Bright ideas — Energy Wise program sparks cost savings

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Tyna Ledda. Leslie Meyer, part of the Energy Wise program, demonstrates how to install a window insulation film at an energy fair at Sterling Elementary School.

Redoubt Reporter

In the last 20 years, Betty L. Peterson’s work situation, income level and monthly bills have changed. Her refrigerator hasn’t.

After a recent home visit and electricity audit from an Energy Wise crew, she realized just how out of whack her refrigerator is with her financial situation.

Peterson, of Soldotna, was a registered nurse for 40 years and retired when she was 62 after needing a hip replacement. There wasn’t the emphasis on retirement savings back then as there is today, so when Peterson stopped working, her income dropped to just Social Security and a longevity bonus from the state. With electricity, heat and other bills creeping up over the years, in addition to refinancing her home to get a loan for a new well and septic system, Peterson has found herself increasingly interested in saving money.

“Back 15 years ago working full-time, I don’t think I was as conscious of the bills as I am now,” she said.

When a friend in Sterling told her about the Energy Wise program, she figured it was worth a try.

“Well, anything that will help me save energy,” she said.

Energy Wise is a grant-funded program through the Rural Alaska Community Action Program meant to educate low-income families, the elderly and disabled households on alternative energy sources and ways to lower their energy use — and, consequently, their energy bills. On the central Kenai Peninsula, it’s run through the AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America, based in Sterling, and continues through the end of July.

Tyna Ledda, a VISTA AmeriCorps member based in Sterling, manages the program, with help from the recently graduated Energy Wise youth crew — Clancy Skipwith, of Kasilof, and Leslie Meyer, of south Soldotna. They’ve held an energy fair with demonstrations of compact fluorescent lights and other energy-saving technology, handed out pamphlets with tips and information, given presentations and are doing residence visits through July.

Initially the program was supposed to be limited to Sterling residents, but they haven’t gotten enough takers so have opened it to the wider, central peninsula area, even going so far as knocking on doors to offer their free, no-strings-attached services.

“Who would have thought it was so hard to give away free stuff?” Ledda said. “I think Sterling has lot of independent-minded people. Some of them are cautious, they don’t want to take anything if they feel like there’s a string attached or if they don’t know if their information is going to be given out, and I don’t blame them. Nobody likes to be beholden. But word of mouth has been spreading. And even after the program has ended I am still willing to educate people about how to lower their energy costs.”

The fair included a demonstration of energy savings from a compact fluorescent light bulb, left, versus a regular bulb.

The energy audit visits are to low-income homes, where the Energy Wise crew uses kilowatt meters to measure the electrical consumption of appliances, checks for mold and mildew, educates residents about ways to reduce their energy bills and distributes bags with CFL bulbs, a carbon monoxide detector, a window insulation kit, a refrigerator thermometer, surge-protector power strips and a digital hygrometer to measure moisture.

There’s no revolutionary new technology to distribute; nothing complicated to install or operate; no groundbreaking, never-been-heard-before ideas for reducing energy consumption. It’s more about reinforcing good behavior, like turning off lights and not running the dishwasher or wash machine unless it’s a full load, and demonstrating why even little changes can make a big difference.

“Some things you already kind of know, but we forget about them so we don’t do them,” Ledda said. “It’s incremental knowledge, not necessarily one revelation, it’s a series of steps and things that we can show people. And a lot of it are things that anybody can do to reduce their costs. They don’t necessarily need somebody to show them how to do it.”

Changing incandescent bulbs to CFL bulbs is one of the biggest, easiest changes. Most residents participating in the Energy Wise program knew CFL bulbs are more efficient, but didn’t realize how much more — they use two-thirds less energy and last at least six times longer — or didn’t want to bother with the added expense. That’s what was keeping Peterson from making the switch.

“I haven’t gotten them because they’re so expensive. So these will help me getting started on those,” she said.

Netting rewards — Dip-netters score loads of silver in weekend Kenai, Kasilof red runs

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Richard Jay, of Wasilla, untangles a sockeye salmon from his dip net while fishing at the mouth of the Kasilof River on Monday evening. This fishery saw a surge of salmon over the weekend.

Redoubt Reporter

After weeks of being blue about poor returns, dip-netters finally saw a surge of red last weekend, and the signs of success were visible in the sand at low tide.

There were hundreds to thousands of bright-pink pieces of salmon carcasses — heads, guts, eggs and skeletons with meat still clinging to them — dotting the beaches at the mouths of the Kenai and Kasilof rivers. For many, the few weeks of opportunity to stand waist-deep in the cold, fast-flowing water is an annual family affair.

“You can get so many this way compared to hook-and-line fishing,” said Jaime Grimes, of Homer, while cleaning a pile of fresh-caught sockeye last weekend at the mouth of the Kasilof River. She caught 18 fish Sunday, for a total of 49 sockeye since she came up to the Kasilof on Friday afternoon, when the run really started to pick up.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Kasilof River sonar unit — about eight miles upstream from the river mouth — daily count estimates of sockeye jumped to 12,513 fish Friday, up by more than 5,000 fish from the day before. The trend continued through the weekend as the sonar unit picked up a whopping 22,509 sockeye Saturday, followed by another 16,532 Sunday for a cumulative 173,479 sockeye through Sunday.

“I have a family of five, so we can get up to 65 fish,” Grimes said. “And we’ll use every one of them. We’ll can them, smoke them and freeze them, and over the year we’ll eat them all.”

Like Grimes, Elaine Martin, of Anchorage, said dip netting helps offset food bills for her family of four. She was also close to pulling her annual limit from the Kasilof by Sunday afternoon.

“We have salmon at least twice a week year-round,” she said. “Two meals a week, 52 weeks a year, for a family my size — that adds up to a lot of money saved in groceries, so it’s worth making the drive down to catch our 55 fish.”

