I take a walk with Shadow

I have always been a walker and usually I have walked alone, or with a dog. Occassionally, I have walked with cats, but as much as I love them, walking with cats can get pretty aggravating. You have to keep stopping and you never do get very far.

Sometimes when I was small, I took off walking and when my parents discovered that I was missing they called the cops and each time they launched a search for me.

They never found me, though, because I could be anywhere from the side of mountain to balancing on the railroad tracks. Finally, I would come home and find the cops at the house, trying to calm my distraught parents. I could not understand why they got so upset, because I always knew exactly where I was in relation to the house. Now, of course, I understand.

After I met Margie, we would often walk together but even then, I would take long walks by myself.

Next, the kids came along and we would often all go walking, or Margie and I might walk with one or two of the children one time, and others later, or just the young girls when the boys became teens. Yet even then, I would often walk by myself.

Years ago, Margie quit walking with me all together because it became hard for her. The dog Willow was still with us then, so she and I would walk together and there was no Serendipity and so we had the big woods to ourselves. Then they cut down the trees, made Serendipity and Willow died.

Again I found myself walking, all by myself. Which was fine with me. I enjoy walking alone. 

Then Jacob, Lavina and Kalib moved in and often I would walk with all or two of them. Kalib was always on those walks and he even inspired Margie to come on a few - sometimes just her, Kalib and me. The pace was terribly slow and we never went as far as I would have liked, but the company was good.

Now that those three are living in their own home in Anchorage along with new baby Jobe, I am, once again, walking all alone.

That's not really true.

Sometimes, Shadow pops up and walks with me.

He did today.

Sometimes, Shadow will step on the very bottom of my feet. You would think this would be annoying, but I hardly even notice it.

I'm pretty sure that these two guys had planned to stop, jump out of the car, beat me with a baseball bat, take all my money and then head to Taco Bell. But they saw Shadow. See how tough and frightening he looks?

Shadow scared them away. Those poor guys didn't get to go to Taco Bell today and neither did I.

I don't know about Shadow.

Maybe he snuck off and went without me.

Were any of you at Taco Bell today?

Did you see Shadow there?

What did he eat?

Shadow had been walking in front of me, but after I turned the corner, he walked alongside me. We were equals, then.

But when I turned and walked to the south, Shadow walked behind me.

We turned east on Seldon, which can be a fairly busy road. "Hey! You fool!" I shouted at Shadow. "What kind of idiot are you? Don't walk down the middle of the road! You will get run over!"

Shadow did not heed my warning, but just kept on walking.

It was horrible. Shadow got his head run over. Shadow brain matter spread out across the road. "I tried to warn you!" I screamed, "but you wouldn't listen!"

Hmmm... Shadow was not hurt at all. He just kept walking. I guess that's because when you are so flat that you are not even flat, you cannot be flattened.

A mailman came along - the same one who sought to rescue me from Tequilla, the sweetheart bull dog who tries so hard to make me think she is mean. Shadow waved at the postman.

I didn't wave, though. I kept my hands in my pockets.

In the late afternoon, I stepped outside again. I looked for Shadow but he was not there. The sky had turned overcast. 

Shadow, I'm afraid, often proves to be a fair-weather friend.

Well after dark, I took a short walk, just to clear my head. Shadow was with me when I stepped off the porch, but the farther I got from the house, the darker it became. Shadow has a very dark side, yet, he will only step out into the dark when it is punctuated by light. Shadow abandoned me.

Then, a ways down the road, as I passed by a house with the porchlight turned on, Shadow reappeared, walking beside me. Shadow can be sneaky like that, at night.

Shadow. 

Only he knows.

The blond girl who checked me out, then engaged me in a discussion about politics and religion; the humiliation of bare grass in February; Royce

Margie drove into town to see Jobe and Kalib, but I could not go because I had too much work to do. So I had her drop me off at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, which would leave me with a four-mile walk home, but that's good. I needed to walk four miles. Five would have been okay. In fact, I probably did walk five, because I did not take the most direct route.

As I ate my ham and eggs, a little girl from three tables up and across the aisle saw that the table in front of me was empty, so she came over to check me out.

Her name was Nona.

We discussed the fine points of politics and religion. We did not agree on everything, but it was a civil and friendly discussion, with each party showing complete respect for the other's point of view. It was a discussion that Senators and Preachers could learn from.

