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. 

CM*D32: Tiger Kalib and Tiger Caleb

I know, the background is terribly distracting, cluttered. But when you step outside and are surprised to find your grandson being Tiger Kalib, you go with the background that you have, not the one you wish you had. Kalib places the ball.

Kalib pulls back the club for a swing.

Kalib swings! And misses!

He tries again. Boy, does he rap that ball!

Tiger Kalib and Tiger Caleb.

I hope this brings a smile to all you Kalib lovers down in Arizona. I know you can use one, right now.

*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).

CM*D31: I go shadow biking, I get a strange look from a solid kid

I was struggling with my project, going nowhere, so I decided to go shadow biking.

OH NO! Head on collision! Damn fool! He should know to watch out for shadows!

But shadows are tough. I continued on.

And on and on and on. But not as on and on as I would have liked. I wanted to go on all day, and then to camp out under the stars at night. But my shadow would have died in the night, so I came back home to wrestle with my project, which has vexed me to a degree that no other project ever has. I don't know why. It just has.

I have placed all my pictures, long ago. Now I sit down to write, but the words just don't come. I can spend two hours and etch out one sentence that I don't like. Then, at the end of the day, I sit down to this blog and words pour out of me and through the keyboard into the computer and out to anywhere in the world that someone happens to log onto this blog, either by intention or accident, as fast as I can move my fingers.

Here is a kid riding with no shadow. I think that he is pretty unhappy about that. And why isn't he wearing a jacket? It is October 13, for hell's sake.

But the warm weather continues. Last year, the snow was piling on now but it was 49 degrees at the moment I snapped the photograph - nothing at all for a kid pedaling a bike up a hill. I can just hear his mom when he gets home, though.

"Billy! What are you doing going outside without a coat? You'll catch your death of pneumonia!"

No, wait. That was my mom, decades ago, when she still breathed, still loved, still smiled, believed in the resurrection and I thought life would always be that way and that I would never die, not of pneumonia or anything else.

I think this boy was very curious about the detached shadow coming down the hill on his shadow bicycle. I am certain he had never before seen such a sight in all his many days.

One day, I suspect, his grandchildren will tire of the story. "Yep, kids, there I was, pedaling up Wards Road in Wasilla, Alaska, when all of a sudden I saw a shadow coming down the hill. Just a shadow - a shadow man, riding a shadow bicycle..."

"Yeah, right, Gramps, we've heard this one before - like 20 billion times."

*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.

CM*D30: I blow past Mike, Hutch, and Hayden on my bicycle as they motor down to the Little Su

As I pedaled my bike down Shrock Road toward the Little Susistna River, I saw these two ahead of me, on the four-wheeler trail that runs down the ditch. It looked to me like there might be a third person on the first machine, so I pedaled harder, hoping to catch up so that I could find out.

Sure enough, there was, and as I came pedaling past, taking their picture, they were surprised to see me, but seemed friendly. Just after I shot this frame, I came to the steep downhill, so I hurriedly slipped my camera back into my pocket, cranked the bike up into the very highest gear, then pedaled hard until I was going so fast that there was no further resistance in the pedals.

I shot far, far, ahead of them. I figured that I would see them no more.

At the Little Su, I pulled off the road and went down to the bank. As I stood at the river's edge, I saw them coming down the hill. While the odds seemed against it, I hoped that they would pull off exactly where I was, so that I could learn their names and hear their life history.

And they did. They could have kept going straight or they could have chosen any one of five alternate paths from the road to the river, but they chose the same one I did.

So - the littlest guy, that is Hutch. The man with his hand on the littlest guy's head is his dad, Mike. The one in the blue jacket is Hayden.

And this is their life story: they live not far from me and on their walks, often come down Sarah's Way, right past my house. They were amazed at what a beautiful warm and pleasant day it was. 

And, as you can see, they are responsible four wheeler drivers. They did not take their machines past the sign prohibiting it. You can see tracks where others have.

Fourwheelers can be very hard on salmon spawn.

And a lot of salmon come here to spawn and die. If I am around more next summer or at least am here at the right time and nobody is injured and I have any time, I will show you. There used to be a huge cottonwood log that spanned the river just to the right of this spot and while the water is shallow there now, it was deep back then, about ten feet, swift, cold and crystal clear.

