Alaskan Blog

This photo is to explain why you won’t see too much of my photography on Alaskan Blog, and why you’ll be sorry when you do. I took this with a cheap sub-megapixel Sony Mavica in May of 2001, on the Taylor Highway, somewhere in the vicinity of King Creek between Polly Summit and The Flats:

You know those huge moose in the calendar photos, the ones in the middle of small lakes, luminous in the summer sunshine with aquatic plants dripping from their Boone & Crocket antlers? I theorize that those are specially bred for wildlife photographers, and kept in a secret preserve for journalistic use only. This picture is how real Alaskans usually see moose: unexpectedly, at dusk, in the fading light, through a dirty windshield, along the side of a desolate stretch of road. The soundtrack is usually “Oh shit, don’t hit him!” accompanied by squealing brakes and tires skidding on gravel.

On the rare and fortunate occasion when such an encounter is actually happening during hunting season, the soundtrack differs. Then it’s “Shit! I can’t see any antlers! Can you see any antlers?”