iPhoning it with Rex and Ama by the Little Su, where a spineless moose lost his head - and his antlers, too

Rex and his girlfriend Ama showed up yesterday about 1:00 PM. They had wanted to take Margie and me out to lunch, but Margie had gone to town to babysit Kalib and Jobe, so they just took me. Afterwards, Rex drove Ama through his boyhood haunts toward the Little Su.

To Rex, as it is for me, the tour was one of lament, for what he saw was all the places that had been so wild and free now ruined and cut off by the development that has put an end to the hiking, skiing, and mountain biking that we used to do through all this country, but can't do anymore.

To Ama, who grew up in New York and now hails from the San Francisco Bay area, it appeared as though we were driving through a rural, nearly pristine area, with just a few houses here and there, and a gas station.

Ama and Rex met last summer when she came to Alaska to do some adventuring and they hit it off. She had a great time in Alaska and did some things that I still haven't done - such as kayak in Prince William Sound, but she was pretty certain that she would not want to be a winter-time Alaskan.

Rex went and spent some time with her in the Bay area in September and, judging from Facebook, they had a great time.

Now she is back in Alaska. She might have even found a job here. She is ready to try winter-time Alaska, ready to become an Alaskan.

You will note how bundled up she is - hat, gloves, multi-layers and what she probably believes to be a winter coat.

You will note how Rex is not bundled up at all.

I was even less bundled.

It's often like that, when people come to visit from other places. 

Next year, I suspect, she will be dressed just like us.

To me, the air only seemed disgustingly warm for this time of year. The ground should be covered in snow. All the lakes should be frozen over. Some are, and some are freezing, but some have little ice at all.

The bank of the Little Su should be completely rimmed in ice.

It's disgusting, really. I can hardly stand it.

The other day we were talking with Jacob and Lavina about Halloween, and how the kids would go out, sometimes in sub-zero weather, and come back with icy pant legs and their costumes crisp and frozen.

It could still happen that way this year, but I wouldn't count on it.

Rex skips a rock.

What is that he has spotted? A log, drifted almost to the bank?

Why, it's a moose head! As you can see, someone has cut the antlers away from the skull. Soon, perhaps, they will hang on someone's wall, or be placed over a doorway or put on display in a yard. Maybe they already have been.

I wonder where the moose was shot and butchered? This is a place by the road and bridge where many people gather to picnic, skip rocks, cast a line, drink beer, smoke dope or do whatever. It would be very rude to butcher a moose in such a place and just leave the leftovers behind, so I speculate that perhaps it was done upstream and the skull just washed to this place.

A short distance away, we found the spine. There was a significant amount of moose hair on the rocks on the bank.

So I am not sure. It might have drifted down, but someone might have butchered it right here.

Coming into the main channel is a little estuary that has frozen over. 

Whoever left this to freeze into the estuary definitely is rude. I hate to say it, but an awful lot of this kind of thing happens around here.

There are many people who live in this area who do not know where they live.

Oh, yes - they will tell you, perhaps proudly, "I live in Alaska!"

But they don't even know it.

Frozen moose print. I had forgotten my camera, by the way. I had to take all these pictures with my iPhone. I like the iPhone camera, but the lens has become very smudged and hazy.

Ama studies the scientific properties of a frozen puddle.

I find a nice little shell along the bank - a 9 mm. I still have it. It's in my pocket.

Ama observes a scorched tree trunk. Trees here do not have long tap roots that extend deep into the ground. Here, the roots spread out beneath the tree and form a platform for it.

Rex gets an idea for some iron art involving salmon that he wants to create. So he takes a few pictures of this dead one for later study.

The dead salmon.

Later, we go to Little Miller's for coffee as we listen to the afternoon news on the radio. We could not go to Metro, because Metro is closed on Sundays.

The lady at the window accepts Rex's cash.

Such was Sunday.

Now it is Monday.

I don't want to do anything.

I suppose that I had better.

I am tired, though. Really, really, tired.

I don't want to do anything.

But how can I do nothing at all?

That would be boring.

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To help him stand up to the trials ahead, Larry Aiken begins a self-portrait and gets a kiss; Art Oomittuk and his mask: Kalib falls asleep

Three or four days ago, I received a Facebook message from Larry Aiken, a friend of mine from Barrow, who whaled with the Kunuk crew during the years that I followed them. He had come to Anchorage, where he expects to spend the next nine months in treatment for esophageal cancer. He had known for a few months that something was badly wrong and the doctors had done some tests - except for the one that needed to be done - an EDG endiscopy, a scoping of the esophagus from the throat to the stomach - but had not found a cancer.

