this is what i do

dardos?

I guess I won another one.

Thanks, Monster Librarian, for awarding me the Prémio Dardos Award. Here's what it means:

'Com Prémio Dardos se reconhecem os valores que cada blogueiro emprega ao transmitir valores culturais, éticos, literários, pessoais, etc. que, em suma, demonstram sua criatividade através do pensamento vivo que está e permanece intacto entre suas letras, entre suas palavras. Esses selos foram criados com a intenção de promover a confraternização entre os blogueiros, uma forma de demonstrar carinho e reconhecimento por um trabalho que agregue valor à Web.'

"The Prémio Dardos is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web."

The rules are easy:
1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.
2) Pass the award to another 15 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award."

So because it's an award with homework, I now have to give it to someone else... Let's see. I'm pretty sure I don't know fifteen bloggers, so I'll do my best. Here they are, in no particular order:
*KT
*Mummy Dearest

because i'm bored and have nothing better to write...

I could survive for 1 minute, 16 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Created by Bunk Beds.net

change

Now that this election hubbub is finally over...

let's all take a deep breath...

and celebrate our new chance!

Yes We Can!

525,600 what?

A couple of weeks ago, I arrived back in Pennsylvania to attend the wedding of a couple of friends. A year ago, almost to the day, I was called here for the same reason. A year ago, I left my job and home in Massachusetts to embark on this trip that hasn’t stopped after celebrating the beginning of my friends’ new lives together. That wedding was the omen I was waiting for to help me determine when I should start my adventure, and this one seemed like an omen, too. It marked the end of my internship on Lopez Island and brought me back to my family and home state to sort through the wonders and experiences I gathered like souvenirs.

I thought I owed myself a minute to stop and absorb what I’d seen and done. I wanted to take a slow moment to think about which goals I had met and what aspirations I may have yet to achieve. I’d lived in a foreign country. I tried my hand at farming, new languages, and lived out of a sleeping bag for the better part of twelve months. I drove 7000 miles with a friend to some of the last wild places on this continent. I learned to build houses with straw and mud. I lived in a tent for seven weeks and slept in a new place nearly every night. I figured it was a good idea to give a serious thought to my future.

So I sat and stared my future down, demanding a revelation—some great end-all-be-all moment of clarity. And my future stared right back, just as closed-lipped as ever. Not a clue, not an inkling did the murky days ahead surrender to me. “C’mon,” I wheedled, “just a teensy hint?” And the future said nothing.

Before leaving all stability behind, I figured I’d give myself a year if I could last that long. I left my plans open to finding a new niche to settle into, a new person, place, or skill to fall in love with. Perhaps I’d love the road too much to commit to anything before the end of it, but I wasn’t giving myself that much credit. I figured after three months—six months tops—I’d come loping back with my tail between my legs, afraid of all the possibilities the wide wonderful world had to offer. I counted on having to hold my own feet to the fire to stay out there.

Well, now here I am at the end of that short year. I find myself laying my adventures out like treasures before me and marveling over how... few there seem to be. I suppose this isn’t the time for short-changing myself, but I can’t help but think that I just haven’t covered that much ground in 365 days.

So that’s it then. I’m not done, I guess. The road winds ever onward and I find myself compelled to keep following it. Now, if only I had any idea what it is I actually wanted to do next... The suggestion box is open!

juggle fest

It’s hard for me to believe that three weeks have passed since the end of a fantastic weekend of weirdos. The folks who have given me a room for the summer host an enormous juggling party every year. What began as a small gathering of family, friends, and a handful of strangers from Seattle eighteen years ago has become an island tradition that brings hundreds of performers and spectators alike to the front yard of Carol and Al. The story goes that on their sons’ return from a profitable fishing season in Alaska, they decided to have a party to celebrate. All the kids enjoyed juggling, the boys had sent piles of salmon ahead of themselves to the Island, and decided to see if they could get other jugglers to hang out for the equinox. So they went to Seattle and began handing out flyers to whatever street performers they could find. A few weeks later, a rag-tag bunch showed up at the gate and Juggle Fest was born. There were around thirty in that party. Nowadays, meals and accommodations are planned for upwards of a hundred people for the whole weekend.


