Two studies of the young writer, Shoshana; dog in the post office; six scenic views taken through the window or a red Ford Escape in the vicinity of the Little Susistna River and the Manvil H. Olson Bridge; breakfast

Metro Cafe study of the young writer, Shoshana, #1,313,467,982.3333: The young writer removes the cap from the half-and-half.

Metro Cafe study of the young writer, Shoshana, #7: The young writer readies a lid before snapping it on a cup of steaming Americano.

In mid December, a photographer friend who lives in Greece and who I met at the online magazine, burn, air-mailed his book, Nicosia in Dark and White, to my street address. Months passed, and that book did not show up. So, maybe less than two weeks ago, he mailed me another copy, this time to my P.O. Box.

The very next day, the book that he had sent three months earlier did arrive at my house.

And now the one that he sent to my P.O. Box arrived, but since it does not fit into my box, I had to stand in line to pick it up.

As I waited, I saw this dog, a helper dog. When he lady and the dog left, I wanted to call out to her, to stop her and have her tell me something of this dog's story and what it does for her.

But I did not want to lose my place in line. I did not want to annoy the people in line behind me.

So I did not call out.

The two walked out the door and I have seen neither since.

Someday, maybe.

Scenic view in the vicinity of the Little Susistna River and the Manvil H. Olson Bridge as seen through the window of a red Ford Escape, # 1: the river itself.

Scenic view in the vicinity of the Little Susistna River and the Manvil H. Olson Bridge as seen through the window of a red Ford Escape, # 2: trees above the bank of the river.

Scenic view in the vicinity of the Little Susistna River and the Manvil H. Olson Bridge as seen through the window of a red Ford Escape, # 3: the bullet-pocked sign put up in honor of Manvil H. Olson, for whom the bridge is named.

Scenic view in the vicinity of the Little Susistna River and the Manvil H. Olson Bridge as seen through the window of a red Ford Escape, # 4: a tree on the river's bank is reflected off the dirty window of a school bus.

Scenic view in the vicinity of the Little Susistna River and the Manvil H. Olson Bridge as seen through the window of a red Ford Escape, # 5: queue of mailboxes just across the bridge.

Scenic view in the vicinity of the Little Susistna River and the Manvil H. Olson Bridge as seen through the window of a red Ford Escape, # 6: the river itself, as seen while crossing back over the bridge.

I had another one of those nights that I could not sleep and so, at too early of an hour, gave up and went and had breakfast alone at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. 

Readers will note that in the recent past, it was very dark outside during these breakfasts - and that was true even if I went late.

Now it is light.

Yep. The season of darkness is over for this winter.

By the way - Jobe and Kalib are here. Reader friends can visit them tomorrow.

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Skateboarder gets caught in the snow - and other scenes from a hopeful but rather minor and insignificant fall

It snowed a little bit yesterday. Not much, and today it appears to mostly be melting in the searing, unseasonable, 40 degree heat, but it was enough to give me a little hope.

Perhaps this guy can soon trade his skateboard in for a pair of skis.

I know, it doesn't look like it, but it is snowing in this picture. The temperature is 33 degrees. If you could see the full-size version of this, the cross that marks Grotto Iona would be clearly visible at the end of the visible part of road, by the west-bound car. You can somewhat make the cross out in the slideshow version, but to get the full impact, you need to see the full-rez version, which, unfortunately, I can't put in this blog.

By the time I reached this trail 10 minutes later, it was beginning to stick.

Our back yard.

The people who live in this house got cold, so they built a big fire outside and opened up the garage door to let the heat come in and circulate through the house. Personally, I can think of more efficient ways to heat a home.

Shrock Road.

Corner Study.

Then I drive over the Little Su, where Rex, Ama and I hung out just the day before.

They say this is a La Nina year and that the La Nina is the strongest that it has ever been since the mid-50's. La Nina years are supposed to be cold. They are the years that the cold Arctic air masses that come from the north completely overpower the warm flow that comes up from the south, off the Pacific.

So far, though, it is warm - very warm for this time of year.

Even so, the frogs have buried themselves in the mud where they will remain frozen until breakup.

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iPhoning it with Rex and Ama by the Little Su, where a spineless moose lost his head - and his antlers, too

Rex and his girlfriend Ama showed up yesterday about 1:00 PM. They had wanted to take Margie and me out to lunch, but Margie had gone to town to babysit Kalib and Jobe, so they just took me. Afterwards, Rex drove Ama through his boyhood haunts toward the Little Su.

To Rex, as it is for me, the tour was one of lament, for what he saw was all the places that had been so wild and free now ruined and cut off by the development that has put an end to the hiking, skiing, and mountain biking that we used to do through all this country, but can't do anymore.

