A pocket camera glimpse back at the gathering before I get going for real; roadside scenes while on coffee break in Wasilla: Baby Jobe in green

That's Harold Frost of Old Crow, Yukon Territory, playing fiddle on the left and Chester Fields of Fort Yukon on base. Yesterday, I stated that today I would begin posting my Gwich'in Gathering images in earnest, but I am not yet ready to do that.

I was very lazy yesterday and it was the only day this week that I would have Margie home with me. I did not even begin to transfer the 360 gigabytes or so of high resolution, RAW images from my big pro cameras from the portable hard drive I took to Fort Yukon into what for the moment is my big working harddrive attached to my desktop computer, until about 8:00 PM.

Those images were still transferring when I went to bed about 12:30 AM. Now I must put them in my photo editing program and start the task of editing and processing and I feel completely overwhelmed. It feels like a task that would take a month to do right.

The very thought makes me feel like I just want to go back to bed and sleep for a year or two.

That's another thing that I really like about my tiny pocket camera - the Canon s90. Not only is it tiny and light, but there is no way to shoot pictures fast with it, so you don't get that many. The ones that you do get have nowhere near the resolution of those taken with my pro cameras, so they do not bog the editing program down and they are quick and easy to work with.

I didn't use the pocket camera much in Fort Yukon, but I did keep it in my pocket at all times and every now and then I did pull it out and shoot a frame or two - such as in this case.

There was a table in front of the fiddle player. I wanted to get a shot from under the table but there were speakers and other gear beneath it, so it was a whole lot easier just to reach under there with my pocket camera, frame it in the LCD and take a snap than it would have been to have crawled under with all that stuff with my big gear and then let rip with bunch of frames.

So for today, I am just going to use  the few scenes associated with the gathering that I did with the pocket camera. Once I get some editing done, you will see Harold and Chester again, along with a whole lot of other folks.

Harold did not come to the home of Ben and Carrie Stevens, my hosts, with his fiddle, but when we all gathered there we could still hear the fiddle music in our heads.

Little two-and-a-half-year old Alex, "Sunshine," must have heard the music very clearly and he remembered well how people had jigged to that music. So the sound and the memory went down to his feet, took hold of them and suddenly he began to jig in the kitchen. Soon, Sunshine had three women dancing with him.

I wish I could dance like that.

This is Jessica Black, who served as Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in 2000. Jessica also spent part of the gathering camped out in the Stevens home in the room across the hall from mine. We became friends, just like that.

She received the scarf tied as a band around her head at a give-away held in honor of a deceased baby boy. After she put it on, she did a short dance, Gwich'in style.

My host, Ben Stevens, preparing moose-rib soup to feed to those gathered at the gathering. Mighty tasty. Excellent ribs. I wish I could have some now. I can't, so maybe I will go to Taco Bell instead.

Ben had to leave early to return to his fish camp far down river, near Stevens Village, his original home.

Just to remind you that I am now back home:

Yes, I am in Wasilla and yesterday after stopping in at Metro to say "hi" to Scott, Carmen and Sashanna, I drove away with an Americano and then took a short drive to drink it. Along the way, I saw this car, parked with its lights on at a corner.

And I saw that someone had rebuilt the memorial for the young woman and her unborn child who had been killed in a collision at Church Road and Schrock. Two crosses used to rise from this memorial, but vandals broke them and messed up the scene.

Now it had been put back together, but without the crosses.

On my last day home before I left for Fort Yukon, I took Margie to Metro and as we waited in the drive-through, a succession of police cars and emergency vehicles screamed by, red lights flashing. A bit later, on our drive, we had just turned off Schrock Road onto Lucille Street when we saw that the road was blocked ahead and red lights were flashing.

We detoured elsewhere through the neighborhood to avoid the scene and then I forgot about it. I did not know what had happened. I never thought about it again until yesterday, when I drove past it for the first time since my return. This is what I saw.

Given the location, my immediate thought was that it had probably been a four-wheeler accident and that the person who had died had been young.

