Arctic people join Larry Aiken in Anchorage to celebrate his birthday and wish him many more; I drive home through snow, atop ice

Yesterday was Larry Aiken's 56th birthday. In the early evening, I drove to Anchorage for the party. As recently noted, Larry has come down from Barrow to get his cancer treated.

We gathered around for pie and cake. Celebrants filled their cups with lemonade and Pepsi and then made a toast to Larry on his birthday - a toast for long life and many more birthdays.

There were others who came and went during the course of the party, but these are those who were present with Larry when I took this group picture: Charlie, Candace, Lloyd, James (who had come down from Anaktuvuk Pass for eye surgery), Martha, Art and Harley.

Everybody sang happy birthday.

Then there was another toast.

Of course, I was there too and I took this picture to reflect my presence - us, gathered together in lightness and warmth in defiance of the cold dark beyond the window.

Yet, even beyond the window there was warmth. We went out. A light, wet, snow was falling. We gathered around the fire. Larry spoke about how much the warmth and support of his friends meant to him now. He has felt fear, and has shed tears. He will feel more fear and shed more tears, yet in friendship and love he finds courage and faith.

Although we could not hear it here, we all knew that in Barrow, many people were calling in to KBRW's daily "Birthday Program" to wish Larry a happy one.

Martha took my camera away from me so that she could take some pictures that included me. So here is the one that I like the best - me, Larry and Art.

I think I will post it as my Facebook Profile picture for awhile.

The drive home was a bit nerve-wracking. The rain that had begun in the afternoon had now turned to snow. The temperature stood right at freezing. The highway was slick and dangerous. Some drivers, apparently new to this place and this kind of thing, creapt along at 10 mph. Others, overconfident, proud and impatient, weaved and shot their way through the traffic in their big four-wheel drive vehicles at 60 plus - until finally the flow just bogged down to an unpassable 40.

These are the ones that you most often see turned over at the side of the road - big, four-wheel drive vehicles driven by people who do not understand that the laws of physics also apply to them.

Fortunately, I saw no bad mishaps on this drive home.

For a Thursday night, the traffic seemed pretty heavy to me. I wondered why? Sarah Palin had thrown a rally in Anchorage for Joe Miller. I wondered if that might be the reason - thousands of Palin/Miller supporters streaming back into the valley after a rousing rally for Joe Miller.

But no... according to news reports, only 300 to 400 people attended - and that includes the Anchorage people as well as the valley.

So that wasn't it.

Maybe the traffic just seemed heavy, because weather conditions caused drivers to bunch up.

It took longer than usual, but finally I was in Wasilla, where the snowfall greatly eased. Then I was on Brockton, approaching the very dark corner ahead. Fortunately, I have good headlights. They cut through the darkness before me and showed me the way to the warmth and light of home.

View images as slide show

they will appear larger and look better

The celebration my family threw for me; afterward, we took a walk in the dog park

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.

View images as slideshow

On the big Six-Zero, I fail to go surfing in Yakutak; I do ride my bike in Wasilla, adorned by my first birthday present

Awhile back - YEARS back - I gave myself a goal for my 60th birthday. A few months back, I restated that goal here on this blog.

I would go surfing in Yakutak.

I utterly failed to meet that goal.

But today, my birthday, I did ride my bike - as you can see above. You have never seen fenders on my bike before. Caleb gave me those and put them on himself. These fenders, which will prevent the rain from being zipped up across my shirt and into my face, are the first present that I have received today - although yesterday, I stopped at Metro Cafe and found that Funny Face, a reader from Texas, had given me a $20 dollar punch card there. 

Thank you Caleb and Funny Face.

Later this afternoon, I will drive into Anchorage, where a barbecue will be held in my honor at the home of Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and Jobe. Doubtless, I will receive more presents.

I have not been surfing since I was 20 years old. The last time that I went was in Santa Cruz, California, just before the Mormon Church sent me on a two year mission to the Lakota/Dakota in South Dakota and Montana. I don't really remember much about any of the waves I rode that day, because they were so-so and not that great, but I do remember the voluptuous woman in the tiny blue bikini who walked along the edge of the water with the little gold chain slung atop her hips. She made me wonder why I ever had to be born and raised Mormon at all, why I ever agreed to even go on a mission.

Surfing is a sport that I have always wanted to get back into and I thought that 60 would be just the right age to do so.

I am not going to give up on this goal. I now state my intention to go surfing sometime this winter - in Alaska's sister state, the great state of Hawaii. I will go down there and, fake shoulder and all, I will paddle into the surf and I will shred those waves apart - even if for only one second before the frothing break hammers me under.

