Category Archives: Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Island

Life in the wilderness on Kodiak Island

New Cook Arrives in a Fog

August 9, 2015Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandKodiak Alaska, Kodiak Wilderness, Munsey's Bear Campadmin

Marcia and Robin on vacation in Hawaii — Robin and Marcia on vacation in Hawaii

The New Cook Arrives in a Fog is a story by my dear friend Marcia Messier. I first met Marcia in July 2004, when she came to work as a cook at our lodge. Marcia is from Massachusetts and worked for the Massachusetts court system. After she retired, she moved to Arizona and decided on a whim to apply for a cooking job at a remote lodge in Alaska, and that is how she wound up with us.

Due to the maritime climate of Kodiak, fog can be a problem, especially in June and July, and when it’s foggy, all air transportation to and around the island comes to a halt. While this can be frustrating, it is a fact of life for us, and we’re used to it, but when Marcia arrived in Anchorage in route to our lodge and learned her flight to Kodiak had been cancelled due to fog, she found this unacceptable and was concerned she would be late arriving for her new job. She decided to take matters into her own hands, and I was impressed and amused when I heard Marcia had found a way to by-pass the Kodiak fog. I knew immediately I would like her, and I also knew Marcia was about to learn her first lesson about life on Kodiak Island.

The New Cook Arrives in a Fog

Marcia Messier

A little fog never stopped planes from flying back East, so why was I stuck in Anchorage, Alaska with every flight to Kodiak canceled? Fog..? This wasn’t going to work, after all, I had a new job lined up as cook at Munsey’s Bear Camp and was to report to work today!

I observed many people wandering about the airport with piles of luggage and groceries, grumbling about the weather situation. After a time, I struck up a conversation with two couples bound for a fishing lodge somewhere near where I was headed, at least I thought it was near where I was headed. After commiserating for a bit, one of the women said she knew a pilot who owned a small jet, and if we were all willing, she would call him and see if he would fly us to Larsen Bay. We agreed, she made the call, and he said he thought he could find a way through the fog and into Larsen Bay “the back way”. His fee was divided by 5 and after claiming my luggage, we were off to another runway and a private jet! I wasn’t able to see much of Kodiak during the flight, a few flashes of emerald green, and suddenly we were down on the runway at Larsen Bay. An impressive bright red Hummer was there to greet us, and I assumed to take us to the airport, but all I could see was what appeared to be a small village held up on pilings sunk into the muddy beach. This was the cannery at Larsen Bay. I had arrived!

Next, to find a phone and call Robin and Mike. I had no idea of the distance involved out here, only that I was closer to my destination than I had been in Anchorage. A nice young man in the cannery office seemed to know of Munsey’s Bear Camp and made a radio-telephone call to ask them if they were expecting a cook. After a brief conversation he told me Mike would pick me up in the Boston Whaler in about an hour. Finally, I could relax a little, sit down and observe life at the cannery. It seemed to be a happy place with college age kids running in and out of odd-looking buildings, and others all jammed up waiting to use the phone booths. No cell phones? No, but as I was about to learn, radio transmission news travels faster than cell phones!

Soon, a man’s head popped up beside me from the beach and introduced himself as Mike Munsey, was I Marcia?

I had made my job deadline: July 2, 2004!

The trip from Larsen Bay to Munsey’s Bear Camp was spectacular! The fog lifted, and I could see emerald green mountain peaks rising straight up out of Uyak Bay. I understood canceled flights due to fog, now. The water was calm, and at full throttle, the Whaler flew over the bay. Mike pointed out Fin whales spouting in the distance and seals on nearby (yikes!) rocks.

Robin greeted us back at camp and sat me down to a delicious dinner, a glass of wine, then guided me upstairs to my room for a much-needed sleep.

Next day I had a lot to learn. First, I was introduced to the generator. I learned to respect this growling monster in the shed. He ran a tight ship. His schedule was as follows:

7AM-ON All electrical work is done: computer, baking in oven, mixers, washing machine, dish washer, vacuum cleaner.

