Son of Timatollah

I finally got the pictures from our day in Barrow, Alaska, online. Barrow is the northernmost community on the continuous western hemisphere land mass. (I'm pretty sure there are Inupiat communities on islands that lie further north of Barrow in both Canada and Russia.) It was one of the most interesting places I've ever been.

We were there on 12 June 2008, just a little over a week until the solstice. The sun had been up since April, would stay up until August. Even though the solar azimuth was changing, the elevation stayed pretty constant, and there was hardly any change to the quality of light over the course of our day. We were actually very lucky from a weather point of view: Sunny and in the 40s.

The whole set is here. Here's a couple of examples:

The frozen Arctic Ocean as seen from the air:



Bicycle on the tundra at the coast with frozen ocean in the background:



Us at Point Barrow, northernmost point on the contiguous Americas:




It's hard for me to explain why this mattered so much to me, was so interesting to me. I think it has something to do with looking out from the edge, from a different edge than the one I'm used to.

There's also photos from the Inupiat Heritage Center. Below are some videos Mack shot there of Inupiat people's dances. Check out the drumming.

Young girls dance:




Young men dance:




Men dance:




I'm sorry that I can't tell you the stories that go with the dances.

Labels: alaska, arctic, barrow, inupiat, northernmost, ocean, point

Yes! We're going to Barrow!!

Labels: alaska, barrow

Next month, Mack and I go to Alaska, a trip we've wanted to make for a long time. The itinerary has just fallen into place, finally, today.

• Monday, 2 June: I fly to Anchorage, getting in late. We're using points to go first class. What a concept.


• Wednesday and Thursday, 4-5 June: I attend and present our ERAU team's UAS work at the CGAR meeting.


• Thursday, 5 June: Mack flies in, first class. I know, we're spoiling ourselves here.


• Friday, 6 June: We take the Alaska Railroad, north to just outside Denali National Park and Preserve. We'll spend one night outside the park at the Denali River Cabins. The same folks own the place we'll be staying within the park.


• Saturday-Tuesday, 7-10 June: We stay in the backcountry of the park at the Kantishna Roadhouse. Three days on the north side of Mount McKinley. Should be pretty cool. Besides hiking and wildlife observing, we hope to do one of the glacier landings with a "flightseeing" plane.


• Tuesday, 10 June: Take the train from Denali to Fairbanks.


• Tuesday-Thursday, 10-12 June: We'll be staying in Fairbanks, but hope to hit the Chena Hot Springs Resort for most of the day on Wednesday.


• Thursday, 12 June: This is still tentative, but the plan is to fly to Barrow from Fairbanks, spend the day there, then fly to Anchorage that night. We had wanted to stay in Barrow overnight, but you can't get a flight out until the evening, and we weren't quite sure what we'd make of two full days in Barrow. Still, I hope to put my toes in the Arctic Ocean.


• Thursday-Saturday, 12-14 June: Spend some time in and around Anchorage. Maybe take a day cruise or something.


• Saturday-Sunday, 14-15 June: Fly back to Florida, uh, first class. All those Northwest miles from when we lived in Memphis are finally paying off!
  

Labels: alaska, anchorage, barrow, denali, fairbanks, railroad, vacation