Alaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaska

I was going to write about the work we are doing up here, but I realized I first need to provide a little… um… context. So, the Island I am on is Called Annette Island, and it is near the southeastern-most corner of the state, near Ketchikan, about halfway between Anchorage and Seattle. The island has only one town, Metlakatla with a population of about 1400 people.

A little history of Metlakatla according to Wikipedia:

1886, William Duncan, a Scottish tanner and lay minister of the Anglican Church, had a doctrinal dispute with the Church authorities in Metlakatla, a village near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. He and a devoted group of Tsimshian followers decided to leave Metlakatla. Duncan went to Washington, D. C., in the United States and asked the U. S. government to give his group land in Alaska. The U. S. gave them Annette Island. In 1887 the group arrived on the island and built a settlement in the Port Chester area of the island. The town was laid out in a neat grid pattern and contained a church, a school, a tannery and a sawmill. They named the town New Metlakatla, after the town they had left behind, but later dropped the "New". in 1888, William Duncan returned to Washington D. C. and lobbied the U. S. Congress for an Indian reservation on Annette Island. Although the reservation system had not been used in Alaska, this request was granted in 1891. Annette Island contains the only Indian reservation in Alaska.

During World War 2, the US military build an airbase on the island south of the town. I've heard for primarily refueling reasons. During the next decade while the airport was being operated, fuel tanks, pipelines and all sorts of other environmentally suspect things, crisscrossed the island. And because Chevron's fuel was stored in the tanks and piplines, Chevron is partially responsible for the cleanup now taking place.

This project has been going on for a little over 5 years now, and has included all sorts of work. The hope is that we will be completely done this year. The other SECOR folks I am up here with right now have been working on the site since the beginning, so it's great to get all the background to the site, but also a little weird getting involved now that the project is almost over.

I know people are probably curious about the work I am actually doing, so I'll try to give a little more detail here. When I first showed up, I flew in with Bob, and we met Belinda on the island, who has been working here the last month. We spent the first couple days supervising a crew of local workers excavate the soil below an old wood stave tank. The tank was holding some sort of petroleum and the soil beneath it was pretty heavily impacted. But the tank was way back in the woods, not near the road, so we had to excavate by hand using shovels, buckets and wheelbarrows. That went along with sampling the bottom of the pit and sidewalls to make sure we were getting it all.

We were also doing a lot of GPSing of old and new sample locations, as well as the area we were excavating. If you've looked at the pictures I added, you'll see the large Trimble backpack I'm wearing, that's the GPS unit we are using. It's actually a lot of fun, and it may turn into quite a bit more interesting field work at other sites. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The first weekend Belinda left and a couple days later Ann showed up. She's our expert in natural resources, and her job is to-vegetate the area we excavated. So we've spent the last couple days planting. I'm totally serious. We walk around until Ann is struck by divine inspiration, and cries out "Those plants there" and points to some grass on the ground that looks exactly like all the other grass on the ground. So we dig it up, put it in a bucket, carry it about 150 yards or so, and plant it. And fertilize it. The we go find Ann who has found some other grass... er... "native plants" and the whole thing starts again. It took 5 of us about 3 days to do over 100 plants

In our spare time we have been hiking and kayaking, so we're keeping busy and having fun. That’s about it for now, we've done a couple other things, and there is more we are doing next week, but that’s for later.

Why is Ted Nugent Stalking Me?

So after cooking our Sunday house dinner (mmmm… Lasagna, thanks Liz and Sam for helping and Rachel for the Salad, Thrice Beaned) I decided I could postpone packing until Monday morning. Because my flight to Alaska where I would be working for 3 weeks in the cold and rain and in the middle of nowhere didn't leave until... Monday morning. But late monday morning, so I had an couple of hours. At about 6:30, I got up and packed all my stuff and Rachel picked me up. Because we had planned on bad traffic to the Oakland Airport, I had plenty of time to kill once she dropped me off, until Bob (one of my coworkers whom I’m working up here with) met me at the terminal shortly before the plane boarded.

The flight to Seattle was nothing special, although we did fly pretty much directly over Mt. Shasta, which was pretty cool. Bob said on a clear day you can even make out people on the peak. The next leg to Ketchikan was fine too. The one funny thing I noticed was that the guy in front of me, wearing a cowboy hat, was reading Playboy, which I thought was pretty odd. But to each his own. When Bob and I were waiting for our luggage, he asked me if I noticed the same guy in the cowboy hat. Thinking he thought the Playboy thing was odd too, I said “yeah! Did you see him reading Playboy?” and Bob said “What? No… That was Ted Nugent!”. And I said “Who’s that?”. I mean, the name Ted Nugent sounds familiar, and I think he’s famous for something music related, but this is the second time now that I’ve run into him (the first time in Ohio… I’ll tell you sometime) and still don’t really know why people I know who are over 30 seem to think he’s famous or something. He can’t be that famous if he flies coach. I finally had to look him up on wikipedia just to know. Anyway, Bob gets a picture of him in the background by pretending to take a picture of me.

So Bob and I walk down to catch our float plane, and who should be the only other people on the dock waiting for another float plane but Ted Nugent and his two boys? So Bob strikes up a conversation and we all laugh about how Texans have funny accents or something like that. Then his float plane came.

Our float plane trip was really fun, I’ve got a video on my camera of us landing, but it’s about 50 megs, so I’ll have to show it to whomever when I get back.

Belinda met us at the dock, and we walked to the house we’re staying out. I’ll take some pictures at some point, but the house itself is not that exciting. The view from the porch is pretty damn nice though. We walked down the street and ate dinner at this little convenience store, because the restaurant is closed on Mondays. Yes, “The” restaurant. We came back to the house and then went down to the local high school gymnasium to play Pickle-Ball (yeah, I’d never heard of it either) for an hour or so. Then… um.. sleep. Only to get up the next morning at 6 am. But that’s for my next post. Cause it’s taken me long enough to find enough time to write this much.

Anyway, the point is I made it safe, and I’m having a good time. When I get a chance (maybe this weekend) I’ll tell all about the actual work we are doing up here. But for now, enjoy the pictures I put up so far.