My trips to Arizona and Anaktuvuk Pass - the connection; on the home front, Jobe, a horse, and some kids

As regular followers of this blog know, I was recently in Arizona, where I journeyed to see my friend Vincent Craig just before he died, and then stayed for his funeral and to visit family. I traveled straight from Arizona to the Brooks Range Alaska village of Anaktuvuk Pass to attend the wedding of Nasuġraq Rainey Higbee to Ben Hopson III (B-III).

I have mentioned that there is tie between the people I gathered with in Arizona and those whom I joined in Anaktuvuk Pass.

You can see that connection right here, in the above photo. This is Velma Kee Craig, Vincent's daughter-in-law through his and Mariddie's oldest son, Dustinn. I took this photo inside the Fort Apache LDS church house during the lunch that was served to family and friends of Vincent right shortly after his burial.

Please note the necklace and earrings that Velma chose to wear to her father-in-law's funeral. Both were made by Nasuġraq Rainey Higbee, whose wedding I would photograph in Anaktuvuk.

The moment that she saw the necklace in an online ad posted by Rainey, Velma loved it and wanted it. "Sorry," Rainey informed her. "That necklace has already been bought."

She did not tell her that it was Dustinn who had bought it. Dustinn had sworn her to secrecy.

In the summer of 1981, two months after Margie, little Jacob, Caleb, Rex, baby Melanie and I rolled into Alaska, I found a job at the Tundra Times, a now defunct weekly newspaper that served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities. I started as a reporter/photographer and then became editor/reporter/photographer for a short time.

Back then, each October during the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, he Tundra Times would host a banquet. Entertainment would usually include at least one Native American act from Outside. In 1984, I suggested to those planning the banquet that they consider bringing Vincent Craig up to perform and that is just what they did.

Mariddie came with him and they stayed with us in our Wasilla house throughout the convention.

Vincent and Mariddie wanted to take a memento of Native Alaska back to Arizona and so they purchased a pair of mukluks - caribou, if I recall correctly - at one of the arts and crafts booths that are always set up at the convention. They were very pleased with those mukluks.

One night, as I drove them back to Wasilla from convention happenings in Anchorage, the Northern Lights climbed in a glowing green arc over the Talkeetna Mountains, and then divided into various curtains to shimmer, dance, and flash in different colors. Vincent and Mariddie were fascinated

"Dustinn would love this," Vincent said. "He would feel awe."

That's Dustinn above, with Velma and their four children, Chance, Ashlee, Tristan and Kraig. I took this picture in their home, approximately five hours before his father died.

As Dustinn grew, he would often look at those mukluks. He would touch them, smell them, feel the texture of the fur. He would wonder about the place they came from, the people who made them. He would feel a sense of awe and fascination. His dad would tell him they came from Alaska; he would tell him about his friend, me, who lived in Alaska, who had his own airplane that he flew all about his mysterious, northern, land.

After Dustinn became a filmmaker, the primary center of his work became centered on Arizona, primarily on his Apache people, but he also branched out elsewhere - into Northern Alaska. 

In the image above, he is showing me his "Freshwater Ice" film. It tells the story of how, when a loved one dies, Iñupiat people will sometimes venture out onto the salty sea ice to find a certain kind of clear, blue, coveted piece freshwater glacial ice that yields the purest, sweetest, drinking water to be found.

They will chop it up, bring it back to the village, melt it and this will be the drinking water that will quench the thirst of those who gather to bring comfort to the deceased's family.

It is beautiful. It was also a bit amazing to me, to sit in his living room in Mesa, Arizona, and to watch this film that he made, people with faces and voices from Arctic Alaska, all well-known to me.

Dustinn was also hired to teach a film-making workshop at Barrow's Ilisagvik College. One of his students was Nasuġraq Rainey Higbee and another was Iñupiat filmmaker Rachel Edwardson. The three were all about the same age and after class got to spend a good amount of time visiting. 

Dustinn later got to work with Rachel on a film in Point Hope. Here is a trailer showing some of Dustinn's Point Hope work.

They discovered that, as young Native artists working to make a life in Native society that for them was different even than it was for their parents, they faced similar challenges and had much in common. They all became good friends.

And here is Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson, who made the necklace and earrings that Velma Craig wore to her father-in-law's funeral in Arizona, on the evening of the day that she got married in Anaktuvuk Pass.

