it was only one of several moose that had died by vehicle in Anchorage that day - that's a lot of food for charity, but a lot of suffering for moose.

And I'm sure moose died out here on our valley roads, too. And then there's the train. Moose love to get on the railroad tracks, just to get out of the deep snow. They don't understand about trains. So many die.

And if they stay out in the wilds, then so many starve to death or grow weak and get eaten by wolves. This has been a snowy winter, and cold. 

The moose have suffered.

I am glad that at least three found safety, sleep, and food in our yard today - our yard is really their yard, too. It was their yard before it was ours - even the part now occupied by our house. Sometimes, people move up here and then complain about the moose, say how something out to be done to thin them out, lower their numbers, drive them away from the populated places, because they are too much of a hazard.

In truth - we are the hazard. Yet, we are also a boon - a boon and a hazard. We create these places where they can move about and feed more easily and then they get killed by cars and trains.

One raven feasted, the other complained; Kalib battles Melanie over her cake; train wreck - Friday, I will begin my gray whale rescue series

This morning, I saw two ravens in the road. One was eating something. What could it be?

It was a toad! One of those famous Wasilla Anti-Freeze toads! As the raven gobbled up the toad, the other raven grew upset and began to shriek at it. "Share the toad! Share the toad!" the second raven screamed. "I always share my toad with you! Share the toad! Share the toad! Mabel! Share the toad!"

But Mabel did not share. She gobbled down that toad and didn't even care that the other raven had none.

Thereafter, I went out for my daily bike ride. I have riden every day this week. I am kind of sad, though. I have just over two weeks left to ride and then I leave for Arizona and from there on to India. I will not be back until March 23. My winter bike riding will be over, so soon. Maybe I will be able to get in a little more winter biking after I return, but not much.

I might not be able to get any more at all. March 23 could be cold, March 23 could be warm, with slush everywhere. There is no way to know just yet. If I have my way, I will go to the Arctic Slope not long after I return. It will still be cold up there, but I won't be able to take my bike with me.

And I don't know if I will be able to go, anyway. I have no contracts with anybody right now. I have no paying work lined up. I do not know what will become of Uiñiq. Maybe its day is past. Our cash is just about gone. I am expecting one more check for another project I did and I am hoping that can carry us through until I get back from India and can figure out how to carry on, but I don't know.

Still, I am optimistic I will get paying work and I will get up to the Slope this spring. I have to. I must. The Slope is in my DNA.

As I drew near to home on my bike, this dog came chasing after me, barking. The dog that I believe was the mother to this dog once teamed up with another dog, who might also have been a forebearer to this one, invaded our yard and killed our wonderful orange and white tabby, Thunder Paws.

After that, I had a lot of hatred in me for that dog and its people for awhile, but I have pushed that hatred away. At their core, the people are good people and the dog was just being a dog - albeit a mean dog. Plus, after it raised some bloody hell with someone else's pet, it got put down.

It does one no good to carry a grudge against a dead dog.

In the early evening, I got in the car and drove towards Anchorage. There had been a super warm up. The temperature was a couple of degrees above freezing. The roads were treacherously slick. Lots of cars had slid off.

I drove kind of slow, but not real slow.

I went to town because it is Melanie's 31st birthday. Kalib tried to prevent her from blowing out her candles. He wanted to blow them out. Funny - on his last birthday, he did not want to blow out the candles at all.

Finally, Kalib let Melanie blow out her candles. Except for Caleb, the whole family was there, but I am lazy tonight.

She failed to blow out the last candle. So Kalib blew it out for her.

Jobe got tossed almost to the ceiling. I was tired and lazy, and did not want to move from the couch where I sat, so I didn't. Then I felt kind of bad about that, because I could see that picture was directly below, where I could have caught Jobe rising into his own shadow.

So I moved to the floor to get it, but Jobe ran off. The opportunity had been lost. Photography is like that.

Baby Lynx seems to be all better now. He has put his viral infection behind him.

Just before I left, bringing Margie with me, one night early, I found Kalib, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas and Thomas's friend, James, pushing Thomas over the edge of a cliff.

This is why I do not let Kalib and Jobe play unsupervised with the electric HO Thomas the Train that Sujitha gifted to us at Christmas.

Tomorrow, Friday, February 3, the movie Big Miracle will be released nationwide. I also plan to start blogging my own experience. I usually don't get my post up until late at night or even after midnight, but I will try to get my first post, which will start out where the movie starts out, up fairly early.

After I severely overwrite my next Loft entry, I must pull back to do repairs, so, here is the daily moose, the daily dog, and the daily shovel load of snow

I didn't mean to get so carried away. I placed my photos for my next Loft Workshop entry and then set out to write the text, intending to keep it short and simple. When I write these blogs, I tend to write whatever comes to mind when I look at the pictures. When I looked at the pictures of the temple, the taxi-cabs, the broken computer, and the missionaries, I tried to think of just a few words to say, but a flood poured through my fingers, onto the keyboard and into the draft entry of this blog.

It was as if I was not writing a blog at all, but a book - a long and book, possibly brilliant, possibly just tedious and a tad insane. The process got completely out of hand. Most readers would have ran away screaming and of those that stayed to read to the end, a certain number would have run screaming toward me, pitchfork and boiling tar in hand.

So I decided that I had better pull back and see if I can repair the damage tomorrow. It won't be easy, because I have to drive Margie into Anchorage early in the morning so that she can spend the week babysitting the grandchildren.

Even if I do manage to somehow keep my trips to Anchorage brief, they never take less than four hours and theys always disrupt my plans bigtime. It is going to take some real time to repair the chaos I created today and I might not get started until Monday evening. Even so, I will try my best to get it repaired and posted before I go to bed Monday night or, more likely, Tuesday morning.

In the meantimes, above is today's daily moose, spotted on the corner of Brockton and Seldon.

And here is today's daily dog, spotted just off Ward's Street. This dog really wanted to come home with me, but I said, "No, pup! No, pup! Stay here, pup!"

So the dog stayed, but with regrets.

And here is today's shovel-load of snow. The shoveler is a stranger, who I just happened to pass by on the road, the name of which I know, but it escapes me at the moment.

My poor friends down in Cordova - they have really been dumped on. Doors are completely blocked by snow piled above the eaves. Worse yet, Cordova sits right smack on the ocean shore and it rained, the snow got impossibly heavy and roofs collapsed all over town.

Take care, all of my friends in Cordova.

Valdez got dumped on, too, deep enough to bury houses, but I don't think it rained afterwards, so it wasn't as bad. Plus, Valdez always gets dumped on to ridiculous depths.