Mystic Alaska

 Years ago there was a Russell Crowe movie about hockey and small town life in a little town in Alaska.  As I stood staring out on this scene, it popped into my head for some reason.  "Mystic," I thought, "the movie was about a small town, Mystic Alaska."  Nope.  Turns out I was wrong and the movie was actually "Mystery, Alaska," and was based on a fictional town.  I was however correct with my choice of adjective when I said mystic.  Mystic -- to be spiritually significant; ethereal.  That's about the best word I can think of to describe the view I was casually photographing on the roadside.

 

I am hoping to see brilliant blue skies this summer, but as you can see, the winter skies are as white as the background of this blog.  I liked this picture because it doesn't seem to fit quite right, the sky simply fading away, the mountain with its avalanche shoots looking like a melting ice cream cone, the perfect calm of the water, and finally the trees in the foreground refusing to blend in with the rest of the scene whatsoever.  Like Alaska...this scene just doesn't all fit into a smooth little photo.

The shades of blue in the mountains surprised me at first.  I was used to the slate grey of the Rockies, which do indeed have their blue hues, but the blue stands out a little bit more to me here.  Not a hint of blue in the sky, just in the mountains.  A brilliant blue at that.

Sigh.  This is my new backyard.  I love my Bermuda backyard, my Saskatchewan backyard, and my Eden North backyard...and I love my new backyard.  I am a lucky girl to add this to some other pretty stellar places I have called home.

I just liked the ripples on the water in this next photo.  And...it looks so cold, right?  The grey, the snow....no warm colors...

But then camera pans left and voila -- the warmth returns in shades of brown and purple and blue;  Truth is...it's not really warm compared to Bermuda or cold compared to western Canada...these colors are Alaska mild.  I can't wait to see Alaska in bloom!

In the bottom right corner of this photo you can see a whale tail. 

OK, I am teasing, it just looks like a whale tail.  That is actually just a stranded piece of ice about the size of a mini-Cooper that happens to be in the shape of a whale tale.

I ventured out on the silt (I know I said I wasn't going to do this, but I was very cautious I promise) to check out the ice...and thought the feathery patterns in the mud were kind of pretty.

And again, pan right...standing on that mud...sure looks like spring all of a sudden.  But all of these pictures were taken on the same day...in less than 30 miles along the side of the highway.  Imagine what is in "the back country."  Will do my best to find out for you, without getting eaten by a bear which is a bit of a paranoia I have always had -- I blame my older brothers for being in charge of the remote and letting their little sister see "Night of the Grizzly," which basically is about a bear that eats everyone, whether they are hikers, rangers in fire lookouts, pilots of airborne helicopters, and numerous other situations which I have fortunately forgotten.  Several decades later, I still can't watch the movie, although I did find parts of it on YouTube to show an Australian how terrifying this could be and realized most of the movie was filmed without an actual bear, it was just a B movie with a paw on the stick.  Nonetheless, I have been scarred for life.  Expect a lot of highway photos until I get over this.