Really, I’m making myself post. I have a few ideas for future posts, but I’m scratching right now. This morning, I was thinking about a moment when I first got a smart phone. I was at a teacher writing retreat and we were asked to do a “heart map” assignment — a topic-generating exercise where you brainstorm words representing people, places, memories, stories to put into an outline of a heart — things dear to you that you might expand into some discursive prose.
I had done that many times, and there was always material. This day there was none. The only prop that had changed was that I now had a demanding little computer in my hand. I dismissed the idea but haven’t forgotten.
On our big tree trail mornings lately, I’ve been feeling my phone—which I keep on me for photos— intrude on my awareness. One ping and I’m no longer looking at the fractal-like pattern on the trail or the marvel of an exploded tree from last week’s windstorm; I’m rehearsing an email, or working my calendar.
That’s easy enough to fix and I will manage it. But I guess I’m dragging myself to the keyboard to admit that right now…I’m needing to pause and acknowledge an emptiness. Cedar is not showing any obvious new growth (although I’ve been contemplating our relationship like some kind of [occasionally annoying] friendship of late), and I have realized that the snow excites her in part because one of her favorite games is hide and seek, and the snow does the hiding, while her nose does the seeking. The world becomes one big treasure hunt and I’m afraid much of that treasure is of the fecal variety. Tonight she celebrated the return of winter by pushing her head along and through snow in the front yard in a hilarious little display of play.
“Not even arms will come of nothing” – Parmenides
But I’m thinking of Wallace Stevens’ lines from “The Snow Man,” which push us to contemplate and maybe value absence. (Did I really just realize tonight after reading this a thousand times before that there is no snow man in the poem?) I think a point of the work is to ask us to check our artifice and try to just see the world as it is. January helps with that, I guess. I think, too, of the dramatic kickoff to the plot in King Lear, where Cordelia’s “nothing” to her pompous praise-seeking dad, engenders “Nothing will come of nothing” and the whole big something of the tragedy. (I gather that nothing begetting nothing goes all the way back to the Greeks, too—some dude named Parmenides who doesn’t have any arms any more.)
So.. riffing off of Stevens…. The “nothing that is not there” is a story or a point worth writing about here in the late January days of Tom and Cedar. The “nothing that is” could be just plain nothing; it could be the starting place of everything (to imagine the beginning of the universe you have to imagine before it began, right?), or it could be just a bunch of photos of a dog, a dog who sees nothing but smells everything, then eats shit.
Glacier’s cool, but wanna see my tongue?
Tidepooling, Cedar-style
Swim at the North Douglas boat ramp
Moon, mountain, cove
We try to avoid headlamp walks
There’s gotta be a bit of shame in the neon collar
A week or so ago, Cedar pointed out this dead raven (Yéil in Tlingit) on the side of the big tree trail. I’m not sure if it’s a symbol, a cause, or a cure, but at the moment I’m writing about it because you might say I have blogger’s block. Cedar and I are slogging through a dark, wet January without a whole lot of adventure to report. (It blew 181 mph on nearby Sheep Mountain last night. We were not there.)
While the title of this piece with the image of the dead bird might be the perfect place to end this experiment, I’m going to believe that the way out is through…Yes, I know, I’m asking a lot of you.
But ravens are so much a part of our lives here, and I know so little about them, really, I thought it might be worth a few minutes.
They alternately piss me off and make me laugh. Just last week at Costco, I watched a couple eye me as I walked 25 feet to the cart corral after putting the groceries in the bed of the truck. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized my back was turned long enough for one to get a couple of beaks full of a $45 package of New York steak.
Once, years ago, I skinned up a mountain we called “Cisler” at Unalaska (Tim Cisler is a mountain goat of a friend who scampered up there regularly). I pushed through the fog to summit and as I squatted down to take the climbing skins off my skis, two ravens caught my and dog Will’s attention. They were playing catch with a feather. One would rocket into the blue sky above the other, drop a feather, which the lower bird would swoop and catch, and they would then trade roles, yakking about the fun as they went. Meanwhile, the fog below us kept the whole scene a secret from the rest of the world.
O’Claire, Armstrong, and Carstensen, in The Nature of Southeast Alaska write, “Ravens and crows offer evidence—somewhat rare in nature—that curiosity pays. Most birds and mammals mind their own business, behaving in relatively predictable ways, with a narrow range of forage and cover preferences. Ravens, however, use every unsubmerged community in Southeast Alaska .”
In the same passage, the authors write, “The Tlingit and other peoples of the Northwest Coast recognize the deep intelligence and profound ecological importance of ravens….The Native sense of humor and sophisticated mythology accord Raven a sort of hobo’s dignity.” Meanwhile, out in the Aleutians, I asked an Unangan friend and culture bearer how they viewed Raven in their traditions. “Dirty, rotten shit eater,” was the exact phrase she used.
When Cedar disappears, the first spot I still look is the neighbors’ place where they feed our dignified hobos dog biscuits each morning. The birds bury them for their young — and Cedar, apparently. Maybe one day they will teach her to fly, or fetch steaks.