This is my goal. For many years, it has been my goal to get to Hawaii and I have never made it. So I reset the goal, for this winter, with new determination.

And then, next summer, on my 61st birthday, having had a little practice, I give myself the new goal to go surfing in Yakutak, where I have friends.

I have been young now for 60 years.

There is no appetite, desire, hope or ambition that I carried at the age of 20 that I do not carry now.

I do not intend to quit being young anytime soon, no matter what the damn calendar says, no matter how white my beard has grown, my hair now starting to follow.

I am a young man and I intend to stay that way.

But why do I feel so damn tired? Right now, as I type these words.

Right now and every waking moment - every sleeping moment.

Every moment.

Why, come mornings, do I find that I just want to sleep longer, yet am unable to sleep?

Could it be that I cannot beat the calendar, that it is going to take me down yet, just as it takes down everyone else?

Nah! Can't happen!

One shot from today: Baby boy Jobe Atene Hess - more pictures will follow

I am exhausted and must go to bed as soon as I can, so I decided to post just one image from today's shoot. I chose this one for the simple reason that it is the first scene that I shot on the second compact flash card that I exposed today and that card is the first that I am downloading because it was in my camera when I came home and plugged it in - and I do like the image.

At the end of that card, there are some shots of Kalib meeting his new brother for the first time and I had thought that I would use one of those. But CF cards download extremely slowly out of my Canon 1Ds Mark 2 into my computer and Lightroom, and it will be awhile yet before that picture appears.

I do not have it in me to wait right now. Except for a cat nap after the birth, I have been up now for over 40 hours and I am fatigued, mentally and physically, even as I am overjoyed that our newest grandson has emerged from the womb to make himself known.

In addition to this card that is currently downloading, there is the first card that I filled, which is twice the size of this one and will take twice as long to download - and there is another card from my pocket camera.

The pocket camera card will download fast, but it has to wait its turn and it is the third in line.

So I am going to bed.

Sometime after I get up, I will download the remaining two cards, do somewhat of an edit and make a more complete post on today's event.

Jobe weighed in at seven pounds, ten ounces - a full pound more than did Kalib - and came out 19 inches long. The woman giving Lavina a neck message is her good friend, Natalie.

Jobe is greatly loved and we are glad to have him here.

More later.

Margie returns carrying a buckskin cradle board; Melanie's birthday celebration

So here I am, in the car, driving to airport "arrivals" to pick up Margie. See the smiling Yup'ik face on the vertical stabilizer of the Alaska Airlines jet on the other side of the new terminal building? That is Flight 91, just landed, coming in from Seattle where she changed planes after leaving Phoenix at 7:00 AM. Margie is still on board, waiting for them to open the door to the terminal so she can get out and come to me.

Soon, she is sitting beside me in the car, looking at a card that was sent by my niece Khena and husband Vivek. It has several pictures of their baby, Ada Laksmhi, half-a-year old now, highly intelligent, a full head of thick, black hair and, as you can see in Margie's expression, extremely cute.

She lives in Minneapolis. I hope we get to meet her, soon.

As for Uriah, he is home and has some healing to do, but is on the way to recovery.

I ask Margie if she is hungry, and she is. She has eaten only a bagel since flying out of Phoenix more than seven hours earlier. "Where do you want to go?" I ask. We are headed in the general direction of Melanie's work, because it is her birthday and we want to wish her a happy one. Plus, the engineering firm that she works for was recently bought out by a bigger corporation and she just moved into a new office, which we have not yet seen.

Margie thought about the question for about five minutes. "Taco Bell," she said.

So here we are at Taco Bell by Dimond Center. There is an empty parking space close to the door and these ravens have gathered in it. I make like I am going to park there and Margie scolds me, just like I knew she would. "Don't you dare!" she says. "Look at all those people you will disturb!"

So I parked elsewhere and several ravens came to join us. We went inside. I was not very hungry, so I ordered a cheese quesadilla and a small Pepsi.

Margie ordered a chicken soft taco and a small Diet Pepsi.

The ravens took whatever they could get.

We then went shopping, to buy her some gifts. Melanie loves dark chocolate, so her mother had brought her a box of Godiva chocolates that she had bought in Arizona. We went into Pier 1, which actually has some pretty neat stuff. Margie tends to think practical, so she found some nice, orange, couch pillows that seemed to match the decor of Melanie's living room.