9AM-OFF No electrical work done. Prepare bread dough, cookie dough, soup, tidy up cabins & main house, burn trash… take a break.

5PM-ON Everything is on and the race is on to make dinner & clean up.

10PM-OFF Ah, quiet…time to have a glass of wine and celebrate the day!

I can hear the float plane approaching, the first guests are arriving! We rush to put on our boots and run down to the dock to greet them. Quickly, I had to run back to the kitchen and retrieve a baggie of cookies for the pilot. Cookies are a MUST, the pilot is always hungry! As the guests stepped out of the float plane, I immediately noticed their beautiful Italian leather shoes and smiled to myself. Rubber shoes and boots are standard footwear on Kodiak Island….I was learning.

Amook Airways

August 2, 2015Historical, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, UncategorizedAmook Airways, Flying in Alaska, Kodiak Island, Munseyadmin

Munsey Family is greeted by the Governor of New Hampshire

Park Munsey became a pilot in the late fifties, and in the 1960s, he started Amook Airways, a small air-charter business. His wife, Pat, was his dispatcher, and their home in Amook Pass was their base of operations. Park not only flew his hunting clients, but he also flew for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and delivered mail and supplies around the island. Over the years, he owned an Aeronca Champ, a Tri-Pacer, a Cessna 180, a Cessna 185, a Twin Seabee, and a Grumman Widgeon.

Park bought the Tri-Pacer in 1961, and that winter, he, Pat, and the children flew in it from Kodiak to New Hampshire to visit relatives. In preparation for the long flight, Pat got her pilot’s license, so she could help with the flying. When the Munseys reached New Hampshire, they presented the governor of that state with a gift from Bill Egan, the governor of Alaska.

Pat remembers one harrowing day when the crankshaft broke on Park’s Cessna 185, and he was forced to land on Olga Bay in heavy seas. The hard impact of the landing caused the floats to rupture, and as the floats filled with water, the plane flipped upside down, and Park climbed onto the floats. When he didn’t return home and didn’t call on the radio, Pat contacted the Coast Guard, reported him overdue, and braced herself for the worst. As the waves lapped over the pontoons, the floats slowly filled with water, and by the time the Coast Guard arrived, they found Park straddling the sinking floats, writing a last letter to his wife and children.

Park sold his last plane, the Grumman Widgeon, in the mid 1970s, and he and Pat began spending winters in Hawaii. Mike purchased Munsey’s Bear Camp from his parents in 1980, but Park continued to guide bear hunters during the spring and fall hunts.

Never content to sit idle, Park bought a boat in Hawaii and started a SCUBA diving business. He taught SCUBA classes, and he and his boat could be

chartered for diving trips. In 1982, Park competed in the famous Iron Man Triathlon in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii and finished eighth in his age bracket. The following spring, at the age of 54, he collapsed while guiding a bear hunter out of an interior-lake camp near Spiridon Bay. He died a few days later from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Pat remarried in 1984, and she and her husband, Wally, still live in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where Pat works in real estate. This summer (2015), Pat, Wally, Toni, Patti, Jeri, Bob, Peggy, spouses and several grandkids all visited our Amook Pass home, where we celebrated Pat’s 85^th birthday.

Munsey’s Bear Camp

July 26, 2015Historical, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandAmook Pass, Kodiak Alaska, Munsey's Bear Camp, Uyak Bayadmin

By the1960s, the Munseys spent most of the year at Munsey’s Bear Camp, their lodge in Amook Pass, where Park guided bear hunters in Uyak and Spiridon Bays. He soon established another hunting camp at the south end of Becharof Lake on the Alaska Peninsula, where he guided bear, moose, and caribou hunts. Park was a registered guide and eventually became a master guide, holding master guide license number twelve.

