I was drenched. The rain wasn’t heavy, or even steady, but we’d been out for hours. I’d pulled the drawstrings tight; my hood bore down on the visor of my hat, pushing my glasses hard against the bridge of my nose. Mosquitoes swarmed my face, and I buried my chin deep into the high-zipped neck of the rain jacket. I managed to protect my nose and its immediate surroundings, but was otherwise unable to sustain a defense. The mosquitoes hadn’t been so bad when I first realized my headnet was missing.  But as we mucked through the wet, dense willow riverbank, they were out in force. Ella, tormented too, urged me to higher — drier — ground, but I resisted. I’d lost the river for the last time.

A couple of weeks ago I started letting Ella take me on walks. She starts along her favorite downstream trail and I follow. No two walks are alike; she may follow the river or head away from it. She loves chasing birds, finding swimming holes, and running circles around me (literally). We can do this only because Ella is so well-trained: she chases birds on the wing, not on the ground, to play, not to catch. She won’t chase game (grouse and ptarmigan, caribou, moose, or even the snowshoe hare), and she can’t catch squirrels. Ella knows to stay within range. When I can’t see where she’s gone, I stop to look at the wildflowers, mushrooms, and nascent berries at my feet. She always comes racing back.

As we started out into the drizzle, I threw on a wool overshirt, hat, rain pants and rain jacket, and stuffed a headnet into my pocket. Mosquitoes aren’t dissuaded by a little rain.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

Ella ran well ahead and then back, tail wagging, full body smile.

The first time she urged me down this path was a few days after I arrived here last August. I had my fishing rod in hand, and she seemed to know exactly where to go. I stopped when she did, dropped my line, and a couple of casts later caught a nice grayling.  Good girl!

This time we walked past the fishing hole, fording a small creek. Ella ran ahead and back, leaping over dwarf birch brush after sparrows, robins and swallows, lost in the joy of the chase. I studied the lichen, scouted for mushrooms, admired the flowers – wild roses, native peas, fireweed, purple monkshead, yellow potentilla, blue bells, pink plumes, alpine-white dogwood, lavender asters – in the brief season of their glory.

The rainy week had given rise to mushrooms, patches of common “deceivers” (yes, that’s what they’re called) and similarly ordinary-looking brown-capped gilled species, and clumps of white puffballs, like bunches of miniature low-flying balloons. The stranger mushrooms generally kept to themselves: a round stemless mushroom here, a large slimy orange one there, a shelf mushroom on deadwood, a mushroom with a black-scaled stem. I took samples for awhile, dropping them one by one in the zippered pocket of my jacket, avoiding the largest and slimiest; once or twice I picked a suspicious-looking fungus only to drop it out of some innate fear.

Dampness had started to seep in past my rain gear; it was time to turn back.  I waited for Ella’s inevitable return, and soon she came running.

“Let’s go home. Find the trail!” I commanded.

Ella turned and continued north, by my reckoning, the way we’d been heading all along. The mountains were obscured by clouds, but I was sure she was headed north.

“No, Ella.  Go home! Find the trail!”

Ella pursued the northern path again.

I led for a bit, turning home as best I could without doubling back; Ella and I prefer to hike a loop rather than out-and-back. Ella redirected me at every opportunity.

“Go home. Find Gary. Find the trail!” I ordered again.

She tried, but when I fought her again, she walked behind me and sat. Her message was clear: lead or follow; don’t try to do both.

We wandered — how long I’m not sure — until I realized I could no longer hear the river. I was lost. The river was my guide; home was upstream. Clouds continued to mask the landmark mountains, but eventually I saw enough to know which way to head to reach the water.

We crossed a small drainage and headed upward until we found ourselves on a high bench, well above the river, then dropped down to its edge. Ella wanted to cross the river, but it was wide and fast; she might make it, but I wouldn’t. And there seemed to be no need: home was on our side of the river. When the willows and mosquitoes got too dense, we headed back to higher ground. Ella found the animal trails, scouting ahead, circling back. We were wet, but I felt safe, knowing I only had to continue our upstream course, the water to our right.

Suddenly the bench narrowed, and I blanched: two creeks appeared to our left. As they flowed to the river they turned; to continue upstream meant crossing them. This made no sense. We had forded nothing but a tiny stream near home, and a shallow drainage as we climbed the bench. Logic told me I shouldn’t be crossing streams, but I also knew I had to continue upstream. We started across, and I felt my boots fill with water. So I headed downstream. Maybe by doubling back I could find a spot where the creeks were narrow and more easily crossed. Maybe I could find a river crossing.

It was getting late. I hoped Gary wouldn’t notice the time; there was little he could do to find us, and I didn’t want to stress him. Besides, how embarrassing to be lost! I was wet, but not really cold or tired. I was losing a lot of blood to the mosquitoes, but otherwise felt fine. It would not get dark, not really. Ella had to be reminded that the time for chasing birds was over, so I knew she still had plenty of energy.

We wandered. Defeated, we headed back upstream, where we looked for the best path across. I picked up a walking stick to steady me on the slippery rock riverbed. We stopped at the small mid-stream island, looking for the easiest crossing, then waded in again. Water leaked in at the elastic cuffs of my rain pants, soaking my jeans. The tail of my wool shirt, hanging just below my rain jacket, was soaked. As I trudged along in my water-filled neoprene-lined boots, the water warmed until I barely noticed it.