This is Nona's sister, whose name I did not get. She wanted to see Nona's picture. I showed it to her. She was very pleased.

Across the aisle, one table down. After I finished my breakfast I sat and sipped my coffee for about ten extra minutes, hoping that they would finish their breakfast so I could introduce myself, show them the picture and get their names, but they weren't even close to being done and I had things to do, so I left.

It is not supposed to look like this around here in mid-February. I don't like it at all. In fact, it is humiliating, but there is nothing that I can do about it.

This is Willie. I did not catch the names of his people, but they look really familiar to me.

That was yesterday. This is today, when a raven flew over my head.

I know some of you are very concerned with Royce. A couple of days ago, he vomitted clear stuff repeatedly, but has been fine ever since. At least as fine as a cat in decline can be expected to be.

By the way, I uploaded every single picture in this post and wrote every word with my good black-cat buddy Jim sprawled out across my chest, his rear legs resting upon my left forearm and his front on my right.

You might think that it would be very hard to manipulate a computer under such circumstance, but I have much practice behind me.

Now I hate to shut down and make Jim move, but I've got to go to bed.

I walk to Metro Cafe and take a few shots inside

Margie took the car and drove to Anchorage to see baby Jobe today, so I did not take my walk until 3:30. Then I headed toward Metro Cafe. As I walked through the melt on the bike and pedestrian trail that is closed to motorized vehicles, I had to step into the slush to let this guy pass.

There is a snowmachine and four-wheeler trail on the other side of the road.

On the other hand, I do have to admit that when the snow falls deep and then the snowmachines illegally come and pack down a path, it is kind of nice.

Down below, a bicycle rider chose the hazards of narrow Lucille Street over the slush of the bike trail.

Remember the cute kids who posed for a through the window study at Metro? I found one of them, Jennifer, left, plus two that were not there that day, playing in a puddle. I was walking in a big hurry so I did not stop to talk and ask questions, like, "hey, you, two! What are your names?" I just took the picture and moved on. The temperature was about 40 degrees, maybe 41 or 42.

When will we get back to winter?

As I am posting this Friday night, it is possible that by Monday, the day this post appears, we will be back into winter, but, somehow, I don't think so.

This is Melissa. She comes to Metro Cafe just about every day. "I look intense," she said, when I showed her the picture.

And this is Joshua, who planned to go church after leaving Metro.

I sit facing the door; I see people come and go, I witness a man buying a newspaper; Jobe gets a bath

I took breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant and was seated at a table by myself, as Margie had already eaten oatmeal. I faced the door. From this amazing vantage point, I was able to observe this man buy a newspaper.

I also saw this woman and this little girl exit, hopefully with their bellies full.

This man entered, hungry, I assume.

And then along came this little girl, followed by two people who appeared to be her parents. I'll bet that she was very excited to be eating out with them.

These two gentlemen entered and then stood there, waiting to be seated, as one of them spoke to someone on his cell phone. I don't know who he was speaking too, but I have a hunch it was President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Although this post will not appear until Sunday, right now it is Friday night. As soon as I finish it, I will make another, short, simple one and schedule it to appear Monday. I've got a very important task that I absolutely must finish up over the weekend and I am still recovering from the birth of Jobe and the mad round of blogging that I did afterward, so that is why I am clearing the weekend to be free of blogging. 

I will, of course, keep a camera with me through the weekend.

In fact, this final image is an example.

Come the evening of the day this post is scheduled is scheduled to go up, one full week will have passed since I last saw my new little grandson, Jobe. Lavina did text this iPhone pic of him getting a bath to my iPhone and I found it Saturday morning and attached it to this post.. As you can see, he has grown tremendously.

He is a veritable giant now.

As I wander through the oppressive heat of what cannot possibly yet be spring, I come upon an old friend; I pick up a hitchhiker by the Little Su

As can easily be seen, our horrifically warm weather continues. It feels like genuine spring. For the past three, maybe even four days, daytime temperatures have risen into the 40's and snow has been melting into slush.

The Iron Dog snowmachine race from here to Nome starts tomorrow. Two years ago, maybe three, I went to Big Lake for start of that race to photograph two competitors who were the nephews of my good friend, Rose Albert.

