I pass by a lady Santa on a horse; the new house gets torn up a bit with Kalib in the middle; Jacob is named Employee of the Year by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium

Today, as I was driving out of Wasilla to go to Anchorage, I saw a woman on horseback, wearing a Santa hat. It was a beautiful, wonderful day for a horseback ride, with the temperature at that moment four degrees above zero.

I continued on to Anchorage through what was another hoarfrosty day.

Someone had slid off the road.

As you can see, things are changing inside Jacob, Lavina and Kalib's new home. I told you that Lavina did not like that old rug. Kalib went about the business of taking measurements for the new one.

Kalib looks through the window as Melanie arrives to help.

Rex seals off the tracks for the track lights in preparation for tomorrow's spray painting. There was some discussion about whether those track lights should go or stay, because they do look kind of strange.

Yet, as a photographer, I could see a use for such lights.

Once again, Kalib got to feeling worn down and a bit cranky.

So Grandma took him into what I believe will be his bedroom once he gets a little older. There, she made him sweep the floor.

That cheered him right up.

He also enjoyed watching some Cars animation on Caleb's iPhone.

After that, Lavina and I headed over to the Denaina Center, where the 1800 people who work with Jacob at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium were having their Christmas party. Jacob is still in Washington, DC, so he couldn't be there.

We came very late but still just a little bit early and so they sat us down at one of the many tables and fed us halibut and a chocolate desert that was very tasty.

At the next table, I saw this lady concentrating on her phone.

This is why Lavina and I came, even though Jacob was not here. ANTHC gave out seven Employee of the Year awards. Jacob was named Employee of the Year in engineering.

Lavina accepted his award for him. They said that Jacob gets along with everybody that he works with, and with all the people in the villages that he travels to oversee the installation of sewer projects where there has never been sewer projects before and where, what with permafrost and all, conditions can be extremely challenging.

They especially praised him for his work in the Yup'ik village of Quigillingok and said that wherever he goes, he understands the peoples and cultures and works good with them all.

They said more after that, too, but I lost it because I was trying to figure out how to photograph Lavina receiving his award.

It was kind of tough, but this what I came up with.

Lavina with Jacob's awards, outside, on the way back to the car, beneath a hoarfrosted tree. The soapstone figure with the ivory face is an Eskimo dancer.

He also got $1000 - but, as he is now a Lieutenant in the Commission Corps, that check has to be sent to the federal government and they may or may not decide to let him keep it.

If you live in Point Lay, Anchorage is like a mad rush; hoar-frost at 65 mph (maybe just a little bit faster than that); Kalib begins the day at the end

This is Thomas Nukpagigak of Point Lay, and he is musing about the madness and rush of traffic and people swarming about in Anchorage. Thomas is the whaling captain whose crew I followed in 2008 and I might have been with them again this year, if I hadn't injured my shoulder and then gone to India. The day I left the Arctic Slope for India was the same day Point Lay caught its first bowhead in 72 years.

As for today, I picked Thomas up at the Embassy Suites in Anchorage and as we drove through the streets, he commented on the insanity and rush of traffic in the city. "The people never stop," he mused. "They just keep going and going and going. Always in a hurry to get to the next place. Point Lay is nice and quiet. That's how I like it."

Some of you who live in the country down in the Lower 48 might be nodding your heads knowingly, but, unless you have been to place like Point Lay - and there is no such place in the Lower 48 - you still can't grasp it. 

Point Lay has a population of about 300 people, maybe a bit less. If you go Northeast up the coast, the nearest village is Wainwright, population about 700, well over 100 miles away. If you go southwest, the nearest village is Point Hope, also about 700 and about the same distance. No roads link the villages. You travel between them either by airplane, snowmachine, or boat - sometimes, someone still makes the journey by dog team, but not very often.

When I followed his crew whaling, we set camp out on the ice 36 miles to the northeast, as measured by GPS. When you live like that for awhile, even Barrow, with its 4500 or so people, comes to seem like a big, bustling, city and when you first get there, you long for the quiet of the camp and the village.

So Thomas and I headed to Ray's Vietnamese Restaurant. We had a good lunch together and reviewed some material I had put together. He strongly urged me to come back to Point Lay for next spring's whale hunt. I felt a great desire to do just that.

Of course, my day did not begin in Anchorage. It began in Wasilla. And here I am, in my car, leaving Wasilla at about 11:50 AM.

The air has been foggy and still for the past couple of days, so there is hoarfrost on everything.

More hoarfrost.

The Alaska Railroad bridge that spans one braid of the Knik River.

About 30 miles still to go.

