Grandma and Mikey and Jessica Went To the Taku Inlet and All I Got Was This Digital Photo...

Jan, Mike and Jessica blessed us with a wonderful visit a week ago. Jess flew up a few days earlier, and then Jan and Mike for a week... a great chance to get out and do some touron things. Yeah, like shop at the end-o'-the-season sale at the Alaska T-Sirt Company... wandering around downtown with a big red plastic bag marks a touron as sure as a tattoo on the forehead.

Still, we did some cool stuff. I got to almost kill Mom (death by heart attack) on a hike at the top of the Mt. Roberts Tram...


The sun came out, and it was beautiful. We walked a half-mile loop, sorry that I forgot about the up-hill halfway thru, Mom. The Little One and I ran up a side trail to a large wooden cross, a memorial to a priest who, over a hundred years ago, hiked into the mountains to tend to the spiritual needs of the miners. Along the way, we ran into an 84-year old coot with a pair of binoculars... he pointed out a half-dozen mountain goats and some dall sheep on the opposite ridge of Mount Juneau, a couple miles distant. Days like that remind us how blessed we are to live here.

Back to the whale picture: Julie and I couldn't afford to take the entire time away from work (I mean, somebody's got to support this bunch), so they took a day and went on a tour boat south to the Taku Inlet. So that evening, Julie and I got treated to someone else's pictures of them having a great time in a beautiful place without us.


No, there was no digital manipulation of the picture, the blue of the floating berg-lets is real (there's another dozen pictures of the same). I guess the glacial ice has been so compressed that it attenuates all but the the blue end of the spectrum. After the ice breaks off and starts exposure to the air and water, it loses this optical quality.
So, I guess the three of them had to endure the mean, awful boat captain move the boat thru the floating ice and up to the face of the glacier... and then forced to look at seals lounging on the ice... and then have to watch orcas and humpbacks on the way back to town. How cruel. I am so glad that Julie and I got to go to work instead, and miss all that torture !!

They also went out the end of the road to take a look around. It was another sunny and glorious SE Alaska day, with the sea and the sky nearly the same color, and the snow on the Chilkat Mountains in the distance. They took this picture at Echo Cove. I think they are jealous, but they would never admit it.

We ate some great Thai food at our local world-class eatery, bbq'ed some marvelous red salmon, and had Danielle and John over for my home-cooked Indian curry-feast and Cranium. All in all, the weather cooperated, we had a great visit, and they all left with an appreciation of the beauty, nature and isolation that Julie and I signed up for when we moved here. No regrets.

Lord knows that everyone who visits Juneau takes THE picture of the Mendenhall Glacier, and here's Mikey's:

When is somebody local gonna get up there and sweep the dirt off the glacier and make it pretty for the tourons...

KML

Good-bye, Salmon

I loved this plate.

It was Oregon. The salmon on the plate was drawn by a native Oregonian, and a friend of mine, commercial fisherman (and artist) Herb Goblirsch of Newport.

I was proud to drive that salmon plate around. Made me feel connected to the environment and culture of Oregon.

But now we both have an Alaskan drivers license (with really bad pictures), and Alaska plates on both the cars. I got a Veteran plate with a Coast Guard shield in the middle of it, and Julie got a plain yellow plate. Hers is a placeholder until we can get her personalized plates from Anchorage.

So, although I am glad to be "officially" Alaskan, and now compliant with all applicable state and federal laws and regulations, I will miss my salmon.

The "old" plates will be given a suitable memorial spot in the mud-room, to remind us of those days before we moved up here. Along with a bunch of other memorabilia, all forming a sort of tapestry of past lives.

The present is good, though, too...

KML

Sunset Over Auke Bay

The weather (finally!) broke late Wednesday, and we were treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets we've seen since we arrived.

KML

Five Years

I was as shocked, horrified and unsettled as any of us was that morning. We watched, we cried, we sat in stunned silence, listening to the damn TV and knowing that nothing was going to ever be the same as it was. It wasn't a new chapter; it was a different book by another author, and everything was going to be different.

I thought about the victims, cried and prayed for them and the families left behind.

I tried to give blood, but couldn't get past the long donation lines. When it became clear that the expected demand for huge amounts of blood never materialized, the rush was less urgent, but my need to help didn't wane. I began donating platelets, a three-hour process.

I wanted to strike out at the bad guys, whoever they were, but had to content myself with supporting those that could. And working for the Coast Guard opened lots of doors to serve my country.

