I walk about in hand and ankle cuffs, throwing rocks, as I listen to old songs play in my head

Although the nights have been cold, today was the third day in a row of exquisite, warm, sunshine and after Caleb returned from his late-morning coffee outing, I got him to agree not to go to bed until I could take a walk. I headed down Seldon to Church Road and, as I returned, I saw this vehicle pull out from Lower Serendipity. I should know the make, model, and year, I suppose, but I don't.

When I first saw it, I wondered if it had once served as a hearse. If so, I wondered about the people it had carried. I pictured an old man with pure white hair and a handle-bar mustache lying in the back inside a fine, blue, coffin, his hands folded on top of his chest over a black suit with blue pinstripes, taking his final ride. Then I pictured a tiny coffin.

I decided that instead, maybe it had been a woody, with surfboards piled on top. I pictured bleached-blond surfers and their bikini-clad honeys from the 1960's driving it along the edge of California seaside cliffs, damn near driving off the road because they could not keep their eyes off the waves breaking below.

I remembered driving along such cliffs, surfboard on top, the girls in the car screaming in terror at me to watch the road instead of the surf. I wouldn't have driven off the road. Even though I studied the surf, I knew at all times right where the edge of that cliff was.

I'm afraid the car was not a woody, it was a 1960 Ford Fairlane sedan and the girls did not wear bikinis. They were modestly dressed, actually.

Mormon girls. That's why.

A Jan and Dean song came into my mind:

I bought a cool wagon and we call it a woody

Surf City, here we come

You know its not very cherry its an oldie but a goodie

Surf City, here we come

Well it ain't got a backseat or a rear window

but it still gets me where I want to go

And we're going to Surf City, 'cause its two to one

You know we're going to Surf City, gonna have some fun...

...Two girls for every boy...

If I could but live my youth again, those girls would not be Mormons, or, if they were, they would be the wild ones (sorry, Mom).

One is only young once, and those who stand at the pulpit and preach to young people about what will bring them unbearable regret later in life can really miss the mark.

I walked under a sky that was blue, so deep, clear and clean and in the not too far distance, the mountains rose beautifully into it. The air was wonderfully warm and its aroma was sweet. Yet, I felt trapped, as though I was shackled in steel cuffs - both on my wrists and ankles.

This is how I had felt last summer, too, when I would get out and walk and see the sky and the mountains. This is because it was all inaccessible to me. I could see it, but I could not reach it; I could not go to it. I could not walk in it. This was because of the injury that I had suffered. I was horribly fragile and had a long way to go before I would heal.

And that's how the summer passed, and the fall, but always I was improving slowly and in the winter I began to feel new strength, but still I was limited. The pain in my right shoulder, upper arm and wrist was constant and that whole arm was weak. My range of motion was limited. Even a slight amount of stress, whether by bump or pull, could jar me with startling pain and seemed to threaten to knock me right back to where I had been.

Come the beginning of this summer, despite the fact that I still wore a brace upon my wrist and that the pain remained constant, there 100 percent of the time but usually at a low enough level that I could forget about it, I felt as though I were ready to go, full bore now.

I had a plan to do just that. I had what I figured would be a month's worth of field work - shooting pictures and conducting interviews - to do on the Arctic Slope. I created a fantasy in my head. Even as I did this field work - shooting and working oh, say, 12 hours a day, I would somehow find another eight hours or so to construct my 96 page Uiñiq magazine layout, write all my stories and get my publication press ready by August 1.

Then, I would cut loose for the entire month and do all those things that I had not been able to do last summer. I would hike in the mountains, I would canoe in the wild country, I would catch fish, including a king salmon, kayak in Prince William Sound and then at the end I would see if I could shoot a moose and put it on the table.

As anyone who has been with this blog knows, I had a great time on the Slope and I would judge my field work to have been quite successful. But how in the world I ever got the idea that I could put my magazine together at the same time as I did that field work, I do not know.

So I resigned myself to the idea that I had no choice but to use the month of August to put the magazine together - yet every now and then, no matter what, I would break away to go into the mountains, or onto the water, for one day, or even just an afternoon.