When I arrived at about 11:00 AM, the temperture was -36.

And now we are having weather in the 40's. Snow is melting. And down in the south, people who don't usually see much snow are getting dumped on and are freezing.

It is not that mid-winter 40's is strikingly unusal. It happens every winter, every now and then, its just that this winter relatively warm air has dominated the entire season. There has been very little cold.

It is El Niño, of course, pulling all that warm air up from the South Pacific, magnified by the Arctic Oscillation which has caused the normal polar low pressure to slip south and thus the Far North, even the Arctic itself, to be much warmer than normal - even than the normal of the past decade, which in itself has been significantly warmer than historical norms.

So - to you folks who jump up and down with glee and point to the snow and cold in Washington, DC and elsewhere as proof that global warming is a made up phenomena and that there is no reason for us to clean up our atmosphere but argue that we should just go on happily polluting so certain people can make big bucks until the Chinese master green technology and become the rulers of the world, I say, broaden your vision.

Look north!

This, by the way, is Ron Mancil.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a Facebook invitation from Ron to become one of his friends. We have been friends for decades, so of course I accepted. He then surprised me by telling me that he was working at the Mahoney Ranch, the place where I sometimes photograph horses on my coffee break, across the street from the tiny Mahoney Graveyard in Grotto Iona.

So, as I drove past on my coffee break, I saw the familiar figure of a man who I had probably not seen for at least a few years walking out of the horse pasture toward a barn. I pulled off the road, into the driveway, got out of the car, we shook hands and he introduced to the dog, whose name I have forgotten.

Ron and I first met nearly 30 years ago, when he came to work as an artist and cartoonist for the Tundra Times, where I got my start in Alaska. Ron is an Arctic Slope Iñupiaq and a greatly talented artist and scupltor. The remnants of many dinosaurs have been found on the Arctic Slope, including in the lands where his grandparents used to hunt and roam, and at times as a student of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Ron has worked with scientists to help uncover and identify those bones.

From time to time, though, the bottle has over-powered him and knocked him off course.

This is what brought him to Mahoney Ranch, where, about six months ago, Pat Mahoney, gave him work and a place to stay.

And all that time, I was regularly passing by, sometimes shooting pictures of the horses from my car, or photographing Grotto Iona and I did not even know he was there.

He has been living sober and dry, and takes courage from the fact that in this valley there are many alcoholics who are living sober, who are encouraging each other to do so.

More than once, things have gone wrong, but that doesn't matter now.

There is but one thing that matters and that is today... today... today...

After Ron and I visited, I got back into the car and headed towards home. Just before I got to the bridge that crosses the Little Su, I saw this man hitchhiking.

I don't normally pick up hitchhikers. I did when I was young. I picked them up all the time. Rarely did I ever pass one. Often times, if their destination lay beyond mine, I would just keep going and take them there. But over time, I heard too many reports of bad things happening to people who picked up hitchhikers, including murder.

I knew a fellow, a Vietnam Veteran, dead now, who was himself hitchhiking on the Parks Highway between here and Fairbanks when someone picked him up but then robbed and beat him, stripped him of his clothing and dumped him in temperatures far below zero and left him to freeze to death.

He did not want to freeze and so he ran and ran and ran until someone came along. He lived but lost much of his feet to frostbite.

So I decided it wasn't worth the risk and stopped picking them up.

Once in awhile, I will still pick up a hitchhiker, when something just tells me that it is absolutely okay and that it would be unnecessarily mean of me just to pass by.

Such was the case here. I figured he could only be a local, living in a cabin or hut without a car and that he just needed to get to the store or something.

Sure enough, that was the case. His name was Clay and he had me drop him off at the new gas station and store at the corner of Church and Seldon.

"I'm sure glad they built this place," he told me. "And I don't mind this weather, either. I just don't want it to rain, that's all. I'd rather it stayed just cold enough to snow, but no colder."

I wanted to give him my blog address so that he could see this, but he has no computer, no internet, and is not tech savvy, save for playing a video game that he told me about.

Baby Jobe is doing well. In the morning, before Kalib goes off to daycare, he reportedly gives his baby brother a mooch and a hug. Considering that he wanted nothing to do with him the last time we saw them together, that is a huge improvement.