But we were on the right track. My relief in knowing this was only slightly marred by the sight of bear scat on the path, the first I’ve seen here. It didn’t look fresh, or at least that’s what I told myself. Before long we came to the timber remains of an old bridge, placing us only a couple of miles from home. The cabin we’d hiked to on a sunny day the weekend before stood across the river. I let Ella lead me to an easier path up the bench, knowing now exactly where we were.

When I got home, it was 7:30; we’d been gone almost four hours.

“Were you lost?” Gary asked.

“Yes.”

“Were you scared?” he wanted to know.

“Only a little.” It was the truth. I think.

Gary hadn’t worried much, knowing he couldn’t do much, and knowing that Ella would do her best to keep me safe and get me home. As I took off all the wet layers of clothes and hung them over the cold wood stove, I knew I owed her an apology. She had tried to lead me home. She knew where she was, and she knew where I wanted to go. I knew she knew. I just didn’t trust her enough. Or maybe I just didn’t trust myself.

Sunrise: 4:47 a.m.
Sunset: 11:18 p.m.  We’re losing six minutes of daylight every day now.
Weather:High, 64; low, 39, cloudy.

We’re back! After two weeks of traveling and hanging around Anchorage waiting to travel, we got back a week ago Thursday. Salad greens sprouted nicely in our absence, thanks to the long days, plastic vole-proof barrier, and good soil preparation. By throwing our coffee grounds onto the raised bed daily through the winter, we kept the snow down. Once the sun came, the dark grounds soaked up heat, making for a quick thaw and warm(ish) soil.

The tundra is flowering with berry blossoms and wildflowers, but is not yet providing much food for the birds, who have for the most part finished their musical nesting phase and moved on. We have seen trumpeter swans and geese flying by, a bald eagle coming in for a landing off the dirt highway, and a small flock of ptarmigan, no longer wearing winter white. Some believe Alaska’s state bird to be the mosquito, and if size, song and swarm count for anything, it could be.

Most mornings start with a run, hike or bike, where we try to keep moving fast enough to avoid getting bitten. By the time we get back our porridge (oatmeal mixed with most every whole grain known to mankind) is ready to eat before we start our day. Gary has been designing trellises to fulfill some custom orders he got at the Alaska Botanical Garden fair, where he nearly sold out of those he brought. He spends some of each day gathering wood and building them, and splitting wood to make bundles of firewood to sell at the campground. He sometimes lights a damp, smoky fire to keep bugs at bay, and almost always works with a head net on.

I’m a mess of welts, the mosquitoes having traced both the Big Dipper and the Belt of Orion on my right calf alone. Still, I go out to get water at the campground well every day or two, and to fish and tend to the garden. When I look up, I see Ella tormented too, pawing at her face, rolling or scooting in self-defense. Ella and I have spent more time indoors due to mosquitoes than we ever did due to the cold.

Moving On

After traveling to the Block Medical Center outside Chicago and University of Washington’s Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, we don’t have much to report. Unless a review of the slides of Gary’s tumor shows a different diagnosis, it’s not clear that there is anything to do other than get routine scans and continue on with his diet and program of supplements. The folks in Seattle were somewhat more patient-centered and articulate, but their advice did not differ greatly from what we heard in Portland.

Gary’s diet is heavy on whole grains, fresh organic fruits and vegetables (mainly vegetables),  with fish a few days a week, no dairy, no sugar, no refined grains, and no alcohol. I’m finishing off the last of the wine and sweets. When we’re with wine-drinking steak- and dessert-eaters, I switch teams, but in general I’m eating the same foods Gary is eating. It takes work to plan meals, but what we do eat is very good.

This diet is only possible because it’s summer here. To maintain it, and to facilitate the inevitable travel to Seattle or wherever Gary gets his medical care, we plan to leave this idyllic spot before the snows fall in September.  Aunt Vee and my cousins Joan and Glenn have been wonderful to offer to let us stay at Vee’s place near Ashland, Oregon. It’s beautiful, too, 160 acres of oak savannah and gushing springs far from the city lights, a place where we can grow and buy fresh organic produce year-round.

It will be a beautiful place to get our footing for whatever comes next, and we’re so fortunate and grateful to be able to land there. We are grateful for so much. Gary’s sister Karen and her husband Scott have made us at home at their place longer and more often than is entirely reasonable, and we have been well fed and entertained and cared for (Ella too) by friends and family here. We’re grateful to each of you, too, who though distant has kept us in thought and prayer, given us encouragement, recommended some reading, or just made us feel less alone by sending us a photo or note about your goings on.

Even strangers have helped us: while in Anchorage we met with a sarcoma survivor. Warren was diagnosed some 14 years ago, had a hard fight of it for over five years, but at 65 (two years ago) ranked as the top racquetball player of all ages in Alaska and is top-ranked today in his age group nationally. He had some great insight and encouragement for us.

My San Francisco home is on the market now, with its first open house today. It was a lovely city home, quiet, in a great spot with great neighbors. (http://www.610duncanstreet.com)  I bought it in 1991; I could never afford it now, but luckily I’m not looking to live in San Francisco. I’m also putting my snowmachine and sled on craigslist and alaskaslist, and starting to get organized for the move.

