Succulents and More™

Thursday, September 10, 2015 My last day on Adak. Our flight leaves tonight at 6 p.m. I eat my last bagel (brought from Anchorage) and then pack my suitcase. Usually I’m ready to go home at the end of a trip. This time, though, I would gladly stay a few more days. Until Sunday, for example, when the next plane leaves. But that’s not in the cards. Since Shannon has the car, I decide to walk through the two housing subdivisions that are completely abandoned. The Navy spent a lot of money here; money ultimately wasted. The first subdivision I want to show you was built in the early 1970s. We dubbed it “the Flintstones houses.” On this site maintained by a former soldier stationed on Adak in 1970-1971, I found a photo of these houses arriving by ship. The houses in this subdivision look to be in good shape. I saw none of the damage evident elsewhere. Rumor has it that they could be made ready for occupancy with relatively little effort. If that’s true, the city of Adak definitely has...

Wednesday, September 9, 2015 Cousin Shannon convinces me to get up early so I can photograph the sunrise. We head over to the fuel farm and walk out on the pier. Just in time. The clouds light up with the drama I was hoping for. It doesn’t last long, but I do get a photo of god rays: The wind is picking up and, combined with a slight drizzle, I’m feeling uncomfortable for the first time since I got here. Ever so briefly, I get a sense of how nasty the wind must be when it really blows. Fortunately, the wind and rain don’t last long. That’s pretty much my experience with any kind of weather on Adak: Wait a few minutes and it’ll change. That’s what they say about Hawaii, too.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015 Day 3 on the island and I’m falling into a routine. Get up at 8 a.m. just before the sun rises, have coffee, do some work, then head out for a little walk before meeting up with Elaine at noon. This morning I don’t have much time because of work. I can never really get away from it unless I go to a place that has no Internet at all. But even Adak, population 100+, has Internet although it’s expensive. Another surprise: There’s decent cell phone coverage, even away from town. But only on AT&T. As a T-Mobile customer, I get no signal whatsoever. I must admit it feels strange being disconnected from the world like that. Strange, but healthy. This morning I check out the abandoned McDonald’s in town. This was once the westernmost McDonald’s in the world. As you can see below, the building itself is in almost perfect condition. As is the inside, from what I can see through the window. Apparently the building is still used for civic functions so the city ke...

Monday, September 7, 2015 (Labor Day) Since the sun doesn’t rise until 8:15 a.m. and I’d had an eventful first day on Adak, I sleep in and then go for a walk in the neighborhood. The houses in this subdivision are basically all the same: either off-white with a blue roof, or tan with a red roof. All of them have a solarium attached to the dining room. It feels a bit like an afterthought because it’s not really integrated into house; instead you access it through a door as if you were stepping outside. The solarium isn’t heated so you wouldn’t be very comfortable sitting out there in the winter unless you bring a portable heater. But it could be used to grow plants because temperatures don’t drop much below freezing here. I don’t know how many people have used their solarium for that purpose, but I cannot imagine that among the thousands of people who’ve lived in these housing units over the years there haven’t been a least a few with a green thumb. However, I see no sign of garde...

From this teaser you may know that I recently spent time on Adak in the Aleutians , a chain of 69 islands, many of them volcanic, extending 1,200 miles from the mainland of Alaska towards the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. Here’s a map to give you a better idea: I love numbers, so let me throw some out for you. Adak is: 2,700 miles from the north pole 2,700 miles from Davis, California where I live 1,300 miles from Anchorage, the biggest city in Alaska 870 miles from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia 450 miles from Dutch Harbor , the nearest inhabited place in the Aleutian Islands (if you’ve ever watched the reality TV series Deadliest Catch , you might have heard of it) At the same latitude as Vancouver, British Columbia Horticulturally speaking, in USDA hardiness zone 8, the same as Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington; Anchorage, in comparison, is in zone 4; Fairbanks, in south-central Alaska, in zone 2 Between the Bering Sea to the north and the North Pacific Oc...

Living in drought-ridden California, I had forgotten what rain is. But last Friday I got a reacquainted with the wet stuff that occasionally falls from the sky when I dragged my cousin Shannon to the Alaska Botanical Garden in Anchorage. Born and raised in Alaska, Shannon had never been there and was happy to finally get a chance to see it. Where else do you have a moose fence? Even though it wasn’t raining constantly—it was more of a fine drizzle—there were only two other visitors at the garden. That was completely fine by me since I didn’t have to wait for people to move out my picture. As you can see below, most flowers were gone but many trees and shrubs were at their fall best. I hadn’t expected to find such brilliant colors and I was giddy with the photo ops that presented themselves all around me. I would love to go back to the Alaska Botanical Garden in June when the wildflowers are in bloom—and their surprisingly large collection of Himalayan poppies ( Meconopsis sp.)—bu...

While I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth, I’m close. I’m on the island of Adak in the Aleutians , easily the most remote place I’ve ever been. I’m too busy exploring (and the Internet is on the slow side), so I won’t be able to write regular posts this week. I’ll have one long post about Adak after I get back; here are some teaser photos. The arrow marks the location of Adak Island. To the northeast is Alaska; to the east is the Yukon (Canada); to the west and northwest is Russia. Adak is about 1,300 miles from Anchorage; the flight took 3 hours. First glimpse of Adak in the fog as the plane was descending The raw beauty of Adak is breathtaking