Bow Hunting in Alaska

Part 6 of the Alaska Series.  Click here to start reading at Part 1: Above the Arctic Circle.

This is one of my most favourite memories of our trip to Alaska.  Father and son moose-hunting team The Petes (otherwise known as Big Pete and Little Pete), camp guides Dan, Cecil and Chris, and I were sitting in the cook tent after breakfast, playing Farkle.  If you've never played this game, you're missing out on a bunch of fun.  Especially using Cecil's rules, which state you have to score exactly 10,000 to win. 

Playing Farkle in the cook tent

After a couple of rounds of Farkle, Little Pete asked me if I'd be able to photograph him at target practice with his hunting bow.  He wanted a photo of the arrow right before it hit the target.  Welllllll I'm up for a challenge, so we headed out to the airstrip.

After a few warm-up shots, Pete declared he was ready.  First, however, we needed to figure out how I'd know when to start shooting, to catch the arrow in flight.  I suggested that I count down from three and then he'd let loose.  It went something like this:

Me:     "Okay ready?  Three -"
LP:     [lets arrow fly - it hits target with a resounding THUNK!]
Me:     "SERIOUSLY?"
LP:     "Shut up."

Chris and Cecil enjoying the fun

But Pete is pretty darn good with a bow and arrow, leaving me to be the one having difficulties timing the shot.  Even at a continuous four frames per second burst, the photo below is the closest I got the arrow to the target.  Not bad for a first time, though!

Straight and true

Pete got what he came to Alaska for - he nabbed a moose, using a bow and arrow.  Now that's a serious beastie and some major bow hunting skills.

Pete and his moose.  Photo used with permission.

Next up:  The Northern Lights

My Wish Came True

 

It's the little things in life that can really make your day.  My home town in New Zealand has a wonderful climate: lovely hot, dry summers, winters that are cold enough to kill the bugs off but very rarely below freezing.  I'd been in snow once, but had never actually seen it snow until I moved to the USA.  

Living in Georgia doesn't exactly offer up many opportunities for snow, but there have been some magical moments for me:  my first Christmas in the US was white (which finally made sense of all the snow-themed Christmas carols) and my husband and I woke on the first day of our honeymoon to a pretty covering of snow at our cabin in the North Georgia mountains.

I discovered that it can actually snow hard - I always thought it sort of floated down gently until I saw big, fat flakes barrelling down from the sky.  And I saw my own, personal warp speed special effect as I tipped my head back and stared up into the falling snow.  I've opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out to catch snowflakes and taste them and I've giggled helplessly while feeling the cold wet seep through as I lay on the ground to make snow angels.  

My manager at the first job I had here was appalled when he found out that I'd never been in a snow fight, so he took me outside and we proceeded to pummel each other and our coworkers with snowballs.  I've had a total of three snow fights in 18 years - which says more about Georgia snow than it does about me.

On Tuesday it snowed while I was working; processing photos and entering bills into the accounting software.  I looked out my window and saw the neighbour's kids lobbing snowballs at each other and all I could think of was Calvin & Hobbes.  Give me a sled, my stuffed Tigger toy (or in this case, Rocky Dog in the photo above) and I'm there.  Time to head for the hills.

Photography - A Gift from the Heart

HeartsApart is a non-profit organisation that aims to help ease the pain of separation when one member of the family is serving in the military.  Partnering with a force of volunteer photographers, HeartsApart provides military families with the gift of photography at a time when they're soon to be miles from each other.

It was my privilege to photograph this family not long before the husband deployed and to capture this time in their lives.  Daddy and daughter just love to read a book together - and what better place to do so than under a tree bathed in late afternoon light?!

Click to see their gallery on Facebook.

Here's a short video highlighting some of the moments from their family portrait session:

Alaska - Planes from the Inside World

Part 5 in the Alaska Series.  Click here to start at the very beginning - Part 1: Above the Arctic Circle.