Martin said it still amounts to a lot of work, though, so it’s not like the meal is entirely free.

Sockeye salmon caught at the Kasilof River sit in a cooler waiting to be processed.

“Well, besides the gas money we spent to get down here, we’ll do a lot to get the fish. It’s not like they just jump right in the net one after another,” she said. “Sometimes you’re out there for hours, so my husband and I will take turns in the water while the other one watches the kids. We do the same thing with filleting. He’ll do some one day, and I’ll do them all the next.”

Martin said even the kids have a job.

“They do all the bonking once I get a fish,” she said. “Sometimes I can barely get a fish out of the water before they’re there hitting it over the head.”

Mikhail Volkov, of Anchorage, said he likes the dip-net fishery for the family atmosphere.

“I’ll go to Ship Creek or the Russian River to hook-and-line fish, but that is usually with friends or by myself,” he said. “(The dip-net fishery) is as much about coming and camping with my family as it is about getting the fish. We’re living down here, having our meals together, laughing around the campfire — it’s a summer vacation where we also catch fish.”

Like the Kasilof, the Kenai River also experienced a surge of sockeye salmon over the weekend. The Fish and Game sonar unit — about 19 miles upstream from the mouth of the Kenai River — recorded 45,979 sockeye Friday, up by more than 20,000 fish from the day before. On Saturday, another 62,316 sockeye were recorded, followed by 68,577 sockeye Sunday for a cumulative 328,120 fish as of Sunday in the late run.

“We had a robust number of fish that went into both the Kasilof and the Kenai over the weekend,” said Pat Shields, assistant management biologist at Fish and Game in Soldotna. “On the Kasilof, the escapement goal is 150,000 to 300,000, and we’re at 173,000 (as of Sunday), so we’re ahead of where we need to be.”

The situation was similar on the Kenai River, according to Shields.

“From 2000 to 2009, the average was 300,000 fish through July 18,” he said. “This year we’re at 328,000, so we’re ahead of the average.”

Shields said that if the numbers of sockeye entering the rivers continues to stay high, Fish and Game may subsequently have to make management changes to the fisheries.

“We’ll monitor (the Kenai) to see if the run might be larger than the forecasted 1.7 million to return,” he said. “We’re at that point in the season that if the run is expected to be over 2 million, we’ll have to start making some decisions, so late this week — probably Friday — we’ll make an assessment.”

Increased fishing time for the commercial and personal-use fisheries is one possibility, as is increased bag limits to the sport fishery.

Historic pastime — Beat the bugs, enjoy the mild climb of Johnson Pass

By Clark Fair

Photos by Clark Fair, Redoubt Reporter. Kristin O’Brien climbs along a section of terminal moraine after crossing one of the bridges over Bench Creek on the northern portion of the Johnson Pass Trail.

Redoubt Reporter

By the time we tromped across the bridge spanning King Creek and into the campsite high on its southern bank, it was only 2:30 p.m. and there was some mild dissent in the group. Some of the kids, who ranged in age from 7 to 16, were weary of battling the bugs and the rain and just wanted to keep going, to finish in two days rather than the three we had planned, or to at least seek the comfort of a campsite closer to the end of the trail.

Others, including some of the adults, were weary enough that they wanted to stay right where they were, hunched on spruce logs or sprawled out on the wet moss and mud around an old stone campfire ring. Even the sudden surge in mosquitoes could not impel them easily onward.

So we slathered or sprayed on more DEET-laced repellent or slipped on head nets, as my son worked on a smoky fire and the rest of us set our minds on staying put.

It was the right choice.

A pair of monkey flowers (wild snapdragons) hang over an unnamed stream along a southern stretch of the trail.

In two days we had covered 17 of the 23 miles of the Johnson Pass Trail, and we learned the next morning that no more campsites existed on the final six miles of trail, most of which wound in and out of the woods and dense undergrowth high above Upper Trail Lake, near Moose Pass.

Because we stopped that afternoon, we were able to rest more fully and give ourselves a relatively easy stroll the next morning down to the southern terminus near the Trail Lake Hatchery.

Still, on that second night of the trip, as I lay in my sleeping bag and listened to the rain pelt the tent holding me and my teenage children, I frowned at the thought of packing up a second wet camp the next morning, of the mosquitoes and biting flies feasting on me as I munched my breakfast, and of another wet trudge through overhanging cow parsnip, tall grass and stinging nettles.

And I thought back to the day before and how everything had seemed so different in the beginning: three families meeting up at the northern trailhead, near Granite Creek, peeling off layers as warm sunshine bathed the parking lot beneath clear blue skies, all of us ready to commune with welcoming nature and with each other.

No matter which way a hiker or biker is traveling from here, it’s generally downhill the rest of the way. Johnson Pass separates Johnson Lake and Bench Lake and neatly divides their drainages north and south.

In fact, at that point, I wasn’t bothered at all by my decision to leave my head nets at home with my assortment of rain pants and chaps. Even if the weather changed, I reasoned, the trail ahead appeared wide and accommodating. My kids and I would be fine without the extra gear.

By day’s end, however, I would rue those omissions, especially in light of the fact that the eight other people on the trip did carry those items and benefited from them immensely.

Until that evening, most of us hiked along Bench Creek the first day in shorts and T-shirts, luxuriating in the sun’s warmth and the gentle breeze, sweating up the inclines, even the tumbles of rock making up the large terminal moraine north of Johnson Pass, which, at 1,450 feet, neatly divides the hike nearly in half.

Olivia and Kelty Fair appear well-armored against weather and biting, stinging insects.

Bench Lake, with its abundant grayling, sits north of the pass and drains toward Sixmile Creek, which, in turn, drains into Turnagain Arm. Johnson Lake, containing a healthy population of rainbow trout, lies south of the pass and drains toward Trail Lake, which feeds upper Kenai Lake and ultimately Cook Inlet.

