27 July 2016.
In our last day in Kodiak we went back to sample one more population of monkeyflowers. This was the first population we spotted in our arrival. It was a large one, with lots of clonality. Clonality is a weird and wonderful plant strategy, where an adult plant produces copies of itself by branching out new physiological individuals capable of independent life after splitting off the mother plant. If Mimulus can be quite good at clonality, this last population was the master of them all. Using thin and long branches, the KCG population (acronym for Kodiak US Coast Guard, after the locality where we sampled), is able to send-off genetically identical copies of itself into the world. Plants were flowering and setting seeds, but in addition these beautiful, red coloured clones, were splitting and branching away in all directions.
The weather was atrocious, but this did not detract from the beauty of the green island of Kodiak, and if anything it enhanced it. The low cloud hugged the mountains and coast line around Kodiak. In this last day, we also decided to do some cultural exploration. We went to the Baranov museum, a building from the era of Russian ownership of Alaska. Built in solid wood, and kept to resemble the decoration and style of the time, the Baranov museum was a great way to start stepping into Langsdorff steps. After Baranov, we went to the old Orthodox Cathedral. The marshmallow, blue-coloured domes are a quintessential component of these far-away reaches of western Alaska. The cathedral was closed, but we lucked out when we met Father Methodius who offered to show us instead the Orthodox Old Cathedral, which was built to resemble the original religious building in Kodiak. It was fantastic, and Father Methodious told us stories about the church and seminar. We saw the icons in the wooden, geometric cathedral, and talked about St. innocent (Inokentis) a patron of the early Aleutian and Kodiak convert. We also talked about the three-hand saint who was also an artist, and to whom, after the Prince had cut off his hand so he could never paint again as beautiful work as the one he made for the Russian Prince, God decided to restore the amputated hand. When we told Father Methodius we were going to Unalaska, he asked us to send his regards to Father Ivan in Dutch Harbor’s church.
We rounded up the day with trips to the Aleutiik Museum to see the handwoven baskets made with rye grass. Basket weaving is an old Aleutian tradition, which has had a renaissance since the 1950s. It is so difficult and so time consuming, that a well-made basket the size of your hand was on sale for $2,800!
At 5:30pm, we boarded the US Tustumena. We are heading to the Aleutians!