I was going to call this post Planes from the Outside World, but then I realised you don't get any more outside than inside the Arctic Circle.  If you follow my drift.  Planes come from towns and cities where people tend to spend more time inside than outside.

The airstrip at camp - marked by moose antlers.

It's amazing how seemingly random sounds can provoke strong emotional responses from us.  I grew up in an area that was not quite urban, not quite country; lots of farmland and orchards around my home town.  So it was a fairly common occurrence to hear a prop-plane off in the distance, mostly crop-dusting but sometimes recreational.  So while I'm not the world's most enthusiastic flyer, the sound of a prop plane has a special place in my heart and brings back memories of hot summer days.  I even wrote a poem about it:

Tiger Moth

A distant plane drones
And memory strings
Stir in harmonic hum,
Long ago days and 
Slow summer haze.
Time was a cat
Stretching languidly
As we lay on our backs
On sun-warmed grass,
Cobalt sky reflected in 
Blackberry-flavoured lips.
We sweetened the hours
With lethargic dreams while 
Time mocked our laughter,
Slinking unnoticed
On small padded feet.
And the days and the years
Walked unmarked, except by  
Dusty lines on our faces 
And sepia memories
Revived by the sound
Of a fading plane. 

Got an A for that one - yay me!  (Which reminds me, I need to enroll for next semester soon...)

Anyhow, back to Alaska.  Apart from a satellite phone for emergencies, the only contact we had with the rest of the world was via the bush pilots.  We were a world away from Fantasy Island but the sound of an approaching plane brought Tattoo's cry "De plane!  De plane!" to mind more than once.  Everyone in camp at the time would head out to the 'airstrip' to greet the pilot and help unload the goodies.

Helping unload and load the plane.

And seeing as it wasn't a quick jaunt to the supermarket, planes usually also meant the arrival or departure of hunters.  The first team we said goodbye to was Jerry and Lisa and it was a sad farewell - they are a great couple and brought a lot of laughter to camp.  The joint cook-tent-crossword-solving effort was an epic event and I'll never look at a crossword puzzle again without giggling.  Jerry's such a good sport.

Jerry & Lisa on their last day in camp.

So now, along with memories of the long, hot, dry summers of my youth, the distant sound of a prop plane also brings to mind a colder, utterly wild part of the world.  Two different hemispheres; the bottom and the top of the world, two different times separated by 'several' years, but still the same 'Great Outdoors', good friends and good times.

Next up:  Bow Hunting in Alaska

It's Christmas Day!

Merry Christmas to you all - may you have a wonderful day and may the blessings of God be with you throughout the coming year.

Guess Who's Coming to Town?!

Not long ago I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing someone we all know well.  He has different names depending on where you live in the world:  Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas or Papa Noel, to give but a few - yes, it's the twinkly-eyed man himself - Santa Claus!

I met with Santa and Mrs. Claus while they were getting ready for the big event and was able to photograph him while doing the laundry, darning his loooong red socks and sitting down to have a nice cup of hot cocoa.

It was so much fun chatting with them and getting to know them!  Santa's a great guy (as we already knew!) and he's also graciously allowed me to share some photos with you.

So coming in December, I'll be posting a photograph of Santa every day (except for Sundays!) on my Facebook page.  Come and join us for the fun!

Alaska - Wolves and Bears

Part 4 of the Alaska Series.  Don't miss a moment: click here to start reading at Part 1: Above the Arctic Circle!


Luckily, I wasn't holed up the entire time with a cold.  The first fine day saw me champing at the bit to be out by myself in the Great Outdoors of Alaska.  But there was a problem:  I didn't have anything for protection from the wild beasties.  Not that we'd been inundated with four-legged visitors; all we'd seen so far were a couple of moose, at a distance.  The only thing I was planning on shooting with was my trusty Nikon.  Nevertheless, best not to tempt fate, so when Wayne offered to lend me his handgun, I accepted.

This wasn't any old handgun though; this was a Smith & Wesson 500, no less.  According to Wikipedia, the S&W 500 is 'the most powerful production revolver in the world today, and it is being marketed as [...] "the world's most powerful handgun" by the manufacturer."  Yikes.