Munsey’s Bear Camp was not just a lodge, it was a home. Pat cooked for the hunters and then held school for the kids in a corner of the living room. Mike and Bob assisted their father during the hunts as soon as they were old enough to climb the mountains. Toni, Patti, Jeri, and Peggy helped their mother in the kitchen, and all the kids learned how to safely run boats and shoot rifles.

Fish and Game employees and others often brought the Munseys sick or orphaned wild animals to nurse back to health or to raise. I’ve seen 8mm-movie footage that shows Pat, dressed in a raincoat and hip boots, standing in the ocean gently urging a baby harbor seal to swim. The pup had been abandoned by its mother soon after birth, so Pat assumed the maternal coaching responsibilities. Other pets included foxes, a magpie, and even a bald eagle that had fallen out of its nest. Their favorite pet, though, was a seagull they named Herbie. Once Herbie mastered flying, he would often fly out to greet members of the family when they returned home in their skiff.

During the March 27^th, 1964 earthquake, Mike remembers walking to the generator shed with his father when the first jolt hit and sent him sprawling. They returned to the house and switched on the single-sideband radio, where they heard people yelling for help. The marine operator told listeners that there had been an earthquake and to standby for a tsunami warning announcement. Park and Pat gathered supplies and led the children up the hill behind the lodge, where they sat, huddled in sleeping bags, and waited for the water to subside.

The Munsey children have all carried remnants of their unique childhood into their present-day lives. Cooking is Toni’s passion, and she owns The Rendezvous, a bar and restaurant near Kodiak. On her menu, you will discover a few items that were inspired, at least in part, by recipes she learned from her mother at the lodge in Amook Pass. Patti and her husband, Rick, are both captains and have spent many years running large yachts. Their busy schedules have taken them to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific, among other places. Jeri and her husband, Mark, are also captains and operate a number of tour boats as well as a beautiful, 57-ft. sailboat on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Bob is a commercial fisherman and fishes a gill-net site at Chief Cove in Uyak Bay. He also guides bear, deer, and goat hunters alongside Mike. Bob’s wife, Linda, is a nurse. Peggy lives in Oregon with her two, beautiful children. She is a nurse like her mother, but she now operates a dog kennel and an animal sanctuary.

Mike and I still run Munsey’s Bear Camp. In 2016, the business will be sixty years old, and for fifty-eight of those years, Munsey’s Bear Camp has been in Amook Pass in Uyak Bay. Mike and I have expanded the activities at the lodge to include wildlife-viewing and sport fishing. Both Mike and Bob are master guides, and they still guide bear, deer, and mountain goat hunts in Uyak and Spiridon Bays.

West Side Stories

July 12, 2015Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Islandadmin

This summer, the Kodiak Historical Society and the Baranov Museum in Kodiak are working on a project they call, “West Side Stories.” It is an effort to preserve the history of the west side of Kodiak Island from Kupreanof to Karluk, and to achieve this goal, the museum is mailing out a series of kits throughout the summer to encourage fishermen, lodge owners and residents on the west side of the island to share stories, drawings, and other artwork with the museum, where it will be displayed in the spring of 2016.

I am excited about this project and plan to participate. Not only will this help preserve the history of this sparsely-populated side of Kodiak, but it should get children involved in learning more about where they spend at least a part of their lives each year. I have plenty of stories to send to the museum. My husband’s parents, Park and Pat Munsey, moved to this side of Kodiak Island in 1958. They raised six kids, ran a hunting lodge, and operated their own air-charter taxi. They have some amazing tales, and I plan to retell a few. I of course have stories of my own after living here for 31 years, and my good friend and a former cook at our lodge, Marcia Messier, is also planning to contribute some stories.

This project is just the incentive Marcia and I need to start writing our cookbook/storybook Tales from the Kitchen at Munsey’s Bear Camp (working title), which will include all the stories we’ll write for the “West Side” project plus more. We plan to write this book with my mother-in-law Pat Munsey and hopefully one other contributor.

