Hughesair (Inflection Point)

Tonight’s news showed 20 Native Alaskan citizens pleading guilty of breaking federal fishing laws by taking Salmon for subsistence. The picture was nauseating. Here was a clean shaven citified judge accepting a guilty plea and lecturing these families whose lives depend literally on their traditional strategies of survival. “You are responsible for learning the federal fishing laws and adhering to them,” he said in words to that effect. One violation was merely using a net that was not the right size. The natives, women and children includes, once more sat mute in their traditional coastal dress as they listened to their rights taken away by laws written in Washington, DC by people clueless about the harsh isolated life of remote native villages. Shame on the judge for such bureaucratic judicial haughtiness. I picture him speaking through Klinefelter lips. I saw some of this first hand when flying along the Katmai Coast where enforcement rangers rotating from down below force native...

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6019/906.abstract The brown bear must have similar metabolic features during hibernation. However the Brown Bear does wake up from time to time and sometimes wander around. A couple of years ago an oil exploration person was killed by a Brown Bear disturbed by the noisy passage of a line of workers, waking along a seismic line.. Unfortunately, the poor man was the last in line. If you see, columns of fog rising from piles of snow in your front yard, better post a do not disturb sign.

You know your an Alaskan when: you buy your clothes at REI , install a mercury light for security while leaving the door unlocked, prefer winter driving because the pot-holes are frozen over and for sure leave the pickup unlocked.

Some few years ago my PI told me of an accident investigation on the west shore of Chilikoff Straight. It was a seasoned bush pilot who took off with 6 passengers in a Cessna 206, oversize tires, from the rockey slanting beach. Against the odds he got the plane in the air avoiding larger rocks but he was unable to climb out of ground effect. Two miles down the beach he encountered a fishing skiff pulled up on the beach above tide level. He sheered off one landing gear, and ground looped. The passengers were unhurt and attested to the pilot's great flying skill. My PI now acting as accident investigator asked the old timer, with all respect, why he did not just fly on out over the water. The pilot's response was, "Can't swim."

Resolute Bay, Nunavut Territory, Canada http://www.findlocalweather.com/forecast/resolute_nu_ca.html Latitude: 74.43N Longitude: 094.59W Altitude: 67m http://ca.epodunk.com/profiles/nunavut/resolute/2001945.html http://ca.epodunk.com/profiles/nunavut/resolute/2001945.html http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wl http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wl Think you have seen it all, how about this ocean view looking south over the North West Passage. From East to West, one might cruise up Baffin Bay between Baffin Island and Greenland then through Lancaster Sound between the north tip of Baffin and Devon Island. Cursing further west, Cornwallis Island and the magnetic North Pole, MNP, are on your right with Summerset Island to your left. Resolute Bay is the small bay on Cornwallis Island before you come to a small Island off shore. There is a gravel airstrip, long enough to accommodate jets, an air service and a town ...

Sir Robert John McClure 1807-1873 commanded HMS Investigator prior to it’s abandonment on the ice June, 1853 -Baring Island, NWT. Rescued by HMS Resolute after a long sojourn over the ice by sledge, John McClure and his crew are credited with the first navigation of the North West Passage (1850) as well as circum navigating the American Continent. McClure, an Irishman was court- martialed for his loss of the Investigator, but was exonerated. Subsequently knighted and honored for his exploration, his account of the voyage suffers a few Irish omissions. Historians tend to rely on an objective account written by Alexander Armstrong the ship’s physician --- also an Irishman.

This is a para- tepee . We can always hunt fish and live off the land, but there has to be a place where nature still rules. For me, it's the far North.

This is a Brown Bear with fresh kill. This is a bear trail with bear scat.

Alaska Air Carriers Association: Home Page Convention: March 3rd -- 7th

You know you are an Alaskan when you have a head bolt heater and never lock your truck. --- just in case! Actually, I thought of this photograph when I heard one of the lady Democrats -- a senator, I think -- bragging to the press that drilling in ANWR was once again defeated. Her comment went something like this, "We can build bike paths and hiking trails -- and all enjoy the beauty of the wilderness." But then, there is the mosquito too. And the price of heating oil is so high in the villages, they have gone back to whale-oil (kidding), or moved to the city. And, who did we steal ANWR from anyway? It's Kaktovik on the map. The people were first displaced by the radar station; their houses were bulldozed out of the way and then the great white hunter claimed the whole area as a refuge forbidding property rights, mineral rights, hunting and fishing rights -- to the ancestral owners from whom we stole it. Unlike the treaties with Native American Indians down below, Alas...