Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The Grid at Aurora Harbor, Juneau Alaska


One of the coolest things about Juneau Alaska is the extreme tides. On average tides here change 16-18 feet per day. Compare that to 4 foot tides on the Chesapeake Bay, for example.
I love when people use natural forces to accomplish things. The grid at the harbor in Juneau is one of those devices that do this. The first photo shows a large working boat, looks like about 50 feet long, lifted out of the water.
In this photo you can see the bow and the timbers, just at the water line, that it is resting on. This is the grid.








Here is another shot of the grid a few minutes later. Notice the tide has gone out more and the boat is now out of the water more.
Here is a view back down the grid showing the boat now fully out of the water. Captains tie up their vessels above the grid at high tide, and within a few hours the tide lowers the boat onto the timbers of the grid, exposing the underside of the boat. There is a window of 6-8 hours during which the hull can be inspected, scraped, cleaned and even painted, and the props can be worked on.
Isn't this ingenious?



Friday, July 17, 2009

Glacier Falls

Bruce and I walked out to the glacier and the falls nearby tonight. As we get closer to moving away, my appreciation for the beauty of the world here is renewed. The falls are about 150 feet high, and are a half mile from the glacier.
As we got closer, the sound grew louder and louder. It is probably a half a city block wide at the base of the falls. It throws off a fine mist, but you can walk right up to the falls.


Bruce got excited as we came to the falls, (he thinks waves are alive and need to be hunted down and subdued). I got kinda going too...


Looking back over the lake which flows from the glacier, you can see icebergs floating, having calved in the past few days from the glacier.



There were only two people on the trail. There had probably been hundreds during the day, but they are all back on their cruise ships by sundown.
I will miss the ease of getting out into the wild and being alone with the splendors of creation.




Friday, July 3, 2009

Garrison Keillor - American Master

Garrison Keillor, the author, humorist and creator of "A Prairie Home Companion" radio show was featured on American Masters this week. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/garrison-keillor/the-man-on-the-radio-in-the-red-shoes/1159/

This is a great man doing great work.

Here are a couple of quotations I noted:

"Our impact on the world is slight
so take life as a comedy,
play it for laughs.
You die, there is a sort of decent grief
a few people really do suffer from your absence
but the impact on the greater world is not that big.
You do not leave a big hole.
They dig a hole and they put you in it."


and

"Now that I am the age that I am
I find myself less interested in the adult world.
I feel myself going back to the ravine
and going back to the sort of loose, dreamy feeling
that you had when you were twelve and thirteen.
We see the world clearly when we are children,
and we spend the rest of our lives
trying to remember what is was we saw."