'til November

It's mid-November, and the weather reflects it. A steady drizzle of rain hits the snow like acid, burrowing into the pockmarks and emerging in gray streams of slush on the city streets. Evening's coming and everything's gray, monotone, shadowless, as you're driving toward the Spit with a camera that only has one shot left on it. You're heading due south on the narrow strip of land, so you scarcely notice the sun slipping below the cloudline into the thin sliver of clear sky to the west. You don't have time to notice because the change is instantaneous anyway - as sudden as a camera flash, the distant shoreline erupts in a magnetic shade of turquoise you never even imagined existed in nature. It startles you so much that you pull over that second, like one of those finger-waving tourists that just spotted a the hindside of a bear, and you get out of your car, and take that one picture. Then, when you look at the image reflected on the tiny camera screen, washed of all its color and surprise, it almost breaks your heart, but not quite.

Futures

Today I interviewed a local writer, a longtime resident that these Alaska-types refer to as "old-timers" or "sourdoughs" though no self-respecting Alaskan outside the Chamber of Commerce uses that "s" word. He's just the type that grew up on a homestead, remembers the '64 earthquake ... a longtime resident. They're a minority in Alaska.

As often happens during a phone interview, he turned the tables on me toward the end.
"You new here?" he asked as I was trying to wrap things up.
"Yeah. I just moved here two months ago, from Idaho." (with the apologetic tone I tend to develop when I tell people just how new I am.)
"You like it here?"
"Sure. It's a beautiful place."
"It is. So why'd ya move here?"
"To Homer?"
"To Alaska."
(At this point it's getting close to lunch, and the conversation has rambled on for nearly a half hour.) "I don't know. To live in Alaska."
"Is that right?"
(silence from me. Of course that's the reason, the absolute truth, but it sounds a more than just a little silly when said out loud.)
"Yeah. Lots come up here just to be up here. Most are just trying to get away from something they left behind."
(a pause on both ends. I'm thinking he wants some kind of further justification from me, a good story to match his yarn about the time the Spit almost sunk into the sea. He's probably just reflecting on whether he wants a hamburger or spam helper for dinner.)
Finally I say, "Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me .... "
And so on.

The people are strange in Alaska. But they have a worldview colored by quiet truths few others would ever see. Maybe it's the drawn-out darkness and cold, the solitude and stark landscape that demands silent reflection. I don't know. I can't help but wonder if this stranger on the phone had me pegged all along.

Yikes

So I know this is a diversion from my regular subject matter, but I saw this rather unflattering picture pop up on Geoff's rotating screen saver today and instantly thought "yikes." I didn't even recognize it as myself at first, but after a few minutes I just had to dig through the archives and look. Sure enough, I came across a photo taken in June 2004 at a friend's wedding, and sure enough, it's me. Blah. I guess I really don't have a very observant self image, but I think now I finally understand why I weigh nearly 30 pounds less than I did at the height of my post bike-trip weight binge. I used to think that the numbers on the scale were a big joke and I hadn't actually changed much at all. Hope I have. Hope I actually have. Anyway, the reason I post it on the WWW is sort of akin to putting a butt-crack picture on the refridgerator. It's an effective way of saying to myself, "44 oz. Pepsi = BAD! Step away! Step away!"

Learning to ski

So I took the new cross country skis out for a little slide today. It was my second time ever - the first being at least four years ago. It was an experience that left both my ego and knees so bruised that I put the memory out of my mind to the point of repression. But I remembered today as I snapped into my brand new bindings and started to slide forward ... wait ... I’ve been here before. It was the kind of thing that comes flooding back in a moment of silent dread ... the borrowed boots that were too small, the pair of battered skis waxed too much and a small misstep that sent me careening into a creek.

But it’s funny how much you can learn about something in the space of four years, even when you haven’t revisited it even once. Since that humbling first experience, I learned to downhill ski, took up bicycling for the first time since I was a child, learned to ride with 60 pounds of weight dangling from the frame, began riding in mud and gravel and even snow. My balance has improved; I’m a little stronger and a little less afraid of eating snow (tastes much better than sand, you know). So when I started sliding beyond control today, I just pulled the other foot forward, and kept going for three miles.