And then Margie fell. And now she needs me all the time. Even out here, on this short walk, knowing that Caleb was in the house with her should anything urgent come up, I was nervous and uncomfortable. I felt that I must get back to her quickly as I could. Those mountains were absolutely inaccessible to me. I felt trapped. Cuffed.

And then another old song came into my head, this one by the Everly Brothers:

Through the years our love will grow

like a river it will flow

It can't die because I'm so...

devoted...

to you!*

That "you" would be Margie. And being devoted does not necessarily mean romance at all; it does not necessarily mean holding hands and staring raptured into misty eyes. It means giving up what you so desperately want to do to be with that person when that person truly needs you - just as Margie gave up so much last summer to care for me; it means to be exhausted and to get up at any and all hours of the night, when you do not feel you can even open your eyes or raise your arms, to help that person through an unpleasant and painful task.

And even as I felt trapped and cuffed while walking in the open air under the bright sun, my Margie lay on the same bed where she had lain nearly eight days straight now, always on her back, never getting more than one foot... no, not even more than eight inches... from the bed in all that time.

And yes, I am devoted to my Margie. By so many standards upon which the marital relationship is often judged, I fail. Many is the woman who would have left me long ago. But we like each other. We don't just love each other. We like each other. We are friends. We enjoy hanging out together. And I am devoted to her. No matter how contrary to the idea of devotion some of my actions might seem by the so often artificial standards of the society that we live in.

So all those mountains must just sit there, for now, without me wandering through them.

I did not mean to get carried away like this. I should strike all this.

But what is that rock doing in the air, just beyond my thumb?

I threw it, and photographed as it left. See, yesterday, I threw an apple core into the bushes, for the birds, the squirrels, the bugs to eat. My throw was not good. In the time of my chidhood, if a boy had made such a throw his friends would have teased him, "you throw like a girl!"

It was a weak throw, and the core only traveled about 15 feet - the lingering result of my injury. So I decided that when I walk, I will stop every now and then, pick up a rock, and throw it, until I can hit a target a good distance away.

I probably threw two or three dozen rocks on this walk. I gripped the rocks the way you grip a baseball, and made a concerted effort to draw my arm over my head in good baseball style. It was difficult. It hurt. None of my rocks went much past 20 feet - until the last one. It flew maybe 30 feet.

So I am going to keep throwing rocks until they are frozen to the ground and buried under the snow.

In the midst of this coming winter, I will take Margie to Hawaii and I will rent a surfboard and with my strengthened arm I will paddle into the surf and then I will ride a wave.

It has been so damn long since I have ridden a wave.

So please, please... no more accidents!

Speaking of accidents... at the edge of Wards Road, over the tiny pond my kids named "Little Lake" when they were growing, I found this crash helmet in the weeds. See the indention that covers the nearby area? I could see that it was made by an up-ended machine, probably a four wheeler, most likely driven by a kid hot-rodding in wreckless abandon - maybe a little kid - just before (s)he went off the road.

But I don't know. Maybe it was a responsible adult. All I know for sure is that someone had an accident here and the helmet was left behind.

I wondered how bad it was? Hopefully, not too bad. Maybe Margie is not the only person around here laid up in bed right now.

The other day, Caleb bought himself an iPhone. He plays a game on it.

This is progress. I was able to help Margie out of bed and onto a chair, where she sat for a very long time and read a book. Since she can no longer babysit him, and Lavina had to go back to work, Kalib enrolled in daycare today, just as he did after she injured herself last January.

He and his parents did not get home until late, about 9:30, but they brought Margie's dinner with them. Hawaiian food -chicken and rice - cooked at that place in Mountain View, the name of which I forget.

I did not want to wait that late for dinner and so had eaten mine  - a can of pinto beans and a ham and cheese sandwich - earlier.

But Margie gave me a taste of hers.

Oh, geeze! Had I known, I would have waited until midnight, if need be.

That's how good it was.

It may have been the best chicken that I have ever tasted.

Other than Mom's, of course.

Oh yes - the Sarah Palin experiment:

It worked. I had the biggest flood of hits today that I have received since I posted the Barrow baby contest.