I’ve loved every minute here, except maybe one or two moments when I was under siege by mosquitoes. We still have time enough to enjoy: we’ve been hiking with Glenn and Terri, savoring fresh halibut from Ed, chatting with campground hosts Jim and Bona, catching grayling for dinner, watching Ella swim, running a little farther each time we go, seeing a new wildflower almost every day. It’s hard to imagine leaving. But wherever we go, we’ll make it home.

Sunrise: 4:04 a.m. (as compared to 3:41 a.m. on June 20^th – 23^rd)
Sunset: 11:58 p.m. (as compared to 12:14 a.m. on June 20^th – 23^rd)
Weather:  High 54°, low 36°, rainy.

What we’re reading: Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological Design and Practice for Temperate Climate Permaculture (two volumes), by Dave Jacke.

When I complained to my dear friend Jackie that I was going to have to take a shower in the golden-brown water I’d been pulling from the rushing river, she reminded me that people pay good money to bathe in mud and minerals. Our crystal waters vanished with the ice crystals, so when we returned last on the 20^th of May, a week after break-up, we had to accept a certain liquid earthiness. We filter our drinking water, but it still looked like I’d pulled it from a ditch, so I was sticking primarily with coffee, ovaltine and wine until the well at the campground opened just before the Memorial Day campers arrived. I was reluctant to shower when to all appearances I was cleaner than the water, so Gary helped me filter it through a pillowcase. The pillowcase stayed white and the water stayed brown, but Jackie was right – I had a wonderful shower.

I had hoped to see a chaotic break-up of the river, but when we returned from our travels, banks of ice and the occasional ice sculpture atop a boulder mid-stream were all that remained of winter. Fissures would appear parallel to shore, then vanish along with few feet of ice riverside to the fissure; a new fissure then materialized closer to shore. Visions of huge blocks of ice struggling downstream are gone; as ice tipped in toward the water it simply melted in the rising current. Free of ice now, the river is high; her voice grows louder as the day progresses. When Gary lived with me in San Francisco, our apartment stood right behind Hwy. 101 North at Vermont Street. We pretended then that the freeway noise was just a river; now, the river sounds to me more like the flow of traffic than a roar. It crescendos with the melt of day and into the sunny night.

The joy of long days is that you can goof off for a good while and still get a fair amount done. We’ve been riding bikes, flying my kite atop our breezy hill, and untangling kite string. I’ve been gathering moose poop for my paper-making project; with the campers arriving for the Memorial Day weekend, I hurried to get what I could before they made a mess of it. Meanwhile Gary has affixed the exterior paneling to the shower room addition to the cabin, made a flowerbox for my sweet peas (in less time than it took me to make dinner), worked on more trellises, tied bundles of firewood to sell to the campers and taught me how to tie them too. I’ve been thinning our nascent vegetable garden—the peas are over an inch high—moving lumber around, hauling firewood bundles to the campground, getting sand from the sand dunes down the road for the garden—in short, doing a lot of not too much. We’ve both been sorting through our belongings, moving our winter things into storage and bringing out our summer clothes. Last night we were reading without a light until after 1:00 a.m. About an hour later, I heard a bird start his song, one I didn’t recognize. Plants, too, love the long days; new growth explodes each day as though a week had passed.

A few mosquitoes arrived just ahead of the campers – breeding stock no doubt. The rain waited until the campers were on the road heading out for their holiday. It’s a shock to hear voices, vehicles and dogs day into night. It’s just one more seasonal change that takes getting used to, like not having a steady supply of hot water; now that we don’t need to use the wood stove to heat the cabin we have to heat water and cook on the propane stove, which is too small to easily hold the huge stock pots we usually keep our washing water in. The cabin is often over 70° when we get up in the morning, giving us no excuse for a fire.

We spent last week in Portland, Oregon to learn more about Gary’s sarcoma and treatment options. In just a week, nearly all the remaining snow vanished, except in spots of deep drift and on the mountains. Moose cows are out with their newborns, whose ears barely reach their mama’s belly. Porcupines abound; Gary was chasing one away from the cabins when a giant RV pulled up on the road. The driver rolled down his window.

“Is that a bear?” he asked.

This is not as stupid a question as it seems; the amble and color of the porcupine hit the consciousness before one’s sense of proportion kicks in. We did see three bears in our travels, black bears along the highway; one seemed to be on the verge of surprising a hitchhiker not 100 feet away.

I’m wondering why summer is tourist season here. It’s cloudy, rainy, buggy and beary; there are no berries and no auroras. But still, as a summer tourist, I went home never imagining it could have been more beautiful. It is still breathtakingly beautiful, and we relish it all the more, not knowing what the future holds. We never did know, of course, but we held the sweet, foolish notion that we could continue on here until we found something we’d rather do and someplace we’d rather do it.

Gary’s oncologist at OHSU didn’t give us much to go on. Gary’s spindle-cell sarcoma has gone from a low-grade to high-grade, more aggressive cancer. While both the surgeon and the oncologist seem convinced the surgeon got all of both tumors, the pathology report showed a positive margin, not a good thing. Because of this, Gary was ineligible for a vaccine trial; the doctor has offered nothing else, except “watch and worry,” advising us that this can be expected to ultimately be fatal. We understand chemo for this type of thing is more toxic than it is effective, so this is perhaps the best course, but since the tumor on the pancreas was found inadvertently in a chest CT scan, we had wanted Gary to be fully scanned for any other tumors.

