We take Kalib to breakfast; Cars and snowmachines, ravens and airplanes

The check that I had been waiting for finally came yesterday, so I decided to take Margie and Kalib to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant this morning. From Friday night through Saturday night, Kalib was pleasant, happy and in good spirits.

Today, he seemed a little down and out. I think he surpassed his tolerance of being away from Mom and Dad. He did enjoy helping Grandma to sweeten her coffee.

He also seemed like perhaps he was coming down with a cold. Still, he did go exploring beneath the restaurant table.

Margie shared her breakfast with him, but he didn't eat much. He did drink most of his cranberry juice. Despite having received my check, I still paid for breakfast with a credit card. The money will not be in the bank until tomorrow and I did not want to suffer an overdraft charge for breakfast.

We do have a big auto-bill pay tomorrow. We will rush the check over in the morning, but I do not know if it will show in time to save us from whatever penalties the bank will be delighted to charge us.

Just before we left, I saw Melanie, not my daughter but the Melanie who works at IHOP, with her son Duncan. When he was just a baby, I photographed the two of them at Carr's.

After we got home, I went for a walk. Many cars zoomed by me.

In just two months, these bare trees will burst out in new green. Given how warm it has been this winter, the leaves might come out a little earlier than the normal mid-May.

But then April could be cold, so who knows?

Snowmachiners passed by on the left.

Two ravens flew overhead.

So did this airplane.

It has been a long time since I have cut through Serendipity, just because it depresses me so. But today I did. I stress again - I hold nothing against anyone who lives in Serendipity, but if you once had a place where you retreated every day that you were home, just you and your dog, to hang out with moose, bears, ravens, eagles and if you rarely ran into another person in that place and then one day they tore your woods down and it wound up looking like this and you could find no solitude there, it would depress you, too.

When I returned home, Kalib was waiting at the window for me.

Kalib and I.

Even though he now has one of my old fish tanks and gets to feed fish every day, Kalib always wants to feed the fish when he comes out.

He insists that his grandma come out and observe.

In the early afternoon, he carried his little stuffed muzzy to the car, along with his Grahamn Krackers. Uncle Caleb buckled him in and then Margie drove him home to Anchorage.

She said that she was not going to be gone long, that she would just drop him off and then come straight home. I have heard this before and I did not believe her. She stayed in town for several hours.

She reported that Kalib's mom was so anxious to see him that she came out the door even before Margie could out of the car.

Kalib was also overjoyed to see her, and Dad, too.

As for Margie, she looked very dejected when she got home about seven hours after she left.

"I sure miss Kalib," she said.

I have a great deal to do this week. Once again, I must push the blog to the back of my priority list. I will post every day, but lightly so - unless something happens that I just have to go all out on.

CM*D33: Margie returns to the scene of her injury; Rex and his sailboat, Willow the dog, Alaska Dispatch and potential young citizen journalist

Margie had a therapy session scheduled at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage today, so I drove her in, dropped her off and then headed straight over to the Merrill Field offices of the Alaska Dispatch to chat with the editor, Tony Hopfinger. 

I then rushed back to pick her up, after which I took her to lunch at Cafe Europa and then to a movie at Century 16. During my stays at home, we used to go to a movie almost every single week, but it has been a long, long, long time since we have.

I did a search in this blog and the most recent movie I came up with was one we saw February 25 - and that was our first outing after she originally broke her left knee and right wrist on January 20.

We have been out since she broke her knee for the second time on July 26, but not to a movie - just here and there to get a bite to eat, a cup of coffee or an ice cream come.

I fell asleep in the movie about five times. Not because it was boring; it wasn't - it was fun: The Informant. There are some gaps in the story for me, but the thrust of it all came together.

The fact that I could fall asleep five times during what may have been my first movie outing in eight months kind of gives me a clue as to why I am having such a struggle completing my project.

Afterwards, we returned to the place where she fell on July 26 - which is now owned by our daughter Melanie. Her fall happened right after she stepped through the door to her left. Later, as we were leaving, I was going to take a picture of her atop that step. I got it framed and everything, but when I pushed the shutter, the battery died. I got no picture.

A couple of nights ago, I wrote about the dog that was given to me by the Norwegian Iditarod musher, Ketil Reitan. I told how I put her in the back seat of my airplane and flew her home from Kaktovik on the Arctic Coast at the top of ANWR - the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 

I mentioned that she is now buried in our backyard, along with some other individuals dear to us who wore fur all the time.

In comments, a reader let me know that I had slipped up and had not named her.

Well, this is she, Willow. I took the picture in the spring of 2005, right after she found a chunk of bone that I believe to be moose. She was very pleased.

Rex felt real bad after her death, so I made this print for him.

