The wind tries to blow the moon away; Jimmy is a bad good cat; we pick up Kalib and Jobe; beauty at the cave temples

Again, I found myself walking in the hard, cold, wind which has seemed to become perpetual lately - temperature about 0 F. Yesterday afternoon, I heard a forecast on the radio calling for an overnight high wind advisory, with winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 km/h) at some places in this valley and temperatures going to -20 F (-28 C).

That would be quite a wind-chill factor.

Well, the night has past and none of that quite came true here - maybe it did somewhere else in the valley but not here. Still, it was a mighty cold brisk wind out there and when you went walking in it, it let you know it.

Even so, Ubiquitous Raven came sailing by.

On the moon, there was no wind at all. See how still it is up there?

The day before, a triple stop sign had ordered me to stop three times. Now, I was ordered to stop once, but I was on foot, so I did not obey that order.

Well, I guess I stopped to take the picture.

But not because I was ordered to.

If I were a child, and  had a sled...

So, just why did the chicken cross the road? I don't know, and this dog doesn't either. Furthermore, neither one of us cares. If a chicken wants to cross the road, that's the chicken's business.

Why do people make such a big deal about a chicken crossing the road, anyway?

When I left to go on my walk, Jimmy had been sitting on the sill of my office window, looking out. This had made me a bit nervous, as Jimmy can do some pretty bad things when he has the office to himself. He turns off hard drives, erases things from my computer and types gibberish into my stories.

I am not making this up - he does all of these things.

Plus, he loves to push things off counters, desks and tables and watch them fall to the floor.

Even so, he looked so happy in the window sill that I decided to chance it and leave him there.

I came home the back way, through the marsh, hoping that I might find some moose there.

I didn't, but when I came up through our back yard, I saw Jimmy sitting right where I had left him about one hour before.

He had been a good cat.

But then Jimmy is always a good cat, even when he is bad.

I don't know how there could be a better cat than Jimmy.

He is ten-and-a-half years old now.

If he goes before me, which seems quite possible, it will be very hard.

Jacob and Lavina wanted to do some major house cleaning this weekend, so they asked us to take the boys. We agreed and in the late afternoon drove into Anchorage to get them.

As you can see, Anchorage has not been scoured by the same high winds that we have - except for the Anchorage Hillside, populated largely by rich people who every winter endure 100 mph plus winds, but they have a really good view from up there. They can see Cook Inlet, Denali, Foraker and a host of active volcanoes.

The snow did not mostly all blow away there the way it did in Wasilla. Plenty was left behind to weather the big warmup - that warmup now being history.

Here we are, picking up the boys. Muzzy wants to come, too. We will not let him.

Now we are getting ready to leave, but before we do, Lisa stops by. That's her and Jacob in the driveway.

On the way out, we stopped at Taco Bell on Muldoon and found a cop with his lights flashing, parked behind an empty vehicle.

I have no idea what the story was. You could look in the Anchorage Daily News, but I doubt that you will find it there, either.

I could have played the role of the true reporter, gotten out, interviewed the officer, took a picture of any suspect with her hands over her eyes. I could have done something like that. I have those basic skills, you know.

If I had done it, then I could tell you why the cop had stopped behind the empty car.

But I was more interested in eating my burrito than in getting the story.

Nobody can fire me.

This is my blog and if I would rather eat a burrito than report on a cop-stop, I can.

We then drove on to Wasilla. The winds weren't bad at all until we reached the hay flats. Then it felt kind of like being in an airplane, flying through turbulence, except that the bumps and jolts were all lateral - no up and down.

A couple of times, we damn near got blasted out of our lane. I could hear the sound of dust and small pebbles smacking the car.

But we made it. I was glad, too, because if we hadn't have I would never have seen this tanker truck roar through the intersection of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

I don't know about you, but, at the end of a long, hard, tough, day, I really enjoy seeing a truck blast through the intersection like this.

It just takes all the stress that I feel and carries it down the road with it.

Poor truck driver! Now he must deal with that stress.

Better him than me.

He's probably tougher than I am, better able to take it.