For such a “private” party, lots of planning and community involvement happen and everything goes surprisingly smoothly. Jugglers ranging in age from the teens to seniors arrive between Thursday and Friday of the weekend of the fall equinox, and the yard becomes a buzz of clubs, balls, and antics. Tents are tucked away all over the ten acres of the property, and outhouses are set up. Everybody volunteers to help with meals, drinks, clean-up, and housekeeping. Very little actually needs to be done by each person as long as everybody participates, leaving more time for juggling!


And there was plenty of that. Despite the rain, it was hard to walk from the house to the garden without getting clubbed, hula-hooped, or drawn into a circle of flying objects. I learned quickly to juggle clubs and was passing with a fellow novice before the weekend was half-over.
Contact jugglers, the introverts of the group, shared their secrets with me, and soon enough I was balancing a ball on my elbow and passing it from my palm to the back of my hand.

The food was fantastic. Three times a day we were treated to the delicious efforts of volunteers. Giant meals of soups, fresh baked bread (I helped with a giant bake a day before the whole shebang), salmon, and homegrown vegetables kept everybody full and happy.

Conversations with jugglers I met all weekend revealed people who had been coming for years. Word of mouth alone has grown this festival and street performers come from the Northwest, as well as all over (one man was from South Africa this year), to hang out, trade secrets, and have a reunion of sorts. Some of these folk have performed in groups together over the years, and some meet up for the first time, planning to put on shows when they overlap in cities along their tours.

Even after three days, many were reluctant to leave. But soon, the place had cleared out and no longer looked like a carnival. It was just our house, our yard, our garden, with lingering promises of next year’s event hanging in the air like juggling clubs.

autumn wind

The wind is howling outside my window and an inky blackness has settled already at 7:30. A chill has settled into the bones of this place and the autumn is now completely manifest.

Two days ago I helped a friend’s family put up food from their garden for the winter. We processed pounds of cucumbers and piles of green tomatoes into pickles and chutney. By the end, a few dozen glass jars covered the kitchen counter, a testament to our hours of chopping and cooking.

As the rain fell outside, Mik and I diced tomatoes, onions, and garlic while Diana marveled over the bounty the earth provided. The caustic scent of pickle brine permeated the house for more than five hours as we tackled the relentless piles of produce, Mik with an ulu and I with a chef knife. With four sets of hands attending to the several tasks of chopping, brining, and dehydrating apples, the canning went faster than we expected and we had time to sit and share stories. Mik and David compared their lives in Alaska. I chimed in with highlights from my recent trip there. Climate change and its effect on the glaciers, fishing, and landscape was a major topic and with their combined years there, we pieced together a picture of drastic change. The glaciers that they recalled couldn’t even be seen from the centers built for that purpose anymore. Salmon numbers and fishing limits have dropped. But the stories weren’t all bleak—there were plenty of anecdotes about Alaskan winters, the bus drivers that braved the snow, and cheap fun to be had in the dark days. Diana and I chatted about cheese making, an interest I want to pursue as soon as I have a spare minute and a pastime she enjoys as a way to provide wholesome food for her family. We all told tales of the places we’d each called home. Diana and David recalled Texas, Mik told of her family in Minnesota, and I drew comparisons between Lopez and the Farm in Massachusetts. The reminiscences over my childhood on my family’s dairy farm and the woods around my house in Pennsylvania impressed the back-to-the-landers.

David, Mik, and I lingered in the orchard after gathering our payment of potatoes and apples from the season’s harvest. The sun was peeking out on the horizon as it set below the thinning clouds. The slanted autumn light warmed us despite the persistent wind, and soon I was returning home to hot roasted vegetable borscht. The wind wailed like furies on the ride as my housemates reported on their day’s adventures over dinner in our warm little burrow.

pictures from the roadtrip

I finally got my photos from the roadtrip on my Picasa page! Check them out!