No - Sarah Palin did not draw as many people to the blog as did the Barrow babies, but she drew quite a few, anyway.

*My condolences to Congressman Don Young, over the loss of his wife, Lu.

Sarah Palin experiment - a berrylicious walk with Kalib and his dad

The experiment:

Typically, the number of visitors to this site drops off come Saturday and Sunday, but this weekend something curious happened: for no reason that I could think of, the number of visitors actually rose. It did not reach the stupendous levels (for me) that it did for two days running when I posted the Barrow baby contest, but, none-the-less, it showed a healthy increase over what it had been and certainly over the typical weekend.

I was curious as to why, and so did some back-tracking and discovered that some blogs that link to me (most notably the Immoral Minority) had stories that Sarah Palin and husband Todd are about to divorce (denied by Palin's spokeswoman). 

And then, last night, the word "Palin" was in my headline.

I figured that these two factors led to the increase.

So, other than what I have stated above, this blog post has nothing to do with Sarah Palin. It is merely an experiment to see what kind of numbers I will get by including her name in the post headline. This is a one-time experiment. I will not do it again. Nor is Sarah Palin about to become a regular topic of this blog, even though it is obvious to me that my really-pretty-small audience could be significantly larger if I were to run a few Sarah Palin stories every week, perhaps every day.

If she stays in Wasilla, or even Alaska, it is almost inevitable that our paths will cross somewhere and then I will probably get a picture and post it with a few words, but, otherwise, this blog has other concerns and I will leave her to the other bloggers.

The walk.

It began in our front yard, where Kalib observed as his parents engaged in a lovey-dovey wrestling match. Shortly thereafter, Kalib found a mushroom.

He did not try to eat it and if he would have, I would not have let him.

Lavina stayed home, just in case Margie would need some help. Jacob took off walking. Fearing that he was about to be left behind, Kalib came running after. I followed with my camera.

Eventually, Kalib wound up on his father's shoulders.

By and by, he was transferred to Muzzy's back. It was sweet.

Muzzy galloped up the embankment, bucking Kalib from his back. Tenaciously, Kalib kept hold of the reins.

There were berries to eat - raspberries, blueberries and currants. There were cranberries, too, but they were not yet ready to be picked.

By the time we reached a hill that we had to descend, Kalib was walking again. Two trails went down that hill - one off at an angle with a more gentle slope, the other straight down, at a steep slope. Jacob tried to lead Kalib down the gentle slope, but he refused to go that way. He insisted upon going down the steep slope, so Jacob got in front of him and gave him his hands.

Fireweed grew in abundance at the bottom, so Jacob and Kalib plunged in. There were many honey bees flying about in those flowers, plus bumble bees and yellow jackets. When a yellow jacket alit on a blossom right in front of Kalib, Jacob warned him to leave it alone.

But, as you can see, Kalib reached out with both hands. Fortunately, he did not get stung.

And then we found more berries.

Now we are on the last stretch, coming through the marsh towards home.

Even though we are now within three hundred yards of the house, it will take Kalib and Jacob more than an hour to reach it. I grew worried about Margie and so, right after I took the following picture, hurried back to our bedroom, leaving the father and son to enjoy the delights of so beautiful a day alone together.

Jacob and Kalib, picking berries. "It was a berrylicious walk," Jacob said.

Kalib goes away - I wonder how he will have changed when next I see him, six or seven weeks from now? (Part 2 - and then some more India)

When we leave Auntie Lisa's to return briefly to Auntie Melanie's, Kalib rides with us, holding his teddy St. Bernard.

Up the stairs to Melanie's Duck Downs apartment.

Kalib climbs into a kitty tunnel. He meows and purrs and swishes his tail.

Soon, we are the airport, where he looks upon the stuffed remains of a once wild Kodiak brown bear.

Kalib tries to sneak on with the baggage. Jacob grabs him.

He was with his dad in the bookstore, but then he saw his mother.

His dad kisses him goodbye.

Then the three of them head for security and out of sight.