By the way - seasoned readers are familiar with my lament about Serendipity, the subdivision that robbed me of the woods that I used to roam - and so often with Willow.

This picture was taken in those woods, which died right along with the dog.

And on the fridge were these pictures of Kalib, Rex and his Grandpa Hess, my late dad. Two years ago, right about now, my Muse, Soundarya, wanted to know about my dad and asked me write up some stories about him and email them to her in India. So I did.

This past summer, when I was in Barrow, she emailed and instructed me to put those stories on my blog. She felt that readers would enjoy them. I promised her that I would. Sooner or later, probably during our next trip to Utah and Arizona, I will, and I will introduce the whole family, mine and Margie's. Time and money permitting, I want to go to the Navajo Nation and introduce Lavina's as well.

The very first image that I posted on this blog was of the tiny sailboat that Rex had made. He is now making a bigger sailboat and this is it. There is a much larger story here, but I cannot get into it just now.

As you can see, this bout of unusually warm fall weather is continuing. It got well into the 50's today. It feels like we live someplace else, but we live here.

Meanwhile, I see more reports of snow at various places in the Lower 48. This is very embarrassing.

Now I will back up to earlier in the day. I mentioned that I stopped at the Alaska Dispatch to visit the editor. I completely forgot to take any pictures while I was there. I don't know why, I guess because we had a fast-paced conversation and when it was over, I had to race off to pick Margie up.

I forgot even though Alice Rogoff's big Cessna 206 on floats was sitting in the hangar, and it was the cleanest looking airplane I think that I have ever seen. It filled me with desire and want and still I forgot to take a picture.

Alice, by the way, is the very good woman who helped us out in Washington, DC, after Margie got hurt following the Obama Inaugural. She put us up in her very fine Bethesda guest house and told us to stay until Margie could travel. We did. I do not know how we would have coped without her.

She also bought into the Alaska Dispatch and that is why they have their offices in a hangar at Merrill Field.

Tony and I spent some time talking about how online journalism is changing everything. We talked about the emerging roll of citizen journalists, ordinary people with cameras and cellphones, documenting and reporting on life and getting it out to the world in a new way.

And then I took Margie to lunch and the first person that I saw when I stepped through the door of Cafe Europa was 17 month old Luca, looking very much like a citizen journalist.

His mother said that this was the first time that he had ever held a camera. He was still figuring it out. I told her that if he got something, she should email it to me and I would share it with you.

No promises.

We will see.

The kid's got his own mind. He will do what he will do.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month (obviously, now, more than a month. Perhaps forever, it feels like) Oh, hell! Let's face it - I did not keep myself within cocoon restraints. This does not qualify as a cocoon entry. But I will leave it as one, just the same. It was supposed to be. 

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.

Valiant though his effort be, Muzzy pees and pees and pees and pees, yet fails to reclaim Serendipity

Muzzy and I walked into Upper Serendipity (the developers call it, "Serendipity Hills) and Muzzy immediately marked the subdivision as his.

Muzzy continually checked for any challenges to his claim as we walked on through Serendipity.

Perhaps some dog has challenged him on that berm, but the leash is too short for him to reach and sniff it.

The Saint Bernard zeros in on a challenge.

Muzzy stakes his claim deeper in Serendipity.

He believes himself to be grabbing even more new territory.

He will soon claim this spot, too.

Of all the new homes in Serendipity, this is the most ostentatious - excuse me - I mean "grand." This is the most grand home in all of Serendipity. Muzzy must find just the right spot before he stakes his claim.

Muzzy finds the spot. He claims the property, along with all of Serendipity.

He zeros in on his next mark.

Soon, we will leave Serendipity. He reinforces his claim with a final mark.

Muzzy is proud and happy. He believes that he has claimed all of Serendipity. He does not realize that human law does not recognize "Deed by Pee." He does not realize that, the moment someone called these former woods Serendipity, they were lost to us forever.

As we near home and walk back down Sarah's Way (the name was quite innocent back when we moved in) we spot Tiffany driving the oppposite way. She had been at the house to visit Caleb. She stops and pets Muzzy, who still believes himself to be the owner of Serendipity.

He is most definitely The King of Pee.

The country that Willow knew, before it was called, "Serendipity"

In this blog I have often lamented about the construction of the destruction of the life that I had known here before they tore down my woods and put up the subdivision called Serendipity. I have also noted how easy it was to take the dog on a walk back then, as I could let her run free while I walked, contemplated, and played with words. By pure chance, this image of Willow running through the woods now gone and called Serendipity, just popped up in my computer.

And this one was nearby. So there you go. Now, I will shift to my latest walk with Muzzy, right through Serendipity.