With her is her sister, Angela and her new brother-in-law, Byron Hopson.

I have a number of pictures and stories yet to post here from my trips to Arizona and Anaktuvuk. Now you will know how the two tie together.

In time, I intend to bring Rachel into this blog as well.

I don't know how to state this without sounding like I am bragging, but it is part of this story, part of this connection, so I have to say it. When I got to Rainey's home, she showed me her stack of the battered Uiñiq magazines that I made and she saved. She told me that she grew with my pictures, that my inspired her and that is why she kept the magazines, why she wanted me to come and photograph her wedding. That is why, after I made my final stop in Arizona at the home of Dustinn Craig to visit he and his mother, I got on an airplane and began the first of the four-leg that would take me to Anaktuvuk Pass.

Now, a little bit from the home front:

Yesterday, I had to go into town to take care of some business. I stopped at Jacob and Lavina's to visit Margie, who is babysitting Jobe. Jobe was asleep in his cradleboard.

Another view of Jobe.

Late in the evening, I took a ride on my bike. I had not gone far before I came upon this group of young people. The girl on the horse told me her name, but I was so certain that I would remember I did not bother to record it. I have forgotten. I do not know the name of the horse, either.

I should have lingered, spent a bit more time with them, learned a bit about that horse and how the girl feels about it and what the kids on the bikes think.

But I didn't. I just quickly stopped, told them what I was doing, got the name that I would forget and then pedaled quickly on.

Update, 11:35 AM Friday: AKponygirl left a comment and identified the horse-riding girl as Marcella. Thank you, Akponygirl!

Bird's nest in Charlie's beard, he takes 3rd in US Beard Championships - see it in the Anchorage Daily News and The Oregonian

I don't usually post twice in one day, but this is big news - I have to do it. At some point after I left Arizona, Charlie and Melanie did, too - but they did not come straight back to Alaska. They went to Bend, Oregonian, so that Charlie could compete in the National Beard and Moustache Championships, amongst a total field of 189.

Today, I received an email from Charlie's mom and dad informing me that Charlie won 3rd place in the Freestyle category. Some birds helped him make this stunning achievement by nesting in his beard.

The Anchorage Daily News ran a blurb today, and you can find the partial full story, complete with a picture of Charlie and the birds that nested in his beard, in the Oregonian.

Congratulations, Charlie - we always knew that you have talent and would go far in this life!

I do not want to violate the Oregonian's photo copyright, so I have only posted an extreme crop from one of the photos in my Cibecue Creek series, but, please, if you haven't already, go look at the real thing!

Update (10:25 PM): Charlie's mom just informed me that Melanie was his stylist. Melanie took some pictures of her own and she is going to email an image or two or three. When she does, I will add it, or them, to this post.

Update (7:03 PM Thursday, 6/10/10): MgSoCal has left a comment informing me that Charlie's picture is on the front page of today's L.A. Times online. I don't know how long it will stay there, but here it is:

http://www.latimes.com/

A man wearing an orange shirt pedals his bicycle north on Tamar, toward the Talkeetna Mountains

This is the ONLY picture that I have taken since I put up my last post. Although I never let a day go by without taking at least one picture and usually anywhere from a dozen or so to a thousand or more on a big, intense, shoot, I did not want to take very many pictures today. I already had a post planned for this slot and I knew that if I took a bunch of pictures, at some point I would have to take some time to edit them.

I did not want to take the time.

But I have to get up early Wednesday morning to take the Escape into the shop for some warranted work and then I must drive the loaner car to Anchorage to take care of a very important task. Despite thinking that I would just veg all afternoon and evening, that I would walk, ride my bike, drive my car, do whatever, I found myself with a cascade of tasks to attend to and so I did not veg.

I did take one very short walk, late in the evening, and that was when I saw this guy riding his bike ahead of me.

As to the post that I had planned - one that would make a tie between what I did in Arizona and Anaktuvuk Pass - it is just going to have to wait one more day.

It is 10:26 PM and, just like last night, I haven't the energy to continue tonight.

So I will set the blog-timer for this to appear at 11:00 AM and will do the post that I had planned for today tomorrow.

I have one more task I must do before I go to bed. It, at least, will help bring in some genuine revenue.

