Monthly Archives: January 2012

Division of Labor

30 Monday Jan 2012

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When I arrived here last August I watched Gary, guest-like, for a few days and then took on the simplest, most familiar tasks. I could do dishes, get water, and sweep with minimal instruction, but that was about it. While I can build and stoke the fire now, it took some practice.  Gary taught me how to clean and can the berries we picked, dig post holes and provide a second set of hands for raising the wind tower and solar platform. I gather brush and use it to build small bonfires for burning garbage. I learned to stack wood the hard way. I tried splitting wood, but had trouble controlling the heavy axe and abandoned the effort while I still had all my toes. Everyone I’ve met here can split wood — unless they’re at least forty-five years older or younger than I am — so I know I’ll have to master it eventually.

I learned how to stack wood the hard way! (see http://www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/09/ Sights and Surprises)

As things have settled out this winter I usually make coffee and breakfast.  Dinnertime comes too early to make lunch worthwhile, but as days grow longer that will change. Either one of us might make dinner, with a goal of having leftovers to reheat for a future meal or two. Gary sharpens the knives and I keep the kitchen supplies filled from the upstairs pantry (bedroom) where our fifty-pound sack of oatmeal and ten- and twenty-five pound sacks of various types of flour, lentils, pasta and grains reside.

I never learned the skilled trades that make up much of Gary’s work — logging, milling, construction and setting up alternative energy systems — so I’ve gratefully retained many of the minimum-wage jobs. I missed having a dishwasher when I first arrived, but a month or two later found myself telling Aunt Vee I was surprised to find I actually didn’t mind doing dishes.

“Warm water,” she replied knowingly.

Yes, that might explain it.

Fire in the hole!

I do miss having a sink that drains properly; we’re not sure whether the underground tank is full, clogged or frozen, but the sink now drains into a bucket. As often as not, Gary carries the bucket out to the compost pile. This saves me some laundry, as I frequently manage to slop the contents on my pants leg. Since we do laundry by hand between trips to town, we each do our own; as you might imagine, nothing gets washed before its time.  We don’t have a bathroom to clean, but the outhouse isn’t entirely maintenance-free. We have a problem common to outhouses in the frozen north, a stalagmite of sorts, so Gary gamely doused it with diesel fuel and lit a match. I hope that will be the end of that.

At least the ice chisel wasn't buried! The shovel is just to the left -- see it? Me neither. For more on the water hole, see http://www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/12/03/Riverdance/

One of my favorite jobs has been getting water. In this weather, though, it’s a much harder task, so I try to get enough for two days when I go. A couple of weeks ago I found snowdrifts encroaching on my view of the icescape under the river’s surface. Snow is stealing my room; as I shovel a space for myself around the water, I’m at a loss to know where to put it all. Shoveling it up to the surface is tiring. I did push some into the hole, but the ice on the river bottom is thickening, and I worry that dumping large quantities might hasten the day when the hole is too shallow.

It was thirty-eight below when I went to get water the other day. My gloves iced up, so I switched them out for the mittens in my pocket. The plastic dipping bucket grew impossibly heavy with ice; I removed the worst of the buildup with the ice chisel, careful not to break the plastic, brittle in the cold. Ice on the buckets’ rims and lids frustrated my efforts to seal them. As my water spilled, new ice formed an imperfect seal, so I tried to coax the buckets into staying upright as I pulled the sled home. One refused, so I knocked ice from the buckets and sled and made a second trip.

Gary reopening the water hole in -48 degree weather

I looked downriver to the sunset-pink Alaska Range; in the bitter cold I could see ice fog steaming from an open lead of water a hundred yards away. I’ll have to check it out; it might just be my next watering hole. Yesterday Gary and I went together to get water; it was forty-eight below. The hole, vigilantly protected with spruce boughs and snow, had nevertheless frozen over, and Gary had to reopen it with the ice chisel.

I want to be learning and doing more, particularly outdoors. Gary usually maintains the paths around our little campus, packing them every few days with the snowmachine. Recently he suggested I take over occasionally as a way of getting more comfortable with driving the thing. It may not have been wise to take him up on it on Friday the thirteenth, the day after our biggest snowfall and windstorm.

