KENAI — It was President’s Day last year, and the 60-year-old was walking along the Kenai River’s south beach in a gale, snow and sand particles whipping against his body.

The sky was overcast and the sea was white-capped, and it broke on the shore as the tide rolled in.

He wanted to sit somewhere to watch the weather. As a fisherman, he said, he liked the energy in a gale.

As he walked, he noticed a large block of shore ice sitting below the tide line. He figured the river had carried it down. It was about the size of a single-car garage, he said.

KENAI — They are the flowers carried in a bouquet at a sunny wedding. They can mark promises made, or the beginning of a happy future.

But these flowers, peonies, grow best in a state where the winter sun can linger for less than six hours a day and temperatures can drop to 20 degrees below.

“Out of the darkness of Alaska comes the bright brilliance of the peonies,” said Wayne Floyd, laughing and throwing his arms up.

KENAI — Bruce Willard tries to keep about 80 to 100 head of cattle on his farm in the Fox River drainage on the Kenai Peninsula, but over the past four years brown bears shave killed nearly 40 cows and twice as many calves.

“And I’m not the only one that’s lost cattle,” said Willard, of Homer.

During three days of public testimony at the Alaska Board of Game meeting in Kenai, other area residents said the Peninsula brown bear population is a problem.

KENAI — Growing up, Jewel Meader had more on her mind than most 12 year olds.

Who’s making the money?

Who’s paying the bills?

Where am I going to sleep tonight?

Those were common questions, she said.

She had just moved back with her mom in Nikiski and was taking classes at the area school. But life at home was anything but healthy, she said.

“My mom tried to help me when she could,” Meader said, but her family argued, and her mother had “complications,” she said.

Her mother often had no job. They had no car, no truck, no money.