(When you have the time. Seriously, pace yourselves. There are six...)

Super, Natural, British Columbia
The Yukon Territory
Alaska
Denali (which is REALLY BIG)
From Denali to the Kenai Peninsula
The Southeast Islands

houses for nobody

The walls are up. The first coat of plaster was smeared on with little ceremony. Now we must learn again. The second coat is sandier, trickier. We work with trowels now, no longer trusting the rough precision of our hands. Pamela tells us this is where we must be more exact, our building-out must be more subtle, the plane of the wall must be more deliberate. Although we’re still doomed to follow the flow of the straw bale waves, we must produce the illusion that the wall is flat with a smooth and firm stroke of the trowels on the second coat of plaster. But it’s still mud nonetheless.

Not many of us, if any, have ever done work like this and the hawks and trowels are foreign in our grips. The first coat was more organic and made more sense even to us novices—all we needed was a firm hand to slather the mud into the straw and build out a rough coat to approximate the look of a flat wall. Even the plaster mixers must be more careful: is there enough sand in the mix, has too much clay been added? We are in near- constant communication about how well the mud goes on the wall but we won’t know the ultimate truth of our application until it has dried and (hopefully not) cracked. That’s why we begin with the house that nobody will live in.

A few of the houses we’re building do not have owners right now. Some folk have backed out long ago when the project was still being planned, others more recently as financial concerns became more looming. So we practice and perfect on these houses for nobody. The experimentation that we all, even the supervisors, are a part of is played out on these walls. We note the dryness of the base layer and look forward to how that will affect the application and curing of this second coat. We consider the proportions in this mix and wait for the cracks to appear or not.

And we sculpt. The houses with owners on-site have their own special touches: niches carved here and there at the whim of the occupant, a truth window shaped like a heart rather than a picture frame. In the houses that aren’t spoken for, we interns have the freedom to curve the window space just so, or cut a crisp corner. We can even put shapes on the walls, and soon a couple of artists emerge from our ranks. Sunbursts, grapevines, moons and stars crop up in the future kitchens and bedrooms that as yet look more like empty garages or warehouses. The whimsical forms on the walls mock the dusty, formal concrete floor and naked wooden frames. The houses for nobody seem to be choosing their own personalities now. Perhaps these homes will call their owners into being just as the current residents fashion the image and characters of their own.

the sour toe

As promised, here's the video of my drink, the Sour Toe Cocktail.

This atrocity took place in the Downtown Hotel of Dawson City in the Yukon Territory.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun...


The story of the toe, as taken from www.sourtoecocktail.com, is as follows:

Toe #1 was that of Louie Liken, trapper, placer miner, and in the 1920's, rum runner. Louie and his brother Otto would cross the border to the United States in a blizzard by dog team to deliver their alcoholic cargo. During one such outing, Louie stepped into overflow and got his foot wet.Fearing that the Northwest Mounted Police were on their trail they had to continue their trip. As a result of extended exposure to the cold, Louie's big toe froze.To prevent the onset of gangrene it was necessary to amputate.

Lacking faith in doctors the brothers had no intention of traveling 60 miles to Dawson and paying one to do what they could just as easily accomplish on their own.The first step in the amputation was anaesthesia. Consuming large amounts of their 180% overproof rum, they soon felt that they were sufficiently drunk to continue with the amputation. Louie stuck out his frozen toe as Otto lifted the woodcutting axe. With one swing the toe was removed. As a reminder of the incident the brothers kept the toe, pickled in a jar of alcohol.

Years later, when cleaning the brothers' cabin, the toe was discovered by Captain Dick Stevenson. After conferring, Captain Dick and his friends decided on the rules of the Sourtoe Cocktail and started serving it at the Eldorado Hotel in 1973. In July 1980, a placer miner named Garry Younger was trying for the Sourtoe record. On his thirteenth glass of Sourtoe champagne his chair tipped over backwards and he swallowed the toe. Sadly, Toe #1 was not recovered.

skin

“Here it is.” Chaz unrolled the white and brown goatskin, rock salt clattered to the ground.