I started down the main drive toward the gate, circled past Gary’s truck and the logs we’d had delivered last summer — well, past the truck, certainly, but quite possibly over the logs. Gary breaks trail around the nearby campground so mushers and others can access the outhouses there. I was feeling confident, so rode out the gate to the campground. The snow was deep, his path completely obliterated, but how hard could it be?

Instead of a picture of another tipped snowmachine, I'll show you the view from the solar platform as we were working to set up the new panels.

I tipped over just past the first picnic table. I walked home for the shovel, but after shoveling long and hard the snowmachine still wouldn’t budge. I looked up when Ella whimpered to see Gary skiing toward us. Once we had the snow shoveled out of the way, he grabbed a handlebar and put all his weight on the skyward-facing running board of the machine to right it.

“Will you be able to finish the loop?” he asked.

The only thing I was confident of now was that I would not be able to steer through the turn, so Gary rode the full loop. He explained that I should never sit down while breaking trail and gave me other tips on how to avoid tipping, then left it to me to reinforce the path and continue my work. I made it back home and began reinforcing paths around the cabin and outbuildings. You could say I got stuck once again, or many more times, depending on how you count; I tipped, shoveled, inched forward and back, got stuck, shoveled, inched forward and back…you get the idea. At one point I got going and had to floor it to keep moving. I was heading directly, and rapidly, for the tool shed. A vole heard me coming and got out of there in a big hurry.

I missed the shed but thoroughly demolished what had once been a path; Gary shoveled for quite awhile to level things out.

“Can you drive the path now?” he asked when he’d finished.

No.

“I’m not sure I can either,” he sighed, but mercifully took over to repair the damage.

Gary rode over the scarred path, and then I rode it myself as reinforcement, for the path and for myself. I learned some good lessons that day: be prepared; don’t sit on your butt; use your weight judiciously; if you feel yourself losing balance, stop and take stock; if you can’t move forward, go back and try again; and don’t be chicken.

We have more hungry moose browsing in the extreme cold. This moose on our drive surprised me as much as I surprised her!

Sunrise:  9:39 a.m.
Sunset:   4:39 p.m.
Weather: High, -8°; low, -21°, calm and partly cloudy. Yesterday it was -48°. Go figure!

Easily Amused

22 Sunday Jan 2012

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We spend our free time much as you might: we read, cook, work puzzles, enjoy a movie and popcorn most Saturday nights, walk, hike and ski. We have plenty of free time now, particularly when it gets too cold to stay outside long, and are always looking for new ways to amuse ourselves. Here’s what we’ve been up to lately:

Gimme Shelter

Ella's making a U-turn, heading back to me full speed in a game of Chicken

One of our favorite pastimes is to walk down the road, checking for signs of wildlife, snowmachine traffic or dog teams. Ella bounces ahead, turning to take a bite of snow before racing back to us in a game of chicken, then falls behind as she finds something good to sniff, taste or roll in. As Ella and I neared the end of our walk the other day, we found Gary in front of the campground entrance, shoveling snow into a pile. He couldn’t have been at it long, but already it was as tall as he is. I knew what it was — he’d been talking of building a snow shelter there. Just for fun, mainly, but it could serve a traveler stranded by weather, or by recalcitrant machines or dogs.

By the time we got back from our walk, Gary had piled most of the snow for the shelter

We let it set up for a couple of days. After Gary shoveled out the arched entrance, we took turns: one of us would get on our belly or back, carving snow from the interior while the other scraped and shoveled the resulting snow-debris out. It didn’t take long before we could kneel inside, making the work quicker and a lot more fun. Within an hour or two, the shelter was in move-in condition. Now as we walk by, we check to see if we’ve had any visitors.

It's plenty roomy in there!

A long tunnel entrance, like those in igloo cartoons, would make the shelter warmer, but getting the snow out through the narrow opening would not have been fun. It’s not too late; enough snow is piled up to the side of the entrance, we could add the tunnel and close off the existing entrance. The urge to remodel — it must be universal.

Secret Lives of Dogs

Like any family member, Ella has certain responsibilities. She’s a shepherd, so she keeps her flock of two together if she can and, failing that, keeps a protective eye on the one she’s with. She cleans the floor of crumbs and spills, and tells us when it’s time for dinner. Her ears are on constant alert, and she’ll give a little “woof” for something just interesting enough to comment on, a sharp bark if it’s noteworthy, and a growl if she perceives a threat.