Poor Jacob! He drives away separately from me but does not get far before Lavina calls him. Kalib does not have his teddy St. Bernard. It was left at Melanie's place. Jacob drives over. Melanie runs out to meet him and gives him the St. Bernard. He rushes it back to the airport. He can see Kalib, Lavina, and Margie on the other side of the security barrier.

A security man comes forward. Jacob gives him the bernard. He takes it back to Kalib. The flight is on.

Tomorrow, I will return to the wedding and India, but for now I must take a break and go bike riding in Wasilla

At the moment, I am frustrated to the extreme. Bike riding is a good thing to do when you are frustrated. I am frustrated because I just spent the past few hours taking a first look at my shoot of Soundarya and Anil's wedding. Now I face the terrible irony that I journeyed all the way to India specifically to photograph their wedding, got a decent enough take of various events that preceded the wedding, plus a pretty good shoot of all the things that we did in India after the wedding, but my shoot of the wedding itself...

Despite the fact that I was in their country, I should never have yielded to the hired photographer and his videographer. I should have made an issue of the fact that I traveled all the way from Alaska to India to do a shoot of love, a shoot of the heart, and I should have insisted that they back off, kill that glaring light and let me do the shoot that I had come to India to do!

Ohhhhhhhh - that monster floodlight!

Ohhhhhhhh - that out-turned palm and push of the hand!

Still, my dear Soundarya and Anil, remember always the deep friendship and love that brought me to India and your wedding. That is what matters now, more than the pictures. They will never be as they would have been, but the friendship will be.

As frustrated with this take as I am, I will still post a wedding series. At the very end, it will take a rather nice turn.

Back to bike riding: I have just loaded pictures that I have taken over the past three days or so as I rode my bike about Wasilla.

In the image above, I am coming down Ward's Road, nearing home, after a short ride of less than five miles.

Even when I bike ride, I am cognizant of any airplane that flies overhead. When I was in India, I decided that I should give myself a goal to replace my crashed airplane by July 14, 2010.

This is an absurd goal, given the fact that it is going to be a genuine struggle just to hang on to what we have until then.

Still, I want to have an airplane again. I need an airplane again. I can hardly stand not having an airplane. Time is running out and I am tired of being bound to the ground, able to fly only in other people's airplanes.

Plus, this blog can never be what I want it to be unless I get an airplane.

This is Alaska, my friends, and you cannot get around this place properly unless you have an airplane.

No, not even flying commercially, unless you are very, very, wealthy.

Consider my last trip north, to the Arctic Slope - to Barrow and Wainwright, just before I went to India.

My airfare for those two relatively small hops cost me about the same as did my airfare to Bangalore and back!

How absurd is that?

I bike down Lucille Street towards Shrock Road, towards the Talkeetna Mountains.

And then yesterday Lavina surprised me when she came into my office to tell me that she and Jacob were going to take Kalib on a bike ride. She asked me if I wanted to come. It would be a short ride - three miles round trip - at a slow pace, but I had never been bike riding with my grandson before, so off I went.

Lavina and Kalib.

Today, towards the end of an eight-mile bike ride, I traveled through Upper Serendipity. How I detest Serendipity! I do not detest the people who live there, nor do I resent them. They are just doing what people do.

But when one knows untrammeled country the way I knew Serendipity before it became Serendipity, and then one is forced to watch helplessly as it becomes what it is today, it is an extremly painful thing. Back then, I would also ride my bike through this area - on narrow trails originally tamped out by moose. I would see no roads, no houses, no pavement; seldom would I see another person.

Now this is what I see.

In a way, though, it is a good exercise for me, considering how much of my life has been spent with Native people, from the Lakota to the Apache to all the Alaska Natives. The loss that I feel in Serendipity is so tiny, by comparison.

And the area now called Serendipity was their loss even before it was mine.

As I came down the Upper Serendipity hill toward Lower Serendipity, I saw a robin standing in the road in front of me.

As I approached, I pointed my pocket camera at it. At the moment it raised its wings, I snapped the shutter. Compared to my DSLR's, the pocket camera is a bit slow to react, but it is easy to carry when I ride a bike.

