July 1, 2004
Entering moose country
I find myself quite abruptly in Anchorage, Alaska, helping my friend and former Baltimore Sun colleague Rose Ragsdale with design and editing a chain of community newspapers. She is short of staff and called me in to help, and I found myself on an airplane nine days later.
Rose picked me up at the airport on Monday and we went straight from the airport to work, laying out a small newspaper called the Tundra Drums, which serves a community near where the Yukon River enters the ocean, along the western edge of the state. Everyone I met at the office, and talked to on the phone, was extremely nice.
There was a buzz at the office and everyone rushed to the windows, not three hours after I arrived. There was a moose trotting up the street! You have to picture this happening in a large-ish city, very sprawling like Virginia Beach, and the newspaper offices are in an industrial park (kind of like where Army Times is, Lamont) near the city's largest mall.
Today is my fourth day here and I just saw another moose. Rose lent me her Huffy bicycle, and I rode from her house into downtown, and then along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. About four miles along, I heard a loud crashing in the trees beside the trail, and came to a halt. It was another cow moose, eating leaves. She walked up a slope and starting eating right beside the trail. If I can figure out the technology, I will try to add a digital picture of her to this blog.
As I stopped and watched and photographed her, other bicyclists came upon the area and took pictures as well. Either we are all tourists, or even the locals like seeing moose. Giant mosquitos do tend to settle all over your hands if you keep still, so I eventually headed along.
It feels like it is in the low 60s today. Have not seen the snowcapped mountains that encircle the city yet, because there is a cloud system firmly in place, but it doesn't matter. So far I like getting to know this area based on diving in at the deep end and being here as a worker, much as I was when I lived in England and knew the place in a different way to a tourist.