(I just used Wikipedia as a source in my writing.  My English professors will be rolling their eyes in dismay.)

Okay, so that you know where I'm coming from, I hadn't even seen a handgun until I came to the US.   My brother has a rifle, my uncle and cousins enjoyed hunting and I'd shot a BB rifle, but I'd never been in the presence of a real-live, hip-holstered, gun-totin' type before emigrating.  When we were planning the Alaska trip, Steve and I decided it would be a good idea for me to learn how to use a handgun, if only so that I didn't shoot myself...  (For the record, I'm pretty darn good at sporting clays and the paper-silhouette target at the gun range ended up with a nice, tight cluster of holes in its shoulder, right where I intended it to be.)

Smith & Wesson 500

Anyhow, back to the story.  Here's me, the rookie in camp, out for a walk by myself with a portable canon strapped to my chest (gee I hope Mum isn't reading this...).  The S&W 500 is a lot heavier than those I practiced with at the gun range, but Wayne promised me the adrenaline rush would take care of that if I had to point it at something.  Oh joy.

I walked far enough away that camp was a few smallish white blips in the distance, then stopped to breathe in the scenery.  A movement caught my eye and I spotted a black bear moving at a fairly quick pace in the direction of camp.  My heart started racing - it wasn't the first black bear I'd seen in the wild, but this time I was alone.  My initial thought was to alert the folks back in camp.  Actually, that was my third thought.  The first two were:  Eek!  Oh whew, it's moving away from me and then Rats!  I wish I had a longer zoom lens.

Black bear heading towards camp.

But my cellphone was stuffed into the bottom of a pack in my tent and no-one provides service north of the Arctic Circle anyhow.  Yes, that's right; of all the ridiculous things to flash through my mind at that moment, calling camp on the cellphone was one.  Yet more proof that I've lived in a large city too long.  (Smoke signals would have been more effective.  Hold on a moment while I rustle up a fire.)

By this time, I was fairly hopping with excitement and no-one around to high-five.  At least I had photographic proof!  I turned south again and spotted husband-and-wife team Jerry and Lisa heading back to camp.  Walking over to meet them, I 'casually mentioned' seeing the bear.  Jerry took one look at the photos and hot-footed it back to camp, trying to intercept the bear before it could disappear.  Lisa and I chatted for a while, then she followed Jerry back to camp.

If you look closely enough, Jerry is just below the horizon off
Lisa's right shoulder.

That wasn't the end of the excitement, however.  Walking back to the river, I spotted a wolf on the far bank.  No doubt he'd long since seen me, but right then he was watching Jerry and Lisa intently as they moved further away.  Determining that they were no longer a threat, he focused his attention on the next curiosity - me.  My heart was now pounding so hard that I could barely get a clear photo, because if there was one animal I wanted to see out here, it was a wolf.

My friend the wolf.

I was totally okay with him trotting down the far bank, then daintily crossing the river and I even got a few shots of him looking upstream and downstream on the near bank.  But when he stared fixedly at me, then quick-trotted straight for me, I started getting nervous.  I thought wolves were shy creatures!  This one was sizing me up for a tasty snack.

Quickly but carefully (yes, carefully, go figure!), I placed my camera on the ground and stood up, drawing the gun and standing broadside to the wolf in one movement.  The gun that was so heavy had never felt lighter.  Until this point, I'd been standing side on so as to better steady myself while photographing the wolf, but turning to face him afforded him a better view of me and he realised I was human.

If I'd known then what I know now, I would have handled it completely differently and ended up with some beautiful photos before scaring him off.  And I would also have scored some awesome video footage as the wolf spun a swift 180 then forded the river, pushing up waves bigger than he was as he bounded back across.  My mind is now the sole keeper of these images, as well as how he quickly climbed the bank, shook himself, then looked back at me over his shoulder before disappearing into the trees.  Next time, my friend.

Next up: Planes from the Inside World