“Wow. So what do we do with it?”

“Isn’t it beautiful? Basically, we’re gonna stretch it out in this frame and scrape the fat and meat off of it. I brought a dull hatchet, but claw hammers work well, too. Just be careful not to gouge the skin, though.”

And that’s what we did. We cut holes into the extremities and tied the skin as tightly as we could to the crossbars of the crude wooden frame. It stretched over the open space like a misshapen trampoline with a strong but dubious spring. Here and there along the mostly white skin were stringy chunks of white tissue and easier to spot pink shreds. Chaz explained that this hide was better prepared than the last two he was given.

“Can you believe people are just giving me skins now? I asked for one deer skin and now everybody who kills something on this island is giving me its hide. You should’ve seen the last one. I gouged it up pretty bad; it had a lot of meat left on it and I didn’t know for sure how to get it off.”

We clutched at the white strands and pulled. I took out my pocket knife to coax larger slivers free while Chaz worked with the hatchet. Eventually we met in the middle, having cleared off the fat from the leg and shoulder regions. A thin pinkish band of meat covered the skin where it met the ribs. We found purchase at the edges and pulled with our bare fingers, slick with grease until the flesh came away in one sheet. I remembered doing something like this once, long ago, with a deer. But then, I was helping to remove the skin from the body, not remnants from the hide. A simple slip of the knife blade against the clear membrane was all it took to release the pliable hide from the carcass. This was decidedly more difficult—there was next to nothing for our slimy fingers to grasp and the fat wasn’t giving up without a fight. But after an hour, we cleaned off most of the extraneous tissue just as a light rain began to fall.

I biked home in the drizzle, wondering what Chaz would do with three animal hides. I think he’s still scratching his head over it, too. Hell, we came here to build houses.

check this out!

I could be writing about kayaking on Puget Sound. I could be writing about dealing with moldy straw bales and musty barns. I maybe even could be writing about potlucks and sunsets on rocky beaches as seals played in the waves. And of course, there's the goat skin that will be needing some explanation...

Instead, I need to take some time to tell you all about something amazing. Three friends of mine from the Farm where I used to live are running a marathon this October. They're leading a relay and raising money for the Farm, and along the way, working to raise awareness for mental illness and the lives it touches.

Living at the Farm for three and a half years gave me an invaluable opportunity to learn how mental illness affects so many lives. And it also brought me into contact with countless amazing people: people of compassion, of courage, of hope. One of the greatest things I learned from living and working there was how important community is in combatting the effects of mental illness as well as the stigma and ignorance surrounding it. I learned how much we need all of the people in the communities in which we surround ourselves and how far we can carry each other through difficulties.

I'm truly inspired by their passion for this run and the cause they're supporting. Please take some time to learn about my friends' project. If you feel so moved, they (and the whole community) would appreciate any financial generosity you could afford. Even taking a moment to learn about mental illness and those who work to help live with it is worth the time. Help fight the stigma!

http://run4gouldfarm.blogspot.com
www.firstgiving.com/run4gouldfarm

kismet and health care, island style

I’m always on the lookout for signs from God, the Universe, Destiny, whatever you want to call it. Mostly, I look for cues to what my next big move should be: where should I live or what work should I do? Sometimes, I manage to remind myself of the little omens and gifts of generosity that land in my path.

The Universe gave me two things today: a trumpet and a tetanus shot.

My wonderful hosts are on an excruciatingly kind but misguided mission to get me to stay here indefinitely. I don’t know what they’re thinking; I work slowly, I eat a lot, and I take a long time in the shower. And I smell funny. However, they believe that if I join a small Latin band I’ll just spontaneously sink roots on Lopez, so they introduced me to a brass player here who happens to be forming one. And today, Al walked in the door with a Conn, on loan for free, from the school. My own horn (affectionately named The Beast), also on loan from my very generous and talented cuz JT, is in PA right now, still enjoying an extended respite from four arduous years of college. But the trumpet seems to follow me around, showing up at the Hacienda Buena Suerte in Spain even, and my lips are beginning to itch...

