We celebrate my birthday in Anchorage to the taste of Arctic char from Kaktovik

On the evening of my birthday, I drove into Anchorage where most of the rest of my family already was. Margie had been staying with Jacob and Lavina since the day that I left for Kaktovik, as Jobe had been a little under the weather and she needed to take care of him while Lavina worked.

Soon after I arrived, Lavina threw a few of the Arctic char that I had brought back from Kaktovik onto the grill.

These particular char were given to me by Marie Rexford. Elizabeth Rexford also gave me a generous number from the cache of she and husband Fenton.

Oh, boy, was it tasty! Char is one of my favorite fish - right up there with salmon, halibut and trout.

Thank you, Marie, Fenton and Elizabeth - your generosity made my birthday extra special.

I will still try to work a few char fishing pictures in here, maybe tomorrow, maybe Sunday, maybe Monday.

I am told that Kalib still wields the spatula - usually on a weekend morning when he is cooking eggs, but I have not personally seen him carry the spatula for awhile.

It had been rainy and cool when I drove out of Wasilla, but when I got out of the car at Jacob and Lavina's house, the sun shone brightly upon me and I was surprised by how hot it felt - just like I remember from the southern Arizona desert.

Well, maybe not quite that hot.

We ate on the table that graces the back deck of Jacob and Lavina's house. When I sit here, I am always amazed at the typical American suburban environs my son and daughter-in-law have planted themselves in and how comfortable they seem within.

After dinner, a few of us sat in the living room and talked while others readied something out in the kitchen that I was not supposed to see just yet.

It was Lisa whose stories dominated the conversation, and they were mostly about the dogs that she had been caring for while their owners were away. One day, she came to the house to find that one of the dogs had pooped on important tax papers. She had to save those papers, and the process involved rubber gloves and drying and sterilizing things and it was not pleasant.

Charlie said the dog had only done what everybody wants to do.

After she told the story, Jacob came out with Jobe. Jobe tackled Jacob.

Look up there, on the wall. It's Jobe's Apache cradleboard, the one made especially for him by one of the most skilled cradleboard makers on the White Mountain Apache Reservation - his Aunt LeeAnn.

Jobe will never sleep in it again.

That makes me kind of sad, yet I so greatly enjoy watching him grow, learn and experience.

Margie came out, pulled the curtains and turned out the lights. Then Melanie entered from the kitchen, followed by Kalib, Margie and Lavina. She carried the object that I had not been allowed to see until now. It was a flaming cake that she had made, just for me.

Count the number of candles and you will see that on my birthday, I turned younger than I had been for five decades.

The little ones watched intently as grandma inhaled a deep breath. Could he do it? Not quite!

So Kalib, the expert candle blower-outer, finished the job.

Once again, I drove home by myself. Jobe was doing quite a bit better, but Lavina's good friend, Sandy, has hit her due date and could go into labor at any minute. She wants Lavina with her when she delivers and Lavina has promised that she will be. 

Jacob had to leave for Kipnuk early in the morning, so Margie stayed to be on hand to care for the little ones should another little one choose the next day to be born.

This is what I saw as I neared Wasilla, just a few minutes before midnight.

Midnight won't look like this for much longer.

View images as slides

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

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.

Margie returns from being snowbound in Arizona; we celebrate Melanie's birthday - but readers must wait to see it*

It has been quite a day. After being gone for nearly a month, Margie returned from Arizona. There, at her sister's home in the high White Mountain Apache community of Hon-Dah, she had been engulfed in up to six feet of snow and had spent a good deal of her time not going anywhere.

It was a very warm day here today, although, after she got off the plane, Margie noted that it was still cooler than it had been in Arizona, despite the fact they got huge amounts of snow and we haven't had any snow to speak of since early in December.

Cooler weather is forecast, and I look forward to it. It would be nice if it snowed a bit, first.

Today was also Melanie's birthday, so we stayed in town until late this evening to celebrate it.

It is 1:25 AM and Margie has been up for 22 hours. I haven't been up quite that long, but, in general I am living in a perpetual state of exhaustion and I really feel it right now. I took many pictures today and have already prepared and placed a selection in a post, but have not written the words. Margie just said she is going to bed now. I think I will too. 

I will add the words to the post after I get up - perhaps right away, perhaps not until the end of the day. I want to do it early, but at the same time I have a great deal of work that I must do tomorrow and I want to get started on that early, too.

Plus - if I add the text early and post it early, then I will surely find myself adding more pictures and more text in another post at the end of the day. I do not think that I have time to write two blog posts in one day.

Anyway, it could go either way.

The above picture of Kalib and Lavina is one of the images from today's take that did not make it into the post that I have not yet written. You will learn more about the beautiful, brand-new, white-buckskin cradle board once I add the words and put up the post.

*Before I went to bed, I scheduled this to post at 4:00 AM, as I usually do. Or so I thought. I actually set it for 4:00 PM. I did not discover this drastic, disastrous, error until 11:06 AM, so this is just now going up. I will hold the main post for one more day.