Gary has taken on a near-vegetarian diet (limited fish and egg whites allowed), no dairy, refined grains, sugar, alcohol, little coffee; sitting back and waiting is just not in him. We will go for second and probably third opinions, exploring alternative and complementary approaches that might be helpful alongside conventional treatment, if there is treatment. Even if there is nothing more to be done at this point, we need to know we have left no stone unturned.

I know that some of you are physicians or other medical professionals, or have family members who are, and some of you are survivors of cancer and other life-threatening diseases, or have dealt with cancer of those close to you. Should you have any thoughts for us, reading you recommend, an oncologist or cancer center or other source of expertise we might want to consider  consulting, or alternative, complementary, mind-body or other ways of healing (if not curing) that have been helpful to you, your experiences of hope and healing (Karl shared an extraordinary story of his family’s experience with us), or the name of a cookbook or a good recipe, I hope you will share them. We are currently planning for Gary to get a second opinion at Block Center for Integrative Cancer Care in the Chicago area later this month, and will probably seek a third opinion as well at a specialized sarcoma center. I have found the online sarcoma communities to be very helpful, and know this little indeepalaska community will help us too as we navigate this new world.

Sunrise: 3:53 a.m.
Sunset: 11:55 p.m.
Weather: Mostly cloudy, random attempts at rain and clearing, breezy. High 65°, low 38°

Gary is reading: Life Over Cancer, Keith Block, M.D.; Help (which I read a few weeks ago).
I am reading: Choices in Healing, Michael Lerner.

We had a brief window of darkness from about midnight to 4 a.m. where were staying with Gary’s sister Karen and her family just north of Anchorage. Here the nights are forty minutes shorter, or so my online calendar tells me. In truth, night here no longer has any real night-like quality.  Midnight is, if not broad daylight, very close. I woke at 2:30 in Anchorage to darkness, but here 2:30 is just a shade darker than dusk. Shortly before 4:00 sunrise is showing its pink lights, and an hour later it is in full bloom, a rose backdrop to the snow-covered Alaska Range. We’re home.

Life makes good use of the long days. Seagulls, mallards, swallows and robins abound in Anchorage now, finding food and refuge in grass and bugs and snowmelt as well as in the birch and aspen that spun a chartreuse array from nothing in the nine days we spent there. The snow was already gone when we arrived, save for a few dirty piles here and there. School is over, and the whole population must have been out last weekend to pick up the trash that surfaced from under snow’s cover. It’s a bright new season, sunny and warm, there at the foot of the dramatic Chugach mountains.

A couple of hours out of Anchorage, driving home, we began to see snow in the woods again. Our season is well behind theirs, with not quite half of the landscape here still covered in snow. Our nights are frosty but the days are toasty, into the fifties and sixties. Yet aspen and birch, to the extent we see them at all, are still stark as winter. We saw trumpeter swans on lakes as we drove home, and the robins are back. New birdsong tells me I have much to learn about life here in spring. Our pure-white snowshoe hare had brownish highlights when we last saw him less than two weeks ago; will he be completely brown when I see him again?

The icy river’s surface was sinking in places when we left. I stopped the car on the bridge as we arrived. Frozen no more, the river’s waters are muddy and high, racing loudly between banks of dying ice. I didn’t have the nerve to drive through the muck and flowing snowmelt that greeted us at the gate, so Gary managed it, getting us perhaps a quarter of the way — maybe a hundred yards — closer to our door. On foot the rest of the way, we had a choice of slopping through mud or trying the rotted snow still on the drive.

The seeds we planted are starting to sprout despite the frost, safe under a plastic sheet. Something (a bear?) has come along and forcibly torn down the platform of the bird feeder. The detritus of winter shows here, too, where we missed in picking up after ourselves and Ella before and through the long season. Yesterday, when I wasn’t napping or fixing meals, I was picking up. First I collected a five-gallon bucket of post-consumer recycled willow, otherwise known as moose poop, from the campground across the river. I want to learn to make paper, and Gary came up with the idea that the pulp might require less cooking and beating if it had been previously processed. If it works, I’ll need a lot; the moose have provided. Next I picked up after Ella, and today I went after bits of insulation and debris that escaped us earlier. I’d reach for some foam insulation and come up with a dessicated mushroom; a piece of aged newspaper was just birch bark. I reached for a piece of white plastic and found a bone; I also found a small skull and a partial jaw, probably porcupine, according to Gary. Meanwhile, Gary is working on trellises for the Alaska Botanical Garden’s mid-June Garden Fair, and Ella is running crazy in circles, chasing birds, or sitting in the sun with her ball waiting for one of us to give it a good kick.

Gary is healing remarkably, now ten days out of surgery. His excellent surgeon removed the tumor on his pancreas, together with a small one he found on Gary’s liver during surgery and a healthy spleen that happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. We were told the tumor was not likely to be a return of Gary’s sarcoma, which would have metastasized to his lungs if at all, but indeed that’s what it turned out to be. We don’t know what that means, or what the treatment might be, or where Gary will be treated. We’re scheduled to go to OHSU in Portland before long to see the oncologist, one of three experts we found nationwide when Gary was first fighting this strange spindle-cell sarcoma of unknown origin.

