He's ba-a-a-a-ack

And, boy, does he look pissed!

Harmonizing in quarter time

Sometimes the simplest accomplishments put music in your life.

Winter solstice and a Christmas Story

Woo hoo! Made it to another Winter Solstice. That’s 50 since I moved north and always a moment for optimism. The end of the dark days and now we start gaining sunlight. Slowly at first, but almost a full day by the end of January. January also makes a habit of being clear and cold which lets the sun shine more than in the overcast days of November and December.

  The drive home on a clear night a few years ago was beautiful, trees decorated with hoarfrost lining the road giving it that Christmas card picture look. Here and there the lights of a decorated house showed through the branches, creating a festive contrast. Nice dry road too. Only problem was the three moose in the road, two of which I had to honk the horn at to shag them off into the pucker brush. Couldn’t see any stars or northern lights, meaning clouds probably moving in which is good because it will warm up a little for my trips later in the week. And, to complete a good night, I got a Hawaii quarter in change. That makes all 50 and fills the nice wood cutout for the state quarters my son gave me for Christmas a few years ago.

Getting to the solstice seems to be a little tougher every year, and maybe that is why I chose not to do anything about Christmas this year. The past four years haven’t been much in that regard anyway. I get to wake up alone and spend the day alone, then drive 80 miles to spend an uncomfortable hour throwing presents back and forth with my daughter and her husband. A couple of days later I have gotten to drive 600 miles to spend a day in a hotel room with my son. The anxiety, apprehension and disillusionment are just too much. This year I get at least one day to spend with a friend.

But I know others do enjoy the holiday, so I have a present for you. I had told myself I wouldn’t do this (put short stories on this blog) but I guess this a special time, so here you go. Look, I know it is derivative and kind of a hack plot, but it is MY Christmas story, so deal with it.

PENNY'S CHRISTMAS STORY
Augustus Birch-Alder

Christmas that third winter we spent up in the Talkeetna Mountains promised to be cold and empty. The solstice came and we looked forward to more daylight but, though we had plenty to do and we hadn't run short of food yet, we were just skimping by. I had a poor season trapping the year before and that last winter's catch just about paid for this year's outfit. That meant getting by with a lot of worn out things we wanted to replace. The children's clothes would have to go another year with a few more patches. I had to repair the dogs' harnesses instead of buying the new ones they needed. And, as Christmas approached it meant little or nothing was left to buy toys for the children, both of whom had suffered the trials and the joys of our remote life without benefit of schools and playmates and all the other things a kid might find in a town.
Christmas Eve found us pretty low, but we did go out and cut ourselves a little spruce tree to at least remind us of the season. My wife stood it up in a corner of the cabin away from the stove and after we put the few ornaments we had on its branches, we sat much of the day just looking at the little tree as if some miracle might put presents underneath. Of course in the practical atmosphere of life out here, that sort of thing just didn't happen so easily.
We ate a joyless meal of sourdough hotcakes and after reading the children the story of Dickens' Scrooge for the third year in a row, we packed them off to bed. For them, at least, nothing could diminish the expectations they had for the morning and that put us as parents into an even deeper depression knowing there was little for the children to find under that tree in the morning. We tried to warn them, but children have a faith that we as adults tend to lose with the passage of time.
With the children asleep, the two of us sat silently contemplating the tree almost as if in mourning. No noises broke the heavy silence save for an occasional crack of wood in the stove or the rustling of a squirrel or shrew or the little ermine who had taken up residence somewhere under the floor. I recall now thinking all we needed was a howling blizzard to complete the scene, but the sky stayed clear with all the stars out and northern lights waving and bouncing above the horizon.
A quick movement caught our attention and we watched as over by a wall, a wiggling little white animal struggled with whatever it was he was dragging behind him. His struggle continued and minute by minute we saw a little more of his hind end as he came out from under the base log. Finally his whole body showed, then behind, clamped tightly in his jaws came the shrew that would be his Christmas dinner. Why the ermine chose this particular route was beyond us; we'd never seen him go all the way across the cabin floor. You have to know that for as small as they are, ermines aren't afraid of anything and there he was backing diagonally across the whole cabin floor.
At the point where he came right between us, he stopped and dropped his prize, or at least let go of it. He looked at each of us, probably to see if there was any danger and when we didn't move, he grabbed his shrew again and continued on his journey.
He moved the shrew another five feet or so and then stopped again and looked up at us. Now I'm not one of those people to go giving animals little human personalities, but I swear that little white animal looked at us as if he understood the situation.
First came the usual quizzical look, his rounded ears emphasizing the question in his eyes. Then his eyes narrowed as if he'd decided something, something he wasn't sure he should do. He dropped back down on all fours, but instead of grabbing the shrew and pulling it, he nudged it back the way he had come, well, not exactly. He nudged it off course a little in the direction of my wife in her rocking chair. He moved his burden maybe halfway to her chair and then stopped and backed off, watching. When nobody moved, he returned to his task and pushed his dinner another two feet toward her, then backed off again.
We looked at each other, then back to the little white animal on the floor who was now standing upright looking first at her, then at me.
"You don't think...?" she started to ask.
"I don't know," I said.
Our words startled the ermine, but he didn't back off, rather he chattered back at us.
"See what happens if you try to pick up the shrew," I told her and she reached for the dead animal on the floor. The ermine didn't move; he just watched her hand as she slowly reached for his offering.
When she picked the shrew up by its tail the ermine dropped to all fours and ran toward the base log again, but halfway there he stopped, turned and stood erect and looked at us again. My wife reached over to the kitchen board where a chunk of moose meat was thawing for our dinner the next day. She cut a small piece off the roast and tossed it on the floor near the ermine. He raced for it, grabbed the meat and hightailed it for his hole, disappearing somewhere under the house.
""Strangest thing," I said. She looked a little silly sitting there holding the shrew by the tail and I asked her what she planned to do with it.
"I don't know," she answered, "I never really got a shrew for Christmas before." The ridiculousness of the idea gave us both a quick giggle.
"Well, he gave you what he had," I said and our eyes met for a long moment. The truth of the statement fell over us, opening into an idea we both came to simultaneously. From looking at each other, our eyes began to glance around the cabin. What did we have?
"You know," she said, "they might not taste so good, but I bet I can make some Christmas shapes out of that sourdough."
My glance fell on the red coffee can. "With some tin snips and a little imagination, I'll bet I could make a couple of ornaments for that poor little tree over there," I said.
We went to work, but it didn't stop with the first two ideas. A stick of wood from the kindling box, with a few notches from a knife and a swatch of cloth that was to patch my parka, became a doll. A forgotten sheet of corrugated tin, with a few new bends grew into a sled.
And, though it wasn't much, a couple of twigs from a spruce with some cones and another slip of cloth, made something of a corsage for, the woman I was sharing this life with, who by this time was pulling the first batch of those sourdough Christmas cookies from the oven. A touch of her homemade cranberry or blueberry jam added just the right colorful decorations to them.
With the second batch in the oven she began finding pieces of cloth and slivers of wood and pretty soon there was a bed for the little doll. And, how she did it, I never saw, but out of the bustle in the cabin that night, she even managed to find time to make a lanyard of braided moose hide strips for the pocket knife I was always losing from my belt. We stayed up and worked through the night as one idea merged into the next and by morning when the children awakened, they found two exhausted parents, but their Christmas had come to pass.
They came out very quietly, looked at the decorated tree and the treasures underneath. A shaft of morning light came through the window, fell directly on the tree and lighted that tree better than all the twinkling lights in the world could have done. It shined bright green, and red off the coffee can ornaments, as the children approached it in awestruck silence. But, as children can be on Christmas morning, the quiet didn't last all that long as they touched and then fondled and then began laughing and playing with their Christmas presents, presents they, at least, had known all along would be there.
When their mother brought out those colorful sourdough cookies they never even noticed the sour taste as they gobbled them down. There was joy in our little cabin where the day before there had been none.
The sleep we'd lost the night before never seemed to bother the two of us as we watched the two little ones playing and talking and shouting and giggling their way through the morning.
With all that was going on in the little cabin I hadn't noticed the end of the kitchen board where there were a few more pieces of moose meat laid out. The first I saw them was when our little ermine popped his head out from under the base log. I was surprised to see him come out with all the commotion around, but there he was. When she noticed him, my wife reached over to the pieces of meat and tossed one toward the ermine.
At first, the little critter ducked away from the projectile, but when it landed with a plop in front of him, apparently not a danger, he scampered out and grabbed the meat, turned and ran for his hole. Just before he reached it, he turned around and started to back in, pulling the piece of moose meat behind him.
As he was about to disappear, he dropped the meat and looked at us. Now, again, I'm not one to see human things in animals and it's probably my imagination, or at least it's what I wanted to see, but I swear that little fellow looked at each one of us, then he winked--that's right, winked--before he grabbed his dinner and disappeared.
Now, how ermines can wink, well, that's beyond me to figure out.