I would go stand upon the log and watch the salmon pass by beneath. Some would be red, some mottled green and brown, some already gray and decaying - the swimming dead. Once my dog slipped and fell in on the upstream side. There were some bad snags on the downstream side and I feared that the current would take her into those and hold her under, but somehow, and I do not know how, I managed to grab her just when she popped up on the downstream side of the log. I yanked her out of the water.

She was a an Alaskan husky, the daughter of two dogs that the late, great, Susan Butcher sold to Ketil Reitan, an Iditarod racer originally of Norway, married to an Iñupiat who was living in Kaktovik - the only village in the famous Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He gave her to me once when I was visiting Kaktovik, so I put her in the back seat of my airplane and flew her home.

It was an interesting trip.

She is buried in the backyard, along with Thunder Paws, Clyde, Sherbert and Little Runt. Perhaps in the future, I will find ways to work all of these wonderful characters into this blog. I don't know how I would do it, but perhaps I will.

And then when the salmon all spawned out, died, and washed up on the bank, it smelled terrible, yet it was one of the smells that we in Alaska treasure so greatly.

*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.

Russia, as seen from Alaska: Ten views, including one through a living room window and another from a front porch

While roaming my computer, I came upon a shoot that I did in Little Diomede in late March, 2005. As one resident of my hometown managed to turn the very real truth that you can see Russia from Alaska into a national joke, I decided to run this series of photos that I took in Alaska, with Russia in the background.

View #1: Flying into Little Diomede, Alaska, from Nome. The smaller island in front is Little Diomede. The larger island in the back is Big Diomede, Russia.

View #2: Russia through the wind screen. The pilot banks hard to avoid flying into Russian airspace, as that would upset the Russians.

View #3: Russia as seen from the Iñupiat village of Little Diomede, where a polar bear skin hangs to dry.

View #4: Russia, as seen from a front porch in Little Diomede.

View #5: Russia, behind a sled dog tethered to Alaska.

View # 6: Orville Ahkinga Sr. looks out his Little Diomede window toward Russia.

You can't even see Russia in this picture, but where are these kids headed to? Could it be Russia? They would only have to travel about two-and-a-half miles.

View #7: The kids head off to Russia. No! I jokes! The Russians don't allow that. When you are on Little Diomede, you can look at Russia, but not touch Russia. There are military men stationed there to make certain that you don't and they will detain you if you try.

The kids are going to catch a plane that will take them to a basketball tournament down in Gambell on St. Lawrence Island - another Alaskan community from which I have photographed mountains that stand in Russia. In Gambell, the day must be very clear to see those Russian mountains, as they are 40 miles away.

In 1994, I flew to Russia in a North Slope Borough helicopter. Our route was Barrow-Nome-Gambell-Providenyia. After that, although our pilot had cleared us to fly to other places, Russian officials changed their minds and made us leave the helicopter on the ground. So we flew around in a Russian helicopter that was, essentially, a big, flying, bus.

Perhaps, one day, I will recount that trip here. It was amazing and caused me to fall in love with Russia, or at least the far east tip of the country. Everywhere I go, I seem to fall in love with the place, but I always come back to my first love - Alaska.

By the way, there is no permanent airstrip at Little Diomede, which rises sharply from the water. This is the ice of the Bering Strait.

The weather here often gets so bad that planes do not come in for days, even weeks. After the ice starts to seriously melt, the planes will not come at all.

In the summer time, the weather and waters are treacherous, making it very risky to try to come in with a float plane. There is sporadic helicopter service, weather permitting.

View #8: Returning home from the maternity ward of the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, Jamie Ahkinga places a hand over little Marcus Kobe Okpealuk, the baby that she now keeps sheltered under her Parka. While in Anchorage she also went shopping at Wal-Mart with the man who holds her hand, Lane Okpealuk, father of Marcus.

View #9: Standing on the Bering Strait, waiting to fly to Nome.

View #10: Freight is taken off the plane and luggage loaded on, with Russia looming in the background.

Just minutes ago, she stood on the Bering Strait with Russia standing behind her. My time at Little Diomede was much too short and I wanted to go back. I imagined that the next winter or spring I might come and hang out for awhile, but it didn't work out that way. Now, where is that wealthy philanthropist that is going to drop half-a-mil or so on me so that I can do this blog right? So that I can hop off to places like Little Diomede at will? In my own airplane?

FOR HELL'S SAKE! PHILANTHROPIST! Patron! WHERE ARE YOU??????