We’re in a season of transition. What seemed so clear a month ago is, like our river, opaque, muddy. We don’t know what is coming or where it will take us. The love and care, thoughts and prayers of our friends and family, even friends of friends and readers of this blog, stands in high relief and brings us comfort. Still it is a time of great discomfort, physical and emotional, and there are moments when nothing would suit me better than a good cry. Our current state of uncertainty cushions us for now, though, so we laugh and play with Miss Ella, do our chores and enjoy the weather, scenery and new life around us. It’s Saturday night, so for now I’ll just worry about what movie to watch and whether we’ll have to close the shutters against the brightness of the setting sun.

Sunrise: 4:37 a.m.
Sunset: 11:08 p.m.
Weather: Mixed sun and clouds, breezy; high 52°, low °30.

What we’re reading: 
Gary: Gary read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski, in the hospital; good book, especially for dog lovers, but not such a good ending, he tells me. A few minutes ago he finished Hank Vaughan (1849-1893): A Hell-Raising Horse Trader from the Bunchgrass Territory, by Jon M. and Donna McDaniel Skovlin. Not particularly well-written, and my Aunt Vee calls its accuracy into question, but still Gary seems to be taking great pleasure in reading about my notorious ancestor. Also reading Teaming with Microbes, by Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis, a book on soil for gardeners.
Barbara: The Sun magazine, mostly. Just finished Help, by Kathryn Stockett (thanks, Joan!) and just starting So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger, author of a book I loved, Peace Like a River, which was his first novel.

Note: Today’s title comes from a poem of Gary’s.

Yesterday, our first day back after some travel, we weeded the garden of a surprising amount of green grass, and protected our little 4′ x 8′ raised bed with vole-defying plastic sheeting. We planted just a few of our vegetable seeds, in the hope that our mild weather will continue and allow the germinating seeds to take advantage of the long hours of sunshine we now enjoy. The night darkens not long before midnight now, and when I roused in morning’s light today, the clock read 4:28. When we finally got up it was snowing.

I left for a visit to San Francisco and Helena in mid-April, a final ride on the snow machine to my car. Returning, I found a new world emerging from under the snow. The new sounds are as striking as the sights: birdsong and mating calls from all sorts of birds I don’t recognize; even the ravens have a new call that sounds like a drop hitting a water-filled bucket. Muck slurps from my boots, buzzing flies swarm, and the outhouse sounds more, well, liquid. I was relieved to see the river still has its sheath of ice, so I haven’t missed the drama of break-up that I’ve heard so much about.

I’d like to stay and watch each day’s evolution, but we are headed to Anchorage soon on a journey we hadn’t planned. Gary’s recent CT scan, routine follow-up from the sarcoma he had a couple of years ago, showed a spot on his pancreas, a tumor. The tumor will be removed, together with his spleen, and only then will we learn whether it is cancerous.

Cocooning with Gary through the winter here, I have felt protected, safe, untouchable. But life is inherently dangerous; it must be so. What lies outside the cocoon is not yet clear. But as we emerge we will endeavor to face it with strength nourished by the love and beauty we have found together, and by your good thoughts and prayers.

I will keep you posted.

A constant drip from the roof, the occasional “thwump!” as a section of snow slides off, chickadee-dee-dee, these are the sounds of spring.  Snow disappeared from the porch, then melted away from the grate in front of the door; once again we can stomp snow from boots on our way in. Yesterday a porch step re-emerged, a now-unexpected drop-off. Our well-insulated, formerly icicle-free cabin is dripping icicles as sun melts the still-thick snow from the east-facing roof. The steeper west-facing roof is blue again; I watched the last section of snow crash to the ground a week ago. Gary leads an expedition to cut firewood, logs and poles or break and reinforce ski trails most days with a new sense of urgency, while we can still run the snowmachine and its sleds on the river and through the woods.

Canadian jays overwintered here, but gave off begging for food suddenly in the last days of March. Chickadees, with us again since late January, were joined first by one grosbeak, then others, in early March. Week before last I heard a woodpecker in our yard; and while we were out in the woods a few days ago, we saw the first bald eagle of the season high overhead. The snowshoe hare or hares are in frequent evidence, and Ella has chased her first squirrels of the season. She will soon be providing copious amounts of nesting materials for the local feathered population: she started shedding a few days ago.

Sunglasses are a permanent fixture around my neck or on my head – I didn’t need them this much in California! I’m more likely to forget my hat, gloves and even my jacket, cheechako that I am, than my sunglasses; the brightness is astounding, even on a cloudy day. The ice around my water hole has become mostly transparent and even less stable; on warmer days I think about going to the river in nothing but my boots, to avoid drenching my clothes when the inevitable happens. (See http://www.indeep-alaska.com/2012/03/07/taking-a-leap.)

For months I drafted these blog posts in a notebook to conserve energy, but now I can type away knowing we’ll have plenty of solar even on a cloudy day. Days are balmy, up to 42°, a temperature that seemed far colder last fall than it does now. I had started sitting on the porch to work at the computer, but moved back indoors after Ella hurt her two right paws in short succession, as no amount of pain seems to keep her from jumping and playing when she has the chance. Her injuries put a crimp in our plans to go camping, but Gary assures me we’ll have enough snow to carry our gear in sleds for weeks to come.

After the snow-camping season ends, a pack animal may stand in for the sled. We’re thinking of getting a goat. I used to drink copious amounts of milk, and miss it terribly. Goats are social animals, so if we get a milker she will need a companion. We saw an experienced pack-goat on craigslist the other day; though we couldn’t call about it, not having a phone, when we go out next we’ll see if a milking doe and a pack goat can’t be squeezed into my SUV.  Yaks might be even better for milk and packing, but I don’t think I can get even one yak into my car.