FYI, Penney was a co-worker who had seen some of my short stories and asked me why I hadn't written a Christmas story. So, I wrote one.

2008 Ten most tasteless Christmas things

OK, as promised. this is not as funny as it was supposed to be, or maybe I am losing my sense of humor. But here are what i found to be about the most tasteless a use of Christmas as I came across.

10. Find a real “old fashioned Christmas” at Pro Bass Shops

9. Silent Night used to generate guilt and promote ASPCA pet adoptions. (Marginal, but still offensive)

8. Local one, not even clever: Christmas songs used in commercials for Big Bob’s flooring, just repeating "Big Bob" over and over to the tune.

7. Any Beatles song sold by Michael Jackson and used in a Target ad. Not really Christmas but offensive enough to be included.

6. Alasak State Troopers using reworded Christmas songs in their campaign against drunken driving. Nothing wrong with the campaign, but to associate traditional songs with it, is, yes, tasteless. At least so far they haven’t used religious ones. Think of the kids growing up who when they hear certain songs thinking of drunks in jail. Is that Dickensian?

5. Camo Santa hats and stockings.

4. “Come they told me …” Movie “The Spirit” some kind of wierd superhero violence thriller. Using “The Little Drummer Boy” in its commercials.

OK these next three are the absolute worst and it is tough to decide which goes on top.

3. Check out the picture. It is the December edition of the Mexican version of Playboy. They deny it is meant to deptict the Virgin Mary. That's a pretty baseless defense when the headline reads: "Te adoramos, Maria" You can judge.


2. This is almost as profane as diapers. The clean coal association has animated lumps of coal dressed in Santa costumes singing about the attributes of clean coal to the tune of religious Christmas carols. Awful, even “Silent Night.”

1. “Silent Night” used to sell Pampers diapers.

The things you do for love

It seems like everywhere on the trail to the East Pole these days there is a story attached. Today riding out and passing one of those spots i was reminded of an incident a few years ago. I was living there at the time and had invited a woman to visit. She had never been to Alaska and in making preparations I kept trying to think how to ease the culture shock of moving from Philadelphia to the Alaska Bush.

One thing she was hoping to see was a moose, I think maybe even more than she wanted to see me. A couple of weeks before she was to arrive someone killed a moose along the trail. It was well past hunting season, so there was another reason. Sometimes when snow is deep they want to stay on the trial and they will fight for it. I once hit one square between the eyes with a jar of baby food and it still wouldn't budge. But, that's another story.

For whatever reason, someone killed a moose and then left the head against a tree right next to the trail. In the next few weeks i passed that moose head several times, each time thinking, too, about bringing my friend along this very same trail. But there was always some pressing matter and I passed on by. Then as the day approached, it hit me that this might be the first moose she would see.
Not the sort of sight for someone who thought they are cute.

So, one day I stopped. I picked up the head (do you have any idea what a moose head weighs? It isn't light.) Then I slogged away from the trail in waist-deep snow for a couple of hundred yards until I came to a ravine and I pitched it down the side. Pleased that I had done something sensitive, I slogged back to my machine and went on home.

A couple of days later, after the long drive from Anchorage with nary a moose sighting, I brought her down the trail and had to laugh out loud when I passed the spot. If she only knew, I thought. The week was pleasant enough and after that she went back to Philadelphia none the wiser. Incidentally in the week she was here, she saw 15 moose as I recall, all of them, fortunately intact and moving about.

Wrong numbers you hope you never have to hear

A message on my machine when I returned from the East Pole: In what sounded like an older woman's voice: "Hi Chuck, um sorry I missed you earlier and then didn't get back to you right away. You know how I always fall asleep after I take my enema."

So glad I got to hear that, and wonder if Chuck ever got the message.

The absolute bottom of bad taste

And that pun was intended, but not to be funny. A commercial today advertising diapers... using Silent Night, maybe the most beautiful Christmas Carol ever. Do NOT buy Pampers. Here is a place to tell them about it Imagine this: Suppose someone chose to take a sacred Muslim religious song and sell body wash with it. What kind of worldwide outrage would that generate? And yet we can take our own and corrupt them any way an insensitive, money grubbing marketer on Madison Avenue sees fit. Wednesday I made a bet with a friend. I started a list of the 10 most offensive Christmas incidents i see this year. The bet is how long it would take. Of course Silent Night, dry diapers will be number one, but how long will it take to fill out 10? Two days later it is Friday and i have five. I am betting Monday or Tuesday, especially as I am about to venture out on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Overheard in passing

Putzing around the house with TV on. And this: "Remember the magic of an old time Christmas? Well, you can capture that magic again … Now at Pro Bass Shops…"

Perspectives

There’s an old line here that Anchorage is the closest big city to Alaska. This refers to Anchorage being more of a city and headed in a cosmopolitan direction, but still claims Alaska roots and just over the mountain there is Alaska. The divergence has grown over the years and the other day I came across a minute but telling example of how that works. A snowblower has a shear bolt that holds the snow-churning rotors to the axels. The idea is when the rotors are stopped by an obstruction, the bolt breaks rather than more expensive parts. So, I broke one. I went to the Honda dealer in Anchorage. Now this is a modern store with lots of glass, machines all over the place and lots of gear to sell. While Honda equipment is popular in Alaska because of its reliability, this new store emphasizes motorcycles and high-end four-wheelers rather than the nuts and bolts of generators, snowblowers and working heavy duty four wheelers. So, I went there to replace the shear bolt. The parts desk takes up a tiny area in a massive showroom. It is even difficult to find among the $20,000 motorcycles and mannequins clothed in the latest leathers. I told the guy what I wanted and he looked at me quizzically, Then he got out a book with a blowup picture of my model snowblower. I showed him where the bolt went. But he couldn’t find anything like it after searching through a multi drawer cabinet. We finally guessed one particular bolt was the right one, so I bought it. Of course when I got home, it was not the right one.
I put this off for a while, not really enthusiastic about returning to that store. The other day I made a trip in another direction and realizing I was going to pass the other Honda dealer around here, I planned a stop, even took another shear bolt off the machine to take with me for comparison.
Mind you this is an old building, one story, been there forever and needs a coat of paint. Much of the display inventory is outside during the day. A few of the popular sellers have special places indoors. The parts department has two entrances, two people working there and a long L-shaped display case/counter. A young man finally waited on me.. He looked maybe late teens, but was probably well into his 20s. I told him I wanted a shear bolt for my model snowblower and started to pull my sample out of my pocket. He said, “Oh I always keep a box of those right here this time of year.” He turned, reached under the counter into a battered cardboard box, in the process asking me how many I wanted. I said four and had them in my hand, all in about two minutes.
I had to smile. realizing in this place I was much closer to Alaska than I had been in that modern showroom in Anchorage.

Blow ye winds in the morning

Awesome wind storm last night. This valley is notorious for them. Gusts hit 100 mph in Anchorage, not sure what it was here but there were some that rattled the house. Two power outages totaling 5 1/2 hours. Also a loud bump in the night. And there it was this morning, a tree close to the house blew down.