I apologize for being so exhausted.

I must get a bit rested over the next couple of weeks so that I can go to Greenland and exhaust myself all over again.

That should be fun. I will take you all with me. It will be good - not what most of you probably think - but very good.

The collapse

As I pedal my bike, I come upon these two dogs. Head down, tail up, the black one turns toward me and approaches, growling. I do not believe him. I think he is bluffing. It turns out I am right. Still, it is a little nerve-wracking when this happens.

I pedal past a lady on a four-wheeler going in the opposite direction. I have ridden my bike three times since I returned from Arizona/Anaktuvuk Pass. Each time, it has been hard - much harder than when I first got my bike out after the snow melted. I had expected it to be very hard then, but it wasn't so bad.

Now, it has strained my muscles and burned my lungs. I do not think it is because my physical condition deteriorated that much while I was in Arizona and Anaktuvuk. I think it is because I have missed so much sleep, because I have sunk into so deep a state of fatigue.

That's my theory.

Naturally, in such a state of fatigue, I do not want to cook oatmeal in the mornings. I do not want to deal with dirty dishes. A couple of mornings, I have eaten cold cereal straight out of the box, dry. It has been good, but sometimes I just have to go to Family Restuarant, be waited on and have my dishes taken away to be washed by some poor guy or gal on the bottom rung of Wasilla's economic ladder.

At the moment, I stand on a rung not much above his; maybe not all. I am in one hell of an economic pickle. Although I thought I would have a new contract over one month ago, although a new contract was sent to me just before I left Arizona and I signed it and sent it back, legal-technical people keep finding reasons to stall that contract, to continually come up with one more task that needs to be done before it can be activated and then, once that task is done, they come up with another.

I feel as though I am living in the Twilight Zone.

My credit cards are completely tapped out. I still have a tiny bit of the cash that generous readers have donated to keep this blog going, but that's all and not much is left.

So I have no business going to breakfast at Family Restaurant, but I go anyway.

No, this is not a plea for more blog contributions

That contract will eventually be activated, soon, I think (but then I have thought so for a month now) and then I should be okay for half-a-year or so.

Maybe that will be enough time for me to figure out how to turn this blog into a more profitable, self-sustaining, activity so that I don't have to worry about contracts anymore.

You readers who have contributed have greatly bolstered my confidence that such a thing is possible.

I will write more about this in a later post.

I took the above picture at Family Restaurant not because this guy was walking through the door, but because the train was rolling by in the background.

I love the train. I prefer to catch the engines, but my camera was still in my pocket when I heard the whistle blow, when the blue and yellow engines appeared beyond the door. By the time I got the camera out and ready to shoot, the engines had moved on and this guy came walking through the door as the passenger cars rolled past behind him.

If I can't get the engines, I prefer freight cars or the caboose, but this was a passenger train for tourists, so there were no freight cars, no caboose.

In this life, when you can't get exactly what you want, you have to take what's there.

I am so damn wise I amaze myself.

Margie, by the way, was still in Arizona when I took this picture.

Later, as I drove down Lucille toward the Parks Highway - Wasilla's real main street - I heard a siren. I looked in my mirror and saw this emergency vehicle coming, so I pulled to the right and shot this image as it passed. I wondered what had happened.

I looked in my mirror to see if there were more emergency vehicles coming. There weren't, so I turned left onto the Parks Highway, right behind the red vehicle of the previous frame. The driver did not pull out into traffic, but instead entered the middle "suicide" turn lane and then proceeded forward, slowly.

The accident was right there. It didn't look bad. I could see no smashed-in vehicles. I did not study the scene to see what I could make of it, but raised my pocket camera and took a blind snap as I rolled by. Once I had passed, I accelerated and moved on.

At this small size, it is a little hard to see all the elements in the picture, so, having no actual knowledge beyond this frame of what happened, I will describe those elements to you:

It would appear that the gray mini-van was rear-ended by the black pickup - but I don't know this for a fact. It just looks that way. There is glass spread across the hood of the black truck and the man in the Levi's with the blue shirt seems to be examining that glass. Inside the van, an apparent EMT wearing a blue glove appears to be securing a neck brace on the driver. The open sliding-door reveals two small children, one of them an infant suckling on a pacifier, strapped into car seats. 

