Fall continues to have its damp, chilly effect here in the Susitna Valley. Every morning, the sun comes up a little later; every evening, it sets a little earlier. We are at the point where we are losing an hour of daylight every 10 days. The sun does some strange things at these latitudes. But the bright side: We’ll be seeing auroras again!
Now then: We’ve seen some significant Second Amendment wins on the national level lately. Alaska’s a pretty Second Amendment-friendly state; even our short-term at-large Democrat Representative Mary Peltola, now running for the Senate, earned an A rating from the NRA. As I’m fond of saying, in Alaska even the hippies have guns. Now, our home borough, the Matanuska-Susitna, is moving forward with a plan for teachers to carry concealed in the schools.
The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District will use state and local taxpayer funding to cover startup costs for a new program allowing teachers and staff members to carry concealed weapons in schools, district officials said.
School board member Andrew Shane helped spearhead the concealed carry program and initially said he planned to propose an amendment directing the district to move forward with the policy only if officials could secure outside funding.
That amendment was ultimately not introduced and was not part of the final policy the board approved in June ahead of its annual summer break.
But it did work out in the end:
The district will designate money to pay for the concealed carry program as part of the school district’s October budget update, Assistant Superintendent Katie Gardner said in an interview last month.
Setting up the concealed carry program is one of the administration’s six priority projects for the 2026-27 school year, Mat-Su Superintendent Randy Trani told the board at a work session late last month.
“The concealed carry is in the works now — including training standards and how individuals will be chosen to participate,” he said.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all. The worry here in the Mat-Su is more likely to be an encounter with a moose, but an armed teacher willing to undergo the requisite training is a good stopgap; after all, when seconds count, as the saying goes, the police are only minutes away.
Alaska Man score: Five concealed moose-dissuaders
September in the Great Land has brought us another great seasonal event. Once more, it’s Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park, and there are a lot of chubby little cubs this year!
Katmai had an exceptional 2025 salmon run. The result, Bruce said, is a small population explosion at Brooks Camp this year.
“There’s kind of a new generation of bears coming up on the river,” Bruce said.
By early August, rangers had counted 25 spring cubs at Brooks River, a number that climbed past 30 once yearlings and 2 ½-year-olds were included, park staff said. That’s more bear families crowded onto the same stretch of water than staff say they’ve ever seen.
This isn’t without its sad moments, but this is nature for you.
The crowding has come with a cost. In late July, explore.org’s live “Kat’s River View” camera captured bear 806 killing and eating a spring cub belonging to another female, bear 909, the first infanticide rangers say has ever been recorded that close to Brooks River. Less than a week later, a second cub died after climbing into a tree occupied by another mother’s cubs; that mother pulled the intruding cub down and fatally injured it, according to rangers.
Bruce, who has fielded questions from a shaken online audience following both deaths, said the losses are difficult but not unnatural.
“We’ve lost a couple of cubs that were caught on camera, and those are definitely tough to watch,” Bruce said.
That happens, especially when you have a lot of bears concentrated in a small area. It’s usually the males that kill cubs, but females have been known to do this; whether it's to increase possible resources for their own cubs or just to grab some easy protein isn’t known.
Alaska Man score: Five hopefully healthy and chubby cubs.
Now, let’s talk to a man about his successful moose hunt. Note: Apologies for calling the successful hunter, Sam, "Scott" at the end of the video. In my defense, I can only say that I had been talking to a guy named Scott a little while earlier. My bad.
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