I seldom think practical when buying gifts. I found a decorative pair of birds on a stand. They appeared to be dancing with each other.

We bought both the pillow and the birds.

Now we needed to get them wrapped, but to box and gift-wrap them seemed quite impractical, at this time. So we went to another store, where Margie decided to buy some fancy gift bags to put them. She thought she would be very quick, so I dropped her off and circled the parking lot.

As I came back, I noticed this bear, standing under this word, in front of Sportsman's Warehouse.

Margie did not find any gift bags, but she did find some little white bowls shaped like hearts. She thought Bear Meech and Diamond, Melanie's Anchorage cats, would enjoy them, so she bought them.

Next, we stopped at Melanie's new place of work. We wished her a happy birthday and examined the premises. Melanie told us about a nearby coffee shop that had the name, "cats" in it. She said the coffee was good there. We went looking for it, but never found it. We wound up at a nearby Kaladi Brothers instead.

The coffee was superb. 

From there, we did some grocery shopping for Melanie's birthday dinner and then we headed over to Jacob, Lavina and Kalib's. Margie was eager to see Kalib, but he was not there. His dad had picked him up from daycare and they had gone off to do a little shopping themselves.

Lavina was home alone, as she had been all day. She was almost desperate to see people. Margie then gave her the Apache cradle board that her sister, LeeAnn, had made for the new baby-in-waiting. That's white buckskin that you see on the cradle board. The part that Lavina is touching and admiring is made from cholla cactus.

During the time that Margie and LeeAnn had been snowbound and then even afterward, LeeAnn had worked hard and long to finish the cradle board. She completed it the night before Margie left.

She also made the one that Kalib spent his babyhood sleeping in.

All of our own children were packed in such cradles - made by Margie's mom, Rose. If you should ever get a chance to see the February, 1980, issue of National Geographic, I have a three-part story and photo spread on the White Mountain Apache Tribe in there and it includes a picture of Rex in his cradle board, as his grandmother works on others.

A few years back, the Governor of Arizona declared Rose to be an Arizona State Living Treasure for her skill in making cradle boards. 

I think LeeAnn is a treasure, too.

Even though I missed this trip, we are all planning to go down for a Sunrise Dance in June, so you will get to meet them all then.

As for the baby who will occupy this cradle board she... well, could be a he, but I have just been feeling that it is she, but I could be completely wrong... is definitely getting ready to be born.

Lavina is experiencing intense contractions again. Of course, this has been going on now for a couple of weeks - intense contractions, followed by light contractions. She visited her doctor today and our new grandchild is right there at the door, ready to exit.

As soon as Lavina's contractions get to be ten minutes apart, she is supposed to go in.

This is the longest labor I have ever known of.

Jacob and Kalib finally arrive. Margie is thrilled to finally see her grandchild again. Kalib reacted the way I used to react when my grandmother's would hug me.

Yes, I still remember.

Soon, everybody had arrived - except for Caleb, who stayed in Wasilla to sleep before heading out to his all-night work shift.

Can you guess whose feet these are?

We gather in the kitchen to get our avocado cucumber sandwiches and our baked potatoes and corn chips.

See the fact at the far right? The one that is just barely into the picture frame? That face is Lisa's face, just as the feet in the previous frame are Lisa's feet.

The arm at the right belongs to Bryce, Lisa's boyfriend.

The others, of course, are Margie, Melanie and Rex.

Kalib rips his sandwich apart and devours it. I suppose one day soon, he will have to start learning some table manners. I don't think the lessons will please him.

As he always does at anybody's birthday party, Kalib came dashing over to help blow out the candles. He puffed so hard that he nearly blew Melanie away.

She quickly recovered to blow out the remaining candles.

Next, she opened her gifts. I will not list them all, but I will note that this one is from Charlie and he did the raven painting himself. You can see how he docorated the package.

Afterward, Kalib rolled a big ball down the stairs several times. 

Is my beautiful, sweet, baby girl, who I love so dearly, so sweetly, who I cherish more than I cherish the sun that shines each day, the earth that spins, my own life, the little girl who, when she was small, would automatically appear in my lap whenever I sat down, really 29 now?

She really is.

How beautiful she is, from the first moment onward.

I wrote up an extensive journal entry about her birth, which started in excitement, turned frightening, and ended wonderfully. I was going to transcribe it into this post and I actually began to, but then, just as happens every time I read it, I began to weep. Twenty-nine years has passed, but I sat here at my computer and I cried, as they say, "like a baby."

I had to pull back.