Credit where credit is due

Several times in life I have been criticized for taking things personally. The thing is, if we don’t take issues personally how are we going to understand them? How do we feel strongly enough about something to act? Here is an example. This economic situation is stressing everyone. The other day I got an understanding why it has happened. I have long felt we as a society focus too much on obtaining all the goodies out there and lose touch with basic needs. In fact we resent what we pay for energy, food, shelter, clothing because it takes away from what we can spend on video games, HD television sets and more car than we need.

So, back to the point. the other day I got my credit card bill. It was for more than $1,400. that was for a trip I took, I expected it and I was ready and paid it off. That’s not the point. The point is this: For a bill that size, the minimum payment was… get this … $21. TWENTY ONE DOLLARS on a $1,400 debt. I didn’t even bother to do the math on how long it would take to pay that off at $21 a month. And that without counting interest, which might even have been more than the minimum due. What that is supposed to do is make me think, “Oh, I can handle that easily, what’s $21? So I go out and spend more on that card. Not a chance. And, on top of the ridiculous minimum payment, they sent me three checks, checks I can use to build up even more credit debt.

(An aside: Did anyone notice when the late payment fee on most cards went to $39, the time frame between when they send the bill and when it was due, was shortened? That means you lave less time to pay it and get it to them so they probably collect more late fees. That’s unless you pay on line which means putting your credit payment on another credit or debit card, or worse let them take it out of your account, not to mention the security problems.)

So, the other night a number came up that tells me our government is simply a victim of the credit system as much as the rest of us. There is a sign in Times Square that keeps up-to-the minute track of the actual amount of the national debt. This past week the operators had to remove the dollar sign from it. They had to remove it because there was no more room for numbers when the national debt went past $10 trillion, TEN TRILLION DOLLARS. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, there was a surplus. This administration and the six years the party controlled Congress did it to us. Now the whole system, built on paper and granting and receiving poor credit is collapsing. And what did the government do so far? Go deeper into debt to give the bad lenders more money to lend. It is my retirement accounts that are losing because of it, It is my son’s college fund that is losing because of it. Why in the hell shouldn’t I take it personally? Good grief. I kind of like living where security is a good supply of firewood. I am sore tempted at this point to go back to it.

Enough said

Numbers 4 and 5

Getting that warmth today and probably tomorrow, fourth and fifth stage and some of the third. But i admit to cheating on stage 1 and and 2 and most of 3. (I don't write like Thoreau, but sometimes i think like him) Have two cords of firewood dumped in the yard to stack. Some to split. I am going to be a sore puppy tomorrow, but every one that goes onto the pile is one more step toward winter security. Seeing chickadees checking out the feeders now, too, so I am going to have to go get some seed. Partly sunny today. Funny, the years I drove boats, i lived in a place that was very rainy in the summer time. Often we would leave in the morning in fog or low overcast and rain. We used to describe the weather as partly thinning and partly thickening. The thing about places like that is, when you get a sunny day, it is glorious and you appreciate it so much. A bright day on the water, with myriad shades of green up the mountainsides and snow-capped peaks in the distance can take your breath away. Does it seem like i am sitting here at the computer procrastinating? To steal a phrase from my daughter who pulled it off in the perfect situation: I'll get back to you on that.

The picture is a visitor to the feeder last year, a hairy woodpecker.

It had to happen on the Equinox

Twelve hours of darkness, twelve hours of daylight and this morning for the first time this fall, the temperature below freezing.

Random metaphor at the Equinox

You've thrown a whole bunch of balls in the air. You know you have to catch them all, but while they are suspended there you cannot figure out which one to catch first.

It's sad, oh so SAD

Just when does this voyage of self discovery end? By all rights it should have been over by now but apparently it isn’t. I mean several years ago one night I was whining, I guess a little too much, about a divorce and a friend told me to shut up, it was all character building. I looked at him and said, I am 55 years old, this IS my character. That should have been it, but apparently the voyage goes on.

I have always liked Keith Olberman since I first saw him as a sports announcer on ESPN. When he showed up on MSNBC with a news show I made it a point to watch every chance I could. I like what I called news with attitude. I saw the show as unbiased and cutting edge. Then began the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin. And that was when the new discovery came. I am not a big fan of her politics, but I have enjoyed her rise to fame, have been astonished at the attacks on her and have gotten a little defensive about it. She may be a flawed politician, but she is OUR flawed politician. What amazed me was how nasty Olberman got and how petty, and how little he even tried to get at anything like truth. Several times I have had to turn it off. The discovery was that I saw him as unbiased because his biases are the same as mine. Until Sarah. So, now I have some growing to do. But, then, so does he.

The latest was the most outrageous, when he started criticizing her for having a tanning bed in the governor’s mansion. What exactly is the matter with that? Do we want our government people working 24 hours a day? Are they not allowed to find a way to relax? Nixon put a bowling alley in the White House. Eisenhower had a putting green on the lawn. Kennedy had his own recreation, which the press chose to ignore. Clinton with the same interests, was impeached for it. Is it so awful that Sarah Palin has a tanning bed? The governor before her bought that million dollar jet airplane.

Criticizing the tanning bed might have been tolerable, but then someone in state government suggested she might use it to fight depression. Olberman immediately jumped all over that, adding his own diagnosis to elevate the problem to clinical depression. What the aide should have explained and Olberman should have taken the time to find out was that just about anyone who lives in the north suffers some measure of depression.

It is called seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and it affects everyone in the north to some degree. It is caused by a lack of sunlight. When a person does not absorb enough sunshine, the pineal gland causes depression. More in some people less in others but most likely a little bit in everyone. In winter we get a little more than 5 hours of daylight on the shortest day where I live, less as you go north until north of the Arctic Circle whole days, weeks and months go by without a sunrise. I used to feel the effects of it until I learned more. What I do now is try to get outdoors for a while during the brightest part of the day and on top of that most of the lamps in the house hold full-spectrum color bulbs, which also helps. Fortunately the new mini fluorescents are full spectrum so I save a little on electricity, too. There are SAD lights available specifically for it but they are very expensive. When you drive to work in the dark and come home in the dark and stay indoors all day, you are very susceptible and need to do something about it. If Sarah Palin uses a tanning bed to help out, well, good for her. And by calling her clinically depressed, Olberman has managed to slander everyone in the world who lives north of 60.

Let’s see him bring it on north and broadcast his show from here for a couple of weeks around the Winter Solstice. Let him experience some of that depression and see if he goes clinical on us.

A bear moon

So far this year there have been a lot of bear encounters reported, including at least three serious attacks by grizzlies. And that doesn't count the college cross country guy who managed to outrun one or the guy who fought one to a standstill. The bears are out there, but at a distance, someone else's story, interesting but not personal. Yesterday morning that changed a little. As I turned into my street, i chanced to look up and a full moon was sneaking out of the clouds. When i looked down again, two eyes showed up reflected in the headlights. Slowing for the driveway i saw the animal pass me going the other way, a black bear cub. I quick looked around for others but didn't see any. I turned around and went back down the street to see if i could find it, but it had disappeared. But, now I had to go into my yard in the dark not knowing where the mother was. I drove way closer to the house than I usually do and forced the motion detector lights to turn on. Once I saw it was clear, I hightailed it for the house. Later in daylight i looked around but saw no sign a bear had been around the house.

Oh, no, SWANS!

Since she was old enough to understand them, my daughter and I have been going to movies together. Though we often disagree on interpretations, our tastes in general are alike. When you watch movies with someone for that long, you develop a string of communication, sometimes with nothing said. One thing we always agreed on was swans. We knew if we saw swans in a movie somebody was going to get kissed.

The minute swans appeared, there would be a hushed:

“Oh no, SWANS!”

“Ewwwww”

“Oh, yuck”

“Hide your eyes.”

Then it would degenerate into uncontrollable laughter at our insight into American film.

Why did that thought come up? The swans came back to the pond yesterday: three of them all clean and white swimming among the bronzed lily pads. They usually stay until freezeup.

I looked around, but, nope, nobody to kiss.

Blowin' in the wind

Watching the news as Hurricane Ike heads down on the southeast Texas coast. Weather is fascinating especially something huge like this. We can only hope those souls are tough enough and aware enough to survive it. A former dear friend of mine is directly in the path at this hour, though she lives farther northwest in Austin.