The children must be basically okay. They look fine; none of the EMT's are rushing to or hovering over them as they would be if they had been hurt.

Car seats - what a wonderful invention.

I'm not going to accuse anyone of tail-gating, because this picture is 100 percent of the information that I have and I don't know what happened, but let the implication stand as sober warning to all tailgaters anyway.

Don't tailgate. There is no need to. It won't get you there any faster. A baby's life could hang in the difference - maybe two babies.

Elsewhere, a young man worked to attact business to a car wash by offering a free one with every oil change. There must be a catch, of course.

I ate a sandwich on the back porch. Jimmy came out with me. As I bit, chewed and swallowed, he walked among dandelions going to seed.

Margie enjoys digging out the dandelions, but she was still in Arizona.

Late Saturday night, she came in on Alaska Airlines, with Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and Jobe. Although he, his brother and parents would be picked up and taken home by Rex, Kalib jumped into the car with me for a few minutes. Margie stood outside the door with Jobe.

Jobe looked so wonderful that I just wanted her to hand him through the door to me so I could hold him and give him a little hug.

"Margie, pass Jobe to me!" I kept saying.

There was a lot of noise out there. She didn't hear me. Soon, Jacob took him from her arms and then they disappeared. Kalib went with them.

Margie got into the car.

I drove away from the airport feeling extremely frustrated that I had not been able to hold my little grandson.

Why are we this way? What makes a grandfather so strongly want to hold his baby grandson that when he doesn't get to, he is left feeling frustrated?

Along the way home, we saw someone parked alongside the southbound lanes of traffic who was probably feeling pretty frustrated, too.

I got to have Margie's company for one day only. Then, early Monday morning, I drove her into town and dropped her off at Jacob and Lavina's, so that she could spend the week babysitting Jobe.

"We just vegged-out all day," Lavina spoke of their activites Sunday.

Man, I thought - that's what I need to do. Just veg out. I have become unspeakably exhausted. I go from one thing to another, never stopping, never resting. It has been this way for months and months and months. Never stopping. The push through Arizona and then straight onto Anaktuvuk was particularly draining, for reasons that my posts of the past few weeks make clear.

I vegged out and laid around through the summer of 2008, because I was hurt and recovering from my injuries and had no choice - but once I got going again, I have pretty much gone, non-stop.

"Be sure to take a nap," Margie told me when I drove away, leaving her with Jobe.

After I returned home, I sat down to my computer and tried to do a few things, but I was too tired. About 11:20 AM, I got up and headed to the bedroom. Jimmy followed me to the door but then stopped without entering.

"If you want to nap with me, you had better come in now," I told him, "because once I'm down, I'm not going to get up and let you in."

He didn't believe me. He plays this game all the time. He stops at the door and won't come in until he knows I am down and comfortable. Then he meows and raises a fuss until I get up and let him in. Then he settles down on top of me and goes to sleep.

Sure enough, he refused to come in.

"Okay," I told him. "I warned you."

Pistol-Yero was already in the room, sitting in the window sill.

I laid down, pulled the blanket over me and fell almost instantly to sleep.

Occasionally, I would wake up slightly, would barely hear Jimmy meowing and pawing at the door, but I did not get up to let him in. I could not get up to let him in. It was like I was paralyzed. I could only close my eyes and go back to sleep. Pistol-Yero was there, sleeping with me - sometimes next to me, sometimes atop me.

And so it went until a bit after 2:00 PM.

Then I got up and didn't do much of anything. I did spend some time in front of my computer, but it was pretty much all stupor-time.

I lasted only until a bit after 10:00 PM, then had no choice but to go to bed.

Jimmy played the same damn game, then sat and meowed and scratched at the door until 3:00 AM, at which time I finally got up and let him in.

Then the three of us, me, Pistol-Yero and Jimmy, slept snug until 9:00 AM.

Once again, I could not bear to cook oatmeal or wash dishes, so I breakfasted at Family. As I left to go home, I saw these kids with two adults, playing in the park.

I then returned home, determined to veg another day.

Once I got home, I kept receiving a flurry of tasks that came by email, all needed to be done immediately and all were non-revenue generating, but were the kind of non-reimbursable tasks one must do for clients.

These have continued to come in as I have worked on this blog entry, which I intended to be much shorter than it turned out to be.

