A memory for Throwback Thursday

Finally a smile on her face once she got me to

 do it her way.

Well, for lack of anything creative and substantial, elements that have been elusive these days, here's one for Throwback Thursday.

For what reason I have no idea, but today driving around doing errands I got to thinking about the first time I took my daughter into the Bush.

It was Easter weekend, probably in 1978. We had been invited to visit some friends who lived off the highway a hundred and twenty-five miles or so north of Anchorage. We could drive to fairly close but then it was a hike of four or five miles to their cabin. I packed snowshoes and took a sled thinking I could haul my 3-year-old in the sled along with our gear and a box of goodies for our friends.

The day proved bright and sunny, the kind of perfect one you find in late spring in Alaska. The snow on the trail had set up so hard you could walk it like a sidewalk and we headed in. But almost immediately ran into trouble. My daughter absolutely did not want to ride in the sled. She complained, she cried, she was just miserable and I was at a loss for what to do. I let her walk for a while but even as slow as we could go she couldn't keep up, and of, course, as a youngster that age is prone to do, she found dozens of interesting things along the trail to explore rather than keep the pace.

We proceeded slowly. She walked sometimes, then rode in the sled for a while crying all the while. I suppose anyone who has ever dealt with a petulant child who will not be mollified can understand the frustration. When we had gone about halfway, we ran into my friend and his daughter who had started out the trail to meet us. I have often wondered what their first impression of my daughter and her tears was, not to mention what a terrible parent they might have thought I was.

About 10 years later on her first trip to the East Pole I remembered 

the lesson.

But as we stopped and chatted for a minute she resolved the issue. She finally was able to communicate to her child-deaf father what she wanted to do. She wanted to stand up. I looked over our outfit and then slid the box of stuff to the middle of the sled. Then I strung a bungee cord across the top of the box from one side of the sled to the other.

With that she could stand in the back of the sled and hold onto the bungee cord, in the relative position of sled dog drivers, whom she had seen in action previously.

After that she only had two words for me: "Go faster!" Ha! We arrived at our friends' cabin in a short time with one happier camper ready for her adventure.

A single shade of gray

Redpolls did crowd a feeder one day.

A strange pale has fallen across the neighborhood since the return from the East Pole. The sky has been mostly undefined gray and temperatures for a while dropped to near zero. A brief snowfall combined with the cold has coated the trees in a latticework of white. The sun rises and sets behind the mountain still so there is no direct sunlight even as the hours of daylight grow longer by about six minutes a day.

The bird feeders ran out during the absence and there have been very few birds around since I returned and those that do show up have done so on an unusual schedule. They mostly arrive and feed in late afternoon and not many, just a few chickadees and nuthatches. I did see a hairy woodpecker one day and twice about a dozen redpolls came by, but for the most part they have been ignoring my yard. Every morning I go to the windows as soon as there is light to look for birds, but almost every morning no birds are flying around, not even as simple movement among the dense tree branches farther out in the yard. During past Januarys and cold spells they usually worked the feeders all day long and I had to fill them almost daily. I filled them when I first got here and since then have only had to add about half to fill them again and that only once.

One reason may be an aggressive squirrel that I have seen charge at the birds on the ground to chase them away. I saw one up on a feeder one day also, so I let that one go empty and left it that way for a few days. The neighbor's almost feral cat has left tracks all over the yard. too, though there has been no sign it actually caught a bird, at least not yet.

More redpolls.

So you add the gray atmosphere and the lack of birds to the general malaise that accompanies re-entry from an extended adventure and it's fairly easy to imagine the mood around here these days. I stayed at the cabin long enough to be living there. I read years ago that moving residence is one of the five most stressful events in people's lives – leaving the East Pole after a month almost qualifies as a move.

The sun should emerge from behind the mountain any day now, so perhaps things will brighten then and maybe it will bring the birds with it. The East Pole also stands on the north side of a hill and doesn't get sun for a while in winter. Out there I know January 14 is the sun day the first day of the year direct sunlight hits the cabin. That's a date always easy to remember because it is also my son's birthday, another form of son day, if you will. And, to top it off, he was born on a Sunday. As I recall the sun shows up here around the same time so perhaps if the gray ever lifts some sun will shine on this life again and then we can look forward to that first warm kiss of light on a cold cheek that comes as rays from the sun begin to carry some heat with them in February.

Passages by the numbers lead to a revelation

That's right, it's a Lady Gaga t-shirt and I got it at a concert.

It's about those milestone birthdays, mostly the ones that have zeroes in them.

The first few you look forward to, those big days in the teens; first big one is the year you can drive. That was 16 in my case. The next was 18; you could drink in New York in those days. Of course you could count on getting drafted at that age also. The next is 21, today's drinking age and in some states, pot age. Oh yeah, in my day that's when you qualified to vote but I don't recall particularly looking  forward to that.

Then somewhere during the next nine years that balance shifts and you begin to dread those birthdays with zeroes in them. Thirty, forty, OMG 50, even.