Both ends of the Johnson Pass Trail tend to be mostly open and mild in grade. Meanwhile, the middle 10 miles sport thicker foliage, which, by midsummer, tends to spill over the trail and, in some cases, obscure it. At

the peak of summer runoff, streams can also overrun the trail, forcing hikers to find adequate spots to leap or wade.

Throughout the hike, streams tumble from swales and gullies

Olivia and Kelty Fair may not look eager, but they were — to reach a campsite, start a fire, eat some dinner and escape the insects by climbing into their tent.

and clefts in the rocks, adding to the rush of water moving steadily toward the ocean. And it may be that this abundance of water is responsible not only for the wildflower meadows, the prevalent bogs and the swarthy growths of vegetation, but also the sometimes-intense clouds of insects.

Where the trail is not so overgrown, it is possible to imagine the sweep of history marching up and down this valley that was a key part of the overland passage between Seward and the gold fields of Hope and Sunrise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Johnson Pass Trail is part of the Iditarod National Historic Trail and was at one time a portion of the Johnson Pass Military Road that gave miners in the district an easier avenue by which to move equipment in and out of their gold-seeking operations.

Science of the Seasons: Sculpin — life at the bottom

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. Sculpin are found in many of our streams and lakes. They are bottom dwellers and can be an important predator, as well as important food items for a number of larger fish.

Many a halibut fisherman has pulled up a multicolored fish called an Irish lord. These fish have a big flat head, an equally rounded belly, a short tail and looks that only a mother could love. If you have ever seen one, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

When we leave the ocean habitat and look in our streams and lakes, the basic creatures are found there, too, but in much smaller form. Both the marine and freshwater versions are called sculpins, although they may be categorized into several different genera.

Those found in Alaska’s fresh waters are in the genus Cottus. These fish do not have scales and they are also missing a swim bladder to adjust their body buoyancy. So they are pretty much stuck on the bottom wherever they live. Perhaps the most obvious trait of all the sculpins is their enormous pectoral fins. These lateral fins are a primary means of propulsion and movement around the bottom. The combination of large pectoral fins and a weakly powered caudal tail causes them to swim in a jerky, stop-and-start fashion.

The sculpins found in most Alaska streams and lake bottoms are Cottus cognatus, or the slimy sculpin. They only reach 3 to 5 inches in length during their three- to six-year lifespan. Slimy sculpins are found all across North America, but there is some confusion, and probably some hybridizing, between other closely related species.

No matter what name we give them, these tiny fish play a big role in our streams and rivers because they are very abundant. They are active predators in the stream and, in turn, they provide food for a number of our favorite sport fish, like rainbow and lake trout.

Since they aren’t proficient swimmers, sculpins wedge themselves in between a couple rocks and wait for the current to bring them food. They also use their large pectoral fins to create downforce to prevent them from being washed away by the moving water. When a possible food item drifts by, they simply open their large mouth and dinner is served.

Research done on an almost indistinguishable close relative (Cottus bairdi) on the East Coast indicates that their food preferences include anything they can get into their mouth. Stomach analyses found a variety of aquatic insects, aquatic worms and various fish. Many of those fish were smaller relatives. In the world of sculpins, cannibalism is alive and well.

Within streams, the youngest members of the population remain in the shallowest sections to avoid their hungry, older relatives. As they grow larger and are less likely to become someone’s dinner, they move into deeper-water sections. As they continue to grow, they eventually move into even deeper parts of the stream. The deepest water is where the most food items are drifting by and there is less predation from above the water.

Sculpins usually breed in spring with the male selecting a rock-covered area. He uses his tail to excavate a small area and to clear away any silt. During mating season, the males acquire a darker, almost black pigment. A female who is appropriately impressed with the redd will attach a few eggs to the underside of the rock and be on her way. It is likely that several females will contribute to the clutch of eggs. The males protect the eggs from possible predators and fan away silt until the eggs hatch. Once the eggs hatch, the young scatter around and seek out safer, shallow stream areas.

Many stream fishermen are aware that an egg-sucking leech fly pattern works well in the spring and early summer. The reason is it mimics the jerky swimming patterns of darkened, breeding sculpins. Other colors, like green leech patterns, are mimicking the coloration of sculpins during other color phases. So sculpins turn out to be a favorite food item for Dolly Vardens, rainbow and steelhead trout.

Sculpins are found in a large number of Alaska lakes, as well. There, sculpins are ambush predators on a variety of amphipods, insects and worms. Researchers on some of our high-latitude lakes have found that sculpins are a very important food item for lake trout populations. During winter months, sculpins can be their major food source.

The next time you catch an Irish lord, remember that there are miniature versions found in local streams and lakes. While much smaller than their marine relatives, they play a very big role in the local food web.

David Wartinbee, Ph.D, J.D., is a biology professor at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus. He is writing a series of columns on the ecology of the Kenai River and Cook Inlet watershed.

Tune up firearms, aim, safety before hunting season

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

In a matter of days we’ll be able to smell hunting season in the air. Now’s the time to prepare, particularly zeroing and practice with your hunting firearms.

For some this is a required chore, and for others it is a formality, having been shooting throughout the year for the sheer pleasure of the activity. Knowing your firearm shoots where you aim it and knowing what your own limitations are, in terms of placing accurate shots at known distances from various positions, is a must if success is your goal. An aspect of this is the importance of making clean killing shots for the sake of the hunted animal. Wounding an animal and having it run off to suffer and die should be unacceptable to everyone who takes to the field.

Zeroing the firearms typically takes place at 100 yards and should be done from a platform that provides a solid rest for the forend and the buttstock. Some are machine rests and solidly lock the firearm into place. These are fine for load testing for absolute accuracy and getting close to zero. But the final zeroing must be done with the firearm able to recoil, as when held by the shooter. For most modern firearms, a zero of 2 to 3 inches high at 100 yards takes advantage of ballistics and allows a center hold out to 250 yards to 300 yards, depending on the cartridge. Check ballistic charts published by most ammunition companies to determine what is best for your cartridge.

