The Disreputables & the Parentals

Many of you have asked how the Disreputables survived the trip from Alaska to Colorado and how they are doing in this new house with the two Parental Pets. The Disreputable Dog has made the trip before. I wouldn't say flying is his favorite activity but he's okay with it. He loves his kennel and feels safe there; he also loves flirting with the check-in people who tend to suddenly forget all of their holiday stress when they see him and several times have even concocted a long joke about how he resembles their husbands but is better behaved. He long ago made friends with the Parental Cat, Mr Nibbs, with whom he got along great, and the Parental Dog, Maggie, both of whom seem fonder of each other with each visit despite very disparate play tactics.

The Disreputable Cat & Mr Nibbs

The Disreputable Cat was new to flying but she too is very fond of her kennel. She has no problem being in it and will even enter it on command. However, being in it for 17 hours was a rather new experience and she got bored. Unfortunately, she proved, somewhere mid red-eye, to be very capable in finding her way out of her kennel including undoing the clasps and zippers which meant I spent a considerable amount of time poking paws & a curious head back into the kennel as opposed to sleeping as I'd hoped. Eventually I asked the flight attendants for tape and taped the whole thing shut. I had visions of her escaping and clambering over heads and causing an outcry before hiding out in a lavatory.

The Disreputable Dog with Maggie & Summit (in the foreground) on a hike

However, she made it quite well and the minute that she and the Disreputable Dog were re-united in my parents' car she happily accepted a full doggie tongue bath. On the four hour drive back, the Disreputable Dog was wedged between my niece and my mother and the Disreputable Cat spent happy hours intently watching the back windshield wiper. She loves riding in the car and has absolutely no qualms about it. Because she had been flying so long my parents brought her a litter pan and my niece inquired in a very adult tone to her grandfather "Excuse me, papa, May I ask why my boots are the kitty toilet?".

Maggie & the Disreputable Cat share a bed

The Disreputable Cat quickly made friends with Maggie, even allowing her to put her feet on her while they shared a bed, but not going so far as to allow her to lick her as she does her own dog. The pair we were the most worried about were the cats. Mr Nibbs is 17 and suffers from liver failure which means he is cranky and sick. Their initial meeting resulted in Mr Nibbs flying at the Disreputable Cat but since she is young and agile there was no harm to be done. Since then they have become reluctant friends, if only because the Disreputable Cat is determined and brave and repeatedly makes attempts at friendship. Their first friendly interactions involved them pawing at each other under my opposite sides of my closed bedroom door. They've since evolved into a follow the leader game. I think Mr Nibbs' main objection to the young upstart is that she is easily distracted and refuses to be intimidated for long before she's off following reflecting sun beams.

All in all, the Disreputables are doing well. However, due to having lived in a tiny little house they now being in a much larger one they insist on following me around everywhere, because you just never know which room will have porthole through which I'll escape and leave them.

Wine Labels

My father has taken up wine making and beer making and cider making in the last couple of years as another way to put up the excess fruit that they get every year. They freeze and can a lot of it too and they manage to live almost entirely off the fruits of their garden through the winter months almost as much as the summer months. This year my father received a treasured family heirloom: the cider press that belonged to his grandfather. He remembers this cider press being parked in a dairy barn and all of the family coming and many of the neighbors too, to press their apples into cider. He continues the tradition by collaborating on the beverage making process with several young neighbors. My favorites out of his home made beverages are the perry (a pear cider), the apricot wine, and a plum beer - he also made an awesome Merlot from grapes he picked at a local farm. Both he and my mother have given away fruits of their garden and harvest labor ever since I can remember. It was this that made my dad decide he needs a label. So we have embarked on a father-daughter search for the image we want to use most for his label and then I will help him format it so he can put his name on it, the name of the particular beverage, and the year. I'm rather fond of the picture below which is a modified image of the beloved cider press. What do you think?

Winter Hike

The muffled silence of a snowy winter day, thick flakes, falling like powdered sugar sifted from on high, freshly minted footprints in a magical world of white draped boughs of trees and the joyous bounding of dogs. I'd forgotten the wonders of a pinon-juniper forest, of the sagebrush draped landscape. Of trees with vermilion colored trunks twisted like old swinging ropes with age, the red dirt beneath the snow brilliant in it's contrast. There, too, were the round holes created by the Northern Flicker, a woodpecker, soft tooth scratches of the porcupine along the lower reaches of a tree, and the long claw marks of a black bear marking it's territory. The birds and rodents were absolutely silent, safely asleep in their holes and perches, waiting out the brunt of the storm. As we reached the top of the cliff the clouds began to rise off the valley below, exposing the sinewy wind of the river below and the frosted ranch fields and even the damp asphalt of the highway which from that distance looked like a kind of river itself but the mountains remained shrouded.

