First snow forces me to take a break from the break that I took so that I could do nothing but work

It came very late this fall - which seems to me to have been the warmest fall that I ever remember here - but finally, Sunday night, it snowed. It's true that last Thursday, I put blog entries together all the way through this coming Friday so that until that time, I would not be disturbed by this blog but could just concentrate fully on my work.

But how can I ignore the first snow, especially when it comes so late?

Here is a kid, getting off of a school bus on Ward's. As you can see, somebody did a bit of fish-tailing.

And here is an AWAC, flying through the clear sky the snow left behind.

I hope the driver of this vehicle guided it safely to its destination. 

He biked with a heavy load. This was about noon, when the temperature was 17 degrees. We have yet to experience our first cold snap. Perhaps he is glad that it is late.

More jets in the clear sky.

And here is the decoy frozen into the surface of Little Lake.

Tilted stop sign, with Pioneer Peak in the background.

Crossing the bridge over the Little Su.

Somebody is behind me. I hope it's peaceful person. I don't want any trouble.

I still have my respiratory infection, by the way, but it is not as bad as it was.

I take four outings today and see many spectacular sights

Outing #1: I Face the Morning

Mornings are difficult for me. There are two ways that I can tolerate them - I can fix myself some oatmeal and eat it in silence with a cup of coffee and a banana. Silence. No TV. The sounds of a TV are virtually intolerable to me in the morning. So if I can get my breakfast ready and take a seat on the couch where I can look through the window into the small patch of woods that is our backyard before anyone else comes in and sits down, I am fine.

In this quiet, I find a certain peace and my mind comes to terms with the fact that it has another day that it must cope with.

But I am the only one in the house who feels that way concerning TV and breakfast. If anyone is already out there when I come staggering out, I am lost, because the TV is on. I do not feel like imposing my will on anyone, so I just bear it. It isn't easy, but I'm a tough and compassionate man.

Today, I got up and all was silent. Jacob, Lavina and Kalib had already left for Anchorage, Margie was asleep and Caleb had not yet returned home from his all-night shift. So I thought maybe I would have oatmeal in quiet and peace. But then, as I was getting dressed, I heard Caleb's car pull into the driveway and I knew the TV was about to come on.

I punched the auto-start to the Escape so that it could begin to warm up.

I still await that check that I wrote about last week and so severely lack cash, but I do have a credit card. So I headed over to Family Restaurant. That's the other way that I can tolerate the morning - if I can sit in a restaurant and be served a good breakfast.

There is no TV at Family although there is noise there, but it is the indistinct sounds of conversations taking place between people who I do not know, usually with only a word or two, perhaps a phrase, that actually reaches my ears at a volume loud enough to pierce through my own thoughts. Of course, it is backed up by the chimes of plates banging against each other, and being tapped by knives and forks. So I can just sit there and let my mind come to terms.

So here I am, at Family, where I ordered a Denver Omelette, hash browns and wheat toast with jam, plus coffee. 

When I came in, they tried to sit me against the wall 90 degrees to where I actually sat, but I wanted to be by this window, just in case the train came by. 

I did not see a train, but I did see the reflections of people inside the restaurant as I looked outside, at a blue Ford Escape and the Chugach Mountains.

As anybody who reads this blog knows, I love my G10 pocket camera despite its many deficiencies when compared to my DSLR's. I can carry it in my pocket, that's why. But sometimes those deficiencies cost me the picture. This is what happened here. I looked out the window and saw this elderly couple embrace, kiss - and hold the kiss - just like newly-weds on their honeymoon, or smitten teenagers who will who soon be surprised to have a baby come along. I don't believe there was any danger of that, in this case.

But, if they wanted to try, what the heck - go for it, I say!

I quickly raised the camera, got the scene framed just right and pushed the shutter button. Nothing happened. NOTHING! I kept pushing. Too late, it shot - but did not focus first! I don't know why. Sometimes, it responds quickly and accurately. Sometimes, it doesn't.

Oh well. The couple got to enjoy a good kiss and that is what really matters.