A place to do this safely is becoming harder to find with the expansion of human population into areas that were once safe shooting lanes. In the past there have been three gravel pits on the Escape Route and Marathon Road that were used by shooters for practicing and zeroing. These pits were never open to public shooting. They are on private property and the property owners have posted them and made attempts to keep shooters out, with little success. Because of the astonishing amount of litter left behind by shooters and others, these places are being cleaned up and the property owners are going to make a concerted effort to prosecute those who trespass.

Fortunately, there is a relatively inexpensive and easily accessed shooting range locally. The Snow Shoe Gun Club, between Kenai and Soldotna off the Kenai Spur Highway across from Beaver Loop Road, is a club-owned facility with membership open to the public. Membership is $80 per year, which gets a key to the gate and unlimited access. There are shotgun, rifle and handgun ranges that are well set up for each of these shooting activities.

Belaboring the issues of safe firearms handling and use is a constant in the business, and remains the prime reason hunting is still one of the safer outdoor activities in which to engage. Formal target shooting, due to the strict regimen of firearms safety at events, makes it among the least-likely activities at which one would get hurt. So my repeating firearms safety rules here seems appropriate, even if you have heard them before.

• Treat all guns as though they are always loaded. A high percentage of firearms-related negligent discharges are followed by the phrase, “I didn’t think it was loaded.” This is why we insist on treating all firearms as if they are loaded. Don’t “think” it is unloaded. Make sure.

• Never allow the muzzle to cover anything you are not willing to destroy. If one is around firearms long enough, at some point you will make one go off when you didn’t want it to. This is not referred to as an accidental discharge, as it once was. Rather, it is a negligent discharge, meaning you neglected something in the handling of the firearm that caused it to go off when you didn’t want it to.

If you handle firearms with complete muzzle control and never allow the muzzle to cover anything you are not willing to destroy, then when it happens it will at worst be a damage of property that you deemed expendable. No one wants to look up and see directly into the muzzle of a firearm. Why would you ever want to be the person on the other end of that gun?

• Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target and you have made the decision to shoot. This rule is among the most violated and, to some degree, can probably be blamed on what people see on TV and motion pictures. Fingers are always on the trigger and, inevitably, a first-time shooter, even having been advised, will pick up a gun and immediately put their finger on the trigger.

Winging It: Fine-tuned to Chickaloon

By Sean Ulman, for the Redoubt Reporter

Back at the Chickaloon Flats, standing on Pincher Creek cabin’s porch, I see black flies swirling, dirtying the grassy vista. Nausea from the plane ride tumbles my system. A paper wasp stings the back of my head. But this unexpected rude return soon proves to be a fleeting ruse.

The adrenaline, tapped for the sting, quickly quells my queasiness. We spray and smash the nest, for it dangles above the cabin door. As a sort of apology for scientific work tuneup, we inspect the fist-sized hive’s design — honeycombed cubbies harboring pulsing, perishing larva.

I go for a walk. Half a kilometer along, the full cure sets in.

In Seward, I cramped muscles biking, hiking Mount Marathon and overthrowing hanging curveballs. Here in the field, fresh air filling my lungs, the sense of the ocean and marsh treating my nose, the twist in my lower back uncoils, my quads limber, my mind sighs, ending its muddling streak of surveilling and judging its repetitive unproductive thoughts.

I had many mysterious headaches in town. Slight temple tappings are clogging in the occipital lobe like drying cement. Regarding the culprit, I had theories: car rides, computer screens, cramped indoor air, rainy gray weather.

Now ambling under the evening sun, a warm breeze brushing my cheeks, keeping the flies off, I understand what happened. It wasn’t town throwing me so much as a lack of the Flats. After eight weeks in the field, my mind and body were fine-tuned to Chickaloon. The tang of the air, the squish of the mud, the daily routine of hiking many miles, a plain low-fat diet (oats, nuts, dried fruit). And the joys of observing a variety of avifauna in their very natural habitat.

My body had become a mud-striding machine, made for mounting mucky banks or skipping skinny slough cuts. Meanwhile, my mind had prepared for a whole summer, another seven weeks of field life. I forgot to factor in the break.

A blue dragonfly hovers over a patch of peach-tinged goosetongue. Beyond the stripes of knee-high green seaside arrow grass, large alkali grass (pink, celadon, straw), and parched stonewashed mud, a lane of crimson glasswort suggests a cranberry bog.

With joy, I consider the upgrade from pavement and carpets to the colorful vegetative floors and other lopsided trades attached to the lifestyle swap. Binoculars replacing wallet. Wood stove versus electric, book instead of digital screens. Collecting data rather than entering it. Ocean, mountains, wilderness replacing streets, sidewalks and trailer interiors.

Birds are back. Southward migrants supplement the breeders that spend the summer. We know this from the dramatic increase in least sandpipers and greater yellowlegs, two species whose numbers had dwindled to a handful a week the first half of June when shorebirds are typically nesting.

Every 100 meters flushed least sandpipers’ squeak “streeep brreeep.” A mixed flock of yellowlegs draft behind a 100-count time step of dowitchers. I follow the 20 yellowlegs as they land in a pool. Side by side, the greaters are gigantic, their breasts, flanks and wings checkered with crisper black, white and gray flecks, as opposed to the lessers’ washed-out finish and bland gray bibs. However, seeing singles, especially in shadowed lighting or from a distance, makes for difficult IDs.

So I take advantage of the influx of greaters, studying their calls — coarser and deeper than lessers — and gawky, more exaggerated, erratic foraging forays.

Living room Last Frontier — Ninilchik home captures Alaska in indoor view

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Lisa Steiner. A scene from the winter section of an Alaska mural, featuring the Coca-Cola bear, morphs into spring as snow melts off a tree. The mural is painted in Lisa and Tom Steiner’s living room in Ninilchik.

