The earthquake was at 3:58 AM 49 miles west of Haines, just over the mountains from my house, toward Yakutat. I suppose on a clear morning I could almost see it from here. It woke me up with a jolt, and as soon as the rolling quit I checked to see if there were tsunami warnings or if it had been really bad somewhere else and we were feeling the leftovers. Turns out this was pretty much a local disturbance. The geophysical institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks pegged it at 6.02 initially, but it’s been adjusted to 5.8 now. (This is a great resource site for all things seismic in Alaska.) At our house there was a sustained shake which woke me up better than a fire alarm, and lasted so long that I started to think maybe I should move before the house falls down, but about when I was thinking that our bed under the eaves would have a long way to fall, and wishing we had at a least bought a better mattress and box spring to cushion the impact, it stopped. I hummed rock-a-bye baby and wondered why anyone would soothe a child with the image of a cradle dropping out of a tree? I modify the ending when I sing it to my granddaughters to ” The cradle will fall, and down will come baby, safe through it all,”– anyway, I was thinking all that and glad we finally made a will, when the bedroom quit shaking and downstairs the cuckoo clock cuckoo-ed four times, just like it always does at 4:00, and Pearl got up and wagged her tail and checked on us and then went back to sleep. I figured we were all clear, since animals know these things, even domesticated Golden Retrievers. I looked out the window and everything was still, and much calmer than it had been in a few days. Funny how the earth– the very bedrock of our existence– can jolt and shake, and yet the inlets, rivers, trees, and clouds aren’t even ruffled. Here’s something else to consider. When I checked the geophysical institute’s site again, there had been at least a dozen more quakes in our area alone since the big one that I hadn’t even noticed at all.