The insightful news heads are reporting the storm at this point is a cartegory 2 hurricane, saying it might go to category 3. Now get this: the upper limit for a category 2 is 111 mph winds. Sustained winds being reported right now are 110. You have to wonder how much worse that 1 mph makes it. That is the problem with categorizing anything, you impose strict limits that might under or overstate the actuality.

For example, the weather service calls it a storm at 63 knots and a hurricane at 64 knots. Here is an anecdote about what a difference that makes.

I wrote a story years ago about a storm that tore through the Aleutian Islands. One of the sources was Peggy Dyson who lives in Kodiak. Her husband Oscar was one of the original king crab fishermen. He made his millions and got out before it crashed. An orginial “Deadliest Catch” guy. In those days there was very little weather forecasting in the Bering Sea, so Peggy got a serious single sideband radio and called Oscar twice a day with a weather report. In time other fishermen began listening in, too. Then came the requests: “It’s our anniversary, could you send some flowers to my wife?” The weather service knew a gem when they heard one and eventually hired her and set her up as the broadcast station for weather in Alaska waters. No one on the ocean missed Peggy on 4125 at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. and her call “Hello, all mariners.” There was something comforting just in her voice, She could forcast the most unimagineable bad weather in the same voice she might tell you the cat had kittens. (Not like these new talking heads who have to inject drama and outrage with inflection in every news story they report.)

So, for a storm story in the Aleutians, she seemed the perfect source. She told me basically what she knew and then came this anecdote. Now, you have to understand this storm actually blew the house (cabin) off a fishing boat. A fisherman who weathered it went in to see Peggy when he returned to Kodiak. And this was why. According to her, in a very angry voice he told her, “Damn it Peggy, we get 110 knot winds out there all the time. But you went and called it a hurricane and scared the hell out of everybody.”

Reflections redux

In the first posting here, I rambled on about the enjoyment i find commuting and seeing the critters along the way. Today I drove the last 10 miles of it and made photos here and there in an attempt to provide something beyond words to describe the view. As a writer, I have to admit that is something of a failing... after all who should need pictures if the writing effectively provides the necessary descriptions? What ever. Here are a few pictures of the road. It was an overcast day but beautiful in its own way.

Slideshow

Relief

It was so dark this morning coming home I almost missed him. Then a shadow of a man appeared hiking up the hill toward town and he was back. I hadn't seen the Solitary Man since the night the kid and the bear got into a fist fight near that trail. Then, too, that last time I saw him, he had his bedroll tied on top of his pack, so he could have been going somewhere. There has been a twinge of worry every morning driving by the trail and not seeing him. But that is one reason solitary men are solitary, they don't want anyone worrying about them. But as time passed since that night I have wondered about him often, even to the point of considering a hike through the woods where he lives to see if there were at least some sign he was alive. I would never recognize his face in person. I just haven't seen him up close. However the beard is recognizable and one night I saw a photograph of protestors outside the Republican convention and the one closest to the camera had a very similar beard. The caption said he was a minister from Alaska. The time frame was perfect, it could have been him. At any rate it was with some relief and a bit of comfort seeing him again, in the rain, hiking toward the town this morning.

We don't give a damn how they do it on the Outside

The national media is missing something in the assessment of Sarah Palin. They love to point out her lack of experience in foreign policy, national policy, just living in the big Outside, just about anything. People need to get to know this: It takes a certain kind of person to live in Alaska, at least outside metropolitan centers, someone who is independent, adaptable, savvy and innovative. We have a word for it, “skookum.” In the broadest sense it means strong enough to meet any situation and savvy enough to resolve the problem. The idea conflicts with modern consciousness. Take this for example. I have gotten so frustrated in first aid classes. What is the first thing they tell you to do? Call 911. Finally the frustration boiled over in one class. I said, “hey, I might be miles into the bush, or I might be out on the big ocean, don’t tell me to call 911.” For one thing there are no phones, for a second, no one is coming to help. Let’s talk about how to deal with the situation, not how to call for help. A hundred miles from anywhere, you better be able to take care of yourself. So, you learn to think that way, learn to get yourself out of situations.

Another example: On a sailing trip things go wrong and it is one of the Murphy’s law corollaries the farther offshore you go, the bigger the problem. I sailed with a good friend once and learned a way to think from him. When something went wrong, he always had a plan to fix it. But, even more, when the fix didn’t work, he already had the next plan. And if that one didn’t work, he had another. I think we might have gotten six deep into that process once. The point is, while we were making the fix, he was already thinking about what we could do if it didn’t work. Since then I have learned to think that way also. And you have to learn to fix your own dumb mistakes.

Here’s one. One night sailing, the binnacle light went out. That’s the one that illuminates the compass. So two experienced boat guys and basic mechanics, in our brightness we taped a flashlight to the binnacle next to the compass so we could see to steer. And on we sailed. Next night, 24 hours later and on the same watch, I looked at my friend and said, “You don’t suppose that flashlight affects the compass, do you?” OMG. Our mouths dropped open. What we finally decided to do was one guy stared at the compass, while the other carefully removed the tape, then pulled the flashlight away quickly. That way the guy watching could see how far the compass swung. 5 degrees. Between Cape Flattery off Seattle and Hawaii, 1 degree off and you miss the whole Hawaiian archipelago by 80 miles. You wouldn’t even see it! But knowing we were 5 degrees off course for 24 hours we could adjust the course and make up for it and all came out good.

You have to be self-sufficient, you have to know how to meet a situation. You don't call for help. You solve it and move on, It is that innate Alaska, maybe, sense of survival. With her experience Sarah Palin has it and it is doubtful many Outsiders understand it, let alone appreciate it as an attribute. Skookum. Explain that inside the Beltway.

On the wings of a dust brown crane

A wedge of sandhill cranes flew over the road this morning all of us on our way home. As light came through the clouds, it highlighted the first yellows showing up among the green leaves. That nip in the air meant something for sure. The state fair is over, kids are back in school and oh boy are we in an election season.

In case somebody isn’t paying attention our governor has been nominated for vice president. A little more than two years ago she was mayor of the town next to this one, an Alaska version of a valley girl (the Matanuska Valley). The rap on her is she doesn’t have the experience for the job, but a lot of people didn’t think she had the experience to be governor either, and now she works with something like an 80 percent approval rating. Some people rise to the occasion and she seems to be one of them. The big thing in her favor is she is an outsider. She beat three former governors on the way to winning that election, including the incumbent, who came in third in his own party’s primary. Now she is up there on the national stage, a woman who had to quick get a passport last year to go visit Alaska troops in the Middle East because she had never been overseas before, and drawing all kinds of focus on the north. We could do without that, but nothing’s going to stop it. I have to admit I am pretty darned proud. I disagree with so many of the things she stands for, but I like her, and I just have to smile every time I see her there on TV with all those famous, politically powerful people and holding her own, her family with her.

The media sniping had to be expected. Sometimes my own profession embarrasses me. She stepped into that spotlight and I suppose expected it, but how hard the press tries to find some dirt amazes even me. A coworker this morning said it was awful how she paraded her family in front of everyone in her drive for public office. But, to my mind that is part of it, everyone brings the family along and my guess is the family is well prepared for it. They may be reluctant but the smiles from most of them showed they were happy to be there and proud of Mom and what she was doing. Pretty common knowledge the governor’s daughter is pregnant, and her being there also offended this person. But my thought is, this is a family, they are going to support each other and not hide their problems, but instead show the world how they deal with things like this and that is up front and honest, not try to hide it. That is support. I don’t suppose many people do, but I felt some sympathy for the boyfriend. Try to imagine this from a male point of view. You finally achieve every boy’s dream and have sex. A mistake is made and you find yourself dealing with a pregnancy. That can be traumatic enough. But then imagine your mistake ON THE FRONT PAGE OF EVERY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD.

I sent a note to my son at college warning him this was yet another reason to practice safe sex.

