His heart broken, the two left-footed man sets out for New York City

Doubtless, you have heard about those wild, savvy, Alaskans who have such a deep knowledge of the land and environment that to them to look at a track in the snow is just like reading a book. If one knows how to read it, each track tells stories to the knowledgeable that will completely escape the average person.

I am pleased to announce that I am such an Alaskan. And yesterday, as I walked, I read novel upon novel in the tracks that other wanderers had left behind in the snow.

For example, you have heard about the famous person who has two left feet. Yesterday, I discovered that this is not just a figure of speech to describe a clumsy person who stumbles over himself when he tries to dance.

There really is a person with two left feet and he lives right here in Wasilla. Here are the actual prints left behind by his two left feet as he set out to walk to New York City.

Clearly, as indicated by the dipthong in the upper indentation of the right left foot, he is going to New York City. To understand why, just look at the asperance right smack in the middle of the left left foot.

Two days ago, his cat left him and moved in with a neighbor. He is heartbroken. He believes that once he gets to New York City, the cat will come to her senses and join him there.

But only if he walks. If he flies, the cat won't give a damn. Only by walking all the way through cold and misery does he believe that he can demonstrate to the cat the depth of the love that he feels for her.

It's all right there - in the tracks left behind by his two left feet.

When the dog who has been loyal to the man with two left feet for the past 30 years discovered that his human had left, he set out to find him.

Unfortunately, as you can see, the dog is going in the wrong direction. Instead of New York, the dog is headed towards Hong Kong. Not only does the dog have a long walk ahead of him, but a long swim, too. Perhaps if the dog had the legendary canine sense of smell, the dog would know. But this dog lost its ability to smell - even though, by hell, the dog does smell - during an unfortunate sniffing accident that it suffered as a pup.

It is sad, because the dog will search and search and search the streets of Hong Kong and will never find his man. He will find a friendly lady who will give him refuge every night and feed him hamburgers every morning - just before he goes out to search in vain again.

As for the double-left-footed man, he will find only disappointment in New York City. His cat will never follow him there. He will spend the rest of his days living in the subway, playing his accordian as passersby drop nickels, dimes, and quarters into his upside down baseball cap - the one emblazoned with a picture of a moose and the word, "Wasilla."

Sometimes, I wish that I did not know how to read tracks so well.

Sometimes, the stories are just too heart-breaking.

I saw a boy, walking down the road, leaving his own stories to trail behind him. I moved along, without bothering to read.

Margie and I went out for a drive, but this guy made us stop.

This from India:

I will explain nothing, except to identitfy the location as the temple cut into stone at Mamallapuram. I will leave the larger story to your imagination.

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Margie and I drop in to Metro Cafe - she drives on to Anchorage, I walk home; boy takes precarious seat overlooking the temple and the sea

Jacob and Lavina had something to do Monday night, so they called and asked if Margie could come in to babysit and stay for the night.

This meant that I would be without a car. So we agreed that Margie and I would leave together at coffee break time, we would stop at Metro Cafe, go inside, enjoy a cup and cinnamon roll together and then she would drive on to Anchorage and I would walk back home.

So here is Elizabeth, seen not through the window from the outside, but from the inside, preparing our coffees.

And here is Elizabeth serving one of those coffees. As you can tell by the punch card lying on the counter, the coffees this day still came courtesy of the generous reader in North Carolina. Even with a card, I still lay down cash for the tip.

In past posts, I have lamented about the ironic fact that when we were young and she possessed all of her exceptionally exquisite youthful, beauty, Margie would almost always refuse to let me photograph her. Most of the exceptions involved the kids also being in the picture. 

As I have pointed out, Now that we have grandkids, she has somewhat relaxed about it - especially if the grandkids are in the pictures. No grandkids were with us at Metro, but she did tolerate a photo. As you can see, "tolerate" is the exact right word.

And then my eye got distracted and my lens pulled away from her beautiful face by this four-wheeling guy and his dog, as they whizzed by. The dog is kind of hard to see, but if you look close, maybe you can find it. If you can't see it here and it is important enough to you, you can try again in slide show view.

