Alaska Man Monday - Lost Treasures, Buckets, and Bush Planes

In the past week, I must have checked my fishing rod, reel, and fishing vest a dozen times. The ice is leaving the rivers… We’re getting so close…

In the meantime, let’s look at some interesting Alaska Man stuff; no stupid criminals this week (we can’t hope to keep up with Florida Man on that score - we just don’t have the population), but we do have some neat feel-good pieces.

First up: Alaska has, in the distant past, been home to a lot of people, starting in the last Ice Age, and it’s neat to see some artifacts of some of these folks.

Rare Treasures.

Ben Jones suspected he had found something special when he squeezed into a volcanic cave and saw pale wooden poles, some with ends shaped like a willow leaf.
When he crawled in farther, he found a cache of items — several paddles and a spear with a stone tip that was still attached. He suspected that the last hands to touch those paddles belonged to people who were no longer alive.
Jones, a permafrost and northern-phenomena researcher, then backed out of the hole, which had been formed by cooling lava a few thousand years earlier.
He sat down on a rock, looked out at Imuruk Lake on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula and took a few breaths.
“How cool,” he thought.

This is cool. These are artifacts that have been in that cold, dry cave, a perfect environment for storing such things, for hundreds of years. It’s neat to think that these were used by people living in the old way, paddling sealskin kayaks out onto the frigid ocean to hunt seals and otters for their families ashore. It’s a neat find; and in the vastness of Alaska, who knows how many similar finds await discovery?

Alaska Man Score: 4.5 of 5 moose nuggets. The only demerit would be if the site goes public and is disrupted by treasure hunters.

Now then, some young ladies down in the Kenai Peninsula have done some good, thoughtful work. The Girl Scouts nationally have gone "woke," unfortunately, but not so much here in the Great Land.

Soldotna Girl Scouts’ “Bucket Trees.”

Earlier this month, Girl Scouts from Soldotna-based Troop 210 were recognized for an advancement in the area of campfire safety. The invention, dubbed “bucket trees,” has already been implemented at campsites in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and will be brought to more sites around the state later this year.
“We saw a problem and we wanted to try to help it,” said Kadie Newkirk, one of the scouts who helped develop the invention.
Similar in shape to a small tree, the simple wood structure sports three branches that hold plastic buckets. When placed near a water source like a lake or river, the device allows campers of all abilities to quickly extinguish campfires.

We do have the occasional wildfires, even though our summers are cool and often rainy, and it’s a good thing for people to extinguish campfires when breaking camp – good for these girls for making it easy.

Alaska~~Man~~Girl score: 4 of 5 moose nuggets. The only demerit is not really their fault but for campers needing to have buckets hung from fake trees to get them to put out their flippin' campfires.

Next, airplanes!

The Great Alaska Aviation Gathering comes to Palmer.

Palmer is a neat little town over on the Matanuska side of the Mat-Su. It’s smaller than Wasilla, and is a little more “artsy.” It’s home to the Palmer Friday Fling all summer, with arts, crafts, food, and other fun stuff; it’s home to the Alaska State Fair, and also the Great Alaska Aviation Gathering.

The 2024 Great Alaska Aviation Gathering is set to return to the Alaska State Fairgrounds and the Palmer Municipal Airport Saturday, May 4 and Sunday, May 5.
The Great Alaska Aviation Gathering is hosted by the Alaska Airmen’s Association, and it’s typically held during the first weekend of May. This annual gathering is designed to serve as an opportunity to celebrate aviation as a whole and help pilots plan for the upcoming flying season. According to the Alaska Airmen Association’s website, this event is regarded as the largest free aviation gathering in the country.

Civil aviation, especially the Great Land’s famous bush pilots, has made Alaska what it is today. There are so many far-flung bush communities that were previously only accessible by boat or dogsled that now have grass or gravel strips, many of which can accommodate not only the small single-engined bush planes for also the big, rugged, seemingly immortal surplus C-47s that one still sees flying around regularly. These intrepid airmen don’t always get the recognition they deserve, but at least on Saturday and Sunday, they had their day. And honestly, these days you may be safer in a bush plane than in a commercial airliner.

AlaskaMan Score: 5 of 5 moose nuggets, perfect score since there were no crashes.

Now, some thoughts on a state that isn’t as big as Alaska but has more idiots in the state legislature than we do.