Larry insisted that they send him to Anchorage, where he got the EDG and the fast growing tumor was found. Monday, he starts radiation therapy and on Tuesday, Chemo. 

He knows that he faces an ordeal, but his doctor has been encouraging, friends and relatives back home are raising money and praying for him and he has faith that he will beat it.

Larry is a talented artist. To help build his courage, he decided that he would paint a self-portrait of himself harpooning a bowhead whale. He would begin by sketching the scene out and then would paint it in.

Yesterday, from inside the room where he is staying at the Springhill Suites hotel located near the Alaska Native Medical Center, he sketched this scene. The man behind him with the shoulder gun is George Adams, the captain that Larry now whales with.

So we decided that I would take a picture of the sketch as it now it is and later of the painting that it will soon become.

But when I set about to take the picture, I found the situation vexing. The light in the room was not good. Plus, I wanted the dolls and other items of Native art in the showcase behind him to show up in the picture, but when I found the angle that would have Larry, his art and the dolls more or less lined up, I discovered that the lights on the ceiling cast a horribly distracting reflection upon the showcase window.

I did not immediately know how to deal with and so I did what I usually do in this kind of situation - I just started taking pictures that I knew were no good, hoping that the answer would come to me as I shot.

Instead, I saw the hands of a person enter into the scene from the right and I knew that the whole person would soon follow.

Another distracting element!

And then the whole person materialized. It was Martha Whiting from Kotzebue, a lady who I have known for decades and who also knows Larry and knows what he faces. Martha stepped into the picture, knelt down beside him and kissed him on the head.

And so there you have it - Larry Aiken, with the beginnings of his self-portrait. In the showcase window behind him hovers a symbol of his own culture - the culture that will give him strength, matched with Martha's spontaneous showing of the kind of love and support that will also help him get through this.

Martha gives Larry a hug. I should note that Martha is the Mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough. 

For decades, Larry has been a volunteer with the Barrow Search and Rescue and in his work with them has been instrumental in saving many lives. Last winter, he did a rescue inland on the Slope in temperatures in the -70's.

In about April, although he did not yet know why, Larry found that he began to tire easily. The endurance that he had always had was not there. He went out on a couple of hunting trips from which he had to return early, with the help of others, because he grew too weak to continue.

Then, earlier this month, during the same time that I was in Kaktovik, he was at Barrow Rescue Base when word came in on the radio that a propane tank had exploded inside an aluminum boat that had gone out for the fall hunt. One other boat had been in sight and the occupants had seen flame blow out the windows and shoot up through the roof. The boat itself had risen an estimated four to five feet above the water, then had fallen back into the water.

Now, the boat was drifting, dead in the water. The crew could not be seen.

Although the rescuers have faced many things over the decades, this was a new situation and the news was greeted almost with disbelief. Larry did not feel that there was any time to waste and soon he was out on the water with two other volunteers and three EMT'S they had picked up from the fire station.

When they approached the boat, it was quiet and still. They could see no one. A sick feeling came upon them. Then a hand appeared at window, followed by a face. All the occupants had survived, with no life-threatening injuries - although bones were broken and skin was burned.

Along with the other rescuers, Larry did his part to supply the victims with medical care and get them back to shore and to the hospital.

During all that time, he did not feel weary. The exhaustion that had plagued him earlier had retreated.

Once it was all over and he was home, the adrenalin left. He laid down upon his bed and collapsed.

The next day, he flew to Anchorage, where his cancer was discovered.

Another person that Larry sent a Facebook message to is Othniel Oomittuk of Point Hope, better known as Art. As it happened, Art was in Anchorage working as an actor in the major feature film, "Everybody Loves Whales," about the Great Gray Whale Rescue of 1988.

Ever since receiving that message, Art has been giving Larry his full support - spending time with him, taking him shopping and out to dinner. Most importantly, he has been his friend.

As Larry visited with Martha, Art disappeared for a few minutes and then reappeared with this mask that he has been making.

The face is made of ugruk (bearded seal) skin and the hair comes from a sheepskin rug that once sat on the Amsterdam floor of his European girlfriend.

Larry and Martha study the mask. Art is known around the world for his fine art.

Art in his mask.

Afterward, I took Larry, Art and Lloyd Nageak, who is staying with Larry until his girlfriend can come down from Barrow, over to meet Marige, Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and Jobe. It was a good visit, but we must do it again when Jacob and Lavina will have a chance to cook and feed them properly.

After they left, Kalib fell asleep in his new chair. The chair is based on the movie, Cars, once his favorite. Kalib has now moved onto a new favorite, one about Vikings and dragons. One of the stars of that movie is a black dragon by the name of Toothless - who does indeed have fearsome teeth - and who, in personality, character, and movement, seems to be a recreation of my good black cat friend, Jim.

