Ah Alaska

Land as glorious as it is possible to imagine… With sunlight cycles that drive people insane (it’s after 10:00 pm as I write this and it looks like it would be about 6:30 anywhere else), locals who have a serious size complex (“We’re bigger than Texas!!!”), and mountains that humble everything (even the sheeple tourists and their checkbooks).

The cruise up the coast and train ride into Denali was wonderful. The most lasting impressions I’ll carry are the sheer mountainous size of a glacier, the majesty of an eagle in flight, and the fact that the ravens are as big as VW’s. Also the squalor imposed by the exceedingly high cost of living in a place where the weather can be severe enough to shape *every* decision.

Decisions that struck me most were that agriculture is a ‘hobby’ or a tourist attraction, buildings are barely different than what you find elsewhere in the US and that transit is a huge deal here – mainly because they don’t have any! Malls have hotels in them for the semi annual trips into town by locals in from the ‘bush’!

Agriculture

Repeatedly I heard laments about the importing of fresh fruits and vegetables (Tuesday the ship arrives – by Thursday the stores have sold out), and in the next breath bragging about how big veggies grow in this extremely short warm season. This of course spurs a question – what about indoor hydroponics; vertical farming!?!?! The light & temperature cycles here in Alaska provide a great juxtaposition to the more common methods of farming.

The extended daylight obviously plays a huge factor in this and I think it would be exceedingly interesting to experiment with light & temperature combinations similar to Alaska’s seasons for rapidly growing large specimens of very high producing crops. I’m thinking an 18 light / 4 dark cycle, perhaps with graduated lighting changes combined with a cool spring-like atmosphere for the seeding & initial growth phases, higher heat and intense solar quantities during main growth phase and a cooler & gradually darker ‘fall’ done in a 3-4 month period could produce a fully controllable and hyper-growth 3-harvest cycle. Done in shifts you could have a single vertical farm producing continuous harvests of all sorts of produce.

The University of Alaska, Fairbanks seems to have a priority on agriculture. I heard about their focus and a smidgen about what they were working on during the train ride into Fairbanks. And then, once in our final stop – the Pike’s Riverfront Lodge - found a greenhouse that was, with UoA’s and the Future Farmers of America’s help, putting together a hydroponic system to supply the hotel’s restaurant with veggies. Woot – what a great start!!! I’m thinking that coordinating with their Agriculture department would yield amazing results. I’ll get back to you on that after I make a few phone calls & emails.

Architecture

Why are buildings made of almost the exact same materials that I find in central USA – or even gracing the coast of Texas!? Over and over I looked for the differences and found only minor changes. Log cabins are a big deal here – lots of history in them is one of the major draws for them, but I think they are making a nod towards ‘thermal-mass’ as a method for insulation. It’s a good plan though I think some materials improvements could be made. I had the brainstorm that if we’re doing ‘concrete’ siding… what about concrete ‘logs’. Or, why not use the abundance of river rock and gorgeous slate that is *all* over this landscape as the primary building materials? I kept hearing that all the building materials had to be imported – shipped in by rail or boat in order to build their house that wouldn’t look too out of place side by side in McMansion suburbia with less brick – more vinyl siding. I’m guessing brick doesn’t do so well in -60 degree winter weather but I could be surprised. Something to research – can hard materials like concrete and stone really act as a hard exterior layer as envisioned by the Gaiaship in extreme cold & wet winter weather? I’d say yes with the proper interior layers and sod roofing.

A note about sod roofing: Apparently the true natives… known as ‘First Nations Peoples’ (FNP’s forever in my corporate Acronym Generator of a brain – also known as Native Americans or Indians in other less P.C. areas of the US)

… used sod roofs regularly in their construction of their low log houses. This was after the eastern trappers & European settlers brought new technology, guns, metal tools and the agricultural revolution with them allowing the nomadic FNP’s to settle down. The re-creation / example village / tourist trap I visited had several of these log houses with sod roofs. It seemed a logical and very efficient design that made good use of local materials and the insulating properties of even a thin layer of sod.

One comment I heard today (from yet another tour guide / bus driver) was that in Fairbanks the same codes & conventional zoning regulations found in Dallas are in use in Alaska. Lots of land = Lots of Sprawl. This is reinforced by the ‘individualistic’ and ‘frontier’ mindset of many of the residents. Everyone gets their own pieces of the landscape and does whatever they want to it. Sometimes that turns out beautifully with a 4500 square foot log cabin with private river inlet and boat dock. Other times it is trailer park trash. I saw this side by side while on the train headed into Fairbanks and again going down-river on the paddle-boat. But hey – it’s all residential so the zoning laws are satisfied – ugh.

This was less of an issue in the smaller shore towns like Skagway. These towns are hemmed in by ocean on one side and mountains on the other. Level land is harder to come by. Mixed use seemed to be ideal here but even so, I saw very little of it done. Juno did better downtown but the fact that it’s the largest city in land size in the US but by no where close as large in population means that it’s sprawl is truly out of control.

Another real wonder of this trip was British Columbia’s Vancouver. With it’s amazing focus on green building (every building must have some kind of vegetative plantings or green roof) and mixed use development. It’s a model of civic emphasis on environmentally conscious development. I’m thinking I need to look much deeper into BC’s governing principles and perhaps even begin thinking of moving Gaiaship numero uno to the artic area.