For the next several weeks, I will post Pat’s, Marcia’s, and my own stories, and I will then send them to the museum for their “West Side” collection. I will also continue to include posts about wildlife on this site, and since our summer photography/fishing trips have started, I’ll let you know what’s happening with those as well. Please leave a comment if there is anything you’d like me to cover, and don’t hesitate to ask questions. Also, if you leave a comment with your e-mail address, my posts will be delivered directly to your mail box.

If you would like to learn more about “West Side Stories,” visit their Facebook page: Kodiak’s West Side Stories, and if you would like to donate to the project, go to: http://www.crowdrise.com/westsidestories

My Second Novel: Murder Over Kodiak

June 28, 2015Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, WritingFloatplane, Kodiak Island, Murder Over Kodiak, Mystery, Noveladmin

My second novel, Murder Over Kodiak, is based on Kodiak Island, Alaska, where I live. Most of the story takes place in the town of Kodiak, where Jane works as a biologist at a marine science center. Later in the novel, Jane travels to the west side of Kodiak Island to Uyak Bay to collect clams to test for the presence of a natural toxin. Her campsite on this field trip is approximately fifteen miles from my actual home in the Kodiak wilderness, so describing the ambient temperature and other weather conditions Jane might encounter on a July day, as well as what she would likely see and smell, is easy for me, because I’ve spent many July days in this pristine wilderness. At one point, Jane has an encounter with a bear, and since there more than 3500 Kodiak bears on the Kodiak Island Archipelago, seeing a bear in the woods or on the beach is a common experience.

When thinking up an idea for a new mystery, I like to think, what if . . . . In the case of this novel, I thought, what if a floatplane crashed not because of bad weather, pilot error, or a mechanical malfunction, but what if the cause was something much more sinister such as a bomb? How would the residents of Kodiak react when problems from the outside world invaded our normally peaceful island?

Kodiak Island is beautiful with lush vegetation, steep mountains that rise nearly straight up from sea level, fjord-like bays, and at times, some of the worst weather on the planet. We see a few storms each year where storm-force winds spawn waves towering over 30 ft. Throw 3500 bears into the mix, and you have an awe-inspiring setting that can evoke many “what if” questions in an author’s mind.

The rugged men and women who call Kodiak home include commercial fishermen, bush plane pilots, guides, fish and wildlife researchers, and Coast Guard pilots and rescue swimmers, all who do their jobs by being willing to brave the challenging environment in which they live and work. I don’t have to use much imagination to create colorful, inspiring characters for my books. In fact, I know some actual people who are so colorful that no one would find them believable as characters in a novel.

I am lucky to have this rich, unique environment to inspire me when I write. I think and hope my novels will appeal to readers who love mysteries, but also to people who enjoy reading about Alaska and the wilderness.

Puffins

June 14, 2015Kodiak Wildlife, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandAlaska, horned puffin, Kodiak Island, puffins, tufted puffinadmin

Tufted Puffin in Uyak Bay, Kodiak Island

Puffins arrive in Uyak Bay in May, and it is a welcome sign of spring to sight the first one. These colorful, almost comical birds are members of the family alcidae, which includes guillemots, auks, auklets, murres, and murrelets. We have both horned and tufted puffins here. The two species sport different head gear, but the most obvious difference between them is that horned puffins have a white breast and a black back, while tufted puffins have a black breast and back. Both species have large, colorful bills. Horned puffins have a small, fleshy dark “horn” above each eye, while tufted puffins have tufts of long feathers on either side of the head. Both males and females have the same markings. One of the most interesting things about puffins is that they shed the outer layers of their bills in the late summer, and their plumage fades to a dusky gray. In late May, we see colorful parrot-like birds, but by early September, their somber plumage and plain bill make them appear to be a totally different species.