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On a totally different note, many of you will be pleased to hear that I have joined a blog feeder. I am still trying to figure it all out. Why do some blogs have three or four feeds while others only one? Is there one format that is better then the rest (rss versus atom, etc). Please enlighten me if you know.

The state of AK based on my legs

The other night I was at a small dinner party at a dear friend's house. She and I have known each other literally our whole lives. Out friendship has waxed and waned but since college our friendship has only gotten stronger. It's great to have a friend who knows you so well and who you know so well. We don't see eye to eye on everything but we have the kind of friendship that has been around so long that it would take an awful lot to break it.

So we were having this dinner that she made in honor of her younger brother who was off to new adventures and several of his friends were in attendance. Now I haven't seen her brother in ages although I usually am kept up to date with his goings-ons through her and in some ways he and I have a lot in common - the constantly traveling all over to weird places to do work for one. Still, it came as a surprise when his friend's reacted to meeting me by saying "Not the Fairbanks, WS, is it?" and then proceeded to announce that they wanted stories. I have plenty of stories but I always find it hard to start when someone just asks for one, kind of like when someone asks me to say something in another language I know (I finally solved the latter one by always saying "I don't know what to say"). I need a little warm up and to get a flavor for the people I'm with before I launch into any.

Needless to say when we were all sitting down for a fabulous meal one of them started asking real questions about Alaska. It's always interesting to me what people ask about it because it reveals a lot of the mythology that is out there about the state. I don't remember what the guy asked though because Longest Friend burst in with "I would never live in Alaska. Have you ever seen WS's legs? I mean they're white! So white, you wouldn't even believe it! I mean first it's so damn cold they have to wear all these layers and then they have maybe a week where they can wear shorts and then the mosquitoes come out and you have to cover up! I mean, her legs are practically see through!". The poor fellow who started the question said meekly "But they don't have skin cancer." And she fired right back at him "No they just freeze to death." At this point I was laughing so hard I was overcome with a coughing fit (that pesky Thanksgiving crud still hanging in tough) that lasted the better bit of a half an hour and couldn't defend my poor state or my legs. Although she's right about the cold and the mosquitoes (and probably my legs but last I looked I can still see a distinct tan line from my time in Morocco - I should have just pulled up my pant legs and let the company judge for themselves. Granted, one winter I visited my parents after having not left AK for an entire year and I was so pale people kept asking me very pointed, concerned questions about my health).

In Memoriam: Uncle Art

My Uncle Art passed away on the evening of the first day of the new year. It wasn't entirely a surprise. He had been ill for the last two months or so with cancer & a failing liver. All the same, my heart aches for him and for his children, who have watched both of their parents die of cancer, and for his grandchildren. My Uncle Art was a gruff man but sweet. He had the most fantastic waxed handlebar mustache. Out of all the members of my extended family on my father's side, which is quite close unlike my mother's, he was probably the person I knew the least. I am sorry for that. Tomorrow is his son's birthday and his granddaughter's. I know it will be a hard day for both of them. At times like these I wish I lived closer, could quickly physically reach out and embrace them and try to bring some joy to their birthdays. Even now, being in Colorado, I am still far away from my cousins in New York state and somehow the snail mail sympathy cards, the telephone conversations, and the e-mail just doesn't seem enough.

New Year

Wishing you all a wonderful jump into the New Year of 2008!

Polar Bear Jump Fundraiser for Cancer Research, Alaska, January 2007

Rocky Mountain Brilliance

Hoar frost on top of river ice

The other day I was talking to my bother-in-law (no, that's not a typo). I was exclaiming about how bright it is outside. He looked at me as if I was daft. "It's snowing out" he said "and it's cloudy. There's no sun." And he was absolutely correct. When it's overcast and snowing out here it is sooooo much brighter then anything we've seen in a long while in the latitudes north of 60 degrees even when the sun is out in full force. I was forced to wear sunglasses on cloudy days initially because my eyes could not adjust to the beautiful brightness. When people ask me why I'm hear I tell them it's to replenish my Vitamin D and I'm not entirely joking. It's brilliant here when the sun is out and high in the sky reflecting off the powdered sugar light snow. It's such a gift, all this daylight, all this time to get out and play under wide skies when I get bogged down by job applications and need a break.

It's interesting to me, having grown up in this valley, how I seem to have lost it's topography. I once knew it's trails and secrets intimately. If someone suggested a place to hike or ski I could imagine it's slope, the trail head, the creek's that flowed past it, whether the snow stayed late or melted early. Now when people mention these names I can no longer remember how to get there or any of the other details. It saddens me. I have been so many places and explored so many places since I left that those I grew up with are no longer so definitive in my mind and yet the spirit of them remains. So many of the open places have gone, vanished beneath urban sprawl. It seems that every subdivision is named after the species of wildlife it displaced: Elk Run, Coyote Lane, Cougar Hollow, Springing Deer. There are new trails through the pasture lands and the golf courses, rails to trails, new-old places to explore.