A car passes me on the Glenn Highway. It was speeding, but the driver did not get caught.

Shortly after I arrived in Anchorage, just before I picked Thomas up. I wish I had more money in that place. You can count every dollar that I have there now with just three figures.

Afterward, I dropped Thomas off at Wal-Mart by Diamond Center.

From there, I headed over to the Alaska Regional Hospital, to see a friend from Wainwright who was badly injured in a snowmachine accident last month. I found him in his room, alone, asleep. I called his niece and she said, go ahead, wake him up.

So I spoke his name, but he did not wake up. I placed my hand upon his shoulder - how thin and frail it felt, and he, always such a strong and vigorous man. I gave him a gentle shake. Still, he did not wake up. So I stood there at his bedside for awhile and then left. The first time that I went to see him he was still at the Alaska Native Medical Center. I could not see him because, due to fears of swine flu, they were only allowing two members of his immediate family to visit.

The second time, he was also asleep.

I might be in town again tomorrow. If so, I will try a fourth time.

Next, I headed over to the Captain Cook Hotel, to see my Iñupiaq sister, Mary Ellen Ahmaogak, of Wainwright. I was happy to find her daughter, Krystle, there, too. I had something in my computer that I wanted both of them to review, so that's what Krystle is doing here.

And in case you wonder about the little one...

...he is the youngest of her three children - Jonathan.

Krystle, Jesse, and Jonathan. Jesse was raised in Point Hope and that is where they all live, now.

I had meant to get Mary Ellen in a picture, too, but I devoted all my photographic attention to these three and forgot.

Remember how I said I felt a great desire to return to Point Lay next whaling season? When I see or talk to or even just think of any of the Ahmaogak's, I also feel a great desire to return to Wainwright next whaling season and to go back out with Iceberg 14, which Mary Ellen now co-captains with Jason and Robert.

And then speaking of Point Hope - yeah, I feel that same desire to go out there, too.

And then just a couple of weeks ago, a captain in Barrow invited me to get out of the south, come up north and go out with him and crew next spring.

The thought felt wonderful - tough - but wonderful. That's how it is. It is always tough. It is always wonderful.

Life gets very confusing, sometimes.

Who knows what will happen, come next spring?

And here I am, on my way back home to Wasilla, crossing the Palmer Hay Flats. People in vehicles are forever smacking moose on this stretch of highway and that is why they put in these fog lights.

Here is Kalib and Caleb, back at the computer, looking at dinosaurs. This is the very first picture I took today. 

You know what it says in the Bible: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

Well, the last wasn't first, but the first is last.

The Bible got it part right.

A nice beam of light falls upon Kalib; a dog in the road draws some honks

Kalib, just a little bit ago, sitting on the couch as a beam of light falls through the window upon him.

On my walk, I heard a car honk and then another, followed by still a third. I thought perhaps there was trouble brewing, a gang fight about to take place on Seldon Street. I turned to look, it was just this dog, out in the road, blocking traffic.

Now, I begin a new short term plan. Until I get on top of things, I am going to limit this blog to just two images a day. I was going to make it just one, but then I realized that Kalib's fan club, particularly those down in the Navajo Nation, might grow very irritated with me if that one picture did not include Kalib. Most importantly, Kalib needs to put a smile on his Grandma Mary's face everyday.

So I decided to make it two pictures - one from out and about, plus a daily Kalib.

So here you go.

Sarah runs out of gas, picks up her hockey stick; Mr. Dodd Shay blows the snow away; Rex and Kalib play with train, eat pie

As I walked today, I saw this girl, sitting still in the road on her four-wheeler, going nowhere, holding her hockey stick. I wondered why. "I ran out of gas," she told me.

I wasn't carrying any gas so I could not help her, but I could take her picture. Her name is Sarah, she is 14 years old and she plans to start playing hockey very soon. "At school?" I asked.

"I think I'm going to join a girl's league team," she answered.

Or did she say, "city league?" I'm pretty sure she said "girl's league." I suppose that I probably shouldn't quote her if I am not absolutely certain what her words were.

But then, it's not all that unusual for a blogger to get a quote a little bit wrong. I don't think that I got it wrong, I think I got it right. But I'm not 100 percent certain.

And don't worry. She had a cell phone. Her gas was coming.

A little further down the road I saw Dodd Shay blowing the snow off his driveway.

When he got to the end of his driveway, he turned around and started going back. His black dog kept coming. In fact, the dog followed me for a short distance. It wanted to keep following me, but it got worried that it was getting too far from from home, so it turned around and went back.