Redoubt Reporter

Lisa and Tom Steiner’s slice of Alaska is an idyllic spot off Oilwell Road in Ninilchik, a cabin perched on a bluff overlooking Deep Creek, with views sweeping from the rolling base of the Caribou Hills to the south and east toward Cook Inlet to the west, in mostly undeveloped countryside where wildlife can and does wander by at will.

Still, there’s only so much of Alaska visible from one set of windows — not enough for a couple so moved by the area’s beauty to buy a cabin and relocate on a spur-of-the-moment whim. So they decided to bring the rest of the state to them. When they tire of looking at their own little vista of the Last Frontier out their living room windows, they can look up and see the rest of it in a 60-foot mural covering the upper walls and ceiling of their cabin, depicting landscapes and wildlife of Alaska.

“Oftentimes I think when people come, their first impression is, ‘Wow.’ But I think they think it’s wallpaper because it’s just too big of a project. Then I tell them it’s painted and then they see (the artist) signed it. It’s quite amazing,” said Lisa Steiner.

Above the 8-foot log walls of their living room is a 4.5-foot strip of bare wall with the ceiling sloping up to a 20-foot peak. That section of wall, stretching 60 feet long if it were unfurled, is covered with tiny, colorful depictions of Alaska’s flora, fauna and geography.

Polar bears and puffins chill on an ice floe. Moose browse in a field streaked with fireweed. A blue jay perches in a spruce tree near a wolverine sunning on a rock. A black wolf lurks behind a ptarmigan, which might be worried about becoming dinner if the animals weren’t all safely immobilized in paint. A hare peeks out from the cover of grass. A herd of caribou fords a river. A tern swoops over Dall sheep. Bear cubs tussle and eagles jockey for position to scoop up salmon. Whales and seals dive in the water as an otter bobs on the surface and crabs scurry across the rocks.

Any animals not mentioned are omitted in the interest of saving time, not because they aren’t in the mural.

Northern lights blend into a starry sky on the ceiling of an Alaska mural in Lisa and Tom Steiner’s Ninilchik home. A stovepipe bisects one mall of the mural.

“He got a bit of everything — all the animals of Alaska — fox, ptarmigan, bears, otter, Dall sheep, rabbits, caribou — everything,” Steiner said.

And that’s just the wildlife. The birds, animals and sea creatures populate a richly rendered landscape of ice fields, glaciers, rivers, ocean, alpine meadows and wildflower-strewn fields. Again, if it can be imagined in Alaska, it’s probably depicted in the mural.

“Everybody goes gaga when they see it,” Steiner said. “Everybody who’s come is surprised. We had a boy clearing trees on the lot and he came in for a drink. He sat down and didn’t notice it at first, then he just rocked back in the chair went, ‘Wow. Cool.’”

Above it all are northern lights, sunrises and sunsets stretching up to mingle with the starry sky painted on the ceiling — with the Big Dipper prominently featured, of course.

It’s not just the scale of the mural that draws a “wow, cool” response, it’s the dichotomy with how detailed it is. Each scene could be a standalone painting in itself, with every tiny detail — from animals’ fur, snow streaks on mountain ranges, whitecaps on the water and individual tree leaves, flower petals and blades of grass — carefully rendered. Steiner takes viewers up to a second-floor landing to get a better look, and recommends using a zoom camera or binoculars to take in all the tiny details.

“We say ‘mural’ and people think it’ll just be a few animals trotting along on top of the wall or something, but it’s quite magnificent. He does rocks really well, and the Ninilchik (Russian Orthodox) Church is quite amazing. The flowers next to the church are miniscule but the details are quite beautiful,” Steiner said.

Some of her favorite details are ones that might not have as much meaning or be as obvious to anyone else. Steiner is a Christian, and had the artist include homage to Jesus’ face in the clouds, so subtle she needs to point it out if anyone else is to notice it. A bright floatplane swoops past an erupting Mount Redoubt, with Tom Steiner at the controls. The plane’s registration number is the Steiners’ address.

On a sportfishing boat below the plane, an angler is hooked into a giant, jumping salmon. The angler is Lisa Steiner, with her dog, Mr. Pinky, onboard beside her. The artist even painted himself a permanent home in Alaska. He’s got a tiny cabin on the shore of a river, complete with a food cache and outhouse.

The artist, Michael Dover, poses next to a moose he painted. He spent two months in Ninilchik last winter, viewing the scenery and wildlife and translating them into the mural.

“He’s panning for gold, and if you look real close, he’s wearing a U.S.A. (red, white and blue) jacket and top hat, because he’s a total patriot,” Steiner said.

The artist is Michael Dover, a friend of the Steiners’ from “back in the day,” about 35 years ago in Los Angeles, when they played racquetball and ate pizza and did other 20-year-old activities.

“Dover was kind of a shy guy. We didn’t even know he was an artist until we went by his house one day and knocked on the door and he didn’t answer. I put my key in the apartment lock and it just happened to open it. We went in and there were all these murals,” Steiner said.

Since then, Dover has been the go-to artist in the group. The Steiners have had him design T-shirts for their business, Runner’s Gear Inc., which sells Sub 4 performance athletic apparel, made in the U.S. He did an ancient Egypt mural in their California home, and has done others for a variety of clients. One of his largest, next to the Alaska painting, is a mural of the Santa Monica skyline, painted in Santa Monica City Hall. His most famous client is probably John Travolta. Dover painted an aquatic scene in a bathroom, a jungle scene in a daughter’s room and a 1950s scene in a screening room in the actor’s Florida home. Along with photos of the completed murals, Dover slips in a shot of him standing with Travolta — sans his toupee.

The Ninilchik mural presented some unique challenges. One issue was the dimensions. Not only was it large, but it was up in the air, yet cramped beneath a ceiling.