So what’s the point here? “Nevermore” croaked one raven. Man and dog eventually tried to give the bird a more dignified final resting place. Man noticed that they have cool white coloration under the black chest plumage.
But for better or worse, man lives to try to write one more day, scratching his own grey plumage about how or whether curiosity might pay.
I’m traveling again. Inevitably in fall and winter, while I’m somewhere with less extreme weather, my phone lights up with notifications of “Small Craft Advisories” from places near home I shudder to be.
It hit me this morning as I walked the frozen ground with Cedar that what I have to write about today requires me to take inventory. So far I’ve had more boats than either dogs or wives since I’ve been in Alaska. I hope to keep it that way. (I’m on boat number four, dog three, and wife two. I’m pretty happy with two out of three, and as you know, I love the dog.)
So for today’s meditation, Cedar is going to have to wait while I dial back one boat, one dog, and one wife.
In 2002 or 2003, the kids’ mom, Ali, and I camped out in our old flat bottomed C-Dory and we got our spines shortened by that thing in a nasty blow coming home. Ali subsequently gave me carte blanche to buy a bigger and more capable boat. In a few months, I was cruising around Washington’s San Juans on a test drive of a 1990 26’ Olympic.
She arrived later that fall with an old gas guzzler OMC outboard. One test drive in Alaska waters, and I filled her up and then covered her up for the year. By the next spring the price of gas had doubled. So it wasn’t long before my investment in the boat had doubled. Brand new four stroke power.
The Olympic in Boat Harbor. I once posted this on social media with the caption, “The Art of Aging Gracefully.” In hindsight, I guess I aspired to her high functioning at a fairly advanced age, even with some significant new parts.
Somewhere after the break-in period, wife number one was breaking in a new partner, and I had the amazing fortune of meeting Katrina. The Olympic was our boat, and what follows is just a smattering of memories of adventures with Katrina, Katie, Tim, and our then-new puppy Bella.
Matt catches a fishing rod.
During Katrina’s first weekend in Juneau, we fished in the Oly. We were working close to shore and not doing much. I had an idea the waters behind Pt. Retreat might be worth a try, but I didn’t want to push things on the first “date.” When I brought up the idea of heading for some less protected waters, I did so a bit gingerly. Katrina’s response, “Don’t be a pussy! Let’s go catch some fish.” That was the moment I realized that I already had a keeper on board.
I didn’t have a truck back then so needed moorage. I dreaded calling Betsy Haffner, the dragon at the gate of Tee Harbor, a peaceful old marina out the road. And she lived up to her reputation, making me listen to her grumbling about who wasn’t paying their bills, who expected her to run a yacht basin, etc. At some point I snuck in that I had a 26’ Olympic, and she surprised me several minutes of rant later. “Olympic, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Well that’s a real boat, designed the way a boat should be. We’ll have room for you. Call me in the spring.”
Tim wasn’t an immediate convert. I remember a conversation with him that went something like this. “Dad, can this boat tip over?”
“No, Tim, it’s specially designed to stay upright even when it’s rough.”
“Well, could it sink?”
“Oh no. It has floatation built into the hull.”
Tim got quiet for a few minutes and I almost forgot about the conversation until he came out of the cabin with a fire extinguisher and pronounced, “It could catch fire or you wouldn’t have this on board.” No questions this time.
“The readiness is all.” — Tim (or Shakespeare)
And… turns out he was right. It did catch fire once when we were anchored up for the night in Barlow Cove. I got a little careless lighting the alcohol stove—which was already lit—and the flames traveled up to the gallon can of alcohol I was holding, lighting it immediately. The kids scolded me for throwing the can overboard and I apologized while hunting madly to douse any invisible flames that might have traveled down the cabinets.
It seems like it might have been Katrina’s next trip — but it was likely a year or two later—that she and I headed out to Boat Harbor (photo above) with weeks-old Bella pup. Katrina never knew that we were nearly out of steering fluid, but the trip went smoothly until Bella’s nose belied my fake confidence in the fresh bear tracks. She ran towards some cloud of smell, which flattened several alders as it fled my shouts. With the dog safely in my arms, I finally registered Katrina’s voice. “My boot! What should I do?” She had run out of it and left it in the mud. Ah, go back and get it?
To own an old boat is to have an intimate relationship with entropy. One spring while frantically trying to ready her for Katrina’s first visit of the season, I realized the bilge pump wasn’t working. This was a task within my skill set. I removed the mounting screws and discovered that water was bubbling up out of the screwholes in the top side of the bottom of the boat. That seemed strange enough, but I gave it time. Then I attached a shop vac for 24 hours, then I attempted some extra hot fiberglass resin on each hole. Nothing could match the power of water to come to daylight.
I finally called the local fiberglass guy, “Itchy Willy,” who, long story short, presented me with a 1” drill bit, about a foot long, and sent me under the hull to drill some holes. “There are some things a guy just has to do himself.” About five gallons of water and almost as much fiberglass later, we were back in business.
A year or two later, Katrina and I had just set anchor and settled into our bunk for the eve when we started smelling gas. I spent the rest of the season trying to troubleshoot and eventually concluded the tank itself had a leak. This meant tearing out the deck, replacing all the waterlogged foam, and some rotten stringers, and putting Humpty Olympic back together again. Kaching.