Ella gets a biscuit for accompanying us to the outhouse. When she hears the words “who wants to go poop?” she’s at the ready. We feed her the biscuit slowly, in pieces, and then she wanders out of sight. Gary told me early on if Ella growls it’s wise to get up, ready or not, to check out the threat. Not long ago I rushed out to see a moose disappearing toward the creek. But usually she waits silently, and when I emerge she is consistently sitting just a few feet away on the drive, positioned with a good view of the area.

Ella alerts us to moose; these took one look at us and crossed the river

I was in the cabin the other day when Ella went with Gary to the outhouse. She devoured her biscuit and went to sit at her post. I stopped to watch from the window. After a moment she stretched, as she so often does, the “downward dog” followed by a “salute to the sun.” Then, without warning or apparent provocation she raced to the cabin and back. As though conjuring an imaginary playmate she bowed in invitation to play, bounced in a 180-degree turn and bowed again. After a half-dozen repetitions, she raced to the cabin again, on the way performing a single lutz – a mid-air 360-degree turn – without breaking stride. She ran back to her spot, then toward the creek. She tore back past the outhouse and circled the cabin at full speed before returning to her post.

There she sat, sedately, when Gary emerged.

Birdbrain

Once the snows settled in for good, we began feeding the birds. Canadian Jays are not shy – hence their other name, Camp Robbers. I noticed one flitting and flirting about the front of the cabin as I went in and out with morning chores.

“You could put a few pieces of Ella’s food on the windowsill,” Gary suggested.

Canadian Jay begging at the kitchen window

The next morning when the Jay saw me and started his song, I stepped back inside to grab a handful of dog food. I placed it on the kitchen’s outer sills. I was barely inside when the Jay landed, picking up at least three pieces before flying off. His friends have joined in, and I wait for them to make themselves known each morning before I put food out.

As I was carrying a bucket of dirty dishwater to the compost pile recently, I saw a piece of dog food in the snow. Some greedy bird must have dropped it on the way to his cache. Ella was uncharacteristically slow to notice.

“Ella!” I called and pointed. “Git it!”

Ella looked twice as if unsure of my meaning, but she ate it, and then a second piece I found nearby. The next day I found more pieces near the outhouse.

“Git it!” I pointed, and this time she didn’t hesitate.

“I’m thinking of cutting back on the Jays’ food,” I told Gary as we walked toward the river. “They’re dropping pieces and not coming back for them,” I said, pointing to a spot where several pieces lay.

Gary laughed. And laughed. He almost fell over laughing, but finessed it so I was the one who landed in the snow.

“That’s rabbit poop!” he gasped, pointing to the “dog food.”

Ella looked, too. Without waiting to be told, she gobbled it up.

Sunrise: 10:00 a.m.
Sunset:  4:14 p.m.

Another beautiful sunset

Weather:  High 0°, Low -6°, much warmer than the -30’s we’ve been seeing (down to -42° Friday). Light, steady snow.

Breaking the Ice

18 Wednesday Jan 2012

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Trailblazing. The word speaks of adventure, even danger. Here it’s part housekeeping, too: something that, once done, refuses to stay done.

Home from harvesting firewood along the river

Our snowmachine is a workhorse. We ride it to town and back, attach a sled to haul luggage, logs, lumber — anything that needs hauling — and we pack trails. Every few days Gary rides out to pack the paths we want to travel, creating a solid base and literally smoothing our way, building a network of trails on the river and on nearby ATV roads. Walking, skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmachining is more difficult on soft snow. Our large, stable snowmachine has a wide track allowing it to float where others might founder. Still, it can get pulled in toward deep, soft drifts, and at 650 pounds it’s a heavy machine.

As many afternoons as time and weather permit, Gary and I ski the river. More private and scenic than the road, it’s a veritable highway compared to the hummocky, spruce-covered tundra. More than two feet of snow covers the ice in most places now; our skis sink and we trudge more than glide without a groomed trail. We also need a path into the woods to harvest dead trees for firewood. So Gary uses the snowmachine to break new trail and reinforce existing trail weakened by snow or wind-drifts.

Ella and I stand by as Gary breaks trail on the river, avoiding fissures

Obstacles and fissures in the river’s icy shell hide under snow, so breaking trail can be tricky. That’s why Ella and I generally stay home when Gary is trailblazing. He goes prepared, knowing he could crash through the ice or get stuck. Two weeks ago he headed out to extend the downstream trail.