There is another person in that family to keep an eye on and she is the little scamp Piper, the governor’s youngest daughter. You may have seen her during the speech licking her fingers and then damping down a cowlick in her baby brother’s hair. There was a great picture made of her during the festivities surrounding the governor’s inauguration here. She was standing in front of her mother in a cute little dress, arms folded across her chest, something of a scowl across her mouth and her eyes cast wickedly to the side as if wondering, “now how am I going to work this to my advantage.” The Secret Service is going to have their hands full with that one. Could there be a movie in it?

All in all, except for being somewhat under the microscope, not a bad day to be an Alaskan, and watching those sandhill cranes heading south on the winds of change.

In search of the Snake River

Settle back and be comfortable, maybe get a cold one; this could take a while. Drove south this time, looking for the Snake River canyon. It became a trip of about 300 miles into Idaho and maybe 200 years back into history. The first indication of time travel came as I passed through Lewiston. That was a relief to get past this place because skies had been clear for all of this trip, but what seemed to be a perpetual haze hung over the city, apparently smog produced by at least one large industrial installation there. I passed a huge plant owned by a company called Potlach. The odor coming from it resembled the slight scent of burning tires but it looked to be a pulp mill, though I haven’t seen much in the area suitable for logging. After descending a steep grade to river level, a grade that involved at least five truck escape ramps, the route took me out along the Clearwater River. The name rang a bell and I had the strongest sense of deja vu. I had been there before. As I looked over the terrain, I realized I had seen this country or country like it before and plumbing the depths of that thought revealed the circumstance. In my youth there were a lot more western movies than there are today and this area very much resembled what I recall from some of those movies. Then came the sign marking this as the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition. That was one of my favorite episodes in American history. When it came up in class so many years ago I recall thinking I would have loved to go along on that expedition. I followed the Clearwater for several miles before crossing it and turning south into the Nez Perce reservation.
Again the deja vu came up only of a different sort. I passed their casino feeling I had already donated enough to the cause of indigenous peoples.
For a while I was out in the rolling hills of grain again. Much more activity in this area with harvesters working in several fields. The road then passed through forested canyon country with steep rock sides and pine forest. Far off to the east I saw higher mountains, These were the Bitterroots, another name that raised the sense of deja vu. In my youth before Alaska discovered me, it was this country I daydreamed about. I saw a railroad trestle that resembled all those that frontier trains crossed in those movies with outlaws or Indians in pursuit. Dozens of historic markers had been placed along the route mostly noting spots of Nez Perce history. My mind wandered to what I knew about them. It is quite a sad story though from the looks of fields, and farms they seem to be doing OK. Almost 40 years ago I read a book about Native Americans dealing with white people’s push westward. It was called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, a historian at the University of Illinois. One of the last chapters in that tortured history told the story of the Nez Perce and how in 1877 after years of trying to get along under an 1855 treaty, were ordered out of their traditional lands, won a battle or two against the white soldiers and attempted to flee to Canada. Chief Joseph was the leader at the end and when captured in Montana, uttered a long-remembered phrase, “I will fight no more forever.” He was sent to a reservation in Oklahoma where he died wanting only to return to his beloved country in what is now Idaho.

Just a side comment: Another thing I learned from the “Wounded Knee” book (think about how much a book affected you if you remember passages 35 years later). The Oglala Sioux had a word they used when they encountered white men. It was “wasichu” and in early encounters white men took it to mean them, white people. Years later when the first of those plains Indians saw the Atlantic Ocean, they used the same word. Under further analysis the word came to be understood as meaning “something without end.” Those early Oglala were wiser than they seemed to the white men who encountered them.

As I progressed farther south in search of the Snake I stopped at several of the historic markers. Eventually the route entered the Salmon River valley and paralleled the river for some while. I thought at the time it was one of the most beautiful drives I have taken. There were white sand beaches, people fishing from shore here and there and so many rafters at times it looked like bumper cars. The temperature rose dramatically as well.

I finally came to a sign that read “Cow Creek Road, Access to Snake River Recreation Area.“ I took this road. It began as about one lane blacktop, crossed a wooden bridge and devolved into gravel, then dirt as it climbed the slopes toward that elusive river. I took stock of what I had in the car, none of the kind of survival gear I carry for driving around Alaska. Then, too, I had no idea if this road was a mile, 5 miles or 50 miles to the river. Discretion took over and I turned around, figuring if this was a federal recreation area, sooner or later I would run into at least an information booth. Back on the highway, I did, in a town called Riggins, which is something of a resort community with a number of rafting companies and other tourist amenities. Toward the southern end of town I came across a recreation area information building, While the town had been packed with people, there wasn’t one car here in the parking lot. It being a Sunday I wondered if it was closed, but, no, there was someone there. I stepped out of the car into 100-degree heat. (I now own a Charlie Harper shirt for dealing with this kind of weather.) I might just as well have walked into a wall. It almost took my breath away. Inside, the woman there showed me my errors and how much of a trip I had in front of me to the Snake. Just about every access involved dirt roads as long as 20 miles and most got you to a place where you could see the canyon, but not the river. Where is Pooh when you need to launch an expotition? We talked about the university where three of her children had gone. We talked about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce. I don’t know why that story brings emotions to the surface, but it does.

After talking with this woman for a while, I realized my search for the Snake, at least today, was futile and I would have to save that expotition for another day.

So I wandered back the way I came, stopping to make images of the harvest. My last stop was at the Nez Perce National and Historical Park museum and visitor center. The building held interesting displays, artifacts from the early Nez Perce. The exhibit raised some strong emotions. You go to these things and you see tomahawks and headdresses and other artifacts and they are disassociated from their owners so you take interest but feel little connection. But, in this display there were items actually traced to use by Chief Joseph. It was like I actually knew the guy who smoked this pipe, used this knife, wore this head dress. It held links to other leaders of the Nez Perce, people I had not read about and explained some of the names for geographic features I had encountered on that trip. For a moment the connection became intense across more than 100 years. And there was a quote from another Nez Perce chief. This is from memory and paraphrased because I didn’t write it down but it went something like this: “I and my people don’t come from anywhere like the white men. Nature put us here and this is where we have always been.” Perhaps it explains why the Nez Perce put up such a battle, fled for 1,800 miles in a running battle with federal troops and only in the dead of a harsh winter surrounded by soldiers, finally succumbed two years later only 30 miles from the refuge of the Canadian border.
And maybe why in such frustration Chief Joseph would, “fight no more forever.”

NOTE: River picture is the Salmon. The deep valley is the White Bird Battlefield where the Nez Perce fought federal troops for the first time and beat them badly. The others are obvious.

Slideshow

Amber waves of grain

Drove off into an area called the Palouse today. It comes from a combination of French and Native American words meaning approximately “land with short and thick grass.” Hills roll on endlessly it seems, carved and smoothed by advancing glacier. Most slopes remained gentle enough for cultivation and as a result according to one source only about one percent of the original prairie remains. From the air it appears carved into geometric shapes colored differently according to the crop that’s planted in them or what state the harvest has reached. It truly is a place of amber waves of grain. Driving along through it brought a memory from a different incarnation, to a bar where all of us derelict boat types hung out. (I called it Key Largo which is a story for another day.) We liked it because a wide swath of windows allowed us to look out over the harbor to the east. We also liked it because the owner let us sing without pitching our sorry asses out into the bay. The western slopes of tall mountains rose above the end of the bay mostly snow-covered throughout the year. As the summer progressed into August and we started seeing sunsets again, some nights that sun would color the mountains pink and then purple. If the night went just right when a few too many jars had hit the bar, we made everyone in the bar stand up and sing America the Beautiful while we looked at that purple mountains majesty. I got to thinking it would have been nice to gather all those souls and sing the song again overlooking amber waves of grain.

I saw a few potato fields as well, and passing one area I thought I was looking at a feed lot but the animals weren’t packed tightly enough and even at 60 mph the shape was wrong. Then I thought horses. But that wasn’t quite right either. Then I passed the Elk sign and right afterward saw one with antlers. The place advertised elk meat and I thought of stopping to see if I could ship some home just to see what it is like.

At another place the local tribe allowed me to donate $20 to the cause of Native Americans. Big place with lots of fancy machines, bright lights, and music. You could put your money in these machines and hit a bunch of buttons and in time the machine tells you you have no more money.