Spring has given us other ideas, too. With the season for garden sales coming up, Gary had a thought to design and build bentwood trellises as he thins young spruce from his land. As for me, when we went to Fairbanks I bought supplies to make a mould and deckle for papermaking, something I’ve never even thought about trying before.

It’s too warm to keep the fire hot all day, and that’s started us thinking about cooking outdoors. I miss baking (and all three of us miss my bread), so we’re going to set up to bake over an outdoor fire. And since I dragged a solar cooker all the way from San Francisco, where I never had enough sun to use it, Gary pulled it out of the shed today, and I’ll start learning to cook in it on the next sunny day.

Springtime in San Francisco meant flowering trees and greening hills. Here we have sunshine and snow. Everywhere it’s time for the new, time for renewal. Get out and enjoy.

Sunrise:  7:01 a.m.
Sunset:   8:56 p.m.
Weather: High 42°, low -8°, mostly cloudy.

Sunny days, sunglasses and sunscreen: it must be spring break! Snow and sun combine to make the world bright white and blue; even the green of the trees fades into the background. Days stretch to evening, long as mid-summer days in San Francisco. I never need a flashlight when the snows are lit with the reflection of the moon and stars; if I did, it would blind me to the green glow of auroras that followed the recent spate of solar flares. No wonder Alaskans find this the perfect place for spring break.  Just as a torrent of snowmachiners rushed down our highway, over our river and through our woods, we took our own spring break and headed north to Fairbanks.

The impetus for our trip was a three-day conference on sustainable agriculture in Alaska. But it was also a chance to buy groceries and do laundry after nearly three months in the backwoods. We stayed with Gary’s sister Tina and her family in North Pole; I even got my first haircut in eight months, thanks to Gary’s niece Selena!

North Pole is the town that gets and answers all the letters sent to “Santa Claus, North Pole.” It’s a place where keeping Christmas decorations up year-round is encouraged, especially around Santa Claus Lane (which intersects with St. Nicolas Drive). It earns its name in part by having weather that is easily 15 degrees colder than nearby Fairbanks, which is itself as cold as or colder than we are in winter. But we got lucky—it never got below -30° when we were there.

And there’s lots going on in Fairbanks this time of year: we saw the third and final day of the Open North American Championship sled dog race, noisy dogs bouncing with excitement, a parka parade showing off traditional parkas (and, with nine entrants, reminding us that Fairbanks is still a small town), an ice sculpture park, and the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska.

It’s always hard to leave home, in part because it robs us of so many good days here. It takes the better part of two days to get ready for the trip, two days of travel round trip, and a day to unpack and resettle. Getting ready includes gathering laundry, packing and cleaning, but we also have to prepare for the cabin to freeze. Gary makes large batches of kindling, enough to start and keep a quick, hot fire burning for the several hours it takes to warm the cabin and everything in it when we return. I take charge of dealing with food and water. It’s getting easier: this time we didn’t have any fresh food left, eliminating the chore of blanching it or otherwise preparing it so it would survive freezing. Last time we went away I made ice in small batches in pans to thaw quickly when we returned, so we wouldn’t have to get water from the river after a long day’s travel. It was tedious, since only a tiny bit of water could be left in each pan or bucket; allowing water to freeze in any volume will cause the containers to bulge and buckle. This time I harvested ice and icicles from my water hole and stored them in buckets. At first I chiseled ice, which I needed to do anyway to re-open the iced-over water hole. When most of the ice dropped into the current as it broke free, I hit on the idea of filling my buckets with icicles. I hated to do it—I love seeing the icicles in my beautiful ice room—but by taking them from the least visible spots I was able to keep the beauty of the place intact. (See http://www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/12/03/Riverdance/)

We went to the conference to hear what’s going on in agriculture in Alaska, which ships in 95% of its food supply. We learned about mushroom cultivation; flour milling; cold-hardy hogs that eat grass and don’t root; beekeeping in top-bar hives; geothermal farming done near hot springs; why peony farming is such a specialty here; how to get the government to pay for your greenhouse; biochar, an environmentally constructive charred-wood product used for long-term soil improvement; and how to sell at farmers markets and to restaurants and buyers for Princess, the big hotel and cruise line.

Living here is amazing, but it’s hard to generate much income. We’d like to have land where we can grow our own food and keep horses and livestock for work, play, meat, and maybe dairy. Our growing season is short here and the land won’t support much more than one or two goats or sheep (or reindeer or yaks) and six weeks of garden vegetables. We’ll need more land in a less remote, more temperate place. That doesn’t rule out Alaska, but it almost certainly rules out our home here, which sees snow early and late, and is likely to have a freeze every month of the year.

Gary has some experience working with cattle and sheep. I am bereft of experience even vaguely relevant to ranching. Some days I think about finding some docile, high-butterfat sort of animal for a varietal butter or artisanal ice cream endeavor. Having just left the regulation-intensive industry of money management, I question the wisdom of getting into anything as highly regulated as dairy. When I think about the ice cream itself, the regulations don’t loom so large. Then I remember I know nothing about milking animals, except that it must be done every day twice a day, except in winter when I could let the poor gals dry up. So my thoughts turn to sheep or mushrooms or biochar or ecotourism. But eventually I return to dreams of butter, cheese and ice cream: if I can’t sell it, at least I can eat it!