Ok, so the Universe itself didn’t give me the tetanus shot. A very kind nurse did. Four weeks on a construction sight dealing with power tools and llama excrement hadn’t landed me in the emergency room, but a leisurely day in the garden left me with a gouge from a rusty nail on the back of my heel. After being told over the phone that I could be squeezed in at the end of the day, or the end of the week, I biked my insurance-free self over to the clinic for a tetanus booster.

The nurse was very pleasant after my hour wait, and gently explained all the things that could go wrong after receiving the vaccine. But of course, it’s much better than my diaphragm contracting and my slowly dying of asphyxiation, isn’t it? *Smile* She even made me photocopies of info on the disease and vaccine to take home and ponder with my mommy and daddy. Did you know that all adults should get a tetanus booster every ten years? And that adults who get the shot frequently tend to experience the side-effects of soreness and swelling even more severely than the rest of us? Frankly, I can’t imagine walking into a doctor’s office and asking to be punched in the arm more than once every ten years. But to each his own, I suppose.

After all was said and done, the nurse asked me about my insurance plan. I sheepishly had to reply that I didn’t have one but she just beamed at me. “Well don’t worry; you get 20% off the cost if you can pay the bill today!” So out I walked, armed with this pleasant fact.

“So the vaccine will be $44,” the receptionist said.
“Is that after the 20% discount I get for paying out-right?” I asked.

The woman looked concerned and I was afraid there would be more paperwork or even an investigation into my possibly-fraudulent claim to have no insurance. “Well, we’re not going to give you the discount today, but we’re going to waive the ‘New Patient’ fee. It’s just a charge because you haven’t visited the clinic before.”

I didn’t want to argue, afraid that if I pushed too hard, some miscalculation would give me 20% off the vaccine, but have me paying the likely-to-be-nominal new patient fee twice, so I agreed but asked oh-so-politely what the ‘New Patient’ fee usually is.

“Um, let me see. That would be about... $80. Yes, $80.”

Thank Jesus for traveling karma and connections in small communities.

accolades

It seems I've won an award.

The Golden Delete Key Award goes to bloggers who don't suck. It's for anyone who knows enough to hit "delete" rather than to post worthless crap.

Thanks, Monster Librarian, for thinking that I use the Delete Key with discretion. The truth is, I just don't write, therefore there's a whole lot of crap in my head that would otherwise be posted here if I took the time to sit at a keyboard.

Anyway, I'm glad for the notice and the thoughtful solid gold delete key filled with dark chocolate.

Too bad it's only digital.

aqua chautauqua

I want to run away to join the circus.

A couple of weekends ago, a performance group called Aqua Chautauqua showed up in our backyard. They arrived on the south end of the island on a small fleet of sailing ships, their mode of transportation for their Summer ’08 tour. Several truckloads and a couple of busloads dumped this ragtag group of jugglers, storytellers, musicians, and their assorted accoutrements at our front door. The two other interns and I spent the day setting up a stage, lights, trashcans, and parking signs to prepare for the evening’s performance. Poor Lucy had just gotten off the ferry herself that day, not expecting a circus to welcome her to her new home on Lopez.

After the dust settled (did it really?), we shared a delicious dinner prepared in our kitchen by Chautauqua’s support team. The buffet’s scope (and it’s whirlwind preparation) was reminiscent of my old job in Massachusetts, and sharing it with such a diverse group of people seemed awfully familiar, too. Dinner seemed to flow seamlessly into clean-up and before I knew it, the band was dressed and lined up and the yard was full of islanders ready for a show.