“When he first came up here I don’t think he realized the size of the wall. I told him the dimensions but I don’t think he really picked it up until he saw it. He spent two months — over 500 hours — on it. He was up and down those ladders like a mosquito,” Steiner said. “One thing I admire about him is he has the perseverance and stick-to-it-ivness that not many people have to do such a massive project.”

Almanac: Ringing in with new technology

By Clark Fair

After the Trans-Alaska Telephone Company bought out the Kenai Telephone Company, it issued this first official directory on May 6, 1961. Sometime before this, however, The Cheechako News printed a single-page card-stock directory as an insert in its paper. Note that the owner of this early directory used the cover as a notepad of sorts on which to scribble important numbers and other information.

Redoubt Reporter

Starting in 1952, a wooden shed sitting just off Smith Way, to the west of the “Y” intersection in Soldotna, contained a one-of-a-kind object, at least as far as this tiny community was concerned. Inside the 10-by-12-foot structure was Soldotna’s lone telephone, and anyone wishing to make a call had to come to the shed.

The telephone — the old Army field variety, with a switch to push in one direction for talking and another for listening — hung from one interior wall of the shed. Connected to the instrument was a string of Army phone wire that wound out of the building and traveled along the road system all the way to Kenai, where an operator stood by 24 hours a day in the Kenai Telephone Company building.

The phone in that shed, which sat on land deeded for phone service by Jack and Dolly Farnsworth, was free to the public but was good only for calling any party in Kenai who happened to also have a phone.

The phone wire had been laid by Morris Porter, who, along with Chuck Brady, had begun Kenai’s first phone service just a few months earlier. According to longtime Soldotna resident Al Hershberger, phone service was appreciated, but the system was notoriously unreliable in the early days.

“In some places, it (the wire) ran through culverts,” Hershberger said. “With high water it would short out, so outages were frequent. Occasionally a moose would get tangled up in the line.”

When the Soldotna-Kenai line — or any other line, for that matter — went down, Brady’s wife, Kitty, sometimes had to go out on repair runs, according to her entry in “Once Upon the Kenai.” In addition to running a cab service with Porter, Brady also drove a school bus, and when he was unavailable in the phone business, Kitty drove out to locate and splice together the broken line.

According to Kitty, she and Chuck started Red’s Cab service in Kenai in the fall of 1951, and they hired a man named Buddy Wetbrow to string some telephone wires to each bar in town and to the Wildwood M.P. gate, figuring that this rudimentary communications system would improve their business. The following year, when the Porters moved to Kenai, the Bradys brought them into the business.

Bertha Porter’s entry in “Once Upon the Kenai” offers a slightly different version of the story. According to Bertha, she and Morris started the cab service with the Bradys, and both of the Porters drove cabs. They also were involved, she wrote, in stringing wires and installing field phones in businesses that had the most potential to boost the need for taxis.

The Bradys lived above the old territorial schoolhouse and offered 24-hour phone service, which was enhanced in 1954 by the construction of a new phone building and the purchase of an “obsolete” switchboard from the Homer Telephone Company.

Plugged In: Compose yourself — think in rectangles, squares

By Joseph Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo composition is the art of removing whatever isn’t needed in a photo. It’s probably the most important, but underrated, action occurring after you’ve clicked the shutter release.

Since at least 1890, photographic images have been composed within some variation of a rectangle with four straight sides with four right-angle corners. This week’s article examines how you can use a photo’s rectangular shape and Gestalt principles to improve your photos.

Good composition can be reduced to two basic ideas — where you place the camera and where you place the edges of the picture.

Camera placement and camera angle determine the photo’s subject and control how the different parts of the overall photograph relate to each other. Placing the frame edges, which is usually termed “cropping” the photograph, cuts away unnecessary parts. Cropping your images is the visual equivalent of editing your written words — the final product is usually stronger.

Good cropping can strengthen your initial image by focusing the viewer’s attention on the most important parts of the photograph and strengthening how each part relates to the others. Although you can tightly crop the image when you frame the subject in your camera’s viewfinder, I think it’s best to avoid cropping too tightly when actually taking the photo. It’s the rare photographer whose images are perfectly composed straight from the camera, and you may need some flexibility when later cropping with your computer and printer.

A photo’s final shape and proportions are not strongly constrained by the dimensions of the digital sensor that captured the image. Using programs like PhotoShop or Lightroom, we can greatly crop an image in one or several dimensions, rotate the image as desired, or even flip it vertically or horizontally 180 degrees. I’ve made a few abstract-appearing images whose composition was much improved when I vertically flipped them.

Some cameras, particularly Panasonic’s, allow you to crop before you take the photo by showing and using only a portion of the total sensor area. This doesn’t make much sense to me — you’re not gaining anything and you’ll reduce your ability to flexibly crop the image later.

My personal preference, based on experience, is to either physically move back from the subject or use a wider-angle zoom setting so there’s enough extra around the edges that I can later crop as desired.

If you leave some extent around the subject when taking the photo, you can always crop out any excess, but if something important isn’t inside the frame when you click the shutter, then it’s gone for good. Some may argue that, like bracketing exposures, allowing some slack around the edges for later cropping isn’t the purist’s preferred approach, but I prefer an approach that provides later flexibility and the best possible end result.

Healthy practice? Hospital Classic support raises blood pressure

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Central Peninsula Hospital’s mission is to be a “community-nurtured organization dedicated to promoting wellness and providing high-quality health care” in its service area, but its practice of donating money to nonprofit organizations and sponsoring various community events has some in the community questioning just how far promotion of community wellness should go, and whom should receive that support.

Financial support to one organization in particular, the Kenai River Sportfishing Association and its Kenai River Classic fishing event, has raised eyebrows over the hospital’s practice of giving financial support to nonprofits, when the organization that runs the Kenai Peninsula Borough-owned hospital, Central Peninsula General Hospital, Inc., is a nonprofit itself.