The images of the Towers falling that morning, the slowly unfolding human tragedy striking so many people, so random, so arbitrary, ultimately made the events of the day all about ordinary people.

Ordinary people, like me.

Separated for about half a year at the time, so uncertain of what the future held for me and my kids. I had no idea how bad things would get, how much hurt and pain were in my future. Uncertain, yet in my heart I knew something... and that terrible morning gave me a reason to know that this was the truth.

My family is the most important thing to me.

On 9-11, as I drove to work late from the news coverage, passing by an armed gate guard onto the base, I knew that I would kill to protect my children. I would die to protect my children. Like a brown bear mama, I would rip apart anyone who threatened my children.

Five years later, we praise the many heroes... Tod Beamer on United 93, the ordinary firefighters and police who found extraordinary courage and sacrificed selflessly to save others, the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and so many other unpleasant places, Coastguardsman Nate Bruckenhall who gave his life defending an oil platform in the Persian Gulf. I cry when I listen to the wives, brothers and sisters, mothers, torn between their admiration and their loss.

I quietly endure my own loss. I am divorced, and I have children who I love with all my heart, and despite my best efforts, things didn't turn out well... a drawn-out personal version of that awful morning five years ago.

I know a few things very well:

Life is way too short, and too randomly cruel, to waste time with hate and evil and meanness.

Nothing makes me happier than giving someone I love a big hug (like my Little One), for no reason other than I love them.

It is good, proper and right to do the correct thing, to take the high road, to never compromise on character.

I love my country, and I will endeavor to protect her citizenry.

I love my Julie.


I love my children. Always, unconditionally.

God bless us all.

KML

OK, So We're A Little Dorky

I don't have to prove my manhood...

I've summitted Mount Hood.

I've backpacked 60 miles in 5 days thru Central Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail.

I've hiked from the rim to the Colorado River in the inner gorge of the Grand Canyon and back up, in the 120-degree heat of August.

I've climbed multi-pitch 5.9s at Smith Rock.

I've survived overnight training in SE Alaska, with the contents of a quart-size ziploc bag.

Been there, done that. I am secure in my masculine environmental testosterone...

When the rain temporarily lifted on the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend, Julie and I looked at each other at 5pm and decided we did in fact want to camp before the end of the summer. Because of the rain, on Friday we had pretty much given up on the idea. No plans, no campsite reservations, no camp food waiting to go. We sneaked in a quick (?) seven mile hill hike/climb to the top of the Salmon Creek Dam between showers on Saturday, but we'll not expand on this part of the story (since it involved shameful survival-of-the-fittest behavior, including the abandonment of weaker expedition members on a hillside to be eaten by bears). But Sunday, oh Sunday, a brief respite from precipitation...

We do live out the road, no other houses in direct line of sight, no traffic, so the solution was obvious: camp in the front yard.

Consider, gentle reader, the most critical elements of camping: meat cooked on fire, tall flames for marshmallows and atmosphere, sleeping in a bag on a therma-rest pad in a tent on grass. Technically, the front yard meets these criteria. Granted, there's no view, but there we were within a crawl distance of the back of the car.

Ah, fire good. So what if it's contained in the bottom of an old scavenged garbage can? We dug out the propane lantern when it finally got dark, and the rain actually started to mist again, and played backgammon and polished off a bottle of wine.

We actually discovered that both of our pads now leak, where they were fine before the move. Another project to take on...

All in all, a good weekend. Shoot, we even watched a DVD on the laptop in the tent before nighty-night...

Am I Too Late To Start Building My Own Ark?

An interesting tidbit heard on the radio this morning on the way to work, speaking of the rain...

The Nat'l Weather Service in Juneau says that August was "cooler and wetter" than normal years... whatever normal means.

It rained a measureable amount at the airport on 29 days in August, with a trace amount on one of the other two days... that's 30 of 31 days. The total rainfall for this August, 11.03 inches, wasn't a record (that was reserved for 12-something in like 1969), but it was twice the average monthly in August (5.3 inches).

The highest temperature reading at the airport last month was 64 degrees. The average daily high temp in August was just less than 57 degrees. Obviously, Juneau isn't on the global warming distribution list this summer. I hope this doesn't forebode a "cooler and wetter" winter...

I am looking out my window at the Gold Creek run-off, and the water volume and velocity is just awesome. At the base of the concrete, there is usually a small standing wave about 6 inches high stretching about half the width of the channel. This morning, there is about two-feet of standing wave all the way from side to side. I wish I had brought my camera in...

KML