Truck drivers are known for being tough, able to take it.

Once in the house, Kalib found a flashlight. I found another. We played flashlight games.

Jobe does not know how to use a flashlight, but that did not stop him from joining in the games.

Yes, Kalib had brought his spatula - none of the expensive, fancy toys that he got for Christmas and his birthday. Just his spatula.

And this from India:

Two girls in front of the cave temples of Badami.

I hate to say this, and I mean no offense to any of my fellow Americans, but after one spends a little time in India and then returns to the US, the way people dress here - at least the women - just seems kind of dull and drab by comparison.

The women in India just dress beautifully - even poverty stricken women, begging in the streets.

They remind me of the Navajo saying, "I walk in beauty."

Badami is a long way from Navajo land, but the red rocks kind of remind me of it, as do temples, built in caves - not the same at all but yet evocative of cliff dwellings.

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Geese pass by the sun; Mona, Jobe, Larry and Jim - Pioneer Peak at dusk, Joe Miller sign beneath

I headed for Anchorage about noon, picked Larry Aiken up at his hotel and then drove to the airport to meet his special friend, Mona, who had flown down from Barrow to stay with him during his cancer treatment.

As we waited at a stoplight, we saw some geese coming.

I still have not located my pocket camera (although I know it is here) and I had forgotten to bring a DSLR. That left only my iPhone and it was buried deep in my pocket. I did not think I could get it out and into camera mode in time and so decided just to let the geese pass by, unshot.

But no! To quit is not the natural way of Alaskans and it is not my way. I dug into my pocket, pulled out the iPhone, switched it to camera mode, raised it to the window and then could see nothing in it but the intense glare of the high-noon sun.

So I shot blind. I got my geese. 

Pretty soon, I expect to get a call from MOMA* in New York. As soon as they learn about this photo, they will want to hang it on their wall.

I don't know what I will do, if I will let them hang it or not. I will have to think about it.

Here is how you can know:

Go to New York, or stay there if you are already there. Visit MOMA. If you see this iPhone photo prominently displayed on the wall, then you know I said, "yes."

If you don't, then you know I said, "no."

I can be quite particular about just who I let show my photographs.

*Museum of Modern Art.

After we got to the house, Jobe charmed Mona.

Then Jim came out, to charm both Mona and Larry. 

I hardly took any pictures. I just visited and ate. I ate too much, and I still feel it today.

Jacob and Lavina came out and so did Melanie and Lisa. Caleb was already here. Only Rex and Ama were missing. They must have been out getting in some good times before she departed back to San Francisco Bay, for just a short stay.

At dusk, I drove Larry and Mona back to Anchorage.

Although it is not at all obvious in this blog-sized version, if you could see this image at full 5D II resolution, you would clearly see that the little white rectangle with the dark in the middle down at the lower right is a campaign sign pushing Joe Miller for Senate.

Given all that has come to light, it is kind of strange to see such a sign, yet, there you have it.

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I wake up on a hard day and look right into the eyes of a good black cat

I had a big post planned for today and this image was not a part of it. Before I went to bed early this morning, I selected 24 images from which to build today's post, put them in a folder and then selected 22 more which I put into a separate folder as raw material for tomorrow's post, as I will be traveling and it might be difficult for me to put one up.

I believe both posts would have been quite good. Tomorrow's would have had particular impact to long-term readers familiar with the people who appear regularly in the part of my life that unfolds in Wasilla.

Instead, I am posting this single, solitary, blurry iPhone photo of my good friend Jim. It is the first and so far the only photo that I have taken today. I took it right after I woke up, before I got out of bed, as Jim lay upon my chest, looking at me.

In my mind, it is appropriate that it is blurry, because to me, when I first wake up, the world is a blur, anyway.

Right now, especially. I suspect that everyone has days when the course of life seems unbearably hard, when the day ahead seems to be an impossible one. Today is such a day for me.

I must leave for Anchorage in about six hours to catch my flight to Phoenix. Between now and then, I have about six days worth of work to get done. I don't know how I can do it. In fact, I can't. I must also finally get my hair cut, my beard trimmed.