And I have told you about it and offered you blurry evidence that, indeed, it did happen, so let that knowledge bring hope and courage to your heart and soul.

Some would criticize me for posting this, just as they would that polar bear that I missed last week. They would say, "If you missed the picture, you missed it. Don't post a crummy picture."

But I don't just take pictures. I write, too. Now, I write about missing the picture.

Outing #2: A Bike Ride in the Wind and Snow

Here I am, pedaling my bike down Church Road. Even though I was going downhill, I had to work to pedal, due to the wind. And then I began to hear the sound of precipitation hitting my jacket. I felt the sting of it as it struck my face. Yet, I could not see it. It looked just like it would have looked if it hadn't precipitated at all.

I wondered if it was rain or snow. Snow, I figured, tiny flakes, heavy with ice. I reasoned this due to the volume of the noise and the sharpness of the stings upon my face.

Sure enough, finally, I was able to spot out a few of the larger flakes.

This invisible blizzard lasted for about three minutes, maybe four.

I didn't time it.

Outing # 3: I Get Margie Out of the House

Having used the credit card at breakfast, I had no justification whatsoever to use it again at lunch. But I saw Margie sitting on the couch, her crutches beside her, and I knew that was where she was going to be all day and I could not bear the thought of it.

So I asked her if she wanted to get out of the house for a bit. "We can stop at the post office and see if the check is there," I encouraged.

"Yes," she said. "I would like to get out."

The check was not there.

I left the choice of dining to her. She chose KFC.

As we waited in the drive-through line, this is what we saw. In some ways, it is getting annoying that everytime I go to a cash register, be it in the grocery store, the fast-food line, or whatever, I am asked to donate to something.

Yet, you look at this and you think, surely, if I can donate one dollar and feed four hungry children, then I should. You also wonder what will actually happen to that dollar.

As it happened, by the time we got to the window, I had forgotten about the sign. And the lady at the cash register didn't ask, the way they usually do, so I did not donate.

Now I have to worry about those four children who will not be fed because of me.

On the way home, we saw a caravan of school buses coming down the hill.

And more buses behind them!

And even more! Some people have the idea that Wasilla is a boring place to live, but, I tell you, there is always something exciting happening here.

Outing #4: Coffee Break at the Metro Cafe

Certainly, having been out three times already, I did not need to go out again - except for this: I always take a coffee break at 4:00 o'clock so that I can sit in the car, sip coffee and listen to at least a little bit of NPR's All Things Considered on KSKA.

I justify this by the fact that I tend to spend the rest of the day, usually until about 2:00 AM, sitting at my desk in my office, struggling to get some kind of work done.

So, as I waited in line, I saw this lady in my outside rear view mirror. As the wind ruffled her skirt, she smiled at someone who I could not see.

It was the driver of this car who she had smiled at.

She got in and then they drove away. Carmen, the owner of Metro Cafe, told me that they were real nice people.

Sometimes, if you want to catch a shadow, you must become a shadow

A couple of days ago, I was about to go walking, but was most distressed to discover that I had forgot to charge the battery to my G10 pocket camera. So, instead, I grabbed my big, heavy, 1Ds 3 and set out to walk and to carry the damn thing.

Here I am, headed down Brockton, in the direction toward where Dan lives. Dan is a veteran who has suffered some bad injuries to his back and neck. At least half the time when I walk this way, I find him outside his apartment, smoking a cigarette and exercising his cats.

So I stop and we talk, about many things.

There have been times that the light has fallen on him in a most beautiful way and I have wanted to photograph him, but he is perhaps the most painfully camera shy man that I have ever met, so I haven't.

I contemplated the problem as I walked, wondering how I might finally photograph him - if he was out. I had not seen him since before I left for the Slope in June and I was a little worried.

He had suffered a heart attack last spring, so there was just no telling.

But on this day, he was out, smoking his cigarette. His cats were hanging out in the nearby shadows. He said he had not seen me for so long that he had grown worried. "There's just no telling, you know," he emphasized.

So I told him about the latest accident, how Margie had fallen and injured her knee, broken her femur.