“I’d like to know why CPH is such a vehicle for patronage, donating to various area entities as it does. Shouldn’t such contributions be channeled through the borough assembly? It would seem that whatever money CPH is spreading around is indeed public money. The hospital is publicly owned, isn’t it?” said John Nelson, of Soldotna. “Where is the justification of the hospital, which is a publicly owned entity, being given some kind of unaccountable ability to donate that kind of money to God knows whom? I mean, I don’t care if it’s the food bank or Kenai River Watershed Forum. What business do they have using hospital funds for that?”

CPGH, Inc. spends $75,000 to $100,000 a year in sponsoring community events and donating to nonprofit organizations, said Tom Boedeker, president of the CPGH, Inc., board of directors. The money comes from hospital operations, not tax dollars, Boedeker said. Though the hospital has received a subsidy of public funds in the past, he said that it is self-supporting now — as of July 1, no tax dollars go to support operation of the hospital. The borough owns the land and the facility, but the hospital’s operations pay the entirety of the bond debt on the hospital, as well as all maintenance costs for the facility, Boedeker said.

“There is not a nickel of tax money going into the operation of the hospital,” Boedeker said. “And people say, ‘Oh, you are getting tax funds because you don’t pay a lease payment.’ And I suggest paying $3.1 million dollars for a bond payment that’s the borough’s obligation, and taking care of all the maintenance and upkeep of the building, which is typically a landlord’s expense, it’s quite a significant lease payment.”

Supporting community health

CPGH, Inc. is a nonprofit organization, but it’s a private nonprofit corporation and engages in charitable giving just as other corporations do, Boedeker said.

“If you have a large business in your community and they never contribute to any community events or help support the community, everybody says, ‘Well, they’re not community-minded.’ We are a very large industry in this community. We’re $100 million in cash flow. There is no other business in this area of that size that people do not expect them to participate in community activities and donate to community events,” he said.

Some past recipients of CPGH, Inc., financial support include, in 2008: $15,000 for the Southcentral Foundation to assist in the development of a pediatrics subspecialty distribution plan, $7,500 for the Kenai River Brown Bears to support a breast cancer awareness sporting event, $20,000 to Bridges Community Resource Network to provide a feasibility study for building a sports dome on the central peninsula, $10,000 to the United Way, $25,000 to support Soldotna Community Playground construction, $12,000 for the Boys and Girls Club and $10,000 to the Kenai River Professional Guide Association to support the Wounded Warrior fishing program. In 2007, funding included: $1,000 to the Soldotna Rotary Club, $10,000 to the Boys and Girls Club, $1,500 to Soldotna High School for student health and safety programs, $2,000 to Bridges for rape defense education, $1,500 to the Alaska Academy of Family Physicians, and $1,000 to the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank.

Boedeker said funding is primarily for events and organizations that support and promote health and wellness in the community.

Nelson said he doesn’t take issue with many of the organizations receiving funding, although support for the guide’s association struck him as out of line with supporting health and wellness on the central peninsula. Nelson said he’s concerned with the larger issue of why the hospital is donating at all.

“The Wounded Warrior program, I have absolutely no idea why they would support something like that. Not that it’s a bad venture, but what does it have to do with CPH?” said Nelson, adding that many of the participants in the program, which gives injured servicemen and women an opportunity to fish the Kenai River, are not from the central peninsula. “It’s a total misuse of hospital funds, as far as I can see.”

Boedeker said he’s sure arguments could be made against funding any of the organizations CPGH, Inc., does.

“There are some people who disagree with United Way and, so, should we let everybody who objects to United Way control our decisions where we think there’s a community benefit? I don’t think so. There’s no organization that we’ve donated to where you can’t find somebody in this community who thinks that’s inappropriate,” he said.

Boedeker said there’s a corporate policy that dictates donations. Organizations make funding requests, which are considered by the hospital administration.

“I’m not aware of a situation where we’ve ever gone out and said, ‘Hey, we want to donate.’ Organizations come and contact us to contribute to community events,” Boedeker said.

The CPGH, Inc., board reviews the hospital’s budget and financial operations and is aware of donations being made, but those decisions are made by hospital administration, he said.

“Basically, we leave that up to the discretion of the (chief operating executive). Otherwise, you’re sitting here looking at board time with every little request,” Boedeker said.

Agile duos — Training, love, patience overcome agility obstacles

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Duct Tape, a 2-year-old Rhodesian ridgeback mix, powers out of a tunnel obstacle during the agility portion of the Kenai Kennel Club’s three-day dog show held last weekend at Skyview High School.

Redoubt Reporter

Watching Jean Strong, of Chugiak, run through the green grass barefooted as she directed her canine companion, it was as if the two were psychically stuck together, as the dog’s name would imply, as they worked their way through a series of obstacles during an agility trial, part of this past weekend Kenai Kennel Club Dog Show at Skyview High School.

Duct Tape, Strong’s 2-year-old, female Rhodesian ridgeback mix, looked every bit as fit as its breeding, which was developed to hunt lions in Africa. Her shoulder and hind leg muscles rippled under her sleek, glossy, wheat-colored coat, and she immediately responded to Strong’s subtle cues to jump through hoops, run through tunnels, weave through poles, and negotiate all the other obstacles of the course.

Watching the dog’s performance, it was difficult to imagine this animal was once considered damaged goods, and by more than one “master,” before Strong adopted her and gave her permanent residence.

“She went through four homes in five months,” Strong said.

Duct Tape was apparently too high-strung for her other owners, and her pack instinct was too strong to be left behind when owners went to work. But these same traits are what make her special to Strong.

“She’s very high energy and high maintenance,” she said. “She couldn’t be shut up in a house or kennel all day. Ridgebacks also form extremely strong bonds, often to one person, so she needs to be with someone pretty much all the time.”