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It's all Kalib and Jobe, all the time... A lion roars in Africa, then sleeps through the Alaska night

Yesterday, I drove into Anchorage to visit a friend who had come down from Barrow for medical care. Afterward, in the early evening, I stopped by to visit Kalib and Jobe, who had just returned home with their mother.

Not long after I arrived, their dad pedaled up on his bike, home from work. He stopped at the mailbox, then looked up a Kalib, who was looking at him.

The two greet each other.

Lavina was amusing Jobe.

As he waited for his dad to get situated and come in, Kalib decided to give Jobe a hug.

Kalib can get a little rough, but Jobe didn't seem to mind.

He pushed it to the edge.

Then Kalib needed a hug from his mom.

It turned into a rather nice group hug.

Dad came in and took a seat on the floor. Kalib jumped onto his lap to play. As noted, Kalib can get a little rough.

Dad gets rough right back.

Just a bunch of ruffians!

They invited me out to dinner at Taco Kings, so Kalib and I headed to the car so that he could ride with me. It was growing dark, darker than it looks in the picture. I had to push my ISO to 6400 and shoot slow shutter speeds.

Kalib and his blanket.

Kalib prepares to jump.

Dinner at Taco King. I had a bowl of chicken soup, chips, and water.

Then I brought Kalib and Jobe home with me. Jobe fell asleep right away. I kept thinking that Kalib had fallen asleep, too, but every now and then I would hear his little voice rise through the dark, "bus! bus!" Kalib loves buses.

I had the radio tuned to KSKA, to a program where they play contemporary music from around the world. As we drove through the dark, they played a Ladysmith Black Mambazo rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." It begins with the roar of a lion, and then the soothing voice of Ladysmith speaking as though to children, telling them a story, as the choir softly sings acapella in the background. Then she sings the song... "hush, my baby, the lion sleeps tonight..."

As I drove through the dark Alaska night toward home with my little grandsons in the back seat, one asleep, the other looking for buses, the car filled with sweet sounds, spawned by grave danger, sounds from Africa.

At that moment, it seemed to me to be the most beautiful song that I had ever heard.

It was exquisite. 

After I got home, I googled it and came up with three Ladysmith versions, including the one I had heard, which I link to here. I put my headset on and listened to it maybe five times, mesmerized. It is playing right now, even as I type.

I went to iTunes, hoping to purchase it and put it in my iPhone, but iTunes did not have it.

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If go to the slide show and do not see a picture, but just a box that says, "thumbnail processing," click on it anyway and the first slide will appear. This is just another Squarespace aggravation. Hopefully, within the next few days, Squarespace will finish processing the thumbnails and the pictures will appear. With Squarespace, you never know.

My final day in Utah - Julie and her family, minus the chipmunk; surprise birthday dinner with a silent Bacon scream; back in Wasilla - Carmen's new do; Mahoney horses

This is Matthew Oliphant, youngest son of the very first niece that ever came to me, Julie, and her husband Kerry. We have not spent a great deal of time together but, my favorite memory of him comes from the time period after Mom died. He was very small then and I took a picture of him eating a chocolate chip cookie. It was part of a batch that his mom and brothers and sister had made and brought over for Dad and those of us who were hanging out to mourn with him.

As the rest of us visited, Matthew kept eating those cookies and by the time they left, the cookies were all gone. It's possible his brothers and sister might have helped a bit, but Matthew was the real Cookie Monster.

I didn't see him with a cookie on this trip, but I have a feeling that he is still a cookie monster.

Julie is the daughter of my brother, Mac, Rex's tall twin. Mac got his tall genes from Dad, whereas his twin and the rest of us all got Mom's short genes. Mac grew to be 6'4", Rex 5'7".

The tall genes were passed down to Julie, who also married a very tall man. All of their children are very tall and whatever age they are, they are taller even then their grandpa Mac was at the same. Six foot is nothing to them at all. Even in junior high years, six-footers have always stood short beside them.

Matthew is only seven, but he already stands eight foot, nine-and-three-quarter inches tall.

Well... maybe I exaggerate a little bit... but give him a couple of years.

It takes a lot of cookies to fuel such growth, but Matthew is up to the task.

That's Kerry off to the side and the nine-year old hefting the two-by-fours is Charlie. 

And this is Chase - Chaseninja. Now, the thing is, I may be the short one, but I am still the toughest member of the entire family and everybody knows it.