Always fun to look over someone else’s country and also best not to make comparisons. This is an interesting area, but Alaska is home

Photo album

That's hot

Every once in a while something tells me I may have lived here too long. Planning a short trip to go with my son to his first year of college. I checked the weather there yesterday and at 8 p.m. it was 84 degrees. So off to the closet to see what i have to wear for that kind of weather. Oh boy. I moved a couple of years ago and got rid of a bunch of stuff I thought i would never need. Apparently I dumped too much. Warm weather clothing? I have exactly one short-sleeved shirt and two pairs of chinos (do they still call them that?) I don't even have a pair of shoes that isn't insulated somehow. As a matter of fact i don't have any footwear that you couldn't call a boot. A whole wardrobe for three days? Starting to look at some older things with a pair of scissors in my hand.

This isn't a new phenomenon. For years I drove a tour boat to a glacier every day all summer. As a result, being around all that ice i had to dress warmly, and by that i mean at least light duty long johns all summer even in the hottest part of July. Times changed and one summer i found myself well inland at the East Pole. Those east and west poles aren't as cold as the north and south ones, Pooh may have found that out, but we will never know. Painting the place in 80-degree weather got pretty warm for a cold-weather guy. And, then, too, I had nothing even resembling summer clothes. I picked up the scissors that time, as well. As a result i might be the only owner in the world of a pair of heavy wool SHORTS.

I took a trip last week, too, only this one didn't involve wings (or heat for that matter). The fellow in the picture is a caribou that wandered around on the road for a while. Wonder how that guy would do in 84-degree weather. But in the Interior of Alaska they run into that sort of temperature now and then.

News night

Quite a night in Alaska. First of all, it was the first time since way last spring I drove home in darkness the whole way. Temperature in the 40s, too, so it is coming. Lots of news, and the kind where something actually happened rather than somebody’s lip flap. First of all you couldn’t fly into or out of Alaska tonight because a huge volcanic ash cloud drifted over the main routes between us and the Lower 48. There are three volcanoes erupting out in the Aleutians these days. The Coast Guard was up in the Arctic trying to figure out what they can do now that there isn’t much ice and ships can navigate the ocean there. They have a whole new ocean to patrol. A while back a cruise ship from Germany showed up off Barrow (the northernmost town in the United States) and dumped 400 tourists on the unsuspecting village of around 4,000 souls. It had come through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic. Then a guy in Anchorage hit a bridge while he was trying to avoid a moose in the road. Both are OK, but the car didn’t do so well. In that Anchorage park, state Fish and Game people are now loaded for bear, literally. They are planning to dispatch the grizzly blamed for mauling two people and menacing a bunch more, but now they can’t find it. It’s been a bad year for that sort of thing, four serious attacks and a bunch more threats. Maybe the bears don’t like the cold summer either. Then, in Beijing, an Alaska kid who grew up shooting at tin cans and squirrels in a place called Chickaloon won a bronze medal in trapshooting at the Olympics. The only American woman and the youngest in the field, she had to shoot an extra round (called a shoot-off, not a shoot-out, which raises some interesting interpretations) against three others to settle the third place on the podium.

Confrontation

Kind of a sad day. It was great to see the bear last week after almost three years on this ribbon of wilderness. Yesterday someone shot the bear. I'm pretty sure it was the same one. It happened in the same area, an area where a lot of people fish. People described it as a juvenile male, which pretty much describes what I saw. They said it menaced several people, probably competing for fish or maybe lunches. Anyway it got close enough and menacing enough that a guy shot it. Investigators found no reason to think otherwise. I hope that is what happened; some guys can get pretty trigger happy. In my only close encounter i had the gun in my hand but i managed to discourage the bear with a couple of well placed bottle rockets and everyone lived. It is part of life, I enjoyed seeing it, but better the bear than a kid. So it goes. That isn't the bear in the picture, just one of a random black bear.

Ultimate fighting

An 18-year-old guy walking home at 2 in the morning which is dark these days was jumped by a grizzly. He punched and kicked and took a beating but the bear ran away. That is two people this summer who have done what is supposed to be wrong with a grizzly, run or fight, and got away with it. You are supposed to lay down and play dead. This guy says he got in some kicks and punches and the bear got in a few but then it took off. Other folks had seen a sow with a cub in the area earlier. What was more ominous about this attack was that it was within a few feet of the trail where the Solitary Man walks every morning.

Summer was yesterday

It turned out I was right Tuesday morning about the fog burning off and the sun coming out. Later in the day the temperature actually rose above 70. Alaska, at least this part of it, was blessed with a beautiful summer day. Most of that new snow even disappeared off the mountain. Wednesday it clouded over, cooled down and we were back into, well -- years ago some wag described the Alaska climate as 9 months of winter and 3 months of damned late in the fall -- damned late in the fall. Thursday morning it hadn't started raining but at 5:45 a.m. the Solitary Man was on the trail. He always carries a back pack and it looked full, with even a sleeping bag rolled up and strapped on top. Maybe he doesn't leave anything in the woods and has to set up camp every night. Where he lives is fairly well protected by geography from other people and even from bears, but i guess it never hurts to be careful.

And sealing wax and kings …

At 4:30 a.m. there he was, the Solitary Man, hiking up the hill toward town. Whatever could drive someone out at that time of the morning, at least someone who had no obligation to be somewhere? I remember though, once you get into the mentality, in my case the Bush at the East Pole, time is measured in seasons, not minutes and you end up doing things at odd hours because the time of day doesn’t mean much except for light and dark. Big dinner at 3 a.m., reading a book in bed at noon. It just doesn’t matter. There’s an-all night supermarket in the town so maybe just an ice cream craving. I have done that. Funny thing about ice cream and Alaska. Alaskans consume more per capita than any other state. But, I could never keep any at the cabin because it just wasn’t cold enough outside. On the Mondays I went to town for mail, my second stop was always for ice cream. One day, it was around zero, I bought one of those chocolate covered ice creams on a stick. I didn’t want to take off all my gear so I sat outside and read a paper while I ate it. I must have gotten very involved in the newspaper because I didn’t hear anybody approach. Then I heard clicking sounds and a different language. I looked up and people in a small group of Oriental tourists were taking pictures of me. Crazy Alaskan, eating ice cream outdoors in zero-degree weather. Kind of like a Solitary Man walking in the rain at 4:30 in the morning.

Morning treat

Another misty morning driving home, changing temperatures created some thin fog and so much mist over the river it was difficult to make out the far shore. It held promise though, looking up there was blue overhead so it may burn off later in the day. But the big feature of the morning was, finally, a bear. It walked out of the woods near the only salmon stream i pass (not counting the river) along the way. A small black bear, probably too big to be this year's cub and very shy, it scampered back into the woods as soon as i got close. I stopped and could see his outline among the trees but then he moved farther back and was gone. Still, the first one in these three years.

Fast food delivery

Wow, if anyone is out there, you have to read this. Running I know this kid. His sister graduated with my son. Ever so close.

Oh global, where is thy warming?

Well, it’s official, this could be the coldest summer since people have been keeping track of that sort of thing. (Gloomy summer) We have had exactly zero days where the temperature rose above 75 F. We have had two, count them, two, that it rose above 70. And, oh boy, seven precious days where it got over 65. No wonder I have had the urge to split wood. If the national pastime is baseball, the Alaska pastime is complaining about weather. We complain about cold summer and rain. But the last couple of years have been warm, the woods tinder dry and wildfires burned more than 5 million acres, and we complained about that. In winter we complain about too much snow, or, not enough snow. We complain about cold but then we complain when it warms up and everything turns to slush. Where I used to live the average snowfall was about 250 inches, but one winter we got 547, that’s 45 and a half feet. I have seen 51 inches fall in 36 hours. I remember telling a friend on the phone about that and she said "Oh what fun!" I had snow up to my eyeballs and couldn't find my car. "NO! It's NOT fun!" Where I am now there is very little snow and what there is often blows away in the incessant wind and the snowmachine sits in the yard, useless. And on and on and on. You have to love it. The fact is Alaskans take a perverse pleasure in the exotic weather. It is like, we can take it and you can't, but we reserve the right to complain anyway. The picture I took when I arrived home today is the mountain I see out my front window and that is new snow on it this morning.