Just beyond the robin, I turned the pocket camera toward the Talkeetnas. Up there is Hatcher Pass, and Gold Mint Trail. I hope to take the bike up there, before the summer is over, and do some real trail riding. First, I need to get in better shape. Pretty hard to do, given all the traveling I have ahead of me.

Still... maybe by August or September.

Watch this blog and find out.

Easter Sunday, part C: We eat and hang out

Remember those strawberries that I photographed in Carr's yesterday? Here they are again - desert, on Easter Sunday, 2009 at the Hess home in Wasilla, Alaska.

The main course was ham, mashed potatoes, potato salad and green beans. Even before dinner, we could not stop ourselves from eating eggs. When it came time for the strawberry shortcake, Kalib wandered about, mooching off of whomever he saw eating in front of him - in this case, Mom.

Charlie borrowed my guitar for awhile and filled the house with wild music. As for the guitar, it is a martin and I first saw it in the display window of a music store in Globe, Arizona, in 1976. I went inside, the salesman got it down for me, I took a seat, and played a bit of Bach on it.

Never had a guitar sounded so good in my hands. I had to have it. It cost $1800 and my annual income was $10,000. I didn't care. I put some money down on lay-away and kept paying until that day came when I could finally pick it up and bring it home.

I did love that guitar and I even played it in a master class with Christopher Parkening. Many people used to think that I was really good, but that was only because they did not know better. I knew better.

There is only one way to be really good on the classic guitar, and that is to play and play and play and play. Practice, practice, practice. I'm a photographer, I'm a writer. I hardly have time for both. How could I be a classical guitarist, too?

So I put the guitar aside, because the only thing that I could do with it was to play works that other people had composed, that other guitarists could interpret much better than I could - but I can create originals with a camera, and keyboard.

Once, during one of those times that I have mentioned when I was broke and in dire need of money, I took this guitar to a pawnshop right here in Wasilla. The fool behind the counter asked me how much it was worth. I told him.

He laughed loud and scornful, asked me what kind of fool I thought he was. At most, he said, it was worth about $150 - he had seen a lot of guitars and he knew - so he would loan me maybe $50 for it.

So I walked out of his store with no money but my guitar in its case, leaving the fool to think that he was very clever, with no idea of the profit he could have made had he given me a loan that reflected its true value, if I had then defaulted.

I often imagine that the day will come when I am able to do nothing but sit at home and write my books, and that I might then find myself with a little time to play the damn thing again.

But really, I don't think so.

As Lisa looks on in bemusement, Melanie reads a few lines from the Anchorage Daily News, concerning Wasilla's most famous resident. These are the words that she read, ""April 6, 2009, Juneau, Alaska -- Responding to the missile test by North Korea, Governor Sarah Palin today reaffirmed Alaska's commitment to protecting America from rogue nation missile attacks." 

Both of my daughters were most amused. 

Juniper came out with Lisa. We were all happy to see her, but she was unhappy the entire time that she was here.

As for the blue golf-ball, Kalib got to hunt Easter eggs twice this year. The first time in Shonto, Arizona, down in his ancestral Navajo home. There, he found an egg that designated him as a prize winner - he won a toy golf set, with a minature plastic golf cart and minature clubs, but large, blue, plastic golf balls, including this one.

Uncle "Tiger" Caleb was greatly pleased.

Melanie and Lisa continue to engage in little verbal battles, which they smile and chuckle through. Many such duels arose today, and I was at the center of at least one.

Melanie asked, "Dad, is there any way to play music in the house?"

"Dad's not anti-music!" Lisa retorted.

"I didn't say he was!" Melanie shot back.

Then everybody chuckled.

Later, their bellies full, Melanie and Charlie walked out to Melanie's car so that they could drive to Eagle River and eat a second Easter dinner with Charlie's parents.

Remember what I said when Melanie left after her last visit? It always comes to this. Every time she visits, she leaves. Every single time.

Lisa stayed longer, but, then, just before 10:00 PM, she carried Juniper to the car, came back in, passed hugs around and then she, too, drove away.

Yes, it always comes to this.