Tag Archives: alaska

Dec13

frozen journey, warm heart.

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RCMP Cpl. Robert Drapeau stands next to Ranger Gary Bath,

Lynn Marchessault, Payton Marchessault, Rebecca Marchessault

and Tim Marchessault near the U.S.-Canadian border crossing. (CNN)

CNN reports a story that’s sure to warm your heart:

There’s nice, and then there’s Canadian-nice, which sometimes involves driving a total stranger, her two kids, a pair of elderly dogs and a cat named “Midnight” more than a thousand miles through a snowstorm to another country.

It all started because Lynn Marchessault and her family needed to get from Georgia to Alaska, where her husband is stationed at the U.S. Army base – Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks.

So Marchessault packed up all their belongings, bought a truck that could handle Alaska winters, rented a U-Haul, and made plans for a cross-country family adventure during the balmy days of early fall. But, 2020 happened.

Marchessault waited months for the travel documents that would allow her to drive from Georgia, through Canada and up to Alaska. Due to the coronavirus, Canada had instituted strict guidelines for Americans traveling through the country, en route to Alaska. By the time she got things in order, her September road trip was pushed to November. Besides the restrictions placed on her by the Canadian government, she knew she’d have to keep up a good driving pace to avoid the worst of winter weather.

The first 3,000 miles of the trip went well. They entered Canada through Saskatchewan. Border authorities checked Marchessault’s paperwork and warned her to keep to the main roads and stop only when necessary for food or gas.The family would have to order any food to-go, even at motels they stayed in along the way. She was allotted five days to drive through Canada and get to the U.S. border in Alaska.

The farther north they traveled, the worse the weather got. Marchessault, who was raised in the South, encountered her first winter white-out conditions. Then she ran out of windshield wiping fluid, slush covered her windows, she couldn’t see to drive, and her tires seemed to be losing traction.

Gary Bath, a Canadian ranger from British Columbia, whose job includes training members of the Canadian military to survive the Arctic, was at home when he saw his friend’s Facebook post about the stranded American family. “A lot of people were wanting to donate money or saying they wish they could help but no one was able to get off work or be close enough to go do it,” Bath told CTV News Channel on Friday. “So, I talked to my wife and we decided that I would drive all the way from Pink Mountain to the border.” Bath says he stepped in to offer the family a helping hand because “it was the right thing to do.”

“It took us two and half days, but for me it wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “I love driving so what a great way to see parts of the country that I haven’t seen in a few minutes.” Marchessault says that she and her family are very grateful for Bath’s help and says that they intended to be lifelong friends. “We’re hoping that when we do leave Alaska some of the COVID restrictions will be lifted by then because we would stop to see Gary and his wife on the way through and just thank them again for what they did to help us,” Marchessault added.

credits: CNN, Martha Shade – CDV News, Den Lourenco

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“unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most underrated agent of human change.”

-bob kerry

Jun25

all are welcome to join in the reindeer games.

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If you want to incorporate quality time with animals into your yoga practice, you have a lot of options these days. There’s puppy yoga, cat yoga, and perhaps the most famous — goat yoga. Now, in Fairbanks, Alaska, there’s a new offering: a yoga class with fauna particular to the cold northern climes of the subarctic. Reindeer.

In a grassy pen at the Running Reindeer Ranch, adult and baby reindeer are milling around — grazing, nosing curiously at water bottles, and pawing yoga mats as people shake them out for class.The air is buzzing with mosquitoes, and the sky is threatening rain, but a good two dozen or so people have shown up for this petting zoo and exercise experience.

The reindeer yoga class is a brand new offering for the ranch — it’s only the third class. They usually give natural history walking tours with the animals. Jane Atkinson, one of the owners, does yoga herself. She thinks that reindeer are particularly well-suited to it. They’re twisty creatures — especially in the springtime when their antlers are growing and itchy, and they scratch them with their back hooves.

“So you’ll see the reindeer getting into these amazing poses,” she says, “and it’s like wow … look at this little yoga move that they do!”

One of Atkinson’s employees at the ranch, Elsa Janney, happens to also be a yoga instructor.She starts the class with a safety talk — things like, don’t touch the reindeer’s sensitive antlers because it could hurt them.

From there, much of the class follows a typical yoga class script. But there is some extra stuff mixed in, like what Janney says after she asks the class to pay attention to the sounds around them.

“Reindeer make a click when they walk,” she says. “That is a ligament connected to two different ankle bones. That is unique to both caribou and reindeer.” At the start of class, most of the reindeer are standing up or slowly wandering around the mats.

But as the class goes on, one by one they all lie down. Rocket, an elegant male reindeer, spreads out between the first and second rows and spends most of the class making a soft, breathy, grunting sound — like snoring.

The whole thing is pretty surreal. There’s a lot of giggling. Especially when one of the reindeer relieves itself on the grass.

And Diana Saverin says that trying to maintain focus was part of the workout.”As the rain came down, the mosquitoes buzzed, and the reindeer snored, it was like, can you stay with your breath?” she says, laughing. “It’s good hard work.”

“reindeer are not only for children;

they are for grandmothers fond of watching the moon.”     

-author unknown

 

 

 

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story/photo credits: ravenna koenig, npr.org, wemu radio

Nov22

light.

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image
Barrow, Alaska in darkness on Monday

On Friday, the sun set for the final time in Barrow, Alaska, as the city plunges into polar darkness for the next two months and, in December, formally changes its name to Utqiaġvik, according to Alaska Dispatch News.

The next dawn in Utqiaġvik will be January 22, 2017, the first sunlight under its new name, an Inupiaq word that the wider area of Barrow has long gone by. The city of around 4,300 was incorporated in 1958 and originally took its name from nearby Point Barrow, named by a Royal Navy officer in 1825.

The city is the northernmost in the U.S. and each year spends a couple of months in darkness, owing to its position hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, and about 2,000 miles northwest of Seattle.

Residents recently voted to permanently change the town’s name to honor indigenous peoples and the area’s roots. Locals seem relaxed about Barrow’s final sunset. As ADN reports, the sun “was nowhere to be seen” on Friday, and Qaiyaan Harcharek, a Barrow City Council member who led the drive to change the name, said the event didn’t have much of an effect on him.  “I didn’t put much thought to it,” Harcharek told ADN.

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“hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”

-desmond tutu

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credits: alaska dispatch news, erik shilling, university of alaska- fairbanks, atlas obscura