Fall of the ice cream cone; rise of the rainbow; some slept through the night and some didn't

There was one bag of corn chips. Both of them wanted it.

So Margie cooked some broccoli. I was a little skeptical, but Jobe loved it.

So did Kalib. I was just amazed. I hated all such vegetables when I was small. I liked peas, though. And green beans.

After they did such good job at eating their broccoli and potatoes, I figured the boys deserved a treat. So I loaded them and Margie into the car and off we went to Dairy Queen. I ordered small cones dipped in chocolate for Margie and I.

"Baby cone, baby cone," Kalib said as I did.

So I ordered baby cones for Kalib and Jobe.

They were greatly enjoying them but then, as we drove up Church Road towards home, Jobe began to shriek. Yep, he had dropped his cone. We could not see it anywhere. When we got home, I found it lying beneath my seat. Amazingly enough, it was in pretty good shape. Only about a teaspoon of ice cream had leaked onto the floor and there were just a few flecks of dirt and grime on the ice cream and cone.

I gave it to Caleb, he cleaned off the flecks and ate what was left of it.

Jobe, standing at the door.

A bit later, I found them all in the back of Caleb's truck. Kalib and Caleb were grabbing at mosquitoes. Jobe was feeding them. 

Yep. The mosquitoes are back.

Kalib, Jobe, and the pickup truck. Mosquitoes are flying.

I left Caleb and Kalib to fend for themselves and brought Jobe into the house to get away from the mosquitoes. His grandma snatched him right up.

The news was on, and at the very moment that I took this picture, a story came on about a four-year old boy who had been run over by a car in Anchorage. A reporter was at the hospital and right after the story began, she reported that she had just gotten word that the boy had died.

In this way, it was a very hard day for Anchorage. A man crashed his Cessna 180 on the railroad tracks and it exploded and incinerated. He died, his mother died, and three of his children died. His wife and one child had been left behind to mourn. 

He was reputed to be a skilled and safe pilot and a good Christian. He had gone to Russia many times to preach the gospel as he believed it and, according to the news, everybody who knew him and his family thought highly of him and all of them.

Also, in recent days, five climbers have been killed on Denali and two more on a smaller mountain that stands near it.

It is a frightening world that we bring our children into, yet we always keep doing it and they always go forth into the risk and danger - which is exactly what we want them to do.

To climb Denali was once a goal of mine, but May is the month to do that and May always had other conflicts and then a time came when I decided that window was behind me and that I would set my sights on lower mountains, mountains to hike in, and be content with that.

Oddly enough, hearing about these people dying on Denali has rekindled my desire to climb the mountain. If I do, I've got to do it soon, like next May, before I get much older.

I'm not saying I will, but the urge just seems to be growing stronger and stronger.

Uncle Caleb and Nephew Caleb were rewarded for their battle by a magnificent rainbow. I discovered this later when I found them in the house and Caleb showed me a pic he had taken of Kalib on his iPhone. I immediately rushed them back outside, but the rainbow had greatly faded now, and because he knew that I wanted him to be, Kalib pretended to have no further interest in the rainbow at all.

For those who are Facebook friends with Caleb, you will be able to find his much more magical and magnificent iPhone picture of the rainbow and his nephew there.

The last time Jobe overnighted with us, he was still sleeping in his Apache cradleboard. Now that he has outgrown it, we were not quite sure where he should sleep. Margie decided that she would sleep with him in the guest bedroom. She propped a mattress against the wall, pushed the bed against it and there the two slept - he protected on one side by her body and on the other by the mattress.

This is how I found them this morning.

One single "click" from my camera and Jobe woke up. He instantly rose up and extended his arms over his grandma outward toward me. I had no choice but to let my camera down and to pick him up and hold him.

I carried him into the living room, we took a seat on the couch and with my left hand I activated my camera. This is just how it is between Jobe and I.

It has been this way since he became conscious of the world about him.

I use the lens cap on a Canon lens, but I lose lens caps all over Alaska and elsewhere, so I often must make do with whatever brand of cap I can find.

Kalib slept quite a bit longer yet. This is where he spent the night - next to me on the master bed in the master bedroom. Jimmy and Pistol-Yero also slept with us. Chicago usually sleeps here on this bed, too, but she has an irrational fear of little people and so would not come him with Kalib on the bed.

She stood in the hallway, complaining, for maybe two or three hours right during that part of the night when a person lying in bed really wants to be bothered by nothing, when he wants to sleep soundly.

