O the Endless Days, O the Grizzlies!

In just a few short hours the summer solstice is upon us. The sun never sets at this latitude from May 26 to July 17, so there is really no "longest day" this far north. I arrived June 9, and ever since I've been here each night has looked either like a sunset or sunrise when clear or like a very dim late winter afternoon when cloudy. It hasn't been difficult for me to fall asleep either; there's a three hour time difference between Alaska time and CST, and my body would just start to poop out at about 7 pm for the first week.

There are many young folks here, undergraduates, grad students and post-docs, and they seem to have no trouble staying up into the wee hours and showing up for breakfast at 7:30. Mealtimes are strict here: if you miss the meal service the kitchen staff are kind enough to put leftovers in the fridge which you can microwave. One of the best kept secrets about Toolik: the dining hall head cook is a former haute cuisine chef, and we have some of the best meals! There is always fresh fruit and a tossed salad, the dressings are homemade, and there is always dessert. But not just poundcake and a few tollhouse cookies. Oh, no. The other night we had steaming hot berry cobbler with home made vanilla ice cream. That was the night the chef served pasta with steamed mussels, scallops and shrimp. Friday is usually steak night and our chef prepares rare, medium, and well done steaks, and there is always a vegetarian option and now even vegan options. I thought I was going to lose weight this summer with all the physical exercise, but I've actually put on a few pounds. It's partly because the food is so amazing, and also partly because the weather can go from a very pleasant 60 degrees fahrenheit to about 35 degrees up on the slopes above camp when a chilly fog wafts in from the Arctic Plain. You never want to be out working on an empty stomach because you can start shivering in no time, so a bacon and egg breakfast with biscuit and sausage gravy is the way to go. Unless you're a vegan or vegetarian, for whom a hot bowl of cream of wheat or oatmeal with real maple syrup can be a great tummy warmer. Or the blueberry whole-grain pancakes. Jeeze, I'm getting hungry already. And tonight was lasagne with marinara sauce, caesar salad, and chocolate hazelnut torte for dessert. You would think there would be more bears hanging around camp than there are (total observed bear sightings to date: zero).

Oh yeah, bear mace. Part of the normal daily equipment you're supposed to carry into the field strapped to your belt is a canister the size and color of a small fire extinguisher printed with the words: "Counter Assault Grizzly Tough Pepper Spray." It has a safety like a fire extinguisher, and like a fire extinguisher, should never be deployed except in the event of an actual emergency. Bear attacks are usually prefaced by the bear charging at you full speed. In addition to the real ones there are supposedly "bluff charges" in which the bear supposedly stops just short of reducing you to a small greasy spot on the ground and backs off. I guess the bluff charge is distinguished by the fact that you can actually live to tell someone about it.

In all seriousness I had a very good talk about bears with our resident EMT. When he's not bandaging wounds and saving lives at Toolik he lives in the Kenai Peninsula with his wife and children (the Kenai Peninsula is about 150 miles as the crow flies from Katmai National Park where Timothy Treadwell got eaten by a bear). I asked him if he ever saw a bear on his property and he replied: All the time. I asked if they were ever a problem and he said they weren't but he's taught his teen-aged daughter to use a 12-gauge shotgun just in case (since she is also here I asked her if this is true and she confirmed that it is. And since she's no longer a teenager it is probably a pretty good thing her father taught her). Goosebumps aside, he explained that my fear of being attacked by bears is about as rational as an Alaskan's fear of being attacked by a mugger while visiting Chicago. I've lived in Chicago my entire life and (fortunately) have never been mugged. So there you go. Alaskans don't freak out about bears any more than the average Chicagoan would freak out about being mugged. I don't go out of my way to visit a mugger's natural habitat either, nor do I accidentally bump into the mugger in a dark alley, or walk around with my purse hanging open to tempt a mugging, or leave my door unlocked for him to sneak in. And therefore I've never felt the need to carry a gun. But apparently in Alaska, as careful as you may be about not leaving food out, avoiding surprising them, etc--the shotgun, the bear mace--you have to carry them. Just in case.