Rush to judgment

I may have misjudged the Solitary Man. I know I made a mistake. Today he was hiking toward the town in a hard rain, not quite torrential, but hard, not like we’re used to around here. A guy would have to be pretty hungry to walk more than a mile in that rain. And that got me to thinking what would bring him out. He didn’t have any different clothes, still the broad-brimmed hat, the lined denim jacket and his backpack, nothing that gave him any added protection against the rain. Then it hit me, same time every morning, walking as if there were an obligation instead of a choice … maybe he has a job. And, that was when the idea of the mistake hit. In Alaska you just don’t judge a person by clothing. This is a place where people go who want to escape careers and try something wild and new. The guy in the beat-up coveralls could be a physicist, the fisherman a former stock broker, the one prospecting for gold a banker, the noisy guy at the bar in raunchy boat clothes a writer of some repute. You just can’t know and it isn’t a good idea to judge because most likely you will be wrong. But, that’s what I did with the Solitary Man. So, now the horizon of speculation has broadened.

Why didn't we invest in housing when we could?

Predictions can come back to smack a guy. Think about all those people who wrote John McCain off before the New Hampshire primary. But this one was even better. In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood, every month the Anchorage Daily News has been printing a page from the corresponding month in 1958. Today's page has the usual: Eisenhower signed the statehood act, three people were lost in an earthquake-wave at an island on the outer coast. But, way down in the right hand corner, a small story quoted a Chamber of Commerce type looking forward to life as an official state in the US of A. Among other things he predicted Alaska would have a population of 30 million by 2008. Ummm looks like we came up just a little short -- by about twenty-nine million, three hundred thousand or so, depending on how the bears did over the weekend. The census bureau estimates there were 670,053 of us in 2006. Even so, Alaska seems so full.

Recovering

A brief in passing on the late news yesterday said the girl attacked by the bear during the bike race has left the hospital.

Reading signs

I saw the Solitary Man once more this week and it wasn't even raining. Again, of an early morning he was hiking toward the town. Speculating a little: He is old enough to be receiving Social Security. Living in his share of the woods, he probably can't keep food for very long so most likely has to go get some almost every day. He may go to shower, but a good bet is the library. Having lived that way myself now and then, at least a book a day is about the consumption rate.

Only in Alaska No. 1

Some things seem like they can only happen in Alaska, like the two trucks passing one night one pulling a snowmachine and the other a wave runner. Of course they can happen elswhere but it's unlikely. This is the first in what might be several "Only-in Alaska" events.

The Alaska Federation of Natives was meeting in Anchoage. People come from all over Alaska, many from remote villages throughout the state. They filled the lobby of the Anchorage Westward hotel (now the HIlton) one day. Many of the women wore kuspuks. That is a dress-like pullover garment often trimmed with fur. The lobby was packed making it difficult to move. Being tall, I could look around for the person I was supposed to meet. When I did, I noticed a man seemingly meandering through he crowd. He would head in one direction then turn abruptly and head off in another or come to a complete stop which seemed to surprise him. As he worked his way closer his difficulty became apparent. The man was blind and aided by a service dog, a beautiful golden retriever. As great as service dogs are, they are still dogs. What was happeneing was, the dog would help him along until its nose came up against the fur at the hem of one of the women's kuspuks. That fur hem was right at the dog's nose level and the scent proved more enticing than simply guiding his master and the dog would follow the scent of the ruff for a few steps each time he encountered one. The dog pulled his owner in several new directions as the women milled about in the lobby. Realizing his predicament I went over and took the man by his arm. I asked if he could use some help. I told him about the fur trim and that his dog was following various fur garments around the room.

He laughed, "Oh, that's what it is. I feel like I've been going in circles."

I asked him where he wanted to go and he told me and I guided him to the exit that landed him out on the street and headed in his intended direcion. At this point the dog looked at me like "I can take it from here," so I wished them well and they headed up the street, having had one of those only-in-Alaska adventures.

Play misty for me

Misty rain all the way home this morning, low clouds hanging in the mountain valleys. A foggy mist drifted over the river masking the water surface. Most of the regular critters were hiding in the brush staying as dry as they could. The solitary man was out, hiking up a hill, his head protected from the rain by a broad-brimmed hat like the one I am wearing in the picture over on the right. What is it about the rain that brings him out?

Wood, lies and winter warmth

We are past the Solstice, now, and losing daylight at more than three minutes a day. Soon it will be six minutes, an hour every 10 days -- the downhill slide to winter, the yearly race to get to equal daylight and darkness in time for the Equinox. It has been a cold summer anyway and well into June after a rain you could see new snow on the higher mountain peaks. What always comes to mind as it begins to get darker is firewood. There is something to the feeling of security a nice pile of firewood brings, and, as one friend put it: “Here a man is judged by the size of his firewood pile.”

With the cost of fuel oil so high, a lot more firewood will be burned this winter. There is some pleasure and satisfaction about doing firewood, too. Henry David Thoreau wrote about it: He said firewood warms you twice, once when you cut it, and once when you burn it. That is a treasured quote from Thoreau’s Walden. But to anyone who has ever really cut firewood, it exposes Thoreau as a fraud. Twice? TWICE? Let’s see:

You cut a tree or maybe wrestle a blowdown--ONE

You buck it into lengths that will fit into your stove -- TWO

You move it and haul it to your cabin -- THREE

You split it -- FOUR

You stack it carefully to let air circulate so it dries -- FIVE

And, finally, you burn it -- SIX

The guess is Thoreau had his wood delivered and maybe he split it himself because as you can see, the count is more like six, and that’s only if things go perfectly. To begin with some of those steps could last for days. A new degree of warmth is added with each complication that arises -- like the time you lost control of your red sled and the whole pile went flying down the hill spewing logs through the alders.

Or the little pile you leave to split when you are quitting smoking, so when the tension gets to be too much, you can go take it out on the wood. (A definition of maturity -- when you learn to plan ahead for your childish tantrums). Oh, and then there was the time you were pulling the sled full of wood and the dog stepped on the back of your snowshoe and you went down the hill along with the sled and the wood.

Yes, there is a lot of warmth in firewood, Thoreau aside, not the least of which is the satisfaction of seeing that wealth of wood stacked neatly against the coming winter.

Now, where is that woman with the chainsaw?

Here is an interesting guide to firewood, value of different species, and tips on seasoning: http://mb-soft.com/juca/print/firewood.html

Alaska man seeks woman with chainsaw …

In the mid 80s I met a beautiful woman. We flirted for a while, but we never really connected romantically. We liked each other, though, still do. During this time she was clearing out a lot of household stuff as she prepared to go teach in a Bush village. Because I was living winters at the East Pole at the time, she gave me a chainsaw she didn’t need any more. A few years later, she met a good friend of mine. I cannot truly remember if I introduced them or not but I like to think I did. No matter. They were married and have two beautiful daughters. They live an interesting life, part remote, part not. They live close enough to town to work there, but off the grid, so have no electricity, or running water. As a result they burn wood for heat. One night her husband and I were having a beer. As I said, friends, we have been hanging around on boats together for years and were telling sea stories until he started talking about putting wood in for the winter and how he didn’t really have a good saw for the job. Somehow the subject of the chainsaw his wife had given me came up and I realized this was becoming a broad hint to return it. I listened for a while, nodding my head until it finally got to be too much. I looked at him and said, “Look, you can have any of my women you want. But, this is Alaska and I am keeping the damned chainsaw.”