Kalib slept right through all the cat-er-wailing, but not me.

Margie says Chicago woke her up, too, but Jobe slept peacefully through the night.

View images as slide show

Kalib flicks dirt into Melanie's face - is he outgrowing the spatula phase? Branson graduates; Margie goes and I am left alone again

Melanie showed up late in the afternoon and gave Jim a pet as Kalib slyly observed.

This is the shoe Melanie wore on her left foot. The one she wore on her right foot looks pretty much the same, except that the toe tapers in the opposite direction.

When next I observed Melanie and Kalib, they had moved to the front yard. Kalib was busy observing something himself. What could it be?

It was ants. Fat, black, ants.

Not long afterward, I found them back in the back yard, a bit beyond the spot where Margie had placed the dinosaur boots that Kalib had muddied in the swamp the day before out to air dry after she had cleaned them.

But what are Kalib and Melanie up to in the background?

And what is that in Kalib's hands?

Oh - the thing that Kalib holds is a weed plucking tool. And right there in front of him is a dandelion, yet to bloom. Melanie is helping him shove the weed plucker beneath the dandelion so that he can yank it right out of the ground by the root.

Kalib yanks the dandelion from the earth and sends it and dirt flying straight into his Aunt Melanie. This turned into a big game - one that the two repeated time and time again, until all the new dandelion plants had been rooted out.

Even so, those dandelions will pop right back up again.

I view Kalib plucking out a dandelion from another angle.

Dandelion and dirt come flying right toward me.

As usual, Kalib brought his spatula to the house with him - but not once did I see him carry it or play with it. I only saw it sitting here, atop the classifieds on the coffee table.

Margie says she saw him play with it. She said he used to flip junk mail like pancakes. There, lying on the floor, you can see one of the pieces of junk mail that Margie saw Kalib flip.

Still, he basically left it alone.

It makes me wonder if he is outgrowing his spatula phase?

If so, the thought makes me a little sad.

It has to happen, sooner or later, though.

Later would be okay with me.

The original plan had been that Jacob, Lavina and Jobe would come out and pick Kalib up Sunday afternoon. Instead, Lavina called to say that Jobe was still sick and to ask if, instead, we could bring Kalib home and then leave Margie there to babysit Jobe for a day or two or a week or however long it would take until he was well enough to return to daycare.

Since Melanie had come, she drove Margie and Kalib back to town with her.

And once again, after just three days and nights together with Margie, I am left alone with the cats. Caleb is here, of course, but he works all night and sleeps all day, except for when he goes out to hit golf balls.

Now I back up to an earlier point in the day:

Branson Starheim, of Metro Cafe, just graduated from kindergarten Thursday night. I promised Carmen that if she brought him and his diploma to Metro Cafe I would take a photograph to commemorate this landmark achievement.

So she did and I took a pretty standard study of Branson and Carmen, posing with the diploma as Branson sat on his bike, but afterward I took this one of Carmen helping Branson don his crash helmet and I like it better.

Following the diploma photo session, Branson, the graduate, zooms past me on his bike. Branson calls me, "Uncle Bill."

Now - about that delayed Arctic Series that I had promised to run this week: I am going to! Starting tomorrow. It's just that I did not know that Kalib was going to spend the weekend with us. He did, and I had to post a few pics  for all of his many fans from Alaska to Arizona to India to see.

View images as slides

Kalib gets his shoe stuck in the mud; straight "A" college student

Once again, Jobe had been feeling under the weather with his respiratory infection, so Margie and I went into town, picked Kalib up and brought him home to spend the weekend with us in order to make it easier for his parents to care for Jobe and do all they needed to do.

After he got up in the morning, Kalib laid lazily back down upon the couch.

He didn't stay lazy for long, though. Soon he was out in the backyard, gathering golf balls.

He knew just what to do with them.

Then he wandered down to the back part of the back yard.

Kalib, at the edge of the woods.

Soon, he wandered off into the trees. I wanted to follow, but I had let Jim out. I needed to keep my eye on Jim.

So Margie went off into the woods with Kalib while I kept my eye on Jim. Jim had not been out the whole time that I had been traveling, as he only goes out when I can watch him and make certain that he does not wander off and get eaten or run over.

It drove me a little nuts, though. 

I wanted to see what Kalib and his grandma were up to.

Finally, I got Caleb to take Jimmy into the house and I went off to find Kalib and Grandma. I found them returning from whatever adventure they had been on.