I looked it up online after I got home. Indeed, 17 year-old Cheyanne Jorge had died after rolling her four-wheeler. Her passenger, also 17, was treated at the hospital and released.

Horrible.

Early this morning, I drove Margie into Anchorage so that she can spend the rest of the week babysitting Jobe. Here he is, dressed to match the bathroom colors.

View images as slide show

Three beautiful young people at the Gwich'in Gathering; Sunshine takes the wheel; my condolences for the death of William Hess, but Bill Hess remains among the living and loves salmon

Four days have now passed since I last posted and I fear I can't make but a token post now - just enough to tell you that I am alive and shooting here in Fort Yukon. Up until now, however, picture blogging has been impossible for me. I have been able to get only the slowest wireless connection, one that works for a minute or two and then cuts out for 15 or 20 minutes - one that did not allow me to upload pictures at all.

Now I have unplugged a friend's direct line and plugged the ethernet into my laptop, but I have little time before I must run. I have shot many pictures since the Gwich'in Gathering began yesterday morning - of dancers, ceremony, speeches, feasting, the Yukon River, a fiddle band, a jig dance contest, square dancing and what have you but I have not had time to go back and look at any of those pictures, save this one.

I chose this one for today's post because shortly after I took it, I showed it to Jayme Thomas and promised her that I would put it on the blog. So, no time to sort through, edit and prepare photos - I just went straight to this one, so that I could keep that promise.

That's Jayme with the Gwich'in dance group that came up from Circle. She holds Esau Ervin John, the baby of a friend. Sitting beyond them is her friend and fellow dancer, Denise Carroll.

I think the problems that I face blogging here are going to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to blog in my usual manner and I will go home with another huge pile of photos to add to my unseen backlog, reaching everywhere from the Arctic Slope to here, to Arizona, Greenland, India and many places in between.

I don't think that I will ever catch up.

But check back anyway. Anything could happen.

On Sunday, I mentioned that I had prepared a dozen photos to post but was unable to, because of the problems that I encountered. For the most part, those photos dealt with my travels to Fort Yukon and that no longer feels very relevant to me.

Plus, lunch is about to be served and I want to go get some of it.

Yet, I will include three from that dozen, beginning with the above. That's my host, Ben Stevens and his two-and-half year old son, Alex, better known as "Sunshine. We were on a road with no traffic, Ben was driving maybe one mph, Sunshine wanted to take the wheel and Ben let him.

Sunshine was born January 20, 2008 - just a bit less than one month past Kalib's birth. January is generally not only a cold, cold but dark month here in Fort Yukon, where wintertime temperatures can drop into the lower - 70's.

But on the day that Alex was born, the sun rose to shine brightly upon Fort Yukon, so one of his uncles gave him his Athabascan name, Hech' edee' 'onh' - Sunshine.

Not long after I had arrived in Fort Yukon, I was taking a nap when I heard an energetic voice that I recognized, so I got up and went out to find Bruce Thomas. In years past, Ben and Bruce had taken me on a number of trips up and down the Yukon and Pocupine Rivers, plus Birch Creek, to visit fish camps and to hunt moose and geese (we didn't get a moose, we did get geese - or they did. I got pictures).

It was a good time and I would be happy to do it again.

First thing Bruce told me was that everyday he likes to read the obituaries. One day awhile back, he read about the death of William Hess.

"I gave you up for dead, Bill Hess!" he told me.

In the event that any of William Hess's friends or relatives should read this, my condolences. I am sorry for your loss.

I, however, am Bill, not William. I have never been a William, I never will be a William and I am still alive.

I say this with caution, because one never knows about tomorrow.

That evening, Ben and I went to visit Bruce in his backyard by the fire, along with whoever else showed up, to share conversation and many did.

As we were leaving, Bruce showed up at the driver's window with these two bottles of salmon that he had just put up. "I have something I want to give you," he said. "Take this home to your wife."

So I will.

Gwich'in hospitality.

View images as slideshow