Water Photoshoot - Ghosts

  I found this assignment a little challenging for a couple of reasons. First, the DSLR app I downloaded on my phone wouldn’t save any of my photos without buying a subscription. Second, it was around ten degrees, which made my fingers hurt anytime I tried to take more a couple of photos. It also detoured me from taking the time to find another DSLR app while I was out in the field. So, these photos were taken with the stock camera app on my phone, which was frustrating because it diminished their quality considerably.

All this being said, it was fun to get out in the field for this shoot. I went to Westchester Lagoon, one of my favorite spots in Anchorage. In the winter, the Anchorage parks department hot-mops the ice on the lagoon to create a large skating rink, several hockey rinks, and long trails out around the lagoon for folks to skate along. A long ridge of train tracks borders the west side of Westchester, separating the lagoon from a large and active estuary that attracts birders from all over the world.

I took the first photo from the west side of the park, looking southeast across the lagoon into the Chugach Mountains. The second, I took slightly north along the bank from the first, looking south-southeast across Westchester, into the sun. The third photo I’m submitting for this assignment, I took west of the train tracks, facing northwest across the mudflats of the estuary mentioned above, towards Mount Susitna.

Since I am currently in Anchorage, Alaska, I cannot say this photoshoot relates to the Kruckeberg reading in any remarkable way, apart from the paragraph on page 69 that briefly mentions tidal flux here being more drastic than that of the Salish Sea. In this regard, the mudflats comprising a substantial portion of my photo of the estuary directly relates the reading. These mudflats of Knik Arm, like the many other mudflats around Anchorage, are made of fine silt that is covered in saltwater at high tide. During low tide, the mudflats span an average of one to two miles between the beach and the ocean where the drastic advance and retreat of the tides carves deep ravines cradling streams that run out to the ocean. The silt and water composition of the mudflats creates what many describe as quicksand, which can envelope and trap anything that moves too much in the same spot. This can be quite deadly when combined with a rapid and drastic tidal flux, particularly down Turnagain Arm, stretching south from Anchorage, where tidal flux creates a bore tide, a five-foot wall of water that sweeps the length of the inlet as it fills.