“When should I start worrying?” I asked.

“I should be back in a couple of hours, but don’t worry if I don’t make it home tonight. If I run into trouble and feel I have to get back here, that’s where the real danger lies. I might try to come home when instead I should stop and start a fire to dry myself,” he explained.

“When should we start looking for you?”

“Five days,” he replied. A kiss and he was gone.

A couple of hours later Ella and I heard the hum of the snowmachine. The trip was a success, and since then we have been enjoying new scenery on the longer trail. Skiing along, we circumvent a snowmachine-sized section of ice that has collapsed three feet onto a lower layer.

Gary and Ella circumvent the site of the snowmachine water landing

“The tail of the machine had just passed over when the ice fell in,” Gary explained.

A few days later he decided to break trail upstream. I was looking forward to skiing upriver, both for a different view and because the gentle downstream slope is a big help when I turn home tired. Gary came back before I even thought about worrying. But I should have worried.

He had only gone a half mile upstream when he crashed through the ice. Our shiny new snowmachine stood on its tail in the deep water, fast-flowing about three feet under the surface ice.

“I’m glad I wasn’t there to see it,” I said.

“If you’d been with me, you’d have gone in,” he replied, laughing but serious.

Gary rescued the snowmachine with a come-along – a hand-held winch. With no trees near, he tied it to a dwarf birch, a leafless bush about the size of a large bouquet. The surface ice held as the winch shortened the cable, notch by notch, pulling the machine up and out, no worse for the wear.

I would have called it a day, but Gary finished breaking the trail as planned. The next day we skied past the site of the accident and even saw snow-white ptarmigan take flight just where he’d seen them the day before.

A week ago Friday Gary invited me to join him re-packing the downstream river trail. He had just run it the day before, but after the night’s snowfall wanted to extend it into the woods where he’d seen a stand of dead spruce. We’d harvested some a few weeks ago, but as Gary says, firewood is like money in the bank. We have three woodsheds partially filled with spruce and birch, but much of it is green. If we hit a long cold snap we’ll burn wood quickly with no way to replenish — the chain saw works haltingly if at all once it gets much below zero.

Gary uses the come-along to pull the snowmachine into an upright position

We rode together on the river, Ella running behind, but I got off just before Gary started up the steep riverbank into the woods. I was going to follow in my snowshoes, a gift from my former colleagues. The snowshoes are fantastic – once on, they stay on, but getting them on and off isn’t easy. I struggled with the clasps as he drove off. I was putting on the second snowshoe when Ella began to whimper. I looked up to see the snowmachine tipped on its side about thirty feet away. Gary pushed and I pulled, but in the end he used the come-along to right the machine. That done, he rode into the woods while I shoveled snow in the hole where the machine had rested, to prevent another mishap.

We followed the beautiful lights at sunset

We rode home toward a prism of color, blowing snow caught by the setting sun. We took a detour down the road, with the nearly-full January moon floating over the Alaska range in a pink sky to the north, and a setting sun with sundogs left and right to the south.

The moon over the Alaska Range, taken at the same time as the sunset picture above

When we got up Saturday it was just below zero, a bit cold for the chain saw but worth a try. I set out first on my “bushwhackers,” short, fat skis for rough terrain. Gary soon passed me, and more than once I found myself detouring around breaks in the ice caused by the snowmachine. I arrived as Gary was cutting the first tree, and was just out of my skis when another snowmachine arrived. We hadn’t seen another soul since Christmas Eve. It was Jim, the local state trooper (see “Snowed In?,” October, 2011). He had promised to check on us this winter, but we were always away from the cabin when he stopped by.

“It looks like the ice broke under you in a few places,” Jim observed.

Gary told Jim how he’d fallen through the ice upstream; Jim’s story was more dramatic. We’d already heard about a solo hiker gone missing in a cold snap, and Jim was one of the two troopers who had made the rescue.

“My machine went through the ice, and I was wet up to my waist. It was thirty-five below. But we got the guy out alive,” Jim said, “and I got a new snowmachine.”