The Fighting Instruments of Karma band led a parade of jugglers, hula-hoopers, and ragamuffins through our yard to the make-shift stage just at the edge of the woods where tents were pitched for the troupe’s sleeping. The show was kicked off with an acoustic guitar sing-along led by Faith Petric, a 93 (and ¾) year-old woman who had witnessed an original Chautauqua. We sang Acres of Clams (we live in Puget Sound, after all) and my mind was cast back to morning meetings on the Farm. The other interns who showed up were amazed that I knew the words to the simple chanty.

So many performances rounded out the night. Jugglers passed clubs back and forth, over and under, and backwards. A group of women hula-hooped on each others’ shoulders. There were folk songs and spoken word/performance pieces by children. Gags and hijinks, displays of flexibility and low-to-the-ground acrobatics drove the performance to its finale: a juggle of nine Objects of Terror that included a cleaver, a torch, an egg, and dry ice.

The whole show was built around entertainment to educate. One of the Chautauqua’s missions is to support community endeavors and build awareness in each place they stop of the community-building issues and resources available. The interns building straw houses were recognized for our work and hats were passed to raise money for my hosts’ 4 year-old granddaughter who had surgery to remove a tumor from her abdomen just a week after I arrived. So many people had come out for the show that I recognized, even after my short time here. There were a gaggle of interns and several resident builders, the people whose homes are being built. I met their families and friends and so many other islanders involved with other community institutions like the four-month-old radio station and the CSA farm.

After the show, as the crowd thinned, Levi and I started a fire in the fire pit in the yard. Those who were left crowded around to fight the chill and guitars appeared. We were regaled with Beatles covers by a band called Abbey Road Live, who had just performed a pay show on the island the night before. Another group, from the Chautauqua, calling itself the Snow Cubs played covers of songs by the Fleet Foxes, the Decemberists, and others. They had tight and haunting harmonies, backed up by guitar, mandolin, and bass. It was a beautiful way to end an amazing day.

Finally, when all the locals had gone home and most of the performers had settled into their tents tucked away in various corners of the property, I headed back into the kitchen. I met a woman named Shine who was part of the kitchen team and she asked me if I was going to run away with them. I suppose my interest was so obvious she could read it all over my face. That night I went to bed to the sounds of pans banging below my room and visions of life in the circus.

breathing room

Wow, a weekend to sit still.  Between island fun, circuses in my backyard, and goodbye parties there has been little time to settle down and process all that's been happening.

I guess the last couple posts haven't really been ultra-revealing about what I'm now up to, so I'll make an attempt at clarification.

I now live on Lopez Island in the northwest corner of Washington.  Puget Sound surrounds our fifteen-mile long piece of submerged mountain and provides a mild summer climate of low temperatures and little humidity to this island group, the San Juans.  The days are breezy and the nights chilly, but the sun is warm in the cloudless sky.

I'm three weeks into an internship here, building affordable housing with a mix of traditional timber framing, strawbales, and earthen plasters.  The organization that I'm with buys land and builds homes for local folk who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to build for themselves on this island of rising property values and small, mom & pop style businesses.  I'm one of almost twenty young people from all kinds of backgrounds who have been drawn here by the prospect of learning to build sustainable homes in a low-impact way.  The goals of the organization in the project include minimizing costs with materials and implementing a net-zero energy consumption program over the next several years.  We've been spending our days the past few weeks building walls with stacked and cut strawbales, compressing them, and then covering them with plasters made with clay dug from the building site, island sand, and manure and straw from local farms.  Most of the work of cutting and placing bales, mixing plaster, and then applying it is done by hand; we crowd into the framed-out houses as the bales rise higher and then huddle shoulder-to-shoulder against the new walls to cover them with mud before each new layer begins to dry in the sun.

My afternoons have been crammed nearly everyday with workshops, information sessions, potlucks, goodbye parties, and even small trips to the beach parks on the island, each more beautiful than the last.  When there isn't something to occupy my time in the evening, I'm sharing dinner with my hosts, a generous couple who put up interns in their post-and-beam home they built with friends.  They like to cook and the meals are always delicious, usually featuring fresh produce from the garden I help tend as part of my work exchange for my housing.