In this part of Alaska, puffins arrive at their breeding colonies in May. It is believed that breeding pairs mate for life or at least for a prolonged period of time. They strengthen their bonds during a courtship ceremony that take place in the water. The male lifts his bill straight up and opens and closes his mouth and jerks his head, while the female hunches over and pulls her head and neck close to her body. Next, the two birds face each other, waggle their heads and touch bills repeatedly while opening and closing their mouths.

Puffins prefer to nest underground. They have sharp claws on the toes of their feet, and they are able to scratch out a burrow three to four feet deep into a steep hillside. They use the same burrow every year, and they clean and may even lengthen the burrow each year. At rocky sites with very little or no soil, puffins nest on slopes or cliff faces. Females lay a single whitish-colored egg that is incubated for 42–47 days by both parents. The egg hatches in July, and the parents take turns feeding the chick for the next 45 days.

After the first five days, the chick can keep itself warm, allowing both parents to leave the nest to gather food. The adults catch small fish such as herring, capelin, and sand lance to feed themselves and their chick. They have a raspy tongue that holds each fish against a double row of backward-facing spines on the roof of the mouth, and they often carry as many as ten small fish at a time when they return to the nest. As soon as the chick fledges, the adults leave for the winter. They shed their beaks and head to the open ocean, where they spend the winter feeding. Young puffins will remain at sea until they are two years old, and then they return to the nesting colony for the summer. They are sexually mature at age three.

I can’t help but laugh when I watch a puffin fly, because with their chubby, round bodies, they are poorly built for flight, and they are actually much better at swimming than flying. When a puffin takes off to fly, it appears to run on the water, furiously flapping its wings until it gains a few feet of altitude. Then it flies for a short distance and splashes back into the water. Landing on a cliff is a tricky maneuver for a puffin, and crash landings are not uncommon.

Seeing a brightly-colored puffin in May is a sign to me that spring has arrived, and catching a glimpse of that same drab-colored bird in September is a reminder that winter is on its way.

Trip To Kodiak

May 31, 2015Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandKodiak, Kodiak Alaska, Kodiak Islandadmin

This past week I took a rare trip to the town of Kodiak. I’ve been posting about springtime behaviors of various Kodiak animals, so now I’ll tell you about one of my springtime behaviors. Mike and I usually fly to the town of Kodiak in late May to run errands, go to the doctor, pick up supplies, and most importantly for me, visit the local greenhouse to buy flower and vegetable starts for my planters and garden.

This may not seem like an earth-shattering topic to write about, but a trip to town is a big deal for me. First of all, it’s expensive. We must charter a plane each way, rent a car, and stay in a hotel. Secondly, it can be an ordeal, because late-May weather is often foggy, especially around town, so our trip easily can be delayed for a day or two due to bad (not flyable) weather, and worse still, we could get stuck in town for a few days waiting for the weather to clear.

On this trip, the weather was marginal for flying. The first part of our flight to town was windy and bumpy, and as we neared town, the pilot expertly dodged pea-soup fog. It was also foggy when we departed Kodiak for our return flight, but as we neared Uyak Bay, the ceiling lifted, and the pilot was able to climb and fly through the mountain passes.

In late May, the town of Kodiak bustles with activity, as commercial fishermen begin preparing for the summer salmon season. This past weekend especially was busy in Kodiak, because it was King Crab Festival weekend.

The King Crab Festival is Kodiak’s version of the county fair but with some uniquely “Kodiak” twists. Since it is difficult and expensive to bring carnival rides to the island, most of the “rides” are of the inflatable variety, but the kids are no-less enthusiastic about them. Many of the food booths are operated by local vendors, and you can dine on salmon, halibut, cod, and of course King Crab, among other things. There is no tractor pull at the King Crab Festival, but the Coast Guard demonstrates simulated rescues, a Russian Orthodox priest blesses the fishing fleet, and most popular of all, festival-goers line the boat ramp near the harbor and cheer on the participants in the survival-suit race. For this activity, teams of four race down a ramp, pull on and zip up bulky survival suits, then jump into the water and swim to a life raft. Once all four team members are in the raft, the clock stops and their time is recorded. The team with the fastest time wins. Participants include everyone from families to fishing vessel crew members to Coast Guard rescue swimmers. The rescue swimmers usually win, but no one complains about that. We want those guys to be fast!

