Skolai Images

hey Folks,

I promised my buddy Ron I’d post this. Hey Ron!

This is a wild lynx, from Wrangell St. Elias, photographed this last winter. I was pretty lucky to get this. I couldn’t believe my luck when I spotted this gorgeous cat, and hoped and prayed I’d get a photo. The lynx obliged me. I wish, of course, the image wasn’t quite so cluttered, particularly his little white beard created by the snow-covered branch in the foreground, but it’s the first photo I ever got of a lynx, so I’m happy enough, I reckon. He let me fire a few a frames, and then bounded off into the brush.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

Here’s one I shot yesterday. As winter comes to an end, the hares are hungrier than ever, which means I get to see them a little more. This one is just starting to change his coat back to the brown summer coat. You can see the black tips on the ears, which don’t go white, even in the mid of winter. As winter goes along, the hares get hungrier and hungrier - there is not a lot of fodder for them once the snow covers everything. You can see the willow branch this one was nibbling on when I found him. The hares eat the bark right off the saplings .. (more…)

Hey Folks,

Here’s a follow up to my recent post on proposals to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Whilst that post concentrated on facts and figures and data and so forth, I think greater arguments ought be made. As you can see from a cursory read of that post, it’s too easy for folks to cut up a pie in any way they choose in order that it might yield the slices that best fit their appetite. I suppose part of the reason for this is that the pie itself is, ultimately, generated by our cultural institutions, our way of living, our way of seeing the world. The potential number of barrels of oil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may yield is somewhat of an abstraction - what constitutes a “barrel”, for example? How large is the footprint of a drilling rig? How many caribou will that impact? Any measurements we choose to use are simply yardsticks of our own worldview (I guarantee you, for example, that the Porcupine Caribou Herd would, if asked, probably give a very different answer to even our cleverest scientists). What if we don’t look upon the world with that viewpoint, however? How else might we be able to see the world, and in what ways might we possibly benefit from a different angle? (more…)

Hey Folks

I’m still in Glennallen. Bummer!

The library has reasonable access to the internet, meaning, at least it works. So I figured I may as well post a note here.

This image is from my recent trip. I was walking along the edge of the lake here, on the ice, and following this set of snowshoe hare tracks. Out of nowhere they venture out on to the ice and do this really cool little loop, then back on course. I thought it was awesome. I know the photo’s hardly wall-hanger, but the scene caught my eye - it just seemed to interesting to wonder why the little rabbit walked a perfect circle like this .. maybe he was just exuberant about it being winter, and such a lovely day. Maybe he had just had his van fixed and was in a good mood. Maybe he just felt like walking in a circle. Whatever the reason, I thought it was pretty cool, so I took this photo.

I’m not sure when I’ll get internet access again, hopefully it won’t be too long, and I’ll post another from the winter here in Alaska (don’t go giving me this ‘it’s still fall nonsense, neither!!!)

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks

This year seems to be the year for snowshoe hares - they’re all over Denali National Park. What was interesting is that I made 2 relatively short trips to Denali National Park this year, one in late August and one in mid-September, and both trips I saw numerous snowshoe hares, but they weren’t at all in the same areas. In August I saw an awful lot of hares in the first 15 miles of the road into the park, particularly near Savage River. In September, we didn’t see any bunnies there, despite my assurances to my parents that would - well, we did see one, he was (more…)