Jim left and Gary began cutting the downed trees into eighteen-inch segments to fit our stove. I stacked them in the sled and dragged branches to a small bonfire. Dusk was falling when Gary set down his chainsaw and finished securing the wood with ropes. I put away my skis and rode home. Our headlight broke the darkness as we returned on the river, Ella running behind the sled. I held my breath, but the ride was uneventful. Before setting out from home I’d pulled a pot of turkey noodle soup from the porch; cold and hungry, we were happy to find it hot atop our wood stove.

Sunrise: 10:10 a.m.
Sunset:  4:02 p.m.
Weather: High -28°, low -42°, calm, sunny day, starry night. We did get four to six inches of snow on January 12th, but nothing like they’re seeing closer to the coast!

Tonight Will Be a Stormy Night

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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To-night will be a stormy night
You to the Town must go,
And take a lantern with you, dear,
To light you through the snow
—Adapted from “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth

These words come to me as I step outdoors. My mother had memorized “Lucy Gray” as a schoolgirl and my siblings will remember how she used these lines — just a bit changed from the original — to tell us to take care as we headed out in bad weather. We were in Southern California; bad weather meant rain.

It’s snowing. The wind has been howling for the last twenty-four hours. We had thirty-degree weather last night; the mercury is plummeting and we expect to wake up to thirty below tomorrow. The bang of shutters against the wall unnerves Ella when she’s alone at night, and she tries to climb the loft stairs to join us.

Red sky at morning, mushers take warning

Cordova, on the coast, has fifteen feet of snow with no sign of relief. Once they dig out the town they’ll start digging out the ski lifts. We hear coastal forecasts calling for “frozen spray,” so bad this year that eagles with ice-laden wings have been seen, unable to fly. Our local NPR station is based at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks; weather reports include a listing of which campus parking lots have lost power to the headbolts, outlets to plug in the essential engine blankets.

We’ve been lucky so far. The snow has come in polite little batches, an inch or two at a time just when it was wanted for skiing or to provide a fresh slate for viewing animal tracks or, well, to cover up the yellow snow. But we’ve had several inches of snow today, and it’s still going strong.

The river is changing as the ice buckles and the snow drifts

So far it hasn’t caused us any real inconvenience. I did have to dig about four feet of it off my watering hole, which was so filled with drifted snow that I had to be careful not to step anywhere near the hole itself as I shoveled out, in case I guessed wrong about its exact placement. As it turns out, I wouldn’t have gone far: ice on the river bottom is so thick that the water is barely deep enough to accommodate my bucket.

But even without huge amounts of snow, drifts can become dangerous. Sunday was windy, too, so we stayed indoors and took the opportunity to go online while our wind turbine hummed busily. An email from our friend Jayne put us on alert — friends of hers were stranded on the road twenty miles from us. The couple was traveling by dog team and snowmachine when the snowmachine got stuck in drifting snow. Late in the day a second email arrived, letting us know they were safely settled for the night under a tarp. By then the wind had died down and the sky was clear. The temperature fell steadily as Gary split wood late that afternoon.

We checked email Monday morning, getting word that some folks from town were heading out. By then it was thirty-two below, and we were thirty miles closer to the stranded travelers. I hurried breakfast and filled a thermos with coffee for Gary to take, along with some food and a week’s supply of Ella’s dog food, a mere snack for a team of fourteen dogs. Gary packed snowshoes, a shovel and axe, the come-along, a sleeping bag, fire starter, extra warm clothes, and packages of handwarmers.

He was gone two or three hours before Ella heard our snowmachine and trotted out to meet him and Mark, who followed right behind. Mark was exhausted, his cheeks red and his hands cold and cramped. I quickly made coffee. While we sat around the fire, Gary told how he had gotten stuck twice on the way, once within 100 yards of reaching Mark.

“I got stuck because I slowed down when I saw him,” Gary said.
—It’s easy to get stuck

“I was so happy to see someone else get stuck too,” Mark laughed. “It wasn’t just me! I am so tired of shoveling.”

Lawrence and Will, the folks who’d come in from town, soon joined us; they had reached Mark and Gary just as they had finished shoveling out. I made more coffee.

Gary had come upon Debbie, Mark’s wife, before he reached Mark. Her dog team was in a tangle, so Gary helped sort them out. Drifts can leave dogs — not to mention people — up to their eyeballs, or worse. Without a trail packed by snowmachine, mushers sometimes resort to snowshoeing in front of their dogs. As we talked, we heard Debbie’s dogs; she wouldn’t stop in but did take a break to feed the dogs nearby, comforted perhaps to be near people. Her day would be a long one, so Mark stayed on awhile, knowing he would pass her on the way to town.