Between running errands, visiting the King Crab Festival, and eating at as many restaurants as I could in four days, I was exhausted and full by the time we flew home. I smiled at my new plants as I carried them up to the house, happy to be home and eager to start planting. I don’t plan another trip to town until late January, and for the time being anyway, that’s fine with me!

Orphaned Cubs

May 17, 2015Kodiak Bear, Kodiak Wildlife, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandKodiak Bear, Kodiak Bear Cubs, Orphaned Cubs, Orphaned Kodiak Bear Cubsadmin

Three orphaned cubs unexpectedly entered our lives two weeks ago. You may remember in my post on Kodiak bears emerging from their dens in the spring, I mentioned that sows with newborn cubs are the last to emerge, and often the sow will leave and return to the den many times before she introduces her babies to the world. Unfortunately, this behavior was fatal for one sow this spring.

Let me make it clear that bear hunting on Kodiak is very tightly regulated by a limited-permit system. It is illegal to shoot a sow with cubs, but when hunters saw this sow alone outside her den they shot her, perhaps never realizing she had cubs in the den. The incident is being investigated by the Alaska State Troopers, and I won’t speculate on what may or may not have happened. That part of the story is out of our hands.

Our guides already suspected this bear was a sow with young cubs in the den, and after she was shot, they kept a close eye on the den. A few days later, Tim, one of our guides, saw tiny, furry heads peering out of the den. My husband, Mike, called the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Kodiak, and they gave us permission to rescue the cubs from the den. At that point, it had been five days since their mother died, and the biologists did not believe the cubs would survive.

Two of our guides climbed up to the den, caught the cubs, and carried them down the mountain in backpacks. They then transported the cubs back to our lodge for the night. The three brothers were dirty, terrified, and stressed, and they huddled under the bunk beds in our guides’ cabin. They drank some water, but I knew we were not getting enough nutrients into their little bodies. We later learned that the cubs each weighed about 12 pounds (5.5 kg), and they were dehydrated and malnourished.

The next morning, I stayed alone with the cubs, waiting nervously for Fish and Game to arrive to take them to Kodiak. I soon learned, though, that it was foggy in Kodiak, and all planes were grounded until the fog lifted. Every hour, I crept into the cabin and peered under the bed, making sure they were still moving and alert. They drank some water, but I finally decided that my attempts to feed them were causing them too much stress, and since the airplane ride undoubtedly would terrify them, I wanted them as calm as possible before they began the next leg of their ordeal.

At 3:00 in the afternoon, the floatplane touched down and glided to our dock. I raced to meet Fish and Game biologist Nate Svoboda and eagerly showed him where the bears were hiding. Nate was impressed the bears looked as good as they did, and he carefully placed them in a large kennel for the trip to Kodiak.

Once in Kodiak, the cubs spent the night at Fish and Game and then took another plane ride to Anchorage, where the vets at the Alaska Zoo are now caring for them. A video recently released by the zoo shows the three brothers playing and cuddling. They are now clean and fluffy and appear to be very healthy. After spending several months in Anchorage, the cubs will board yet another plane. Two will go to a zoo in Wisconsin, and the third to another zoo.

I experienced a roller coaster of emotions during this drama: Anger, depression, excitement, worry, and fear among others, but as I watched the video from the Alaska Zoo and saw three, healthy, playful cubs, I finally allowed myself to smile and breathe a sigh of relief. The three bears will never know a life in the Kodiak wilderness, but they are alive, and their jobs now are to teach others about Kodiak bears. Maybe someday I will be able to visit them at their new homes.

View the video of the cubs.