Pooling our resources, Gary and I hope to find land—land in need of improvement, perhaps, but enough for a few grazing animals—land enough to embark on our experiment without taking on debt or spending all our savings. We want natural beauty, live water, room to roam. If the land is fenced for cattle, with a house and maybe a barn, that would save precious time, but we could live in a tent or a yurt at first if we had to. We love a sense of seclusion, but community is important too, and not just to have a market for our products. Where we might do this—in Alaska or in the lower 48—is, like everything else about our plan, very much unsettled.

I’m in no rush. I should be, I suppose, as we are rather well above a prudent age for embarking on such a different and demanding venture. I’m just not ready to leave. I don’t want to think I’ll never have another winter and spring here. April, Gary tells me, is perhaps the most beautiful month of all. I suppose everything will come together in its own time. We’ll find land that seems right, and it may tell us what to do. Then we’ll start our new adventure. Meanwhile I’ll revel in this one, knowing it won’t last forever.

Sunrise: 7:36 a.m.
Sunset:  8:27 p.m.
Weather: High 17°, low -23°, calm, mixed sun and clouds.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve showered to wake up, warm up and wind down as well as wash up; a hot shower is refuge and reward. Gary knew this, and perhaps he couldn’t be sure I’d ever feel at home without a shower. He fretted about making what had been more summer camp than cabin into a home in when he arrived here in June, just two-and-a-half months before I did; soon he wrote me he was building an addition to the cabin to house a shower and closet. I was pleased, of course, but felt a twinge; I’d never asked for a shower, but I knew the price, particularly in time, was dear.

Gary’s letters took me through his struggle to make a home for us from the day he returned to the cabin after two years’ absence, overwhelmed by decades of stuff and the memories it contained. Beyond the truckload of belongings he’d brought from San Francisco, Gary had enough in storage to fill a boxcar, and he actually did. The Alaska Railroad unhooked the boxcar from the train, he spent three days loading it, and when it arrived he spent another three days unloading it, filling his truck and horse trailer each time, making the thirty-mile drive down the gravel road to the cabin, unloading, and going back the next day. There was more to it than that, including a broken nose, but it was still only a small part of Gary’s challenge: to clean out the place and make a comfortable space for the two of us.

Summer days are long here, but summer itself is short. Gary had to prioritize work requiring unfrozen ground, temperate weather, abundant daylight, or any combination of these. Planting a vegetable garden, digging the foundation for the addition and for the shower’s underground drainage tank, building a small woodshed for firewood that otherwise sat on the porch, these things Gary had to do early. Making an outhouse seat – it was a simple squatter before – was a small job, but one he thought best to complete before I arrived. Building drawers, shelves and a cabinet in the kitchen gave him something to do on the frequent rainy days.

Gary had to bring in the shower stall and attach the drain before putting up exterior walls, but once that was done the shower room project gave way to more urgent matters. By then I’d arrived, and we had several multi-day trips to winterize my car, find warm clothes and skis for me, and buy a snowmachine and sled, solar panels, generators, wind turbines and provisions for winter. The cabin had never been used in winter, so Gary removed the blue metal roof, panel by panel, along with a number of squirrels’ nests, positioned new insulating foam board, and then reinstated the roof. He built yet another woodshed to accommodate the load of green birch we’d bought, and began splitting wood so I could stack it there to dry. We set up the wind tower; Gary installed the turbine and together we dug four-foot post holes for the platform we needed for the additional solar panels and managed to fix the heavy sixteen-foot six-by-six timbers in the holes with no major injuries. By this time in the season the sun was too low in the sky to reach the platform, so Gary finished building it but set aside the task of installing the panels.

Separated as it is from the main room with its hot wood-burning stove, the new addition is cold in winter. We close it off in extreme weather to retain heat where we need it most, but when temperatures dip much below zero we can’t imagine showering there. So priorities shifted to logging deadwood to refill firewood stores, installing the solar panels, keeping trails open and packed with the snowmachine, skiing and generally getting out to enjoy the season. With the upturn in temperatures recently Gary refocused on the new addition; he installed insulation, paneled the interior walls, built the closet and shelves, configured a workspace just big enough for his carving bench, and put finishing touches on the shower stall. He was going to paint the shower area, but previously-frozen latex paint never returns to its liquid state, come to find out. Last fall we bought a pesticide sprayer that holds three gallons, and after a certain amount of futzing it was ready to function as the shower’s mechanism.

Meanwhile, we’d been making do with nightly sponge baths and the old-fashioned Saturday night bath in the galvanized steel tub. (See www.indeep-alaska.com/2011/09/27/complex-solutions-for-a-simple-world-part-ii.) Well, Saturday night for me, right before our Saturday night movie; Sunday for Gary. Gary loves his bath, reading or working Sudoku while he soaks.