It's really not all that important and I won't feel bad if you don't.

Inside the Metro Cafe, Carmen study, #13,496: Carmen poses with Margie and me

Were I to take the most direct route home, I would need to walk about two-and-half miles. That route follows two busy roads - Lucille and Seldon streets. I did not want to walk along busy roads al the way home. I wanted solitude. So I chose a route that would add about one mile, but in which I could find more solitude.

Even that route started out on a busy road, Spruce Street, which is where I walk right here.

Two ravens flew over as I walked down Spruce Street.

In 2002 or 2003, not long after I had made the leap from film to digital cameras, I managed to purchase a bulky, professional, Canon 1D camera body that shot an 11 mp image - the highest resolution available at the time - for just under $8,000. Funny - that I could manage such a purchase then, but now that I am more established and better known than ever, it would be impossible.

One morning, as I waited for my next flight during a stopover in Boise, Idaho, a gentleman who was then about the age I am now took note of my camera. He was impressed, his face full of smiles.

"I'll bet that digital photography is great for you," he gushed. "You can make your pictures better than ever - like, if you take a picture and there are powerlines in it, you can take them out."

"I wouldn't do that," I answered. "If there are powerlines there, they are there. They are part of the scene. I won't take them out. That would be a violation of my journalistic ethics."

This really angered and offended him. He became so indignant that his face turned red and his nose damn near popped off. His voice turned sharp, rasp and sputtery.

I tried to tell him that it did not matter to me what he did with his, that I did not apply my ethics to him, but that I was a photojournalist and a documentarian and that it would undermine my credibility if I started removing powerlines, just because I could. If I were doing ads or a different kind of art that is not documentary, an art in which the literal does not matter, then what the hell, it would be okay.

He did not buy this. He felt personally insulted and let me know it.

I imagine that he probably has a digital camera now - assuming that he still lives and is healthy enough to take pictures.

Perhaps he now takes the powerlines out of his pictures. If so, I'll bet that each time he does, he thinks of me and gets to feeling all indignant all over again.

But really, I do not care what he or anyone else does. I will not judge them for it.

As for me, the powerlines are simply just part of the picture.

Life has powerlines.

I continued on. A jet passed in the distance. I got a call from a friend, in tears, to tell me that her aunt had just died. I spoke what words of comfort to her that I could.

I walked on in solitude. As darkness slowly deepened, I passed beneath a street lamp and it cast my shadow before me. If it appears that there is a spirit accompanying me, then I must note that it is only a scuff on the trail left by someone who gunned their snowmachine right here and spun the track as they drove over this spot.

Yet, this does not mean that a spirit could not have been walking with me, or perhaps gliding along beside me. If the thought should frighten anyone, let me assure you, that spirit would have been a good one. Troubled, perhaps, but good. Simply, fundamentally, purely - good.

I don't know about spirits - if they truly exist or if they are just a creation of the human mind, a fiction, a survival mechanism to help us bear that which does not seem to be bearable. Yet, if spirits do not exist, then why do I so often seem to feel a spiritual presence? In something so simple, perhaps, as a sudden, unexpected, solitary, gust of wind in my face, at just the right moment?

And this one from India

A youth took a somewhat precarious seat overlooking the Mamallapuram temple grounds and the Bay of Bengal and then asked me to take his picture.

So I did.

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What would you do if you found $50,000 lying in the road in an unmarked suitcase?

As 2010 drew to its close, Gilford Mongoyak, Jr. was driving near Sam & Lee's Restaurant in his hometown of Barrow when he saw a suitcase lying in the road. Gilford does not own a car, but he had rented this one so that he could take care of some year-end business. Before returning it, he thought that he would just take a nice little evening drive about Barrow and that is what he was doing when he came upon the suitcase.

There were other people out and about, on the road, walking, driving, but no one paid any attention to the suitcase. Gilford drove right past it himself, but then decided that he ought to check it out. He backed up, picked up the suitcase and examined the outside of it.