Jayne looks on as Anitra gets ready to go.

Mark and Debbie got home safely Monday. By Tuesday the weather had warmed above zero, and Jayne came up by snowmachine. Her dog team followed shortly, run by her young friend Anitra, who was enjoying the last day of her winter break from college. Wednesday, yesterday, was lovely, with dramatic skies and temperatures heading up toward freezing. After a sunrise walk down the river with the dogs, they wisely hurried home. The storm blew in only after the day was done.

Ella entertains her friends

Usually Ella and I take a detour on our way to get water, walking or trotting up the road a piece to see (and, in Ella’s case, smell) who’s been out there. We look for tracks of snowmachines, sled dogs, and wildlife. We didn’t go today; tracks don’t last in this weather. But the snow will stop, and in the next day or two we will be walking in the winter sun, bundled up not against wind and snow, but against cold and clear.

Sunrise: 10:24 a.m.
Sunset:  3:43 p.m.
Weather: High, 10°, Low -4°, howling wind. Snow decreasing; had a few inches of accumulation today.

Mush! The team heads home in a window of good weather.

A Time for Everything

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Gary working on the spring moon panel in his new workspace

We were happy the day we loaded Gary’s workbench—a table, really—onto the sled and brought it out from storage to the cabin. The addition is largely complete: the new closet and shelving have been in use for weeks, and the shower stands in its corner awaiting plumbing. That leaves just enough room for the workbench under the larger of two windows. It pleases me to see Gary reunited with his carving tools, coaxing a playful spring moon from a plank of Alaskan yellow cedar. Sometimes I stand quietly at his elbow as he redefines a shape or a shadow, his focus unwavering. When he comes away from his work I smell the wood’s sweet must clinging to his beard.

Gary at Art Explosion during Open Studios 2010. One of his earlier moon panels is hanging behind him. Credit: David Gartner Photography, http://www.versusgoliath.com

This is by no means the best workspace he’s had, but it’s not the worst. Gary started the spring moon panel—the fourth in a series—in San Francisco, where he carved full-time. When he first moved to the City he did his carving in a bland space at Art Explosion, a studio rental business on the outskirts of the Mission District. The place was as quiet as a library but, in general, not as friendly. Another artist working in wood tipped Gary off to better, cheaper space by Highway 101 at Cesar Chavez. It was one of a number of Connex units, a tin can quick to overheat in the sun and offering no relief from the din of the freeway, but more functional for practitioners of the noisier, dustier arts, inventors and artists working in wood and metal.

Box in Alaskan Yellow Cedar

Gary is a carver, not a craftsman or furniture maker. He can make lovely furniture, more rustic than refined, as well as other functional pieces, but when he does it’s often a platform for his love of carving. Gary’s first gift to me from his own hand was a large box, whose lid of Alaskan yellow cedar depicts a horse running free under the moon.

Gary and his ponies heading to grazing ground

He’d known from my first summer visit to Alaska that I loved horses. Gary had Swiss Haflingers then, beautiful palomino ponies, and we took them to graze at a pastoral swath of tundra. It wasn’t too far to walk, but we had horses! So we rode. I couldn’t mount even a pony bareback, though, so first Gary leaned low and offered his back as a footstool. We’d just met, really—this was in 2004—and I was horrified, self-conscious, and sure I would hurt him. He was sure I wouldn’t. I gingerly put my foot on my human step stool and settled myself as lightly as possible. I remember when we got to the pasture we staked only one of the four ponies; Gary explained that the small herd would stay together, safer with three unfettered horses free to respond to any threat by predators.

So Gary knew I loved horses, but he didn’t know I’m also drawn to beautiful boxes. He made the cedar box for me when he got back to Alaska after his cancer surgery in Portland.

One of Gary's Merangels

When I brought the box from San Francisco, inside I placed two “merangels” Gary had made, mermaid angels I bought from Gary a few years ago. They fly as gracefully over our table here as they did over our dining table in the City. When he was living in San Francisco, Gary was making a similar pair on commission. I came across a note he had written as a reminder to order “ruby nipples.” I was relieved to find out they were intended for the merangels.