This works well for Strong, who suffers from fibromyalgia and is often home-bound from the condition, characterized by widespread and chronic pain, as well as depression.

“I have four dogs now — rescues — and they’ve changed my life,” she said. “Some days nothing helped me and it seemed like nothing was worth living for, but now I look at the dogs and I think life is good. They bring me so much laughter and joy. They’re the best therapy in the world. They’re 10,000 times better than any medication.”

Duct Tape may have looked the part of an athlete when adopted, but Strong said she had no idea how she would perform in the agility ring.

“She’s energetic, lean and rangy. She looked like a natural, but you just never know,” she said.

Strong eased her into the sport and was pleasantly surprised with how the dog took to it.

“She loved it,” she said. “She just picked up on everything right away. My other dog, June Bug, is like that too. I just think it, and they do it.”

Still, like many rescues, there were a few issues that had to be worked out.

“It’s more challenging competing with rescues because there can be a lot of baggage to overcome,” Strong said. “In Duct Tape’s case, she is afraid of men, and sometimes you get male judges.”

Seeing a man in the ring, Duct Tape often finds it difficult to concentrate, but Strong said she is working on overcoming this fear.

“You work on it bit by bit,” she said. “I bring her around men, then I have them give her treats, then pet her. She’ll overcome it in time, one man at a time.”

Strong wasn’t the only example of an owner and dog overcoming the odds at the annual dog show. Jill

Echo, an 11-year-old Siberian husky, isn’t too old to make the jumps of the agility course. She held her own Sunday, despite her advanced age.

Heidelbach, of Wasilla, was also competing in the agility trails with a Siberian husky — a breed many steer clear of due to their need to go “wilding.”

“There are only two of us in the state that do agility with this breed,” she said. “They’re energetic and athletic enough to do it. They love to run, but a bit too much, so you have to keep them focused and it can be challenging keeping their attention in the ring.”

Heidelbach said the key to overcoming the breed’s quirks is to keep the training stimulating.

“I keep it fun and try not to be repetitive,” she said. “I also do a LOT of early training with them on a leash.”

Heidelbach said many of the 20 Siberian huskies she owns will take part in agility trials. She said it is a welcome warm-weather recreation.

“In winter we go sledding, so this is our summer sport,” she said. “It carries into winter, though. I get to use my mind, and so do they, and it increases my bond with them more than if they just sat around all summer.”

In addition to being challenged by her breed of choice, Heidelbach also performed with a dog some would consider past its prime for athletic competition.

Loki, a German shorthaired pointer owned by Tracie Fellows, of Homer, works his way through the weave pole obstacle Sunday.

“Echo is an 11-year-old female,” she said, referring to her husky with a silver-colored coat that ran and jumped like a dog half its age. “You don’t get a dog able to do this without being a good steward. A lot may still want to at this age, but not all can.”

Heidelbach said that, for her, having a senior still able to perform is what agility is all about, and still sharing time in the ring with Echo is more important than any ribbon or prize.

“I do this because I like dogs,” she said. “Enjoying their company, that’s the most important part.”

Bear lessons learned — Sow standoff provides teachable moment

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

As a middle school science teacher, Patty Raymond is always on the lookout for “teachable moments” — stories she can tell her students to grab their attention while imparting knowledge of the natural world.

Come this school year, she’ll have a story that’s sure to hold a middle-schooler’s attention — her nearly two-hour standoff with a bear outside of Hope.

“Twelve- and 13-year-olds, they’re pretty squirrelly,” Raymond said. “As a science teacher it will be a teachable lesson in more than one way, both in terms of the evolution and instincts of large animals, the protective instincts and intelligence of a bear in terms of their evolution. And the safety lesson for the kids respecting nature — the things you need to do if you go hiking.”

Raymond moved to Anchorage four years ago from San Diego, drawn by the appeal of outdoor recreation opportunities. She runs, cross-country skies and hikes, usually with friends, but on June 9 she set off for the Gull Rock Trail outside Hope on her own.

“I’d been eyeing that area. I’ve wanted to go hiking down there. I finally got a day where the weather was cooperating. I was supposed to go with a girl friend, but at the last minute she couldn’t go. I grabbed my cell phone, and thank goodness I did, and went by myself,” she said.

At about 3 p.m. she started off on the five-mile trail, winding through the woods paralleling the coastline of Cook Inlet. She saw a few signs of bear activity, but nothing immediate.

“I noticed a couple spots of bear scat, it didn’t look really, really fresh. With my credentials in biology I’m pretty familiar with different kinds of scat,” she said.

On her way back, Raymond was about two miles from the trailhead at about 7 p.m. She doesn’t carry a firearm or pepper spray when hiking, but was following her customary practice of making lots of noise.

“In the summer, anywhere in Southcentral Alaska, especially if there’s any streams, I know it’s bear territory,” Raymond said. “I whistle all the way down the trail, and I kind of stomp around and sing. One of the things about bears, particularly black bears, is you don’t want to surprise them, especially a mom with cubs. You want to let them hear you coming so they don’t get scared or shocked and make it more likely they charge you.”

With her whistling, the black bear sow likely heard Raymond before Raymond heard the bear, but she smelled the sow before seeing her.

“I kind of smelled a musky smell. I thought, ‘Ooh, that’s a big mammal.’ About the second ‘bear’ flashed into my brain, I saw her,” she said.

The sow was nosing two cubs up a tree about 20 yards away off to the right of the trail ahead of her.

“I could see her snout, which was pretty large, and see the outline of her rear end, which was also pretty large,” Raymond said. “I’ve lived four years in Alaska. I kept hoping I’d never have a bear encounter. I thought, ‘Oh, OK. Here it is, my first Alaska bear encounter.’ In emergencies, my brain kind of goes into a real calm trance. The first thing that went through my brain was, ‘I’ve got to talk to her. Let her know I’m human and not a threat to her cubs.’”