That reminded him of an experience he had in the Army. He described it as having taken place in a pit, where he had to wrestle a big man. He called him a "mullet," or something like that. He was a lot bigger then Dan, and heavier too, but Dan had to wrestle him anyway.

"Look," the mullet told him. "I don't want to hurt you, so why don't you just go down easy and the match will be over."

But Dan wasn't going to do that. He was in it to win and if he couldn't then he was going to go down wrestling.

So the mullet wrapped his arms around him and bent him in half and tore the ligaments in one knee. "It hurt like hell," he said, "so I can sympathize with your wife." 

He was out of commission for awhile and the Army tried to discharge him on the grounds that he was no longer physically fit, but he fought the discharge and won.

"Is your shadow as camera shy as you are?" I asked, after he finished the story.

"No," he answered. "My shadow is not camera shy at all."

So I photographed our shadows doing what we do - mine, gripping a shadow camera, his, smoking a shadow cigarette.

And then I photographed the cat, Varmit. I was surprised that Varmit let me get so close. He didn't use to be like that. Varmit used to spook easily.

"I got him neutered," Dan explained. "He's not so shy anymore."

One day before I left for the Slope, I had come by and had found Dan feeling pretty bad. Varmit had peed on his couch. The cat had never done such a thing before.

And now he was neutered.

Varmit.

Today, I did not walk but rode my bike. I had intended to ride it every day that I stayed home following my last trip, but when I got home the tire was flat and I was too lazy and distracted to patch it and so I just kept walking.

Saturday, to my big surprise, Caleb patched it for me. Sunday, I headed out to take a ride, but my bike was gone. Jacob had taken it to go buy some pickles for Lavina.

But today I rode it.

And later, I felt better than I had felt in a long time, but right now I feel pretty exhausted again. Yet, for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon, I felt bright and alert in a way that I hadn't felt in a mighty long time and I know it was because I had ridden the bike. 

It was a short ride, five, maybe six miles, but it did me good.

Later, I took a coffee break and came home the long way. I had to stop behind this school bus, which was okay with me because I needed to get a picture that shows that the poor kids of Wasilla are back in school now. I was especially pleased that the dog showed up to meet the boy.

The lady whose face is hidden by the stop sign stood there and talked to the bus driver for a very long time, long after all the kids had crossed the road.

But all the while, the red lights kept flashing and the stop sign protruded outward, so I had to just sit there until their conversation ended.

I didn't mind too much, because it gave me something to write about in this blog. Were it not for the fact that I keep this blog, I suspect that I would have been pretty irritated.

I'll bet there were some irritated kids inside that school bus.

Our house; a few other images from today and nothing more

In case you are curious, this is our house - the place where I live and work, and keep this blog. We moved into this house 27 years ago this month. It was well below zero when we moved in and we had to keep the doors open to haul in our stuff, so the house got very cold.

So did our fingers.

I then sawed and split some of the birch that had been cleared to build the house and made a hot fire in the woodstove.

The heat felt very good as it warmed us from the outside.

Margie made some hot chocolate, which warmed us from the inside. 

Those were good days.

Really, really, good days.

We didn't know how good they were until they became the past.

This is my neighbor, from two houses down. I don't know his name. In February of 2001, I lost my black cat, Little Guy, who eight years earlier had passed from his mother's womb straight into my hands. On a day with about three times the snowfall you see here, he stepped out onto the back porch and I never saw him again.

I searched for him, long and hard. I knocked on every door. I asked everyone I saw if they had seen a black cat. I could hardly bear the loss. 

For weeks afterward, every time this neighbor would see me, he would always ask about that cat.

So I think highly of him, even though I don't know his name.

This is another view of my house, taken from down the street as I finished my walk. I usually come home through the marsh, but I did not feel like it. Margie does not like it when I track snow into the house and I did not want to be scolded, however gently she scolds, and so I came down the road instead of through the marsh.

I always take my shoes off at the door, but the snow would have stuck on my Levis, even up to my knees.

I did not want either to be scolded or to take my pants off at the door, so I came down the road.

I did not build that tall fence.