Thirty was fine; I was embarking on a new job and a new marriage and in that period a move to Alaska, so there wasn't much time to worry about life at 30 and being over the hill.

Forty was the best ever. I had reached several lifetime goals in the previous year; my first book was published, I was an established boat captain, I had recently purchased my own little piece of Alaska where I intended to build a cabin and, I woke up on my 40th birthday in the cabin of a 44-foot sailboat 1,000 miles off Cape Mendocino, California, on my way to Hawaii with a few friends.

New Year's Eve 2015 - 2016

Angels' Light on New Year's Eve.

The day started with a bang. Rain blowing in my face as I opened the door under a deeply gray sky. I did a couple of chores outdoors in the rain, but the main job of splitting firewood was going to have to wait. One of the nice things about Bush life, you often can put things off and wait for better weather. It takes some patience.

Then the preciptiation turned to snow and the wind picked up from the southwest, unusual for this hillside where the wind is usually gentle and comes from the southeast. The snow and wind reached blizzard status for a while as I watched and let my thoughts wander.

The other night I had dinner with some friends who have lived this way and one asked me what I do all day. I didn't have a ready answer and mumbled something about firewood. It's difficult to explain

This is the Glassmasters suncatcher

version of the Michael L. Smith photo

that hangs in my window.

all the little putzing chores and repairs I have done – things I put off on weekends when there isn't much time. Today I thought of an example. I have a stained glass image of the angry bluebird. For years it has hung in the window over my desk but at an angle to the window that didn't allow direct sunlight to shine through. Every time I have noticed that angle it irritates me but I have never bothered to do more than turn the picture which swings right back to its original position. Yesterday as I looked at that bird for a minute it hit me that all I had to do was turn the hook it was hanging from to get it into proper position. Easy peasy, now it is oriented properly; all I need is some sunshine to get the full effect. And that's the kind of stuff I have been doing here for a month in addition to gathering firewood and general chores. Oh yeah, there was the great shrew hunt too.

The blizzard finally blew itself out after some pretty strong gusts. It looked like some trees might go down but I didn't hear or see any. There is that question again - yes trees make sounds when they fall whether anyone is around or not.

About then I noticed the angel's light. Not long after that the sky brightened but left the mountain shaded in clouds all day.

Time to head down the hill and split some wood. I did a couple of sleds full and hauled them one at a time up the hill. Unfortunately I couldn't take the wood directly to the pile because the snow on the roof had started to slide. Shortly after I came out in early December I had gone up on the roof and shoveled down the ridge to break that surface tension and cleared above the smoke stack so the snow would not take the pipe with it when it slid.

Each side of the roof is 392 square feet and covered by densely compacted snow at least two feet deep. That adds up to heavy. You don't want to be under the eaves when that lets go. So I had to dump the wood under the porch for the time being rather than take the chance of having a ton or two of snow land on me.

Back down at the chopping block I heard part of the roof slide, about half the uphill side, no help for access to the firewood piles as they are under the downhill eaves. I split a little more wood and hauled it up to the porch and quit to take a nap. Just as I was dozing off the whole downhill side slid. The house actually feels like it jumps a little when that lets go. Very strange feeling, and no fun when you live in earthquake country and don't expect the roof to give up its snow.


So after dozing a little more I went out and stacked the wood. I've barely scratched the surface and what I've already split is about half a cord.

For New Year's Eve dinner I had a New York strip steak, with a small can of peas. That's the first beef I have had since my medical emergency last spring, well, except for the rare 97 percent lean hamburger. So, all good.

That was probably the biggest meal I've had out here this month except for the rack of lamb at Christmas. I fought through the urge to take a nap because I had one more New Year's Eve plan.

In my putzing I came across two full moving boxes loaded with old receipts, cancelled checks (remember them?), tax returns and one badly conceived novel. That seemed perfect for what I had in mind and as a friend said later, it was a great way to send out the old in order to welcome the new.

I had set those aside for a New Year bonfire and about 10 p.m. headed down the hill to the open spot where I often burn stuff. With help from what little remained in an old can of Coleman fuel, I set myself quite a blaze for a while and as I watched, the Northern Lights came out overhead and stayed for maybe half an hour.  At one time three distinct bright green bands stretched from horizon to horizon. And while the moon was behind the mountain here, its light was hitting Denali and at 11 o'clock at night, dark, you could still see the mountain almost 200 miles away.

Very few recollections came to mind from the past year despite the tranquility of the moment. Except for the aforementioned medical event, it was a pretty uneventful year. It closed out with this wonderful month at the East Pole, so that's at least a positive ending as is the fact that there is more firewood under the house now than when I arrived Dec. 1.

But there is this: With Elon Musk in the world and his succes with Space-X completing a round trip into space, I feel very safe in saying, "yeah, baby, let's go for another orbit and ride this rock around the sun one more time."

Angels' Light