I love how I feel after my bath; the experience itself is hardly relaxing. First I mix the water from one of the large stock pots on the stove with cold water or hotter water until I’ve got it just right. I kneel on a towel next to the tub and stick my head over it while Gary ladles the water onto my hair. (This sounds easy enough, but involves some rarely-used muscles to hold the position.) Once my hair is wet, Gary pauses while I lather up, then gives me a rinse. The once-weekly schedule means my hair is really dirty, so it’s rinse-lather-repeat. When we’ve decided my hair is clean and shampoo-free, I climb into the sudsy water and bathe. The process is much like any bath, except there’s no room to maneuver in the cramped space; how to get the soap to the harder-to-reach body parts is a puzzlement. When I’m done I really should rinse off the soapy water, but it’s not worth the trouble; I feel clean, and that’s enough. Of course there’s still the matter of the tubful of dirty water; we can empty it right away or trip over it until we do.

But now we have a shower! We just fill the pesticide sprayer’s reservoir with water, pressurize it by pumping the handle maybe 150 times, carry the sprayer into the shower and, voila!  The hose is long enough to hook the nozzle up so it sprays down like a standard shower head, or it can be used like a flexible European shower handle. The nozzle works much like a miniature gas pump; it can be set for continual spraying or not.

I can shower as long as I want with about two gallons, and there’s always at least that much water warming on the stove. The water drains to the underground tank, so I can just relax when I’m done. It’s not the same as the kind of showers I’ve known and loved before — nothing’s the same here. But I guess that’s the point.

Sunrise: 8:11 a.m.
Sunset:  6:06 p.m.
Weather:  High 30°, low 16° and snowing. We’ve gotten about six inches of snow since Saturday night.

Return of the Sun

On Tuesday, January 24^th, I used my red pen to record one of the year’s highlights: for the first time in months, sunlight streamed through the kitchen window.

Winter solstice is a tease. It took four days after the solstice to gain one minute of daylight. But now, more than a month later, each day is about six minutes longer than its predecessor. That may not seem like much but it adds up quickly, and the shifting rhythm of the day keeps me off balance. I find myself ready to settle in for the evening with an hour of daylight to spare, or I forget to start dinner until dark, not soon enough when the freezer’s operating at thirty below. Our shortest days were four hours and thirty-two minutes long, and today we have seven hours and eighteen minutes of daylight.

We’d been watching, wondering when the sun’s arc would rise over our hill high enough to hit the window. We’d seen sun hit the trees and riverbed, but we’d had no direct sun since November and no wind for weeks.  That left us dependent on our gas generator to charge the large (128-lb.) batteries we draw from when we use electricity. But when the batteries wouldn’t hold a charge, Gary discovered one was dead. The end result — which is all I fully understand — is that we can use as much electricity as we want for the six hours it takes the generator to run out of gas (it holds a gallon and a half), but without the generator we’re limited to the radio and maybe a quick check of email or brief use of an electric light. That is, unless we get sun on the solar panels or a good sustained wind. We’re comfortable working in the dimmer light of our propane lamps and staying offline for a couple of days at a time, but eventually our tools, computers and cameras need charging. The generator is noisy and keeps us glued to our computers as we work to take full advantage of it, so we’d rather not use it. With the return of the sun, Gary focused on putting up the additional solar panels he’d bought last fall. On the 24th we began work in earnest.

“Do you want to stay on the ground or work up on the platform?” Gary asked as we prepared to hoist the set of eight panels onto the twelve-foot high platform.

“I can guide them, but I can’t lift them,” I answered, assuming that would mean staying on the ground.

“OK, climb up then,” Gary replied.

Oh, well. He pushed as he climbed, I guided and supported the panels with a rope, and Ella looked on, emitting worried whimpers.

Gary’s work was slowed by the weather, which stayed between twenty below and forty-five below the days he was outside. When I went up the ladder to help him mark a metal brace for cutting, the felt pen tip iced up. Wire becomes inflexible and brittle, tools freeze to the platform, and metal is so cold to the touch that it burns. Gary was in and out of the cabin every few minutes to warm up or cut a piece of metal or wiring, or to do small tasks that in any other weather he would have done on the platform as he worked, like finding the right bolt from his bucket of nuts, bolts and screws. We didn’t know we’d see temperatures rise nearly eighty degrees this week, so he pressed on. He finished the wiring around midnight a week ago Friday, and the next day we woke to clear skies and eight new (used) solar panels feeding the batteries.

Making the Grade

Months ago we heard a rumor in town that the military, or possibly a mining company, was planning to have our road plowed this winter. We weren’t sure what this would mean to us. If it were actually plowed, we might have trouble getting to town by snowmachine, riding on the less stable shoulder. We have Gary’s diesel truck here, but it doesn’t like the cold.

Gary took Ella up the road Tuesday morning last week, and when he returned he simply said “Go check out the road.”

The machine had come and gone, leaving a hard-packed surface so smooth I could almost skate on it in my mukluks. A grader normally pushes, whereas this machine was like a Sno-Cat dragging behind, but for lack of a better term, I’ll call it a grader. It was preparing the road for the military or mining equipment.

A few days later, once the smooth road had set up, we saw the grader heading east, followed by huge semis with tracks replacing the tires, which made a mess of the grader’s work. The crew has been back and forth a few times since then, even carving a graded path to our snow shelter outside the campground as it made a U-turn. The other day the equipment haulers carried a load west, toward town, with the grader (mercifully) following. Today they headed east, apparently headed back for another load.

Sunrise:  9:30 a.m.
Sunset:   4:38 p.m.
Weather: High 28°, low 26°, high winds, light and blowing snow. This is 76 degrees higher than it was at -48°, where we stood most of the day Sunday.