Alaska Man Monday - Airplanes, Place Names, and Summer Flowers

We’re moving into mid-summer here in the Great Land, and daily we’re reminded of the brevity of our beautiful, mild Alaska summers. The leaves on the birches are already turning from spring’s bright green to the darker, dustier green of summer. The chickadees, juncos, and redpolls are bringing their babies to the feeders, and the swallows are teaching their fledglings how to catch bugs on the wing.

The fireweed is starting to bloom. The daisies and bloodroot are in full bloom, while the columbines and the irises are starting to look a little worse for wear. Soon enough, the leaves will turn and drop, the flowers will fade away, and the Great Land will start to prepare for another long, cold subarctic winter.

But in the meantime, there’s all this summer stuff going on. To start with:

Only in… Well, not only in Alaska, but this kind of thing happens here more than in a lot of places.

On 7/06/2025 at approximately 1514 hours, the Alaska State Troopers received a report of a plane landing on the Richardson Highway near mile marker 121. After the investigation, it was determined that the plane had run out of fuel and made a safe landing on the highway. After refueling, several Village Public Safety Officers (VPSO) shut down the Richardson Highway, and the plane safely departed. AST would like to thank the VPSOs for assisting with this incident.

All’s well that ends well, we suppose.

Alaska Man score: 2.5 moose nuggets. Planning is vital to preventing disaster in flying, but in this case, everything came out all right. Split decision.

This just in: I’m normally not sanguine about renaming geographic features on a whim, but when the feature in question is called Nazi Creek, I’m not so worried about it.

A small creek on Alaska’s Little Kiska Island has been renamed, more than 80 years after it was named after Germany’s Nazi Party by World War II soldiers fighting in the Aleutians.
Nazi Creek was the last landmark in the United States to bear the Nazi name. Its new name is “Kaxchim Chiĝanaa,” meaning either “gizzard creek” or “creek or river belonging to gizzard island” in Unangam Tunuu, the language of the Indigenous Unangax̂ people.
On Thursday, the Domestic Names Committee of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted 17-0 to approve the new name, without discussion.
The board’s decision allows the federal government to officially change the creek’s name in federal databases that are the official repository of geographic names. That repository is used by federal agencies and commercial companies that provide maps to the general public.

There was another name changed at the same time:

The board also approved the renaming of nearby “Nip Hill,” named by soldiers using a derogatory term for Japanese people. That hill was renamed “Kaxchim Qayaa,” or “gizzard hill,” again using the traditional name for Little Kiska Island, which is not far from Kiska Island, site of a World War II battle.

OK, now, there’s some sense behind these, not to mention the idea that they’re returning to names given these features by the Aleut people who originally lived there.

Alaska Man score: 4 of 5 moose nuggets. No issues with the renaming, but I’d like to see them stay in the history of the region, as an object lesson if nothing else.

Now, let’s look at some of those flowers I mentioned.

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