catalysta's VirtualTourist Home Page

I can never quite capture the exquisite shades of blue & blue-green that permeate the waters of the Caribbean. Aqua tinged by the soft pale sands shifting beneath in the shallows protected by the reef...A deeper green-blue floating beyond the reef...a sudden change to darkest aquamarine blue where the ocean shelf drops off to the deeps...melting at the horizon where the blue of the sky seductively rubs up against the ocean...and then it slowly becomes one dark midnight blue, merging the sky & sea together as the sun sinks low, and finally the stars so bright on black velvet dazzle my sun-drenched mind.

My body came back to Alaska, but the rest of me resisted admitting that I ever left that perfect island (some call it "jetlag", right?). New pages are all done now, drop in for a glimpse of paradise Caribbean style:
British Virgin Islands
Virgin Gorda
Beef Island
Tortola

For a list of Islands I Have Known (with links to pages) & another of Islands I'd Like To Know, see Travelogue My Obsession With Islands.

Morning In Late October 2005

Fall fell so quickly in Anchorage, it was all over in one blustery wet night. The birch trees were stripped bare by furious wind gusts clocked at up to 70mph. The next morning they stood out in stark contrast against a backdrop of the Chugach Mountains covered with white "termination dust".

You'll notice I have no spring or fall shown here in the "Seasons Of Alaska"; that's because the 2 transitional seasons pass so quickly I have no good photos of them. This year I was down in America when autumn happened in Anchorage, and then it was all over while I was still too jet-lagged to catch it.

Back at work here on the Pipeline, the long winter has solidly arrived. We're coping with our first heavy snowfall of the year. The plows are running continuously to keep up with it all, and I have to step outside to shovel the entry deck & stairs outside my office every 2 hours or so, or it will build up to a depth that will block my door.

Heavy sighs...Have to control myself, I'm supposed to stay at home this R&R, but already I'm longing for warmth, sunshine, salt water...the tropics are calling again!

It was a bitter cold winter 2004-2005, the coldest I've experienced in Alaska so far. Had several days where the temperature hovered around -40F, and then the winds started. My god was it cold!

Longing to take my frozen body parts to Florida again....

Caught this shots from the crew change flight on the way to work for January hitch. Glad to be in a heated airplane, not down there, whew.

Strangely, when we landed in Fairbanks that day, in -30F temps, there was a freezing fog so thick at the airport that we wondered how we could land in it. Flew down into the cloud blanketing the runway, & suddenly we were on the ground. Impressively smooth landing! (Grateful for experienced pilots.)

Slowly the sun swings north, ice melts...

Alicin rushes into my office, breathlessly ordering me to come see the red sunrise. I grab my faithful C770 and trot out the door, slipping and sliding on the half-frozen slush in the yard. I look up to the east and there it is: Red glowing over orange, but fading quickly. I click and I capture this beautiful moment, still seconds too late to record that phenomenal glowing redredred.

Each day is measurably longer, as we yearn for Summer Solstice. "It's coming," I tell myself.

Thunderstorms...people up here tell me they never used to get thunderstorms in Anchorage, not for decades. But now they are a regular occurrence every summer (one more in-your-face evidence of global warming). In 2004 they triggered the terrible forest fires that destoyed over 10 million acres in Alaska, and millions more in neighboring Canada.

For several nights running, the storms over the Chugach Mountains east of town provided us with lush and gorgeous color shows, and one perfect arcing prism.

We are gradually and very surreptitiously taking over VT, and my VT friend Sean in Cardiff has started a list of VT artists for you to view. Just go to Sean's homepage at aaaarrgh.

To see a few more of my drawings, check out the album:
Drawings