Sure, it wasn’t all sunshine and giggles ... I was dusted by a few skate skiers on the groomer, lost the trail and had to tramp through an open field of thorny bushes, and walking uphill was no picnic - I must of looked like a crippled duck as I thrashed up some of the steeper ones. But it was cool. I don’t regret purchasing the skis. And I got to see this ... the sun dropping over Kachemak Bay. So, all in all, a good hobby, I think.

Too warm for biking?

Temperatures here have started to inch just above freezing again - which means slush everywhere. Yesterday I finally convinced Geoff to go winter biking with me, but my "it will be great now that it’s warm" argument backfired. As we dropped off the ridge, we were bombarded with black goo, mostly melted snow mixed with dirt and gravel fragments. Pretty soon I was only able to keep one eye open, then only half open, and my steering wobbled as I furiously wiped mud from the small part of my face still exposed to the elements. When we reached town I was laughing out loud and Geoff was looking at me through his mud-caked bike mask, obviously annoyed. I know what you’re thinking - fenders, Jill, fenders! But acquiring gear doesn’t happen overnight, especially when you live in a town that doesn’t even stock underwear. I still need to buy studded bike tires and biking booties and gloves (all I own now is a pair of mittens.) And I need a tail light and long johns and weatherproof pants, and maybe one of those hats to go over my helmet, and while I’m at it, I remembered that Geo needs a new clutch and some shocks and I just bought cross country ski boots online that arrived as size 42 - 42s! Who even knows what size that is, but they’re entirely too big for me. In conclusion, fenders are on the short end of a long list, so here’s hoping the cold snap comes back.

Everywhere you want to be

Visa Quest ... it's kind of a bluegrass festival started by three guys who used to live in Fairbanks and never lived in Homer; it's 500 people and makeshift bands packed into a tiny hotel lounge and overflowing into the parking lot, foyer and even rooms; it's a congregation of old-timey musicians from Alaska and California and Pennsylvania and West Virgina who meet in Girdwood for no discernable reason and take a beer-driven bus trip all the way to Homer in November just because someone, somewhere, a decade ago or more, thought it sounded like a good idea. In short, Visa Quest is a Homer tradition.

As dancers herded the non-dancers into a neck-to-neck ring at the back of the room, I executed feeble attempts to get back to the stage so I could take photographs for the newspaper. People flailed everywhere and it was enough to make me nostalgic for the sweaty punk show mosh pits I used to swim laps in as a teenager. I must have looked pretty official with a giant Nikon around my neck, because people kept worming through the crowd to ask me questions.

One guy from Talkeetna: "What the hell is this?"

Me: "Bluegrass concert!" (duh)

Talkeetna man: "I've never been to Homer before. I'm just here to visit a friend. You guys sure know how to party here!"

Me: "Oh, this dosen't happen every weekend. It's sort of an annual event."

Talkeetna man, looking around with a blank smile: "So what the hell is this?"

And so on. It was fun, though. Geoff and I danced even though I was wearing two cameras and way too many layers for a room where temperatures easily climbed into the 90s (and I'm from Utah. I know how that feels.) This time next year? Count me in.

Breaking trail

Today Geoff and I went on a backyard expedition of the rolling woods behind our house. And when I say backyard expedition, I mean we literally strapped on some snowshoes, tramped through our backyard and spent three hours traversing the moose tracks and ravines that weave through a veritable wilderness. Geoff has dreams of forming our own personal network of trails where we can cross-country ski, snowboard and hike all winter long; but, man, breaking trail is tough work. While bounding down a steep hillside toward Bridge Creek, I started sliding out of control. I instinctively turned my toes together right before I hit a large root, which sent me flying forward - knees, hands and even face into the snow. The only worse for wear I sustained was a slightly twisted ankle; and only later did I discover that the plastic protectors were still covering my back crampons (I recently bought these snowshoes on eBay and this was their virgin trek). So it was my fault, after all.

While I’m on the subject of entertaining embarrassments, I photographed this cute little northern hawk owl wearing a feathered beret. A woman from a bird rehabilitation center in Anchorage broughtit down for a new exhibit at the Pratt Museum. This bird was the star of a children’s program I attended this morning. The program was predictable enough - squirming kids, loud questions and lots of facts, including the woman’s continued insistence that this bird “is a wild animal. It’s not a pet.” Which is true, I’m sure; poor thing can’t help that it broke it's wing and can't survive in the woods anymore. But if you can put a hat on an owl ... has the line between wild and fashionable been irrevocably crossed? Or could this owl be both? Or neither? It is kind of an ugly hat.