Then Kalib turned around and took off back in the direction from whence they had appeared. Margie followed. I followed, too.

Kalib left our property altogether and went out into what we still call "the swamp," or "the marsh." Dodd Shay, the friendly property owner, does not like me to call it "swamp" or "marsh."

"Meadow," he insists. "It's a meadow."

Perhaps he is right now. But for the first 10 or 15 years that we lived here, it was a swamp. If Kalib had been where he is in this picture, he would have been emerged in water to his hips - especially this time of year, when the snows have been melting.

Still, the swamp is not completely dry. A bit of water and a bit of muck still remains out there. Kalib scurried off to this four wheeler track, left by vandals who ignored all of Shay's signs telling them to keep their machines out of the meadow because machines damage it.

It looked to me like Kalib had stuck his foot into mud. "Kalib," his grandma and I both shouted out to him. "Don't put your foot in the mud! Take your foot out of the mud."

He just stood there, keeping his foot in the mud, smiling mischievously at us.

Finally, he pulled his foot out of the mud. We called him to come to us, but he would not. He just stood there with a troubled expression on his face.

No matter how much we called, he would not budge.

Finally, I walked to him. When I saw that he now wore only one of his little dinosaur boots, I understood the troubled expression. Look to the right of the frame. There you will see the little dinosaur boot that goes on his left foot - stuck in the mud.

His grandma came, pulled the boot out of the mud and helped him back into it.

Kalib did not want to walk in his mud-filled boot. He wanted to be carried. I offered to carry him, but he would not let me. Only grandma would do. Kalib is grandma's boy.

Then he got down and walked.

How did he get his knees so muddy?

Come night, Kalib and his grandma sat on the couch and reminisced about the day's grand adventure. They watched movies with Uncle Caleb.

A little after 10 PM, Kalib fell sound asleep in his grandma's embrace.

Yes, Kalib is Grandma's boy.

Grandpa then carried him into bed, tucked him in and there he slept for the next 11 hours.

Wow!

While I was traveling, Lisa completed all her class projects, took her finals and wound up with straight A's. It had been a very tough semester for her. She carried a full load, worked full time, and had to take on extra tasks such as dog sitting to make ends meet.

Once, we found her in tears and tried to give her some money to make it a little easier, but she would not take that money. She wanted to do it on her own and she did.

Right after she graduated from high school, Lisa went excitedly off to college in Durango, Colorado, but the year proved disastrous for her. She had an alcoholic roommate and she grew so homesick that when the year ended, she came home and dropped out of college.

But now she knows that college is something she needs to complete to go where she wants to go.

We are very proud of her.

View images as slide show

Simultaneous major events - when lone me needed to be three; red pickup truck; Jim

Man! My recent travels and work schedule have left me too exhausted to even make this blog today, but if the pilots above can fly their helicopters when I am exhausted, then I ought to be able to make a post.

As regular readers know, I have spent the past few weeks zipping about the Arctic and Interior by plane and car, shooting from one location to another, bouncing from 0 degrees F to 65 above and doing it all with many nights of little sleep.

Yet, I only accomplished about one-third of what I wanted to, what I needed to. In this time period, three major events that I needed to cover and be present for took place almost simultaneously.

One happened in Arizona, and I had planned to go. I had my airplane ticket. It was the one-year tradtional Apache memorial for my cherished friend, the Navajo artist, poet, song-writer, cartoonist and humorist Vincent Craig, whose bedside I had rushed to on May 14, 2010, only to arrive hours before he died. The memorial would take place on May 14, with preliminary events scheduled for the evening of May 13.

Before I learned of the memorial, I had planned to be on the Arctic Slope at the time, or maybe in the Brooks Range village of Anaktuvuk Pass, but when Vincent's wife Mariddie called to invite me to the memorial, I dropped those plans. I cashed in my miles for an Alaska Airlines ticket to Phoenix, Arizona.

From spring through fall, I do not like to leave Alaska to go anyplace where the night gets truly dark, but if there was going to be a memorial for Vincent, then nothing could keep me away - not darkness, not work, not any other event... well... almost no other event.

One month ago today, I dropped Margie off at the airport so that she could go to Arizona before me and spend some good time with the Apache side of our family. Afterward, I stopped by the Alaska Native Medical Center to visit my friend, Larry Aiken.

There, I happened upon Bruce Cain, director of operations for Ahtna, the Alaska Native Regional Corporation whose territory includes most of the Copper River basin. Bruce informed me that 95 year-old Katie John would be receiving her honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks at ceremonies to be held in Tok on May 13 and Fairbanks May 15. 