But that's not the hardest part. It's always like this when I leave home. It's never any other way. I always think that next time, I will be efficient and organized, but I never am.

The truly hard part is that I am leaving to say goodbye to a friend. And I hope to hell I get to Arizona in time to do so.

I don't know if I will.

But Dustinn tells me that the doctor says his dad is the toughest man he has ever treated, that no other patient of his has ever endured so long through the same trials.

Yes, he is a tough man, the toughest kind - yet also the gentlest kind. And good. A truly good man. A talented man. A great artist, fantastic musician, poet and humorist, husband, father, grandfather and friend.

So I yet remain hopeful that I will reach him in time.

Vincent Craig, I love you.

A free cup of coffee; 65 degrees, four-wheelers, the Little Su, black cat outside, a golf course far away

Just as All Things Considered began on the radio, I pulled up to the window at Metro Cafe yesterday afternoon only to discover that someone had bought me a cup of coffee and a cranberry muffin. She did not leave her name, but remained anonymous. And the day before, I found a gift card waiting for me from Funny Face.

My goodness!

Thank you all!

As Sashana prepared to hand me the cup, she and Carmen posed for:

Through the Window Metro Study, #3.3333333... and so on to infinity

As I drove away, sipping, I saw these two - father and son, perhaps; uncle and nephew, maybe; perhaps just friend and friend, out enjoying the 65 degree weather on a four-wheeler.

Yes. You read me correctly.

SIXTY-FIVE DEGREES!

I thought for a moment that I had moved to The Bahamas.

But it was still Wasilla. I could tell by the four-wheeler dust. Can you believe it? Just a few days ago, the ground surface varied between frozen solid and muck, and now a kid on a four-wheeler can have a blast, kicking up dust.

As I crossed the bridge over the Little Susistna, I saw this man and this young girl walking along the bank.

It turned out that he is Mike and the young girl is his 26-month old daughter, Dagne. They live five miles from the river and this is the first time that they have visited it since before the snow came down in October.

Jimmy also ventured outside for the first time. He kept pawing at the window until finally I relented, but only under the condition that he would remain always in my eyesight.

Chicago observed, but did not follow. In the ten or 11 or 12 years that she has been with us, Chicago has ventured outside exactly once. As I have mentioned before and will someday tell in detail, here or in a book or both, it took us seven weeks and two days to get her back and then she was damn near dead - nothing but a dehydrated bag of bones.

She is fat now.

As eager as he had been to go out, once he got out, Jimmy was spooked. Something out there was frightening him. He refused to leave the porch.

As for Royce, there in the background, I would have been happy to let him out but he never wanted to venture past the window - which is odd for Royce.

I am happy to report that, at long last, he is gaining some weight. Yet, he is still skinny. He eats a ton of food - more than the other three combined, I would say, and it just seems to go right through him.

But he is gaining some weight, so he must be retaining some of it.

It was Caleb that had spooked Jimmy so. Caleb had knocked some balls way back into the trees, at the bottom of the little hill and had gone down to search for them.

Jimmy could not see him, but he could hear him. He did not know what he was.

A bear, maybe.

If Jimmy even know about bears.

I doubt that he does. How would he?

He probably imagined that Caleb was something even bigger and more frightening than the biggest, baddest, bear out there.

From behind my office window, Pistol-Yero calmly observed it all.

This is Caleb this morning. Where do you think he is and what is he looking at?

He is at IHOP. Caleb had to drop his car off at the shop at 8:00 AM. He asked me to pick him up and then he took me to breakfast, his treat. Caleb loves IHOP pancakes, so that's where we went.

Well, he's still looking. At what?

Passing cars, is all I can think of.

Or maybe golf courses, far away, like Pebble Beach, Tucson, or Scottsman's Head.

After a long, uncomfortable flight with another delay, I am back in Wasilla, with my wife and cats

Twenty-four hours and about $350 after I had been originally scheduled to board the first leg of my Delta Airlines flight home, I followed these guys onto a plane bound for Salt Lake City from New York's JFK airport.

