Tracks in the new snow; mama moose blocks my path; a treasured seed winds up in the garbage

Finally, it snowed again. Regular readers have read my lament - about how it has basically not snowed here since early December (oddly enough, it has snowed in Anchorage a couple of times, but not here). Yes, you may look at this blog and see snow everywhere, but that is only because this is a place where the snow that falls in October is typically still here in April and sometimes even in patches as May begins.

(Contrast this to the Arctic Slope, where the snow that falls in September can linger in patches into July).

This year, of course, there was no snow in October here. It did not come until early November and then it never built up to much. And the weather has been so warm, for us, even as it has been cold to the south, for them.

Thank El Niño. Thank the Arctic Oscillation.

But, last night, I noticed a few flakes coming from the sky. Then, as I lay in bed, more flakes came. They kept coming, one on top of the other, piling up, piling and piling and piling up until finally this morning I stepped outside and disovered that they had piled up to a depth of...

1/8th of an inch, give or take 1/16th, depending on where you were standing.

Well, one-eighth was enough to allow feet to leave new tracks on the roads.

Here are the tracks left by a young moose and a raven.

And here are some tracks left by some ravens who got together to eat out. What did they eat? I don't know.

I walked on from the spot where the ravens dined and then stepped away from the road and into the marsh. I headed toward Dodd's trail, the one he has tried to keep open for walkers, but to close to machines. It's not that he is against machines, just selfish and immature drivers who tear things up with them and sometimes even wake homeowners from their sleep. I took this picture about 100 feet from the barricade with the "no trespassing" signs that he has placed at the entrance to his property.

When the wind blows, it tears through the marsh. I cannot eliminate the possibility that the wind ripped this sign free from his barricade and planted it here.

More likely, though, it is the work of someone on a snowmachine or fourwheeler who is undoubtedly very possessive of all that is his and wants everyone to respect his rights and propety, but has no respect for the property and rights of others.

Being a walker on good terms with Mr. Shay, I continued on, headed for my house. I soon happened upon some very fresh moose tracks.

And then I saw the moose, separated from me by a few bushes. There were two actually. This one that you are looking at here is the child, the nearly grown calf.

The child decided to step out into the open and the mother quickly followed, keeping her eye on it and on me.

And then, standing right in the middle of the path, they played. Regular readers all know that I love my pocket camera, but right now I was wishing that I had one of my DSLR's, and my 100 to 400 mm lens. But I didn't. When you set out to document your surroundings with only a pocket camera, you understand the limitations from the beginning.

You just have to live and work with them.

If you look through their legs, you can see the trail going on beyond. That is where I want to walk. Right here, I am no more than 300 yards from my back porch - if that far.

But this mama moose is not going to let me pass. I have to back up and find another way.

Two calves used to hang out with this mother. I wonder what has become of the second?

And when I do, I come upon Patty, who, according to the doctor who refused to treat her cancer and told her to go home and prepare to die, should have been dead for two, maybe three months now.

But she is strong and getting stronger. Her eyes match her hat and coat.

When I get home, I find Margie ready to drive to Anchorage, to try once again to help Lavina prepare a room for her sister, who will arrive from Arizona tomorrow so that she can help with the new baby.

I decide that I might as well walk two more miles so I have her drop me off at Metro Cafe so that I can still get my afternoon coffee even though I will have no car to listen to the news in.

Carmen's sister, Theresa, has come out from Anchorage to help out and has brought her son, Evan, with her. While a few pass through the drive-through, I am the only customer in the store right now. Everyone is pretty comfortable with me, so Carmen's son Baranson and Evan get away with staging a little wrestling match.

After the wrestling match, Baranson is feeling pretty bad. It seems his teacher gave him some kind of special seed at school, but Evan took it and threw it in the garbage. 

Somehow, I missed that part.

So Carmen and Baranson look for the seed.

Evan comes bearing a little gift, hoping to make up for having throw the seed away. Baranson is not interested. He wants the seed.

Carmen, Baranson, Evan and Theresa. 

Just before I left, as I was paying for my coffee, the seed was found and Baranson got it back.

Margie returned late in the evening.

"No baby, yet," she said, "but Lavina is feeling a lot of pain."

Man. That's why I want our new grandchild to come soon, even three weeks ahead of it's due date - so this two week plus labor that Lavina has been in can come to an end.

PS: I was just headed for bed and I looked out the window... it is snowing. It looks like it might be for real, this time. And somewhere out in that snow, with no shelter but their own fur and tree branches aboe them, those moose have settled down for the night.

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.