A Citabria, a ragdoll and a baby

I had planned to leave for the Arctic Slope Sunday, but then Margie said that I should wait until Monday, to give whomever of our children might be around the chance to honor me on Father's Day. So I agreed to wait. By today, I realized that I could not possibly accomplish all that I must do before I leave by Monday, so I put the date of departure to Barrow off until Tuesday afternoon. Then Wednesday morning I will leave for Point Lay.

Having all this to do, I have basically spent the entire day sitting right here, where I sit now, in front of my computer, working my fingers off. And that is pretty much all that I will have time to do between now and my departure.

Still, I must walk a little bit, pedal a bike a little, and as I walked, an airplane flew overhead. Do you recognize it? It is a Citabria, like mine, like the one that I crashed on that dreadful day in Mentasta, Alaska.

And yet the day was so happy, for that was the day that Katie John celebrated her victory over the State of Alaska, the day that the right of she and her family to catch salmon at their traditional home was finally recognized.

And everybody who came to the celebration, from Governor Knowles to Katie's Athabascan attorney, Heather Kendall-Miller, drove by the wreckage of the Running Dog and they all said, "My goodness! Someone crashed an airplane. I hope no one was hurt."

And then they discovered that it was me that had crashed and I carried on, and photographed the celebration, because that is what I had come to Mentasta to do.

I got some good pictures, too. I wrote up a decent enough story.

Do you feel the longing?

And it is more than longing. Not having that airplane is a damned hardship. My jet ticket to Barrow will cost nearly $800. My roundtrip ticket from Barrow to Point Lay over $500. And then it is imperative that I visit as many of the other North Slope villages as I can.

All those tickets will cost money.

As airplanes go, the Running Dog was a gas sipper, not a guzzler, and I could even put car gas in it. I probably could have made the whole trip for not much more than the cost of that round trip fare between Barrow and Point Lay.

And I could come and go when it suited me, not on someone else's schedule. And I could carry more gear, including a good knife, a rifle and bullets, without ever going through security.

And it was a whole lot more fun.

As I walked, a lady friend from Serendipity picked me up and took me to her house for coffee. Her ragdoll cat was there and so was her husband. And a little dog.

We talked about moose and such.

My niece, Khena, delivered a baby today in Minneapolis.

Ada Lakshmi Iyer is the name of the little beauty and there are pictures of her on Facebook, taken by my sister, Mary Ann, the proud Gramma. Hey, baby sister - how can this word, "gramma," apply to you?

And yet, given the ages of our children, you and I could both have been grandparents over ten years ago.

Khena's proud husband, by the way, is Vivek, first cousin to Soundarya.

Vasanthi, Vivek's mother, is planning to move in with them in September to help take care of the baby and will stay until January. Come the Minnesota winter, she will have a brand new experience.

But then I know India Indian people who live and work on the Arctic Slope, so I suspect that she will do okay, but there will probably be times when she won't like it at all. 

Comments

[kavitha]

Ada lakhmi = goddess of wealth. :) Wow, am an aunt.