Harry the Kelp Hunter!
I assume you all know by now that I frequently place a BIGGER link below images. Clicking said link will enlarge the image and greatly increase the awe and splendor of your visualization experience! It must be a terrible thing for people who have lost their eyesight. I can’t even imagine.
See that notch of blue in the clouds? Veteran Alaskans have a special name for that (even though technically speaking this is not really an example of this thing). We call it a sucker hole. Because only suckers think it means the clouds are beginning to break and the sun will shine soon. When spotting such a hole Alaskan newbies, aka Cheechakos, have been known to run screaming and yelling from their office cubicle, rush outside and cheer, “The sun is coming out! The sun is coming out!” A caring Sourdough will quickly come to console this person, wrap an arm around her shoulders, pat her warmly and escort the sucker back inside, “There there, honey, everything is going to be alright.”
The reason this ain’t a real sucker hole is because the clouds were the anomaly today, momentarily drifting through an otherwise bluesky day!
Met a man from Indiana on the beach. None of that twenty insipid questions about Alaska stuff from this guy, no sir. He simply said he’d been to many places in the west but had never seen anything like the grandeur in Alaska. I liked him. We talked for a while. As he petted Harry I pointed to two bald eagles perched high in an evergreen, squawking at each other and carrying on. Out came the iPhone faster than a kid showing off his decoder ring, “I promised my friend I’d get him a picture of an eagle in Alaska.” I grinned and watched him click away. I told him I thought eagles were cool, for sure, but in my opinion the most impressive bird in Alaska is the Raven.
He said he and others had climbed to the top of Mt. Marathon the day before. Impressive, I thought, especially with all the snow still at the top. Even snow free in July it’s a pretty arduous climb. I told him about the man who died last year during the famous annual foot race up and down that mountain. He was familiar with the race but hadn’t heard somebody died during it. Yup, and despite lots of searching the man was never found. This cast a pall on our otherwise cheery conversation.
We talked a bit more, said our glad to meetchyas, and parted ways.