Springtime on Kodiak

April 11, 2015Kodiak Wildlife, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandBald Eagles, Bears, Fin Whales, Humpbacks, Kodiak Springtime, Oystercatchers, puffinsadmin

I’m sitting next to the heater and looking out the window at a blizzard, so it seems strange to write a post about spring. I know, though, that over the next few weeks, spring will unfold in this corner of the world, and springtime on Kodiak is spectacular. It is, without question, my favorite time of the year. True, the weather is much nicer in the summer, but nothing can compare to the awakening of nature that spring brings.

All I have to do is look out the front window or walk out into the yard to watch the breath-taking aerobatics of mating bald eagles. On the beach, I can see raucous, funny black oystercatchers, squawking and strutting to protect their territories. The black-legged kittiwakes arrived yesterday at their rookery in front of our home, and the Arctic terns should arrive in the next two weeks. We will soon begin seeing horned and tufted puffins paddling through the water and launching their fat little bodies into the air for their short, awkward flights. Of course bears will be leaving their dens, and before too long, we hopefully will catch a glimpse of a sow with tiny, newborn cubs.

All of this is fantastic to see, but perhaps the most amazing displays of spring occur in the ocean. As the sea temperature slowly rises, phytoplankton bloom, providing a food supply for spawning zooplankton. Soon, the ocean is full of these small crustaceans that provide a food, for everything from herring to whales. Spring is also when adult herring return to the marshy heads of bays to spawn and lay their eggs on eel grass and other plants. It seems as if overnight we begin seeing masses of zooplankton washed up on our beach and notice huge schools of herring in the bay, and following the herring and zooplankton are fin whales, humpbacks, and other whales, along with seals and sea lions. Some years we even see Orcas chasing and feeding on the oil-rich herring. There are days in the spring when the last sounds I hear before I fall asleep at night and the first sounds I hear when I awake in the morning are whales blowing. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to go into more detail about springtime on Kodiak Island. How do eagles court and mate, and when will their chicks hatch? What do bears do when they first come out of their dens? When do the Sitka black-tailed deer give birth to their fawns, and when are red fox kits born? I’ll also let you know about the whales and other wildlife we see and tell you a bit more about Arctic terns and some of the other birds in our neighborhood. The snow is relentless today, but I’m certain spring is around the corner!

Please let me know if there is any particular Kodiak animal you would like me to cover.

Kodiak Wilderness

March 23, 2015Kodiak Wildlife, Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, Writingadmin

Welcome to my blog. I have wanted to start a blog for a long time and am finally taking the leap. Let me begin by introducing myself. I live in a very remote area on Kodiak Island in Alaska. I live by the ocean, so we have boats, but there are no roads, and we don’t have a car. We get our mail and most of our freight by float plane. We have one mail plane a week in the winter, spring, and fall and two planes a week in the summer. A barge delivers our fuel, lumber, and larger freight a few times a year.

My husband, Mike Munsey, and I own Munsey’s Bear Camp, a hunting, fishing, and tourism lodge. The lodge was started by Mike’s parents in 1956, and Mike bought it from them in 1980.

I have a master’s degree in fish and wildlife biology, and in the summer, I am a wildlife-viewing and sport-fishing guide.

My passions are wildlife and writing. I have written two mystery novels. My first, Big Game, is set partially in Kansas where I was raised, and partially in Alaska where I have lived most of my life. My second novel, Murder Over Kodiak, is set on Kodiak Island. Big Game was published in 2012, and Murder Over Kodiak will be released in April. For more information on Big Game, click the link below.

I am also working on a book about the wildlife of Kodiak Island. This has turned out to be a very-involved project, but it is a labor of love, since I am able to combine wildlife and writing. Mike is an excellent wildlife photographer, so the book will include many of his photos and a few of my own.

In my blog, I plan to discuss writing, life in the Alaskan wilderness, and particularly, facts, research, and news about the wild animals that are my neighbors here on Kodiak. I hope to get my readers involved in the discussion. I encourage your input, and I will be happy to answer any questions.

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