To Ama, who grew up in New York and now hails from the San Francisco Bay area, it appeared as though we were driving through a rural, nearly pristine area, with just a few houses here and there, and a gas station.

Ama and Rex met last summer when she came to Alaska to do some adventuring and they hit it off. She had a great time in Alaska and did some things that I still haven't done - such as kayak in Prince William Sound, but she was pretty certain that she would not want to be a winter-time Alaskan.

Rex went and spent some time with her in the Bay area in September and, judging from Facebook, they had a great time.

Now she is back in Alaska. She might have even found a job here. She is ready to try winter-time Alaska, ready to become an Alaskan.

You will note how bundled up she is - hat, gloves, multi-layers and what she probably believes to be a winter coat.

You will note how Rex is not bundled up at all.

I was even less bundled.

It's often like that, when people come to visit from other places. 

Next year, I suspect, she will be dressed just like us.

To me, the air only seemed disgustingly warm for this time of year. The ground should be covered in snow. All the lakes should be frozen over. Some are, and some are freezing, but some have little ice at all.

The bank of the Little Su should be completely rimmed in ice.

It's disgusting, really. I can hardly stand it.

The other day we were talking with Jacob and Lavina about Halloween, and how the kids would go out, sometimes in sub-zero weather, and come back with icy pant legs and their costumes crisp and frozen.

It could still happen that way this year, but I wouldn't count on it.

Rex skips a rock.

What is that he has spotted? A log, drifted almost to the bank?

Why, it's a moose head! As you can see, someone has cut the antlers away from the skull. Soon, perhaps, they will hang on someone's wall, or be placed over a doorway or put on display in a yard. Maybe they already have been.

I wonder where the moose was shot and butchered? This is a place by the road and bridge where many people gather to picnic, skip rocks, cast a line, drink beer, smoke dope or do whatever. It would be very rude to butcher a moose in such a place and just leave the leftovers behind, so I speculate that perhaps it was done upstream and the skull just washed to this place.

A short distance away, we found the spine. There was a significant amount of moose hair on the rocks on the bank.

So I am not sure. It might have drifted down, but someone might have butchered it right here.

Coming into the main channel is a little estuary that has frozen over. 

Whoever left this to freeze into the estuary definitely is rude. I hate to say it, but an awful lot of this kind of thing happens around here.

There are many people who live in this area who do not know where they live.

Oh, yes - they will tell you, perhaps proudly, "I live in Alaska!"

But they don't even know it.

Frozen moose print. I had forgotten my camera, by the way. I had to take all these pictures with my iPhone. I like the iPhone camera, but the lens has become very smudged and hazy.

Ama studies the scientific properties of a frozen puddle.

I find a nice little shell along the bank - a 9 mm. I still have it. It's in my pocket.

Ama observes a scorched tree trunk. Trees here do not have long tap roots that extend deep into the ground. Here, the roots spread out beneath the tree and form a platform for it.

Rex gets an idea for some iron art involving salmon that he wants to create. So he takes a few pictures of this dead one for later study.

The dead salmon.

Later, we go to Little Miller's for coffee as we listen to the afternoon news on the radio. We could not go to Metro, because Metro is closed on Sundays.

The lady at the window accepts Rex's cash.

Such was Sunday.

Now it is Monday.

I don't want to do anything.

I suppose that I had better.

I am tired, though. Really, really, tired.

I don't want to do anything.

But how can I do nothing at all?

That would be boring.

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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.

The Vietnam veteran and the returned Mormon missionary; the bicycle and the wrecked airplane

Doubtless, regular readers are wondering what a man in my financial situation is doing dining out at Mat-Su Valley Restaurant for breakfast? Four nights have now passed since Margie went into Anchorage to stay and take care of baby Jobe and one more will pass until she returns to spend just two nights here before she goes back again.

As much as I love this house and the cats who wake with me, it feels awfully chilly and damn bleak in here in the mornings. Whereas, it will be warm at Family Restaurant. There will be smiling people there, waitresses who will serve me coffee and laugh even if I make an unfunny joke.

This is Jobina, doing just that.

I like the name, "Jobina." It's like a feminine version of Jobe. 

If I can, I always like to get this spot, because from here I have a good view not only of all the people sitting and moving around inside this busy, warm diner, scented with the aroma of breakfast cooking, but of those wandering to and fro outside.

My observations tell me that a very broad array of Wasilla life passes in and out of this diner, particularly at breakfast time.

Also, if I am very lucky and the train comes bye, I can often get a pretty good look at it from this window seat.

