A hard wind blows, glacier dust tears my throat and sinuses apart; I wish it would snow and bury all that damn dust
Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 4:01AM ;)
I took this from my car about noon - the temperature was 36 degrees, warm for this time of year, but the voice on the radio was saying that the wind was 40, gusting to 70, so if you were to have gone and stood out there, it would not have felt warm.
;)
This is all wrong. Wasilla Lake is supposed to be frozen by now. Some years, it has frozen in the second week in October, quite often by the third and almost always by the fourth. In only one other year do I recall seeing the entire month pass without this and the other lakes freezing.
Of course, October has not completely passed and it could yet freeze before the month is over, but I don't think it will.
The ravens were having fun, riding the wind.
;)
They rode it low. They rode it high. It carried them up, it pulled them down.
;)
She appeared on the trail and she shouted at me, but the wind carried her words away before they could reach my ears.
"What?" I shouted back.
She shouted at me again.
"What?" I again shouted back.
Then she really put her lungs into it: "The birds love the wind! They ride it high! They ride it low! It carries them up, it pulls them down!"
;)
The wind grabs the glacier dust and drives it through the air. Glacier dust is extremely fine, like powdered sugar. It is horrible to breathe. And undoubtedly, it has some volcanic ash mixed in with it.
;)
One year, it froze very early, but no moisture came. It did not snow in October, it did not snow in November, it did not snow through most of December, but it got very cold. Day after day of teens and twenties below zero, sometimes 30's and even -40.
And on many of those days the wind tore, just like this. There was no snow to hold any of the glacier dust down, so the wind just picked it up and in the midst of all that cold, blasted it into you.
It was horrible.
;)
Traveling through the streaming glacier dust. I write this with a sore throat, plugged nose and irritated sinuses.
Kalib was in the car with us - with Margie and me, that is. We had been baby sitting him. Fierce gusts frequently broadsided the car. It would rock, it would jerk.
;)
It was windy in Anchorage, too, but not as windy as out here in the valley. On what they call the Anchorage Hillside, though - it would have been fiercely windy.
;)
This was why we went to Anchorage. Every Halloween, they put on a chili feast at the place where Melanie works. Every employee brings in a pot of their own special chili. Melanie wanted her mom to help her as she cooked hers, so she did.
Me, I went off to try to visit a friend who had been severely injured in a snowmachine accident while returning to Wainwright from an ice-fishing trip. He was medivaced by air-ambulance to Anchorage and then taken to the Alaska Native Medical Center. Also, I finally got that check that I had been waiting for, so I thought maybe I would buy the new Canon G11 pocket camera, because its high ISO, low-light, capabilities are much improved over the G10 that I have been using.
Yet, when the time came, I could not bring myself to lay down $499 for that camera. I really wanted to, but I just couldn't do it. So here I am, at the chili feed - the perfect place to test out the low light, high ISO capabilty of the G11, but instead I used the G10, which is very noisy and grainy at high ISO, but, oh well, so what?
That's Melanie on the left, of course. The fellow on the right is Chancey. A bit over two years ago, he was one of her coworkers at Duane Miller & Associates, but then he left to go be a Mormon missionary.
And where did he get sent? Japan? South America? France? New Zealand?
No. The Mormon Church sent him to Salt Lake City. For two years. To be a Mormon Missionary. In Salt Lake City. But he did get to learn to speak Spanish.
He is not being rehired, but he remembered how good all the DMA chili feeds were, so he came back to eat chili. That vat of chili in the foreground is Melanie's. Pumpkin chili. It is very tasty. "Don't eat too much, Dad!" she warned. "It's very spicy." It was very tasty. I would never have known that pumpkin and chili go well together, had it not been for Melanie.
I did not get to see my friend. They are being very strict about visitors, due to swine flu, and were only allowing two family members to go in with him. I did see his daughter, but not until after the feast. I was able to introduce her to Margie.
He has not yet come to, but he is in stable condition and his prognosis is good. He is just about to turn 70 and still he is shooting about the country on a snowmachine, hunting caribou, catching fish - doing that kind of thing.
Reader Comments (5)
That Khalib has the sweetest little face. Pumpkin chili? Off to google recipes. We're having cream of pumpkin soup for lunch tomorrow though.
the grandeur of AK as photographed by BH. never knew about alaska volcanic dust. do people wear masks? i spose you can put most anything in chili as long as it turns out delicious. we had our annual bonfire here in suburban philly and WE thought it was cold: 50 degrees. i'll try and check your blog from my cruise ship next week IF i go. my traveling companion, my daughter, has the flu. if i were a praying man, i'd pray for her return to health. oh, i forgot i'm a girl.
Debby - Hope you find a good recipe. If you do, let me know how you like the pumpkin chili.
Ruth, I should have put in a link (in fact, after reading your comment, I now have). You can go here:
http://wasillaalaskaby300.squarespace.com/journal/category/volcano
Maybe you could check and see if Melanie would share her recipe? :-)
Guess I'll try not to complain so much about the wind off the Ohio River here in Louisville. Although I still say, beyond a certain point, the numbers don't matter -- it's just too darn cold!
I will see if Melanie will share the recipe. She is not at all selfish, so I suspect she will - but then when something involves pumpkins, one never knows for sure.