Nesting ptarmigan bowl in birch burl

The winged mermaids came to Gary in a dream. Other ideas come from nature, such as an oblong “marriage bowl” with the head of a raven on one side and the head of a wolf on the other. Out here, we see from the presence of ravens where there might be a kill; ravens once led me to the backbone of a caribou, which we hung as a bird feeder in our yard. Wolves watch the ravens, too, and provide meat for the birds that help them hunt. A bowl Gary made from birch burl, a nesting ptarmigan, went to my cousin Glenn and his bride, Terri, who got married last month. Glenn’s sister, Joan, asked Gary to make her a remembrance using part of the mane of her beloved horse, Kenai, and he made a dance stick. The dance stick, masks, and moon series illustrate how much of Gary’s work is influenced by the art of aboriginal peoples along the Pacific “rim of fire.”

Masks and decorative lintel at Open Studios 2010

Though his workspace is less than ideal, cramped as it is between the closet and the shelving with only a smallish window, Gary once again has a workspace. I can’t wait to see what inspires him next and watch it emerge.

Note: More of Gary’s work can be seen at his Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/GaryPinard

Sunrise: 10:26 a.m.
Sunset:  3:40 p.m.
Weather: Snow and wind, low 5°, high 20°, snow and wind. A big change from -33° yesterday!

A Solstice Wedding

02 Monday Jan 2012

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We knew my cousin Glenn was getting married, but he had talked of a courthouse ceremony. His seventeen-year-old daughter, Danielle, was having none of it and began planning a small but lovely event in Anchorage’s Hotel Captain Cook on the winter solstice. Glenn sent us an email not quite two weeks in advance, asking if we could come. Then, a week later, another email came from Glenn and his lovely bride, Terri, asking Gary to be the best man. We consulted Danielle about the dress code, via Glenn’s sister Joan, since we don’t text.

“Gary should wear a suit, and Barbara should wear a dress,” the answer came back.

This triggered a frantic search through the cabin, outbuildings, and even Glenn’s cabin next door—anywhere we might have stored clothes.

“Don’t laugh,” Gary said, coming down from the loft in one of his father’s old suits.

His arms dangled from the sleeves, but the pants looked hot—and very likely to rip. He modeled two more suits, of unknown origin, each worse in its own way. The final option was an “Alaskan Tuxedo,” a sort of arctic safari suit made of good, heavy wool in Austrian green. Gary had bought it for his oral exam to become a licensed game guide, circa 1986. The Alaskan Tuxedo (not this particular one) dates back to the 1920’s, and it does have a strong, authentic look. Sadly, the style appears to have inspired the leisure suit. Another no-go.

I had it easy, or so I thought. My brother, Richard, and I had attended a party the night before we set out on our drive to Alaska (see “Driving Miss Lazy,” September, 2011). I wore a simple black dress with a turquoise-and-gold scarf my friend Savi had brought me from India. An extensive search turned up only the scarf. No dress, no hose, no shoes. The only other dress I had was sleeveless and on the slinky side. I’d brought it in case Gary and I wanted to dance all alone in our cabin, not realizing our only potential dance floor is a three-foot by five-foot space dangerously close to the wood stove.

Clearly we would need enough time in Anchorage to shop before the wedding.

When we went to Anchorage in mid-October to pick up our snowmachine, we didn’t know when we would next be in that shopping mecca. Anchorage is no San Francisco, but it is home to some 300,000 people, two Costcos, a natural food store, a cheese shop, and an upscale deli/grocery offering a surprising assortment of ethnic cuisines and ingredients. It has the usual big box stores, too, Nordstrom, gun shops that aren’t even in bad neighborhoods, and some eccentric specialty shops with clothing, hardware, and sundries for people who live, work, or vacation on boats or in the bush. We shopped at many of these stores on our last trip, doing our best to bring back everything we thought we might need if we didn’t leave home again for months. As it happens, we’ve been back twice since, once to spend Thanksgiving with Gary’s sister and her family, and this time for Glenn’s wedding.