My neighbor did. He hates cats. He does not like to look at my wrecked airplane, so he built the fence. He often wakes me by revving up the engine to his Harley Davidson in the morning. He doesn't necessarily drive it anywhere, he just sits there and revs up the engine, again and again, so that it does not lock up on him.

We don't talk much. He works for the Alaska Marine Highway and is gone more than he is home.

A kid, apparently on his way home from school, but maybe he is going someplace else. I don't know.

It was warm today, teens and then 20's for awhile, but the wind blew.

I saw this boy, off to the side of Lucille Street, as I was coming home from Wal-Mart. Margie doesn't work there, anymore. She can't, because of her accident. I don't care. I want her to work for me. I work in constant chaos, even when all is calm around me. 

Maybe she can reduce the chaos and increase our income more than she lost by losing her job at Wal-Mart.

I don't know why the boy was down in the snow like that. Maybe he was skiing and fell down. That looks like a ski pole.

I didn't stop to ask. I just snapped and kept going.

I had things to do.

Martigny. She is never allowed to go outside. She doesn't even want to go outside.

Royce - 15 years old or so and the last of the indoor-outdoor cats. I hated to do it, but after Little Guy I never let a new cat go outside unchaperoned - and then only Jim. 

Now that he is growing old, Royce doesn't go outside much anymore and never for very long.

When its cold, he doesn't go out at all. He didn't used to care about the cold. He was born with a good cold-weather coat. Now, he doesn't like the cold.

And there you have it - nothing of consequence, just a few images from today, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

A raven named Fred, and other sights I saw as I drove to get hamburgers and then back again

I went to the fridge to see what I could fix for lunch, but there was nothing appetizing there. I went to the cupboards - same thing.

Poor Margie! She lay miserable at the end of the couch, her leg with the broken knee-cap propped up on the ottoman, her broken wrist on the arm of the couch. She could do nothing to help at all.

So I told her that I would get in the new Escape and drive, until I found some hamburgers.

That is what I did. Along the way, I came upon a school bus waiting at a red light in the lane next to mine.

The windows were frozen; the poor kids trapped in the icy hell inside.

Some say that we here in Wasilla are uneducated, that we are hillbillies - uneducated hillbillies who do not know how to talk right. Obviously, this is wrong. Look at the school bus! You don't have school buses running around communities where the people are uneducated!

What a crazy thought!

And look beyond the bus. Do those look like hills?

No! They are mountains. They are not hills. We cannot be hillbillies.

We are mountainbillies.

And I am a mountain Bill.

After I bought the hamburgers at A&W, I met a raven.

The Raven's name was Fred.

Fred Meyer, to be precise.

Fred Meyer has his own building, among the biggest buildings in all of Wasilla.

Fred Meyer keeps a sign on his building with his name on it.

Fred Meyer wants everybody to know who he is.

Fred Meyer has a big ego.

I have never met a raven who hasn't had a big ego.

I have met many ravens.

Fred Meyer looks to the left...

Fred Meyer looks to the right...

Fred Meyer looks straight ahead.

Having eaten my hamburger and put Margie's in a safe place, I headed to the post office. These guys appeared behind me.

I was pretty sure they were going to follow me to the post office, where they would try to steal my mail.

But when I turned toward the post office, ready to fight for my mail, they continued on, straight ahead.

It just goes to show that Mom was right when she said, "Billy, don't judge people just because they are two men in a truck behind you and you are going to the post office."

As I was growing up, Mom laid this admonition upon me many times but, until this day, I never understood the wisdom in her words.

I met this dog after I pulled in and parked at the post office. It's name was Bernard. Not St. Bernard, just Bernard.

Bernard begged me to take his sweater off, but I refused.

People have gotten shot for removing sweaters from dogs.

I did not want to get shot.

I left Bernard to suffer in his sweater.

If you should meet the humans owned by Bernard and they should dispute any aspect of my story, including the fact that Bernard is Bernard, don't believe them.

They might call him something else, but they don't know Bernard like I do.

Bernard is Bernard, and he resents it when people call him by any other name.