We filed between the rows of those seated among the elite in first class, where serious business was being conducted, and then entered the cabin.

My first choice is always a window seat, then an aisle and I hate the middle, just like most everyone else does. The worst of all is a middle seat in an emergency exit row, because the seats do not recline and instead of a regular armrest that can be lifted up and down, the armrests are solid from the seat up. This creates the effect of being forced to sit in a rigid box.

I had originally successfully booked non-emergency row window seats all the way from New York to Anchorage but now, I had been assigned to a middle seat in an emergency exit row.

Worse yet, when I sat down, I discovered that there was a big, irritating, bump right in the middle of the seat. I would have to sit on that bump for five-and-a-half hours.

The situation worsened even more when I discovered that I been sat between two people, who, whenever they were awake, from the beginning of the flight to the end, continually and intentionally did all they could to try to push my elbows off the armrests altogether. I did not totally begrudge them, because it is just a plane fact that those three seats are just too squished together. There simply is not room for three adults to sit comfortably side by side in them - although I am usually reasonably comfortable in a window seat, because I can lean against the wall and away from the shared armrest. Yet, it was still incredible. I had been stuck in middle seats plenty of times, but I had never before experienced anything like this.

When my adjacent passengers would nap, they would relax into their most comfortable positions, which meant they would lean away from me toward the window or the aisle and their arms would follow them off the rest, no longer to push against me.

Even so, I managed to read most of what was left of the book, Into the Heart of the Sea, before we reached Salt Lake City, but it was the most uncomfortable ride I have ever had in a jet airplane. I am still sore from it.

Yet, compared to the travels of those who were part of the final voyage of the Whaleship Essex, I rode in comfort and luxury and traveled to my destination with amazing speed. I have nothing to complain about.

In Salt Lake, the flight back to Anchorage had already begun to board. I was hungry, so I bought a not-very-good ham sandwich and a bottle of water at a diner right across from the gate, then got in line.

Just as I was about to board, it was announced that the flight had suddenly been put on a weather hold, due to high winds and snow. Out the window, I could see that the snow had turned to rain and it did not look that bad, but apparently it was.

So, as I took note of a bar and grill just a short distance away where I could have got a hot meal, I sat down and ate my sandwich.

Then Lydia Olympic, who had been in the bar and grill watching basketball, sat down beside me. 

I first met Lydia many years ago when I followed her and several other Alaska Native tribal leaders on to a forum in Washington, DC, where they also did some lobbying among House Representatives and Senators.

Lydia is from the Lake Iliamna village of Igiugig in the Bristol Bay Region. Right now, she is living in Anchorage where she relocated in order to fight against the Pebble Mine, because of the harm she fears it could bring to the salmon and other wildlife resources of her home.

"Do you get back to Igiugig much?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said. "Every summer I go back to cut fish."

Finally, they let us board the plane where, once again, I was seated in an emergency exit row. This time, at least, I had an aisle seat and the middle was empty. I did not have to contend with battling elbows. We seated in the emergency rows all paid strict and rapt attention as the stewardess told us about our duties should the need arise to evacuate the airplane.

After the lecture, we sat on the tarmac for about two more hours as we waited for the plane to get de-iced.

It was strange to let my mind wander outside the plane and into the surrounding community. I let it wander to my sister Mary Ann's house, downtown. I had tried to call her right after we landed, but she did not pick up. It was a bit after 9, but some people go to bed early.

I let it wander to the house up in the Salt Lake suburb of Sandy, where Margie and I used to so dearly love to drop into during our early days of marriage. We visit my parents, eat and watch TV with them and sometimes at night, being as quiet as we could possibly be, make love as the old folks slept. Sometimes, we would drop baby Jacob off so we could go out and do things like go to movies or climb a nearby mountain.

I pictured that house now, with only my older brother Rex in it, he living in a state of declining health.

I pictured the place upon a hill at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, where lay my Mom and Dad and my brother Ron. Ron never wanted to be buried but cremated but in the end, his wish was overwhelmed by the force of the Mormon faith that he had journeyed away from long before and he got buried, anyway.