A white poodle awaited it. Yes, I photographed the poodle, too, but today I will make you use imagination, if you want to see it. I won't tell you if it was tall or short, or what color its collar was or if its fur was groomed or how. Use your imagination - see what kind of white poodle you can create to go with this black dog.

Snowmachine tracks cross a well-scraped road.

I needed something besides turkey, so I drove to Taco Bell and passed by Wasilla Lake. Snow blew off the lake, but it wasn't bad.

Rex returned to Anchorage from Homer, where he did lots of thinking. In the evening, he came out and, Taco Bell notwithstanding, we all did a Thanksgiving retake and ate more turkey. Afterward, Margie asked if we were ready for pie.

We weren't. I semi-dozed off on the couch to the sounds of Kalib squealing and Uncle Rex laughing (you can tell how much I got done on this task I told you about last night).

When I got up from the couch, I found the two sitting at the kitchen table, playing with the toy train engine I bought in India for about 50 cents and then brought home to Kalib.

Finally, we were ready for pie.

It kind of looks like yesterday, but it isn't (and yet, by the time this post appears, it will be)

No, you haven't accidently logged on to yesterday's entry. It's just that today's begins just as did yesterday's. Once again, Kalib was ill and had to stay home from daycare. Once again, despite having worked all night, his Uncle Caleb devoted himself to his care and entertainment.

Lately, I have been working on a story about the role of Iñupiat uncles play in teaching hunting skills to their nephews. This is because a father can be so overprotective of his own children out in the dangerous Arctic environment that he can fail to teach him what they need to know to survive.

So I thought about that. In both the Apache and Navajo cultures from which Kalib hails, the uncle also traditionally plays a teaching role that the father does not, and for similar reasons.

But I tell you - no one is more protective of Kalib than his Uncle Caleb. I have never seen a relationship quite like the one these two share. Kalib and Caleb - what a bond they share!

I wish I had had such an uncle.

Four dogs that I saw as I took my walk. It was warmer today - just a few degrees below zero at this point. And snow is forecast sometime within the next couple of days, so it will get warmer yet.

I just hope that none of those "Pineapple Express" storms blows in from the South Pacific. They make a mess of everything and just ruin winter.

But it is an El Niño winter, and these are the winters that the Pineapple Express gets completely out-of-hand, so it is inevitable. Just watch.

And whenever it gets really warm up here, it gets cold down in the Lower 48. You will see.

I used to park my airplane right about there, where this playground sits in Wasilla's downtown park. Yes, this used to be Wasilla's airport and the Iditarod Sled Dog race would start right here. It was a terrible place for an airport, though, as Wasilla Middle School and High School both sat under the flight pattern.

During take offs and landings, I would see the buildings and kids outside, beneath my spinning prop, doing PE, practicing football and such. It seemed to me that it was just a matter of time until an airplane went down there.

In fact, one day, a Super Cub did, crashing not far from my son, Jacob, who was a middle school student at the time. Fortunately, nobody was hurt except for the pilot. He was hurt pretty bad, but he survived.

Somewhere in my files, I have a picture of that crashed airplane.

Today, I passed by on my coffee break. I took it early, at 3:00 instead of 4:00, because I could hardly stay awake.

Again, I took the long way home and saw this horse. "Hey Bill! Come ride me!" it neighed out as I drove by. I ignored the invitation.

Someone might have thought I was a horse thief and shot me, or lassoed me and then hung me on the spot. That's what they do to horse thiefs, you know.

I think that horse was trying to trick me, to get me in trouble. Look closely at it. You can see that it is a very mischievous horse.

A short distance later, I saw this guy pedaling his bike. All that conditioning I did pedaling my bike is gone now! I missed five days in a row during AFN and then two days after that, my back tire went flat and I still haven't fixed it.

And whenever I ride a bike in the winter, sooner or later it slips on the ice and slides out from underneath me and I go down. This was not so bad in the past, but now that I have broken my shoulder and have this titanium one, I really don't want to fall.

I'm going to get my cross country skis out real soon, though.

I don't want to fall on them, either. But I will. But I will have snow beneath me. I think I will be ok.

After the bike, I saw a school bus.

I am now nearing home. It is 4:00 PM. The sun has gone down. Alpenglow lights up the Talkeetna Mountains.

Today, in Barrow, the sun rose in the south, then set in the south an hour later. On the 19th, the Barrow sun will come up for just half-an-hour, will go down and then won't rise again until January 23.

I will get there sometime between now and then and I will show you the dark noon.

Of course, if you are already there in Barrow, or anywhere on the Arctic Slope, as many of you, my friends are, this won't be anything new at all.

I am just about home now. Look how much traffic rolls down Seldon! I wonder why?