In my next post, I plan to return to the undone work from Arizona and Anaktuvuk.

For now, I want to veg some more.

Not necessarily sleep - just veg.

And ride my bike.

Walk a bit.

Drive the car.

Whatever.

Cibecue Creek, part 4: We frolic at the magical falls; Jacob does a back-flop, Rex gets dizzy; we hike out in a race against darkness

As an old man watching from an audience of stone faces observes with a wry smile, Caleb takes a big leap and plummets into the pool below Cibecue Falls.

How could a place where spirit faces peer out from ancient stone be anything but magical?

You can be certain that when Jacob - who was actually the first to jump and jumped the most - hit the water on this plunge, he felt it. It stung; it felt for a moment like he had fallen into concrete. Later, when I asked him what in the world ever got into him to try it this way, he told me he thought that he could complete the rotation before he hit the water.

Remember, my children grew up in Alaska and never had much of an opportunity to hone their water-sport skills.

It looks to me like that old man who peers out from the rocks chuckled a bit as Jacob plunged past.

Even so, Jacob swam away feeling good about the experience.

I think he could have kept at it for hours - if we had hours available to keep at it. We didn't. The sun had long since left the canyon and we knew it would be getting dark soon.

It looked like a decent enough jump for Rex...

...but when he first tried to emerge from the water, he found that he had become dizzy, unable to stand. It took awhile, but finally Rex recovered enough to rise. He took no more jumps after that. Water had gotten into his ears and would stay there for a day or two.

Charlie hit okay.

As all this was going on, Kalib engaged in a game of "throw the rock." His mother stuck close by to guide and watch over him.

Lisa didn't jump, but she did swim a bit.

Melanie spent some time floating in the shallow end of the pool, where the jumpers would not come down on top of her.

As for me, I spent too much time trying to photograph it all with my pocket camera. Finally, I decided to go up and jump, but because of my shoulder, I began to climb very slow and deliberate, and then realized that it was going to take me so long that I had better abandon it, if we were to get out of the canyon before dark.

Anyone can believe that I just chickened out, should they choose, but anyone who knows my history in this life would know that is not true.

Still, I can't stop anyone from believing whatever they are going to believe.

Even before the jumping finished, everyone posed for a picture... well, not quite everyone...

Now it's everyone.

Before we began the hike out, we refueled on mangos, a giant sandwich, oatmeal bars, assorted berry candy and other delicacies.

Now we knew we had to hurry, if we were to get Kalib out by dark. Kalib himself gamely plunged forward.

Sometimes, he needed a little help - but remember, he is only two-and-a-half years old. I think he was doing pretty well.

Once he fell and completely submerged. Cibecue Creek took the hat that he had borrowed from Jobe and swept it right off his head. Still, he got up and forged on.

Not withstanding the big hurry that we were in, we had to stop when Kalib needed another diaper change. A dark rock was releasing the heat that it had gathered from the sun back into the cooling air, so, while Lavina changed the diaper, my fellow hikers laid down upon that rock to absorb some of that solar warmth themselves.

After his diaper had been changed, Kalib found a big stone and played, "strong man."

Now we had to hurry as fast as was safe to go. The sun had officially set - even above the canyon walls. Arizona is not like Alaska, where daylight lingers long even after the sun goes down. In Arizona, after the sun goes down, dark comes fast.

When we reached the small dirt and gravel parking where Cibecue Creek empties into the Salt River, the light was just about gone.

Before we could drive away, Lavina had to change Kalib's diaper one more time. She had only the light of the inside car lamps to work with. After spending six hours with his feet either submerged in water or held in soaked shoes, Kalib's feet were wrinkled to the extreme.

He was also extremely drowsy. At the moment his mom finished changing his diaper and strapped him into his car seat, Kalib fell asleep.

As we drove through the night along the dirt and gravel road that follows the Salt River toward the highway, the moon rose over the canyon walls.

Kalib slept all the way back to LeeAnn's house - a drive of about an hour-and-a-half. He did not wake up when Jacob unstrapped him and carried him inside. He did not wake up when his grandma took him from his dad so that she could hold him on her lap and love him.

He did not wake when his mother got him ready for bed. He did not wake when she put him to bed. He slept until the following morning.

It was a well-earned sleep.

I think he did pretty damned good.

Remember - he is only two-and-half.