Well... maybe I boast a little too quickly. At nine, Charlie weighs in at 156 pounds and plays tackle on his Pee Wee football team. If you doubt that he hits hard, notice the abrasions on his forehead. He wears a helmet, alright, but when he hits someone he practically shoves his head right through that helmet and right through his opponent.

That's what those abrasions are from - the impact of his forehead against the inside of his helmet.

And yet, tough as he is, when his mom mentioned that a neighbor had some kittens, he lifted his hands to the praying position and began to plead that she let him adopt one. I was a little slow and caught the moment just a second too late, after he noticed the camera lens was upon him.

The family, minus daughter Riley, in the backyard. Riley had been to the dentist and, as I noted earlier, felt like a chipmunk and refused to be photographed.

Next time.

Julie and Chase.

In the evening, just before I drove to the airport, turned in the rental car and boarded the jet back to Anchorage, I had dinner with Ada Lakshmi, Rex, Tom and all the children of Mary Ann except for the one who had gotten married the day before, plus their husbands and boyfriend. We ate at Thai Gardens, just blocks from the house where Mary Ann and Greg live. The wedding and all its preparations had exhausted Mary Ann, and so she and Greg had stayed home with the two dogs.

As to the son who had gotten married and his bride, nobody had seen either, all day long, even though they were not scheduled to leave for their honeymoon in Vermont until the next day.

I did not get to say goodbye to them.

Tom's children who had not just married planned the dinner as a surprise birthday party for their father. He was completely surprised, especially since his birthday is in September. His children had not been able to be with him then, so they celebrated it now.

As you can see, Tom is now four years old. Either that, or each candle represents 15 years.

Eric, Amber's adventurous, mountain-climbing boyfriend.

And then I found myself in Wasilla, once again, and totally exhausted once again.

In the afternoon, I went to Metro Cafe at the usual time and found Carmen at the drive-through window. She had done some fancy things to her hair and wondered if I would notice.

Of course I noticed.

Carmen's beautiful new hairdo, from the back.

Scott was there, working, too. His cancer battle has been rough, with radiation and chemo subjecting him to ordeals the description of which make me cringe and I will not pass them on here. But he is a fighter, determined to win this battle.

We talked a bit about our separate wanderings into the same places on the Arctic Slope. We thought it might be good to one day write up some of our stories, side by side.

Shoshana came to the window to say "hi, stranger," so of course I photographed her, too. She is not there on Mondays and Wednesdays, as she has class those days.

After I left Metro, I did the old drive, down past the Mahoney Ranch and the Mahoney horses. I don't know why it hasn't snowed here, yet. I hope it does, soon. I saw some footage from the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention in Fairbanks and there is snow there and of course there has been snow on the Arctic Slope for awhile now.

Some may wonder why I am not at AFN and why I was not at the Alaska Tribal Leaders Summit and the Youth and Elders conference that immediately preceded the convention. I have been going nonstop for months, traveling here, traveling there. I am exhausted. And I can't afford either the time or the expense to have spent this week in Fairbanks.

So I am here in Wasilla. I plan to stay put for a couple of weeks, if I can get away with it.

I have not seen Kalib, Jobe or any of my children except for Caleb yet, but I am going into Anchorage this afternoon, so maybe I will. If I do, then readers will, too.

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This Volkswagen and Taco Bell is not the post that I have been working on, but a shallow substitute

I don't quite know what to do here. I have just spent at least four hours, maybe a bit more, working on a 20 image post that I had titled, "the day that I dropped by my brother's house to visit the ghosts of my parents." Text wise, I had worked my way through 10 pictures and still had 10 to go.

Not only was the effort taking up more time than I can afford, but it was creating a great deal of text that was plunging deeper into some aspects of my life and musings than I suspect many readers would care to go.

It's all material that I must write about, but maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself and this is not the right moment.

Anyway, I do not have the time to finish it today.

So I am going to drop it. Maybe I will pick it up again tomorrow or later, maybe I won't. Maybe it will just sit in the draft section of my blog - unpublished, unread, never viewed. 

Instead, just to get something up today, I now post this picture of a Volkswagen parked near the Taco Bell that sits about one block from my brother's house, where the ghosts of my parents reside - at least in the form of artifacts that play with my mind and memory.

As I have already noted, I am back in Wasilla, but, even if I never post what I have been working on, I want to introduce readers to my niece, Julie, and her family. They came to the wedding reception, which Rex and I missed, but not to the functions that I attended and photographed.

I did pay them a visit, however, and I did get photos of all, except for Riley, who had just suffered some dental work, felt like a chipmunk, and refused to be photographed.

And Melanie - please do not get upset with me. I did not eat at this Taco Bell. I was too stuffed to do that.

Maybe next time.