But first, Gary and I spent the weekend before the Wednesday ceremony preparing for the freeze-up of the cabin, much as we had at Thanksgiving. As soon as we heard about the wedding, we worked to eat as much as we could of the fresh produce that we didn’t want to freeze.  We incorporated fresh carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions into our daily diet, and we each got a whole banana on our daily oatmeal instead of half. Oranges became more than a snack: we dried the peel atop the wood stove for kindling. I cooked up some onions for future French onion soup, but the remaining produce—apples, garlic, and more carrots than I wanted to cook—would travel with us to Anchorage and back in a cooler wrapped in a sleeping bag within a cooler to prevent it from freezing on the snowmachine leg of the trip.

Instead of putting an inch or two of water in our various pots and pans (see “Three Days to Thanksgiving,” December, 2011), this time we made ice in cake pans all weekend, thinking it might be easier to thaw. Good idea; bad timing. The day before we left, a Chinook wind warmed temperatures so close to freezing we almost couldn’t make ice. But I managed to fill a bucket and a couple of stock pots, and it was, in the end, more convenient when we got home.

Gary finishes packing the sled; Ella is dressed and ready to go

We left the cabin Monday just before sunrise—which is to say, a little after 10:00. The warmer temperatures inspired another innovation: instead of riding backward on the snowmachine as I had been doing, facing Ella in her box with my back to the wind, I rode facing forward, reaching back to put my arm around Ella’s neck. Ella seemed calmer, and it was much more comfortable for me. I loved being able to see the Mountain, the moose, and the mileposts. I tried the driver’s seat briefly, but carrying two passengers and a sled made me too nervous to enjoy it.

The car battery was dead when we arrived at our friend Diane’s, where it’s parked, but we were expecting that. From Diane’s, travel was easy, and we made it to Glenn’s in time for dinner at 6:30.

We devoted Tuesday to clothes shopping. (I’d brought my one dress, and Gary had brought his Alaskan Tuxedo, just in case.) We had no luck as Gary dragged me around Value Village and Saly’s (Salvation Army), his preferred clothing recyclers, so we enlisted Terri and Joan, who made short work of the problem. No one had ever seen Gary in a suit but he often wears a vest, so Joan suggested one now. For me they thought a wrap would ameliorate the defects of the sleeveless slinky dress, and Gary quickly spotted an earth-tone knit shrug as we headed out of Penney’s on our way to Nordstrom. Making our way through the mall we ran into Payless Shoes where I found something for ten percent of what I was willing to pay if only I could see the inside of the Nordstrom. But once I bought the shoes we were fully outfitted, so I never got there. My idea of a bargain used to be forty percent off at the semi-annual Armani sale. I’m learning skills now that go way beyond the wilderness.

Gary in his three-piece suit and me in my slinky sleeveless dress, disguised.

I’m old enough to feel a sort of surprised relief when reuniting with friends and family is an occasion of joy and not sorrow. Gary is like a brother to Glenn and Joan, and this gathering gave me a chance to meet a few of their childhood friends. I listened to stories from long before I had met Gary or my Alaskan cousins, and got to see for myself how well-loved Gary is by those who have known him longest. The wedding was intimate and low-key, a delight. And there is no truth to the rumor that I made a flying leap to catch the bouquet. It fell right into my hands.

The wedding party. From left, Joan, Gary, Michael (Glenn's son), Terri, Glenn and Danielle. Terri still has the bouquet!

We relaxed with friends and family the day after the wedding, and on Friday we did laundry at the laundromat (running four washers at a time makes quick work of it, even when you have several weeks of dirty clothes) and shopped for provisions. Circling the Costco parking lot and sitting through green lights while young men pushed cars out of icy, snowy intersections made us even more eager to get home. It had snowed eight inches overnight, but later in the day the skies cleared. We left at 7:30 on Christmas Eve morning and got home by 2:30. The return trip was quicker since we didn’t have a dead car battery to contend with.

Once we were home, Gary put the kindling he’d prepared to good use. I put one of my stock pots of filtered ice on the stove and began moving frozen food we wanted to keep frozen out onto the porch. Well-traveled Subway sandwiches don’t sound like a great Christmas Eve dinner, but they were easy. It would still take a good day to unpack everything else, put away weeks of laundry, and restock our water supply. But what did the calendar mean to us now, home alone together in our little cabin?

Sunrise: 10:36 a.m.
Sunset: 3:23 p.m.
Weather: High 4°, low -25°, with most of the day hovering around the low; yesterday, too. But sunny and beautiful, the mountains brilliant and the sun’s higher arc in evidence as sun starts to hit Glenn’s cabin.