Fishy!

5_21_08

It feels great to be alive!

It’s amazing how fast days go by here. One would think that living out in the middle of nowhere would give me more time to write in my journal or write letters to people, but it’s just not true. On work days I get up, eat oatmeal for breakfast, and work from 8:30am to 5:30pm, with an hour long lunch (which is not enough time in itself), then after work there’s always something going on around camp. On my days off I find that there’s always been something to do as well.

For example, tonight we had a pot-luck dinner that lasted a little over an hour and now there’s a movie on in the auditorium that I’m missing out on. (I thought it was time to write about my adventures and do some long over due reading instead of watching a movie called King of the Corn, or some such thing.) Yesterday after work I showed one of my favorite sitcoms; Coupling. Thankfully Amanda was willing and able to send it to me. Yay for very funny British comedies!! Then I chatted with some of the other crew in camp until about 11pm. The day before that I went fishing right after work. It was wonderful! Well, mostly wonderful; I wasn’t too happy about having to throw both of my Rainbow Trout back because they were too big. The regulations say you can only catch and keep one Rainbow Trout a day as long as it’s less than 18 inches in length… or something like that. All I know was that I was fishing with one of our law enforcement rangers and the first Rainbow I caught was 20” and the second one was about 23”. They were awesomely big, and would have been tasty fish!! Dang law enforcement! Oh well, Ralph, the very sweet and smart law enforcement ranger I was with caught a Lake Trout so we did end up with fish for dinner. It was a very late dinner at about 10pm, but it was yummy!

I haven’t been getting to bed until about 11pm every night. It doesn’t really matter though, because it’s still dusky at 11pm. Gee I love Alaskan summers!

Speaking of Alaskan summers, I’m living this one up! Last weekend a group of about 8 of us went camping on a little island in the middle of Lake Brooks. It was a bit of a learning experience. We only had one day off because our schedule has been weird, so we left on Saturday after work and hung out on the island/hiked Mt. Brooks on Sunday. On the day we left we couldn’t get the boat situation figured out, because the person who had the boat hadn’t seen that it was already checked out by our group. I therefore ended up sitting in the middle of an aluminum canoe so that we could get some people out to the island to set-up while the others waited for the motorboat to come back. The first thing I learned was not to assume that the pants I think are waterproof are actually waterproof. After what I think was about an hour or longer in that canoe, but butt was FROZEN. The only thing I could think about when we got to the island was building a fire. It was really too bad that I sucked at building a fire though. I couldn’t remember any of my Girl Scout training. Ha! Lucky the motorboat pulled up at that minute with my collogue Mason who gave me his rain pants to wear. Unluckily though he had forgot the big tent at Brooks Camp. We had to boat back to get it and then we were going to go fishing. As we headed out, I realized that I didn’t have a lifejacket, so we had to go back. When we arrived at shore I should have gone with Mason to get the tent and a dry pair of pants, but I wasn’t that smart. Instead I tried to warm my butt by the heater in the cabin by the lake. It wasn’t helpful. When Mason arrived back at the boat we finally headed of to go fishing… only to realize that Mason was the one without the lifejacket now. We of course had to go back for it. Another lesson was learned; make sure you have all the gear you need before you head out to go camping or fishing.

Fishing was good though. I think we spent about two hours and forty-five minutes on the water and caught a total of two fish. I caught the first fish. I was so proud of myself, I was the only girl on the boat, I caught the first fish, and it was a Rainbow a little under 18”! That night we had a feast of one Rainbow and one Lake Trout. Lake Trout is pretty good, but along side a Rainbow Trout it didn’t taste like much. Rainbow Trout is really the way to go.

The next morning we had a very nice camp breakfast. It was great! Thanks all to Mason, the backcountry chef!

As you can see though, I’ve been up to a lot. Training has been going well and I can’t wait to meet the visitors. Tomorrow is more bear training… or should I say, people management training. One of my main responsibilities as a park ranger is to make sure people don’t get in a bear’s way. It sounds very complicated and stressful if you ask me. I’d rather just be giving hikes and talks, but guess this people management will give me more experience with other things I may do in future parks. (Then again I don’t feel like I know where my life is going at the moment. It’s a bit scary at times.)

Signing off for now. I have to get up in the morning and be prepared to learn more about bears. I hope everyone is well!