So I would rather be here in the midst of all this than all alone inside my chilly house. The melting snows did expose a fair amount of firewood that had been hidden in our yard, so I can always heat the house up, but, by the time it gets comfortable, I will be done with breakfast. 

And even if I have no cash, I do have a credit card. So its off to Family I go.

Plus, to eat here is a sign of optimism, that things will soon get better and I will be able to pay all my bills.

I took this picture for future reference and it had not been my intent to post it just yet. Many veterans come into Mat-Su Family, and I have a desire to know their stories to the extent that they would be willing to share - just as I would like to know the stories of so many who I see gathering at Family. 

I have this idea in my head that as time progresses and I figure out how to fund this blog so that I can have the time to more effectively pursue my goal of finding the soul of Wasilla and to tell such stories, I will do just that. Seeing the hat, I thought this veteran might have a good story to tell, so I took the picture to remind me to look for him in the future, when that time comes.

As it happened, we wound up in line together at the cash register, so I asked if he had been a POW. No, he said, he had friends that had been and the experience had been hell for them. However bad combat might get, he said he had always kept a bullet in reserve for himself, just to make certain that he would never become a POW.

He served in Vietnam in the very early '70s, in what he described as the clean-up stages of the war, as the US was deciding to quit and pull out.

When I talk to such men, I am always self-conscious of the fact that they risked their lives in Vietnam and I did not. It had been my intent to go. When I was a senior at El Camino High School in a suburb of Sacramento, I decided that I would break with what had become the tradition in my family and what all of us males were expected to do. I would not go to Brigham Young University and I would not serve a two-year Mormon mission. I would enlist in the Army, and go for the Green Beret.

But I was in love with a red-headed girl who did decide to go to BYU. I knew that if I did not follow her there to protect my interests, she would marry a returned Mormon Missionary, as any good Mormon girl would.

So, at the last possible moment, I surrendered my plan to enlist, applied to BYU and was accepted. I followed the red-headed girl there and lived in misery as a returned Mormon missionary courted her. We would still get together to share an occasional lunch or movie or a concert and I took her motorcycle riding a couple of times. The the RM who courted her ordered her not to ride with me anymore, as it was just too damn dangerous.

I might crash and break her neck.

She did marry him, but by then I was in love with her best friend and was not troubled.

Vietnam was a very unpopular war and many people felt that the draft was being most unfairly applied. If you were wealthy, a college student, a Mormon missionary or fell into a number of other categories, you could get a deferment and most likely never be drafted to serve.

But if you did not fall into such a category and you were in good health, then you could pretty much count on being drafted.

This unfairness created such an uproar that a lottery system was instated in which each date of the year was drawn at random. If one's birthday came up number one, then, in theory, whether he was rich, a genious in college, a Mormon missionary or whatever, he was going to be drafted.

If one's birthday came up at #365, there was no chance in the world that he would be drafted.

My number came up 321. After that, the draft was not an issue for me anymore.

In the meantime, I found myself the object of a horrendous amount of social pressure, filled with exhortations that I repent, make my life right with God, yield to The Spirit, accept the call and go serve a mission. Worse yet, I looked into the eyes of my sweet mother and saw that if I did not go, I was going to break her heart. And there was no chance that the best friend would ever marry me if I didn't.

So I told everyone that The Spirit had come to me and so I had repented and was ready to go on a mission. No more weed for me. I had toked my last joint, taken my final hit off the hookah.

That's how I wound up not going to Vietnam. Instead I went to South Dakota, to teach the Lakota that they must never drink coffee. It was my mission to remake them, but they remade me. After two years, I returned to BYU - but found that I could not really return. 

As to this gentleman, he remarked that Vietnam was an unpopular war and that when he returned, he found out what it felt like to feel the wrath of the people for whom he had served. He said that people sometimes ask him why served, did he believe in the war?

It was not a matter of whether or not he believed in the war, he told me, but rather that the fact that he had a duty to serve his country and so he did.

This is what passed between us as we paid our bills at Family Restaurant. It was a very brief visit, and I thought that I would wait until another time and then have him tell me more of his story. I would take a portrait to go along with the interview, and would then include this picture as well.

But what if that time never comes? What if I do not see him again at Family?

What if I forget I ever took this picture and it just slips away unseen into my archives, as do the vast majority of the pictures that I take, never to be seen by anyone?

So here it is, with this tiny fragment of the man's story along with one from my own.

I got lucky! The train came rumbling by!

Yes, many veterans come to eat at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

When I came out, I saw this dog in the back of a truck. When I see such a dog, I find the urge to reach out and touch it to be...

...irresistible!

Inside the Metro Cafe, Study #8881: Carmen and Tyler, who is ten and loves to play football - and me, too.