The hot corner

Driving by a Little League field the other day reminded me of one of the funniest things I ever saw. Managing a league in a remote Alaska town has its own set of difficulties. I remember a guy in Montana complaining about having to go 50 miles to play a game. Our kids went 300 one way for tournaments. Anyway there was another town even more remote. You can only get there by boat or airplane. They started a league and we helped them. They only had enough kids for about one team at each level so had difficulty finding competition. Once a season we would help them come to our town to play a weekend of games at as many levels as they had teams. This involved a six-hour ferry ride each way with 30 or 40 kids. Imagine doing that to play a couple of baseball games. Of course, being a small town, they actively recruited girls or they wouldn’t have had enough players for some teams. So, one summer, in the regular Little League division age 9-12, they had the cutest girl playing third base. Our kids were smitten. The coaches were so frustrated. None of our kids would run past third base. Any excuse they could find to linger there they took. They wouldn’t steal home. They wouldn’t stretch from first to home. For her part she was all business, she was there to play baseball and could have cared less what a bunch of silly boys were doing, She just ignored them. It was hilarious. Finally one kid managed to get stuck on third. He would lead off but he always ran back. The catcher had several passed balls but it didn’t matter. The ball could have gone all the way out into Main Street and that kid would not have stolen home, At one point he led off a little too much. The pitcher threw the ball to third. The kid dove back face first in the dirt, but, he didn’t make it. She tagged him out. And it looked like she might have tagged him a little harder than she needed to. The third base coach threw up his arms. He looked down at the kid laying there in the dust smiling up at him sheepishly, and asked,” Now, how do you feel?”
The kid through dusty teeth and obviously embarrassed said, “I kind of liked it.”

Air pollution

Driving to work last night a pickup passed me. Someone had a socked foot out the passenger side window, resting on the sideview mirror. The truck had just gone by when the foot disappeared back into the cab . Immediately a dog's head popped up from the bed of the truck, as if to say: wow, thanks i couldn't breathe back here.

The Solitary Man was back on his trail this morning, hiking up a hill toward the small town he lives near. It rained during the night and raised the question how he is protected. He looked pretty wet as he hiked.

And, oh boy, there is nothing like a bear attack to bring out the opinions of Alaskans. A whole page of letters in today's Anchorage Daily News (If you read it, be sure to catch the comments at the end): http://www.adn.com/opinion/letters/story/456783.html

Found it

OK, so here's what's at the East Pole. Photo album

The cost (not the price) of gas

I paid $4.39 a gallon for gas the other morning -- $50 to fill up my little car. I was contemplating taking the long way home that morning, to go by the Post Office and get my mail, but decided to save the gas and double up on a trip later. I recalled living through much of the 80s without a telephone and communicating mostly by mail. I couldn’t wait to get to the Post office to find out who wrote and what was said. Some weeks it was only once -- like when I was at the East Pole; others when i was on the boats I could go every day. Now things have changed, I have a couple of telephones but seldom use them, I get mail maybe once a week and it is mostly bills. I communicate now by email and instant messaging and texting. And, now, I put off going to the Post Office to save a little of that $4.39 gas. I have read that this sort of communication tends to isolate people.... we use our electronics instead of our voices and seldom speak on the phone, let alone in person. We become islands, maybe lose communications skills except to speak in text language -- u kno wut I meen? jk nvm lol. So with that in mind I wondered about not making the longer trip for mail. Is the price of gasoline going to isolate us further? Will we put off visits with friends, going out when we can stay home, those little trips maybe necessary maybe not that get us out of the house for a while and interact with others. I figured out the other night that it's cheaper for me to buy a DVD at $19.95 than go to the movies. And that night I didn’t go to the movies. You can carry this to an extreme of, say if you want to conquer a people, isolate the individuals. It probably won’t be that bad, but isolation may be something to consider as we go deeper into our pockets for necessities.

expotition

As I prepare for another trip to the Bush for the winter, I thought an explanation of place might be in order. The East Pole is mentioned often on this blog. It is the name I have given to place where I built a cabin in the Alaska Bush and visit as often as is possible. Why an expotition to the East Pole? An explanation for those who need one: When I first went to look over this land I had purchased we started in Talkeetna and headed due east. It was only natural that this interchnge in Winnie the Pooh came up. It is also the reason for what looks like a spelling error in the title. It was, however, it was written and spoken in the Pooh books, and also seemed natural for us to mount an expototion to the East Pole.

The East Pole winter of 2019-20

OK, here is the real quote from "Winnie-the-Pooh" (the real one)

"(Pooh) had had a tiring day. You remember how he discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of this he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such
that a Bear of Little Brain could discover.

“There’s a South Pole,” said Christopher Robin, “and I expect there’s an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don’t like talking about them.”

"Pooh was very excited when he heard this, and suggested they should have an expotition to discover the East Pole but Christopher Robin had thought of something else to do with Kanga, so Pooh went out to discover the East Pole himself."

-- A. A. Milne (Did you know his brother CC is buried in Dillingham?)

The East Pole Journal

Strange things are done 'neath the midnight sun

A 15-year-old girl is recovering now in an Anchorage hospital bed. Two nights ago, at 1:30 a.m. Sunday, she was beaten up by a bear in an Anchorage park while she was racing in a 24-hour bicycle marathon. Mind you, this is not a manicured city park. It is a large section of almost wilderness that spills off the western slope of the Chugach Mountains onto the Anchorage plain. It has a few parking lots at entry points and a number of dirt trails used by runners, hikers and bicyclists in summer and skiers and dog mushers in winter. Racers had been warned about bears and she reportedly had bear bells on her bike and had lights on both her helmet and her bicycle, but she and the bear collided at an unfortunate point in time and space. She suffered severe injuries and already has endured three surgeries. Her chewed up helmet may have saved her from even more serious damage. Maybe someday she'll get an endorsement deal from the manufacturer. One can always hope for a bright side.

What was disconcerting about the whole deal were the comments posted on the Anchorage Daily News web site after the initial story went up early Sunday only a couple of hours after the attack. http://www.adn.com/bearattacks/story/450061.html (the comments are at the end of the story)

Seems like every wacko in the state had something to say from condemning the race organizers for choosing a path along an active salmon stream in the dark, to gun control, to bears vs. people, to blasting every bear in sight of the city, criticizing or defending the guns the police carried to protect the paramedics who went in to get her, (I’m not a big fan of shotguns in this application either.), to blaming environmentalists for everything. A woman wrote from Memphis saying all the bears should be shot. One idiot even managed to drag in the right-to-life debate.

Quite a stretch for a little girl bleeding in the trail. Finally about an hour into this diatribe a woman wrote to shut up the couch-sitting gun toters to say what was important.... This girl was suffering in a hospital from the encounter, and let's think about her.

The fact is, all these writers look at a simple cause and there is no such thing in a disaster. Look at everything that contributed to Exxon Valdez or Hurricane Katrina. We live in Alaska and bears live in Alaska. We are bound to meet once in a while. In the not too far distant past, a posse would have hunted down that bear and killed it, if someone hadn’t gotten it even before the incident. Of course in those days, there weren’t many 24-hour bike races, either. But we have progressed and value our wildlife more these days. We also push the limits in their territory. It is almost the irresistible object meeting the immoveable force. In afterthought there are lots of “what-ifs.”

What if a huge oil company hadn’t donated the money to build a soccer stadium in the park where the race has been held in the past. The construction led to moving the race to the area where the girl was attacked.. What if the girl had decided to go to the mall with her friends instead. From the sound of her, though, that is unlikely. Reports indicate she had been skiing and bicycling almost since she could walk. As a matter of fact the first person to come upon her and begin the rescue was her former ski instructor.

It all raises a quandary that won’t be solved easily. We live in a state where we kill wolves and bears because they prey on moose, but when one lunches a human we defend the bear. Do we go in and shoot them all? More people have been molested by human beings on Anchorage bike trails than have ever been bothered by bears. Do we shoot those human beings, too? Do we start airborne hunting of cars and trucks and trains because they kill so many moose?

From all the reports that girl in the hospital was aware of the dangers, though she probably, like all of us, never thought it could happen to her. But we certainly shouldn’t be blaming her for what happened any more than we should be blaming the bear for doing what comes naturally.

Mostly, hope the girl comes out of it all right, although this is most likely a serious life-changing event. Let’s hope she recovers quickly with no long-term suffering, and can get herself back up on her bicycle soon. From everything written about her so far, it seems that is what she would like to do most.