Random occurrences from life in the slow lane

Startled awake yesterday to a pounding on the wall. At first I got a flash of a neighbor having seen my house on fire and trying to wake me up. Not nearly so dramatic as I came more alert. My friend the woodpecker is back and just had to let me know. He worked his way around the two walls outside the bedroom making sure I was awake and aware he had returned.

On the theme of birds, eagles are back along the river. There is a teen hangout where two immatures watch the flow from an old, broken cottonwood or swoop down to water’s edge to nab whatever they are finding in the stream these days. Farther along in a huge cottonwood, two adults do the same thing, though, I am sure with a more practiced eye.

One night last week I saw a fox race across the highway and slither under the guard rail. Moose are moving down and more and more of them are showing up along the roads. Time to slow down.

And, another only in Alaska observation: Two nights ago driving home, I came up on a vehicle with hazard lights flashing, four of them. Closer observation revealed a pickup towing a snowmachine trailer, but it was moving close to 60 mph so why the hazard lights? I caught up even with the trailer and then it became clear. On it were two carefully (it looked like at 60 mph) wrapped airplane wings. It isn’t unusual to see people hauling airplane parts around Alaska, even whole fuselages, but in the middle of the night on a dark road, one has to wonder. Nothing ulterior though, guessing the fellow just wanted to protect them at all costs from some idiot running into him and ruining his winter project.

So it goes. Snow in the forecast down to 1,200 feet.

Hip deep in the East Pole mud

There's a reason I don't go the East Pole much in the summer (read, Fall, as well). The trail is so trenched if there has been any rain at all the ruts fill with water and the high sides hold it there so you can run into 100-yard long lake and because the water is so muddy you have no idea how deep they are. It is always amazing what a four-wheeler can do. I remember a time a wave in one of those lakes came right up over the front of the machine.

Most of them aren't very deep but some have no bottom. Another surprise as that when people go through them they gun it at the end of the puddle to rise up out of it. Unfortunately doing that digs the bottom deeper right at the end because they spin the tires and dig it out. It keeps getting deeper and deeper with each passing and creates also a steep rise out of it, some of them trenched enough you can high center the machine. Roaring along through water at full speed and then hit a mogul like that. It can stop the machine cold. The key is momentum... keep going no matter what and hope your momentum keeps you going when the wheels start spinning in the underwater mud. In a lot of places people have created side trails where you can go around some of the worst spots. 

 Picture seven miles of this, another puddle every few hundred feet. The worst is when you decide you can make it and then the puddle curves, you come around the corner and there is another couple of hundred feet to go through the water, no idea how deep it is or how loose the mud underneath is and then the front disappears under water. This is when your only hope is momentum and you grip the throttle and blast through it, mud flying and if you are fortunate enough you don't smack straight into one of those moguls. So in the last two days I did 14 miles of that. 

 What takes about 30 or 40 minutes in winter, takes two hours in the summer. Never stuck, rolled it on its side once and oh, yes, the mud, what a bunch of mud. I never had mud work its way INTO a cooler before. And I saw enough spruce hens for a thanksgiving feast. If I could have stopped I might have brought some home.

Jumping to conclusions

All right so fall is a time of transitions and nothing stays the same. Now the newer solitary man has disappeared again, didn't see him at all for two days, but, of course "for good" doesn't seem to apply at this time of year because yesterday there were two brilliant white swans on the pond. Still no snow on the ground at this level but, some white, and endless rain it seems. And, nope, still no one. And, things change here too, wind blew most of my garden protection away so I have to start over, and oh yeah as if this all should go in the same sentence, on Twitter now, and oh boy, an iPhone. So, I guess the need to change isn't just in Nature and weather. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughter House Five, so it goes.

Rush to judgment

The newer solitary man hasn't disappeared quite yet. Maybe he had to go get gas or something. Anyway he was back yesterday but in a different place... this time in a pullout parking spot, the last one before you get on the highway, or so I thought. On the way home last night he had pulled even closer to the highway and was parked on the shoulder just before the on ramp, stove pipe smoking and at 1 in the morning obviously spending the night. It will be interesting to see where he is today or if he has finally hit the highway.

Fall is edging much closer to winter these days and there have been strange doings. For one, the large group of swans stayed only one day. In past years they have lingered for as long as a week. The nesting pair that stays showed up a few days later again but they too have now gone on. They have stayed until freezeup in previous years. Leaves have lingered longer on the trees and there are still fully yellow trees around the house. Yesterday I got the garden ready for winter. A friend told me and another confirmed it works to put down newspaper and then cover it with mulch so I did. Supposedly no weeds show up in the spring. I raked up all the leaves nearby and covered the newspaper with them. Today there are that many leaves and more right where I raked yesterday. No more raking until the trees are bare. Might as well do it just once. So, anyway, the garden is ready, the swans are gone, leaves are falling, the newer solitary man is inching closer to the highway winter equipment is in both cars, temperatures now in the 30s at night and the stove is cleaned and ready for cold. Oh, and get this: Snuggies are on sale at Walmart. Still to be learned is how an Insight functions in cold and snow.

On another note

It looks like the newer solitary man has disappeared. I never really accepted him as truly solitary because he was always so visible, at least his homevan was. I noticed one day he had moved from his most recent parking place down the road a way toward the highway to a much narrower area. That didn't look too permanent and sure enough a few days later he was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile a friend thinks she might have spotted the original right in the same area where I first noticed him.

OK try this

Southcentral Alaska is clinging to the fall colors still, just too pretty to let go quite yet before accepting the white shroud of winter.