After I completed the study, Carmen caught the unmistakable scent of cologne wafting off Tyler. She teased him a little bit for that, as she now knew that he had interests even beyond football.

After driving away from Metro Cafe, I saw a man riding a motorcycle.

And another sweeping the place where his driveway meets Church Road.

Some days I see Caleb and some days I don't. As he works all night and sleeps in the day, our waking paths seldom cross.

They crossed here, though - with me going one direction down our street and he the other. They also crossed when he stepped into my office to pay me a surprise visit.

"Dad," he said. "I patched your back tire. Your front tire was low, so I put air in that, too."

So I took my first bike ride of 2010. I am badly out of shape now and did not know far I should go. I decided to pedal the 1.5 miles to Church Road and see how I felt when I got there. If I felt good, I would turn right, go to the Little Susistna River and put my front wheel in the water.

If it felt like that might be overdoing it, that the return trip, largely uphill, would overstress my flaccid muscles and tear apart my weak lungs, then I would turn left and follow a shorter, flatter, more easy route.

The final approach to Church Road is all uphill, and I was a bit upset when I realized how it was taxing me. I deemed myself unfit to make the return from the Little Su and so concluded that I must turn left.

I turned right, anyway, and headed for the Little Su.

I did not put my front wheel in the water, though, because I felt that if I did, the under-cut ice might break beneath me and I would get my shoes, socks and pants wet. I wanted to keep them dry.

After I left the Little Su and neared the curve that leads to the biggest and steepest hill, I saw this guy ahead of me, cutting down the vegetation alongside the road before it can begin to grow.

No more snow plows for awhile.

After I topped the first big hill, I pedaled along on a flat stretch toward the corner where I would turn back onto Church Road and then face the next set of up and down hills. At some point, I glanced behind me and saw another biker, who had just topped that hill. I pedaled a little further and then looked back again. It seemed he was gaining on me.

I did not want him to pass me, but I realized that he was almost certainly younger and stronger and in better shape, that he was going to pass me whether I wanted him to or not.

I reached Church Road, turned right, climbed up the first big hill, then began my descent towards the next upward grade.

As I coasted down, I glanced back and there he was - closer yet, I was certain.

Damn. He was going to pass me.

Oh well. I would take a picture of him as he pedaled by me.

I decided that I would take a series of pictures of him closing the gap, passing me, and then moving on. I began with this one.

I then climbed the next hill and then again coasted toward the bottom of the third. Again I looked back. I was surprised to see that my competitor was now further back than he had been.

I figured maybe it was because I was going downhill now and he had been going up. Now he would be going downhill and I would soon be going up. I was certain he would yet close the gap and pass.

But no, he never did - even though he turned left on Seldon just like I did and followed me all the way to my street. In fact, each time I looked back I found him to be a little further behind. It became pointless to take any more pictures, for he had become such a small dot, readers could not have even picked him out.

That's what he gets for deciding that he, being so young and strong was going to humiliate a much older man who hadn't pedaled a bike since early October.

Of course, he never came close enough for me to actually confirm age or sex for certain.

I supposed it is possible that he was actually an 87 year-old woman who was pretty damn pleased that, though she never caught him, she kept that young guy worried every pedal of the way that an old lady was going to smoke him.

Or maybe it could even have been Patty, out keeping her cancer at bay.

When I got home, I parked my bike by the wreckage of my airplane, The Running Dog. I thought about the good days, when this dog and I flew together all over the main body of Alaska, up and down the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, through the valleys of the Alaska and Brooks Ranges, across Canada's Yukon Territory and into The Northwest Territories.

Why did I ever have to get cocky and crash the damn thing?

I can't stand it, being grounded like this. As I have said before, I dream about airplanes - usually this one, every night.

I have a friend in Cordova who says that if I really wanted another plane, I would have one by now. He cites himself as an example, pointing out how he wanted a big crab boat once, didn't have the money for it but got one anyway.

I'm glad for him, but he's 100 percent wrong about me. He is a bachelor and lives in a house that he inherited from his father and he simply has no idea what I face.

But he's right, too. To accomplish what I want to accomplish, I must get another airplane. Somehow, there is a way.

On this day, when I have no money to pay the simplest bill, when I owe the IRS, when I go to Family Restaurant only because I have a credit card and then I bring the leftovers and derive a second meal from them later and to Metro for coffee only because Margie has given me access to the bottles full or quarters that she has saved up over years, it seems utterly impossible.

But it's not impossible. It can be done. I must yet find the way.

A Pay Pal donation button to help with this blog isn't going to do it, but still, you who have urged me to put on on here have convinced me that I am not begging if I do, so I will.

Soon.