Lights

Forty degrees and snow in the forecast, and then northern lights on the way home tonight.

Eight swans a'swimming

Eight swans on the pond as I was driving to work yesterday. They are striking, all pure white against the yellows, oranges and bronze of the lily pads and alders lining the pond. Two flights of Canada geese passed overhead in Anchorage, too. 

Migrating birds are on the move and that means winter is chasing them south. It is a strange fall so far, Lots of color up country and in toward Anchorage but around the house, all the trees are still very green. That is late. It holds me up, too, because I wanted to used the leaves to mulch the garden, which by the way still has plenty of colorful flowers in it. There is very little, if any, new snow -- Termination Dust -- on the mountains. Last year there was some in July and usually it shows up sometime mid to late August. No wonder I have no big drive to do firewood. It all adds up to winter coming late this year after the unusually warm summer.

Things are changing for the newer solitary man. I drove by one day and his van was gone, so I figured he went on south for the winter. But next day I noticed he had just moved back a little behind the tree line. So maybe he was planning to stay. Then next day he was gone. But farther along there he was pulled into a paved pullout near the salmon stream. 

A police car was parked next to him and my guess was he got chased out of his last parking place. Then a day later he had pulled off into a narrow space at roadside. A day later he had moved again, this time to a wider pullout and he has been there ever since, his bicycle standing in front of the van and smoke coming from the chimney. Over the course of the summer he has moved from place to place from near the river bridge back toward Anchorage until he’s now just two miles from the highway. I still have had only one glance at him that day when he was wearing the mosquito net. Somehow this one doesn’t generate the empathy of the first one. I hope that fellow is still around and doing well and I am just missing him because my schedule changed and his didn’t.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out -- the warm summer leading into a late fall and how winter will be, and, too, how this van-loading solitary man weathers it all.

But some things never change … looked around when I saw the swans but, nope, no one.

More in the way of passages: A championship

One of my son’s best friends turned 20 yesterday-- a great kid, no longer a kid any more. And that means my own son will be 20 in just a few short months. Wow! How did that happen so fast. It got me reflecting on things even more. And one thing that came to mind was one of the times I was most proud of him.

When he was in elementary school in one way or another I coached his youth basketball teams. When he moved on to junior and then senior high school he was in the hands for more experienced coaching but I missed the participation. One year while he was younger, I suggested we both coach a youth basketball team and we volunteered.

He must have still been in junior high at the time because he wasn’t all that much taller than the fourth and fifth graders we were coaching. I tried to stand back and let him do as much of the coaching as he would.

One night after practice he started playing a kid one on one. Pretty soon it was two on one and then three and so on until there were seven of them. And he beat them. I had always thought he needed to be more aggressive on the basketball court so almost every time he came into a game after that I would shout “seven on one” to kind of remind him of a time he played aggressively.

But that wasn’t the proudest moment. This team developed slowly, they lost their first four or five games until they began to come together. Then they played the best team in the league on a Saturday of Super Bowl weekend. They took that team into two overtimes before losing by a single point. A couple of people in the crowd said it was probably the best game they would see all weekend. The kids were disappointed of course but I told them they had just taken the best team in the league to its limit; it was the best game they had ever played and that now they KNEW they could beat anyone. They didn’t lose another game.

The moment came during the championship game. At a crucial point in the fourth quarter on a key inbounds play we called a time out. As the team gathered, my son gave me a glance, like “I’ll take it from here.” I stood back and let him do it. Then with the team circled around him, he designed a play with his finger drawing it on the floor. The team gathered for a cheer before they went back in. (This is an aside. Instead of hollering “Defense” or “Win” or some other thing, my teams always hollered something like “Double Fudge Brownies.” Youth basketball is supposed to be fun to begin with, and secondly it seemed to loosen them up -- they’d go out onto the court laughing and win.)

Anyway, after a “Triple-thick Milkshake!” they ran out onto the court, executed my son’s designed play perfectly and went on to win the championship. After the game one parent told me it was so cool watching him take over the team like that.

I have one regret from that day. The winning coach gets to make a speech. I complimented the other team for a great season and a great game and introduced each of our players with a compliment for each as well. But, I neglected to introduce my son and point out his contribution to the effort. I had the greatest assistant coach a guy could ever have: his own son, and was so proud of him but somehow skipped over him in that speech and have always wished I could go back and make the speech again, this time recognizing the greatest assistant coach ever. It was such a great experience, except for that.

Perhaps this made up for it a little. It is customary for the parents to give some token to the coach after the season. They bought us each gift certificates to a local restaurant. In the card with his, one parent wrote: "Thank you for being such a good role model for our boys."

And, now he is going to be 20.

Passages

I watched a friend today go down the driveway in the back of a pickup truck and out of my life forever. I don’t often get attached to things, but in the hour or so before the pickup arrived I sat down and reflected on this old friend.

I bought the Ski Doo Tundra around Christmas in 1986, the winter I was building the home at the East Pole. In its time it carried most of what is in that cabin today, including a lot of the building materials. Every trip along that trail on that snowmachine was an adventure. In those days all we did was haul. I longed for the day I could run the trail and not be hauling a heavy sled behind me. One of those adventures goes like this. Loose lumber is difficult to haul because it’s difficult to cinch down. The minute the sled starts bouncing around the lumber moves and pretty soon the cinch straps aren’t holding anymore. I finally learned to nail them together so they wouldn’t do that but not before this happened: One day I had a load of 2x4s probably five wide and five high. The first mile or so of trail is pretty much uphill including one stretch that is very steep. 