I thought of the later years when I would visit my Mom and Dad, and how hard those years became. I thought about Mom and Dad and Mary Ann and Rex had always hoped that, at some point, I would come to my senses, say my Alaska adventure had been good but was now over and that I might settle down nearby in that same valley to one day be buried on that hill with them.

I love Utah, but, damn, I couldn't live there. I just couldn't.

I lived in Utah for one year when I was a baby and for the five years total that I attended BYU.

That was enough. I can't live there anymore.

Sometimes, though, I awake from a dream. In it, I am in the basement of my parents' house where I am at last writing my books.

I am alone in that house. Nobody else lives there. Just me.

I really don't like that dream.

Then the flight was off - five more hours to sit in a box seat with a stiff, non-reclining back, having already sat in it for two on the ground - plus, of course, the New York to Salt Lake ordeal.

After about four of those hours had passed, I headed back to the restroom.

When I came out, I heard a female voice speak out of the near darkness of the cabin, in which all the main lights had been turned out: "Bill? Is that you?"

It was me, and Courtney was the young woman who asked. I first met Courtney when she showed up at the hospital emergency room after a Saturday Wasilla High football game, probably in 1992.

Caleb had been injured in that game and his memory temporarily knocked out of his head.

Courtney, a cheerleader, was right there at his side, hovering adoringly over him, smiling warmly upon him, caressing his hands in hers'.

They were an item for a long time after that, hanging out, going to the prom and such, but in time she went her own way. Now she was on the plane with her daughter, Abby, and a son who was sleeping in such a dark spot that I could not make him out. They had been living in Texas with her husband, who had just becoming qualified to fly a C-130.

Now she was going back to Wasilla. "I can't believe how much I have missed being home," she told me. "You don't realize how good it is until you go away."

"How old is Abby?" I asked Courtney. Abby answered for herself.

Margie picked me up at the airport and we arrived home in Wasilla about 4:15 AM - 25 hours after I had gotten up at the Comfort Inn that I had stayed in by JFK.

It was nearly five by the time we got to bed and I had hoped to sleep until 11:00 AM, ten at the earliest. But I began to wake up at 7:30, perhaps in part because Jim kept going back and forth from beneath the blankets to resting on top of me.

Everyone tells me that Jim has a hard time when I gone. He gets lonely and anxious and a bit desperate. When I come home, he will come to me with the most anxious expression. Then he will dash this way and that way out of sheer joy. Finally, he will settle down wherever I am at and will stick as close to me as possible.

As I have been working on this blog, he has alternated between resting upon my chest and shoulder to my lap.

Anyway, I gave up on sleep shortly after I took this picture at, as the clock says, 8:44 AM.

Pistol-Yero was sleeping there, too, but when I got up, it woke him up. I do not think he was ready to wake up.

Next I went out into the garage, where Royce and Chicago had already begun to dine on food put out the night before.

I then went outside to get the paper. 

According to our tradition, I next took Margie out to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, just as I always do when I return home from a trip, whether I can afford to or not.

I ordered my hash browns to be cooked "very light." They came back cooked dark, hard and crispy on the outside, mush on the inside.

Oh, well. The ham and eggs were very tasty, the coffee just right, the multi-grain toast and jam quite excellent.

Overall, breakfast was a good and pleasant experience - as long as I did not think to much about what we now face.

Although I am back in Wasilla, I will return to New York and then Nantucket very shortly - at least in this blog. I will begin by showing readers how my search for a New York City pretzel turned out, and most definitely I will bring you along on the tour of Cloisters and the very northern tip of Manhattan that Chie Sakakibara took me on. I will tell you a bit about the unlikely story of how she, a girl in Japan who originally believed Native Americans to be Caucasian because that's how she saw them in the movies and Aaron Fox became bonded to the Iñupiat of the Arctic Slope and brought a treasure that had been lost back to them.

As to Nantucket, I am now completely fascinated with the place and want to learn all I can about it.