What a quandary! My heart told me that I HAD to be in Arizona for Vincent's memorial. My heart also told me that I HAD to be in Tok and Fairbanks for the honoring of Katie John. I had a history with Katie as well, and the way circumstances had played out had made me the only journalist to cover first hand the final, critical events of her story, particularly when she met with Governor Tony Knowles at Batzulnetas on the bank of Tanada Creek and turned his heart away from what all the major non-Native voices of power, money, and influence told him he must do in the best interest of the State of Alaska and instead toward justice for Katie and Alaska Natives.

I had also spent time in her culture camp. It was while I was landing on the road in Mentasta to cover her victory celebration that I had crashed and destroyed my airplane. After I crawled out of the cockpit, I shook that personal disaster off and I covered that celebration.

With this history, how could I miss the honoring of Katie John - a one-time event in the life of one of Alaska's true heros and most important people?

I couldn't miss it. I had to be there.

I snapped the picture above, by the way, as I walked down Seldon Street the morning after I returned from Katie's honoring.

So I set off to Point Hope and then Barrow with plans to return to Wasilla on the evening of May 8. This would give me time to take care of business, prepare an essay on Katie's history, square some things away and rest up a bit before I drove off to Tok.

Yet, on Friday, May 6, I borrowed a snowmachine from the North Slope Borough's Department of Wildlife Management and made my way across the Barrow ice to the camp of the Saggan whaling crew, captained by North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta.

I did not intend to stay beyond one evening. I went there intending to get a single picture, one of the Mayor at whale camp that I could put in Uiñiq along with a statement from the Mayor.

After I took a few pictures from which I could select, my plan was to visit other whale camps as well as the "perch," where scientists and whale counters were conducting a bowhead census.

Yet, after I reached Saggan camp, I saw the good spirit and enthusiasm of the crew. I saw how strongly they desired to receive the gift of the whale and to feed their community. I had no way to know if they would succeed, but if they did, I wanted to be there to document it.

Come Sunday, May 8, the ice conditions made it apparent to me that they would not be able to get their whale before my flight was scheduled to leave. I decided that I could still get everything done that I needed to do if I waited until the night of Tuesday, May 10, to go home.

Come that night, I pushed my departure back one more day, to the night of Wednesday, May 11. This would be pushing it, but would still enable me to get back to Wasilla in time to accomplish the bare minimum of what I needed to do before making the six hour drive to Tok.

Shortly before I left, the lead closed. Saggan crew pulled off the ice.

Sometime after I boarded my plane, Saggan returned to the lead, which had reopened. Twelve hours after I left Barrow, their bowhead came to them and they landed it.

I was thrilled for Saggan, but devastated for me. Utterly, utterly, devastated. I had missed the moment by so little.

Yet, there was nothing to do but my laundry, take a short night's rest and then drive to Tok and Fairbanks to cover the honoring of Katie John.

What does one person do, when three major events that he longs to be at happen simultaneously?

As frustrating as it is, I do believe that I made the right decision.

This honor will come to Katie John but once in a most significant lifetime.

I needed to be there. I was there.

And tonight, Margie will come home. Tonight, I will see my grandsons - who left for New Mexico and Arizona even before she did - in what feels to me like about ten years ago.

So I plan to put them on this blog tomorrow. This also means that I will push my promised posts from my Arctic travels back until next week.

In the meantime, here is Jim yesterday in the backyard, where the buds now sprout into leaves.

Brief stop at home - Jimmy goes crazy, won't leave me alone for a moment

I stepped into the house at about 1:30 this morning, looked down the hall and saw Jimmy step out of our bedroom. He saw me, and came bounding straight to me. Since then, he has refused to leave me alone, whether I be sleeping, eating, feeding fish, computering or whatever.

He is simply all over me - climbing on my lap, my shoulders, stepping onto my keyboard.

And now I must leave him again.

It is off to Tok I go, where Ahtna Matriarch Katie John, also known as Alaska's Rosa Parks for her long fight to take back her traditional fishing rights after the state tried to take them away, will be honored. On Sunday, she will receive her honorary PhD from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

And congratulations to Saggan crew in Barrow for landing a whale this morning.

I wish it had come while I was still there with you on the ice, but the important thing is that it came and the people of Barrow now have that much more to sustain them.

I know - the picture is a blur. I don't care. Seems appropriate to me. Life's a blur.