So that's the paradise I find myself in right now.  What's new with y'all?

i live on an island

I've been one week on Lopez Island in the Puget Sound. It's been a whirlwind of a week here in Northwest Washington, and here are a few phrases that describe my new life:

• island time
• elbow deep in llama dung
• yes, there are llamas here
• farmer's market:  more market, less farmer
• sea kayaking
• straw bale houses
• interns and power tools
• organic EVERYTHING
• sailing on the Sound
• potlucks
• the Lopez Wave
• bicycling everywhere
• fresh veggies everywhere!
• ferry schedules
• free clothes at the dump
• 1500 rubber ducks in a cement truck

Did I mention I've been here a week?  My head is still spinning, but as soon as I can slow it down there will be explanations, reviews, summaries.

PS - The Alaska Roadtrip has officially ended.

the southeast

I haven't posted in a while because I got eaten by bears.

Sorry.

In other news, we finally made it off the Kenai peninsula and crossed through Canada (again) into Southeast Alaska. Our first stop was in Haines, a cute town full of Tlingit art. We spent a day here looking for affordable gifts and native experiences, then it was onto the ferry for a trip down the Alaska Marine Highway to Juneau, the state's capital.

This town is spiffy: small and contained, yet full of activity. Juneau is a major stop along cruise lines, so the place fills with people every day. They hit the myriad Alaska-made souvenir shops and seafood restaurants that run up Franklin Street from the Harbor. Just outside of town are several scenic drives along the waterfront or out to the Mendenhall Glacier, where we plan to hike today. There are trails that take you along salmon runs and out to the glacier itself.

Our next stop is anybody's guess. Possibly Sitka, but apparently each of these communities along the coast has it's own unique flavor and appeal. Our ferry tickets entitle us to three stops between Haines and our final destination, Prince Rupert, BC. But which one?! We're also on the lookout for good kayaking! Maybe we'll see some whales!

signs of life

A month on the road has put me into a kind of travel funk. KT and I have both reached a bit of a saturation point with seeing things and making decisions, so rather than actually writing anything worthwhile about our visits to Talkeetna, Anchorage, or Homer, I thought I’d do something a little different.

All along the road, we’ve seen signs of all types of things. The further north we reached, the more varied and exotic became the signs warning us of the local wildlife that would likely be walking out in front of the car. Here are some examples.

The antlered animals are pretty standard, right? Here we have deer, elk, and then caribou:















Even before the moose started appearing, there were sightings of bison!



Then we got into moose country. Exciting!



And when we saw our first moose, we sure knew how to recognize it! However, we then started seeing signs for a new variety of moose. Our eyes were constantly scanning the woods and shoulders for this poorly-proportioned and pigeon-toed freak of nature, lest it should amble into our path and obliterate the car.



Thankfully, we never encountered this pitiful creature.

Of course, all along the way we were being warned to beware of wild Canadian coal trucks that could bound into our blind spot at any moment!



And we’re still on the lookout for the elusive wild Northern arrow. It’s habitat has been nearly everywhere, but alas, though we’ve caught sight of all the others along the way, this creature has succeeded in completely avoiding us at every turn.


PS - Do yourself a favor and check this out if you want to know more about our time in spiffy, little Talkeetna.

the new pet

Because we didn't get a husky puppy, and we thought we needed SOMETHING to pay attention to, and care for, and feed, we bought...

...a sourdough starter.

Yes. We fretted for a half-hour over whether or not a kitchen tool made with a piece of caribou antler would make it across the border, but it only took five minutes to decide that what we really needed to make this trip exciting was a plastic drink-cup full of fermenting mystery batter.

The sourdough starter comes from a culture that is claimed to be 106 years old. We bought it at the Roadhouse in Talkeetna for $2.50.

We have not yet named the sourdough.

The suggestion box is open.