It carried no identification, so he drove home and took the suitcase inside and showed it to his wife. They did not want to open it, but they did want to return it to its rightful owner and so they opened it up to see if there was any ID inside.

There wasn't, but there was something bundled up in white wrapping paper. "I opened that up," Gilford told me over the phone after I called him to find out this event that I had first learned about through Facebook had come to pass. "I found bills. I said to my wife, "it looks like $10,000."

They did not know what to do, so they started to talk.

"My hands kind of started really shaking with that kind of money right there," he says. "We say, really, what should we do? So my wife and I decided the best thing to do was to take it to Public Safety (Police Department)."

I took the above snapshot of Gilford day last August after I happened upon him as I walked through the Iñupiat Heritage Center in Barrow. I thought that it would be good to include Gilford in a project that I am working on and so I took this quick snapshot to remind me to go back and find him at later date when I had the time to do it right.

So Gilford and his wife took the suitcase to the Police Department. They entered to find a receptionist behind an opaque black window. They stated their business and then a police officer came out to see them.

"You won't believe what I found," Gilford remembers telling him, "look, it's $10,000."

The officer opened up the suitcase and studied the contents

"Then he took a look up at me and said, 'you know what? It's not $10,000. It's $50,000.'"

Gilford asked the officer if anyone was looking for $50,000. The officer told him yes, a woman from Osaka Restaurant.

Due to a back injury, Gilford is unable to work in the labor force that once sustained him. He supports himself primarily through the sale of his art. Here, he has set up in the Heritage Center. Some days, he does okay. Somedays, there are no sales.

Shortly after that, some other officers came in, as well as woman from Osaka who Gilford believes was the owner. I called Osaka to see if could find out who she was, talk to her and get more information, but was told that no one could talk to me about the matter. I also called the Police Department, where a spokesman told me that they could not comment at this time.

Gilford describes the woman as being very happy to get the money back and says she was wearing mink. He believes she had planned to leave on the evening flight south.

"She asked for my name and number. She was happy, shaking," he recalls. "I thought she would call me that night."

She never did call, so a couple of days later, Gilford called her. "I asked her if there is any reward. She said, 'I buy you dinner?'"

The offer did not appeal to him.

There were those who told him that instead of an offer for free meal, he could have kept the entire $50,000 and no one would ever have known.

"A lot of my friends told me that. But I was raised in a good Christian home with a good Christian mom and dad. They always taught me to do the right thing. I have friends who are saying that I was a good Samaritan. My daughter is proud of me." 

His sister, Claudia Mongoyak, who first informed me of Gilford's discovery is also proud of her brother. "I am honored to have such an honest and trustworthy brother," she told me on Facebook.

"My brother Gilford is unemployed due to back problems and makes a living out of selling his carvings and jewelry. He once found a wallker with $500 or $600 in it and called that person and that person was so appreciative to get her wallet back." 

As to the offer of a free dinner at Osaka, "I don't know what to say about that. LOL."

If he could have kept the money, one friend asked, what would he have done with it? "I would have bought a brand new washer and dryer. Our windows are no good. They let too much cold air in. I would have totally fixed the house up.

"I was rich for like 15 or 20 minutes," he laughed.

If anyone should care to learn more about Gilford and his art or to make a purchase, he can be contacted at gmongoyakjr@hotmail.com.

And this from Wasilla:

The holiday is over and the boys have returned to Anchorage to go to day care and be with their parents, but, before they did, Kalib grew bored with doorknobs. He decided the best way to get into a pantry is with his spatula.

When his mom arrived to pick him up, he raced to the window and kissed her through the glass.

Jobe was greatly amused by the walking fingers of his grandma.

Jobe and Kalib spend their last moments with this season's Christmas tree. I am very sad to say it, but next time they come out this tree will be gone.

The holiday season is over.

The carols will now fall silent.

That certain feeling that comes only at Christmas is gone and will not be back for nearly a year.

And this one from India:

About 35 or so miles south of the broiling city of Chennai sits the temple at Mamallapuram, cut entirely out of the rock face of a low cliff.

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