After making a quick stop at Metro Cafe, I drove into Anchorage to Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and Jobe's house, as the family had invited me to come in so they could throw a birthday party for me. I arrived a little before 6:00 PM. I found only Margie and Jobe there.
Jobe was snug and happy in the Apache cradle board that his great aunt LeeAnn had made for him before he was born. Hanging on the wall behind is a picture that I took of Kalib, not long after he was born.
Soon, Lavina came walking home from work. She saw me in the window and waved.
Next, Lisa and Bryce arrived with two little boys who Lisa was babysitting for one of the doctors she works with. The older boy was named Jacob and he was frightened of Muzzy - he did not fear that Muzzy would bite him, but rather that he would slobber on him, or perhaps roll on him.
Margie removed Jobe from the cradle and put him on my lap. I told him a series of ridiculous little sentences. Everytime I did, he smiled and even laughed.
That was his birthday present to me.
Next, Charlie and Rex showed up. I felt kind of sad that Melanie would not be here. Regular readers will recall that she is in Donlin Creek, doing work for the engineering company that she works for and she is carrying a slug-loaded shotgun, just in case she is forced to shoot a bear.
She called just before I took this picture. She said she had seen some bears, but only from the helicopter that they had been flying around in. She had seen no bears from the ground and she was not really worried about bears at all, but it did worry her to have to carry the shotgun around.
She had experienced some ridiculously hot weather (yes, Alaska's Interior can get surprisingly hot in the summer - in the 90's. Fort Yukon, where I will be next week, has recorded 101 - and in the winter, -78).
I had hoped that Rex would bring his new girlfriend, but she had gone down to Seward with her parents to do some kayaking. Rex met her a few weeks back after she came out from the San Francisco Bay area to summer in Alaska. Now her parents are here visiting, too.
I am very glad that he has found her.
As for Caleb, he had stayed in Wasilla to sleep and then go to work his nightshift, but, as I noted yesterday, I had seen him in the morning and he had given me the rain fenders for my bike.
I would bring food home for him.
After Jacob and Kalib came home, Jacob went out to the back porch to barbecue our dinner on his and Lavina's new grill.
Little Anthony and little Jacob - the two boys who Lisa was babysitting - watch a few minutes of Ice Age.
Jacob comes in from the porch with the grilled corn. I tell you - that corn was good! As was the bread, the steaks, the chops, the hot dogs and the salad.
I don't know how it happened, but one bad problem I find with all digital cameras, including the professional models, is that they can change settings all on their own, just because you are moving around. Somehow, my pocket camera had set itself to compensate for whatever exposure I was trying to make by two stops over. I did not discover this until after I took this picture.
I don't feel all that bad about it. The feeling that I wanted to catch is still there.
What I don't like is the fact that I forgot to recharge the battery to my pocket camera. It was on reserve power when I arrived and I knew the battery would soon die. So I had to shoot sparingly, just to be certain I had a frame or two available for my cake.
"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Billy - daddy - grampy, happy birthday to you..."
And here is my cake - Margie baked it and made the frosting. Heavenly, it was just heavenly. Six candles - one for every ten years that I have so far lived.
I could have eaten six such cakes and I would still have wanted more.
Kalib helped me blow out the candles.
Then Kalib brought me the family gift - a hands-free set for my iPhone that will allow me to plug it into the car radio and play music stored in it. Rex gave me some top-of-the line, adjustable walking sticks that can convert into ski poles.
Next, most of us headed to the dog park. My camera battery died before we got there and I was very disappointed, because we went to a lake and I was amazed at how beautiful and still it was, right there in Anchorage. It looked like we were nowhere near the city.
Ducks swam in the lake and repeatedly came right up to the little boys.
Just as we were preparing to leave the lake and move on, a friend of mine happened along. She was taking pictures with her iPhone. I suddenly remembered that I could, too. Yet, even my iPhone battery was almost dead. Still, I would shoot while it lasted.
So the images from here to the end were all done on my iPhone.
"A bear!" Lavina exclaimed when she first spotted this teddy bear laying at the side of the trail.
"A bear? Where?" Jacob responded, then scanned the trees. Bears, grizzlies even, do come into this neighborhood and Muzzy once had a frigthening encounter.
Lavina figured that someone was lonesome for this little teddy, so she suspended it in the fence in the hope that they would come back looking and would easily spot it.
As we walked, Kalib stopped every 40 or 50 feet to throw a rock into the creek.
In time, we reached the playground. My friend who had been taking iPhone pictures was there. This is she, Kelly Eningowuk of ICC Alaska, with her daughter Mina and dog Alexis. Kelly is the one who found the funds to take me to Greenland. Yes, I still intend to post more from that trip, but mostly I think I will save it for the publication we hope to make.
The thing about this dog park is that dogs are allowed to roam free here. They do not need to be on leashes. This seems like a recipe for big trouble to me, but I saw many dogs and not even one bad incident.
You can see Muzzy in the background.
What do you think he is going to do?
Muzzy charges in, shakes his mane, and throws slobber everywhere. That's what he was going to do. Right after I took this picture, my iPhone battery died.
So I could take no more pictures. This was okay, though. It was after 10:30 PM and I needed to drive back to Wasilla. So I went into the house, hugged everybody goodbye, including my precious wife, who still had two days of babysitting Jobe ahead of her.
Then I drove home alone, under an exquisitely beautiful sky surrounded by magnificent mountains, so strikingly beautiful in the radiant, late-night, northern light of summer.
I could not take a picture, but I did not care.
It was wonderful just to be driving home in the midst of such fantastic, magically-lit, beauty.
Many people wonder why I would ever even want to live in Alaska.
If they could only have seen it!
Even if I had been carrying my best camera and lenses with me, batteries fully charged, I could not have captured such beauty.
Such beauty is beyond the reach of any camera. A good photographer can hint at it, but that's all.