 To get up it, especially with load, you have to get a good run at it and keep the throttle hard down until you get to the top. This isn’t all that easy because in places the trail is narrow, moguled, icy, and not level which often makes the machine tip; and with this machine the steering skis had a way of coming off the ground going up hill. As a result I had to stand up and lean forward in order to steer and in standing had to alter my weight from one foot to the other as the machine tipped, kind of like a skier trying to maintain his balance. As another result, it was very difficult to look behind me. So, I headed full bore up that hill wailing on it roaring around curves, over moguls at times the machine airborne and finally reached the top. As I slid over the ridge and into the downhill portion I stood and cheered out loud that I had made it with this load. Then I looked back and to my horror the sled was empty and behind me all the way down the hill were strewn 25 2x4s. That took me more than an hour slipping and sliding up and down that hill bringing them to the top two or three at a time and it was during that hour I decided to try nailing the boards together.

But, it wasn’t just building materials and supplies that machine hauled. There was a lot of other precious cargo. Even on the day I picked it up, the young son of a friend of mine rode with me from town out to the trailhead. That first winter, once the cabin was livable, my daughter came out on the machine and several more times over the years. My son at 6 weeks and in a snuggly inside my Carhartts was another of that precious cargo. He fell asleep and I remember checking on him by blowing on his face to make sure he hadn’t suffocated. He grew up going to the East Pole and eventually drove a machine out there himself, and in time, his own machine.

For 20 years the machine made the trip several times a year bringing in Christmas, often for spring break and was integral to everything that happened in that magical place. So many memories come to mind, so many adventures: the time the moose kicked Christmas, the time I fell through the ice on the Talkeetna River, all the trips to the creek to get water or through the woods hauling firewood, the time blundering around in the dark and getting stuck in deep snow and having to leave it overnight, and just the slow trips through the woods, the wildlife, the people met on the trail, the time Frank and I had to chase his dog team after it escaped; all of it came to mind in that hour.

A couple of years ago I put it aside for a newer one. (Newer? That one is now 12 years old itself) And, of course, my son got his own which I am taking care of : ) while he is away at college. The original has sat neglected in the yard for those last few years and I guess it came time to get rid of it. (Of course losing a great lawn ornament in the process.) So, a fellow came and got it today. He is going to rebuild it for a friend of his who lives in the Bush. He felt he was getting a bargain and it sounds to me like it is going to a good home. I just hadn’t realized how much it meant to me until an hour before it went down the driveway.

Cabbage patch with a surprise at the end

Last night there were several stories to choose from to lead the web site. A big trial, couple of serious crimes, a big oil company cutting back on Alaska contractors. But, then late in the evening a bigger story broke. A world-record-breaking cabbage was weighed at the state fair. I swear if the sky were falling, but we came across a huge cabbage it would be the bigger news. This beast weighted 125.9 pounds, two pounds heavier than the previous record that had stood for 20 years. The record that one broke had stood for more than a century. We do love our giant cabbages.

Of course today I had to go see it at the state fair. In the long run, it’s huge, but it’s a cabbage. How much cole slaw can a guy eat after all? Still Alaska has the biggest one, have to love that. Incidentally one of the photos that won a big prize in the arts exhibit showed a baby happily snuggled among the leaves of another giant cabbage. And speaking of babies, though I was tempted by lots of things for sale, the only things I actually bought were some Alaska things for my new grand nephew.

The fair generates a complex set of responses. It was one of the things my son and I did just about every year and for the second year he is away at college and I had to go alone. At least that made it easier to go through the livestock barn which he would do anything to avoid if he could. The exhibit was disappointing in a sad sort of way. Every year there seem to be fewer and fewer animals. I can’t help thinking of the decline of the American family farm in general and here, the farms disappearing in favor of residential subdivisions. First time I went to this fair in the ‘70s the exhibit hall was overflowing with animals. This year they barely filled half the available space. For a while I watched the few 4H kids parade their sheep in the main ring for judging. Then wandering through the pens eating a pork chop on a stick I looked at the goats and sheep. Once I finished the chop I felt better going to look at the pigs. This next set of kids were taking their pigs to be judged. Interesting how they slip a mobile cage over them and then gently guide them to the judging ring. Watched that for a while, too, glad in a way they still do this and hoping somehow these kids carry on with the American farm and hoping I am not witnessing the end of that era altogether. Maybe there is some hope in these kids. I noticed one steer entered by a girl I had read about. She has won national awards in entrepreneurship and agriculture, was statewide president of the FAA and still entered her steer in the fair. The sign said she is away at college studying some aspects of agriculture, so maybe she and others like her will lead a resurgence.

The rest of the fair was more nostalgic than exciting. Had my pork chop on a stick. Skipped the turkey leg. For $9 it didn’t seem worth it any more. I did have cold frozen cheesecake in a cone, that was something, But with that I left the other sweets alone, including the funnel cake. I walked past the rides my son in his later years loved and sat for a time watching the little cars he couldn’t wait to drive when he was little. I did lust for a minute over a small tractor for sale. Don’t know why, and can’t think of a single reason I need one but would love to have one of those small tractors.

After about three hours, I left the fair with my little bag of clothing for that little fellow who was born about a month ago, clothing that back home would be called farmer’s, and I headed home.

On the way I passed a field of tall brown stalks and about a dozen sandhill cranes were poking around among them. Cranes, like the fair and those swans I see almost every day now, are sure signs the autumn is coming.

The guy came back with an even bigger cabbage and stayed on the front page for three days. Now that's cabbage.

Sandhill cranes