Time for a new gas tank.
But she did us right, taking us out and home comfortably in all kinds of weather. Towards the end of our time with the Oly, as fish were getting harder and harder to find, Katrina and I were getting beaten up pretty badly. Her tune changed from “Don’t be a pussy,” to “How much can this boat take?”
That was a question I didn’t want answered. I sold her several years ago. But this week, I happened to see the answer on Facebook. Tim was right a second time; apparently it was worth inquiring into her buoyancy. She did outlive both a dog and a wife, though.
Like the decorated Aleutian bush pilot who crashed at the end of the Juneau runway, apparently she ended her service to her current owner on a blue bird day in the harbor.
RIP “Oly” 1990-2023; Friday Harbor to Fisherman’s Bend
When my phone pings with “Small Craft Advisories” I’m tempted to feel a little smug that mine’s in the driveway. But really, I guess the point of having a small craft in the land of big weather and big forces is to sort of subscribe to the small craft’s advisories—to treat her like “a real boat” and see what she tells you, to occasionally see what she and we can take. Or at least to stay sharp on how to operate the fire extinguisher.
Katrina and I included a reference to small craft in our marriage vows.
This relationship is our precious home place, our garden, our single boat on seas that can get rough. Let’s take care of it.
The rough seas have arrived. At least boat ownership, unlike homes or gardens or wives or dogs, comes with advisories. And so far I still have a wife who won’t let me be too much of a wuss. And a dog who’s game for it all.
January. We’re almost clear of all the resolution talk and back to plain old life.
It had been a while since I had played Big Tree Eight Ball…where I take a moment to pause in front of the forest elder, take a few breaths, and see if he-she has any insight to share, so I gave it a spin this morning.
Feeling like a bit of a conscientious objector to new beginnings myself, I thought I had come up empty, and started home. For some reason, I turned back for one more look. I chuckled seeing Cedar doing the same—maybe both of us taken with the sunlit side of the old spruce.
The phrase “bright side” popped into my head, dragging with it the old standby of river rafting: “high side!” One usually shouts or thinks “high side” when shit is in the process of hitting the fan… the low side starting to get sucked under the current, and worse forthcoming. Anyone on board needs to scramble to the high side.
So maybe my resolution is to be better prepared to scramble for the bright side. (Now Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” has to be reckoned with.) But what if I spent a little extra time in coming days mentally “bright siding”..?
I might be incredibly thankful that Tim, Cedar, and I survived a 50+mph set of 360s and a high impact dive into the ditch in the truck a few days ago with yours truly at the wheel. I might be savoring the fresh memory of Katie-love for all of us as she wings her way back to college. This in turn might encourage me to appreciate the few days I have left with Tim here, and to vicariously feel all that hope of a kid who just finished college.
And, hey, we are on the bright side of the winter solstice.
“People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was really shook
But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow..”
—Bob Dylan, "Watching the River Flow"
We’re underneath a high pressure system that has been keeping us in a hard freeze for the last ten days. Even the ground under the canopy is rock solid. Morning walks, stretching past 9 am, have been mostly still. A raven croak here, an eagle trill there, with a baseline track of plodding feet, a jingling tag, and the occasional treble of chomped frozen sticks.
But still, there’s flow.
Ice skating has been a staple in our days lately. The kids are home for holiday break. I’ve been playing outdoor hockey nearly every day. Tim joined me one day, and Katie has been skating with friends with and without hockey sticks. We find flow in the psychological sense on the ice. (Or at least we search for it. Looking at that video clip, we hadn’t found it yet!)
Video by Peter. Stunt doubles provided by the Pioneer Home.
According to Kendra Cherry, in “What is a State of Flow?,” “Flow is a state of mind in which a person becomes fully immersed in an activity. Positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as a state of complete immersion in an activity.” Pond hockey games are all about trying to make the perfect pass, against or with the grain, setting up a teammate, somehow before conscious thought spoils the party, and all, lately, before some jaw-dropping scenery.
Our friend took this video of Katie, flowing in front of the Mendenhall, our local ice river.
Katie on Mendenhall Lake this week. Video by Tim Blust.
Just a couple of days after that, the glacier’s flow dropped what observers called a bomb onto the ice, creating waves under the ice and a bit of a wake up call for all us.
***
Facebook post by Ski Gray 12.21.22
***
Less dramatically, near the turnaround spot on our morning walk, there’s one creek that somehow keeps flowing, I think because part of its course runs underground. I haven’t traced its source above the trail. For now, I just like its magic of flowing as it presents itself right there, amidst all the frozen stillness. I like to stand in the middle of it, look up at the canopy of the local giants and feel the stillness and flow at once. It’s not much, but I’ve come to call it “FlowsThough Creek.”
In flow, “The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost,” Csíkszentmihálvi says.
I imagine this flow state is Cedar’s native turf. Every action, movement, and thought (if there are any) flowing from the previous one. I, on the other hand, catch it where I can. And then use the heart of winter as an excuse to “just sit here,” park my butt in a comfortable chair, and yeah, “stop, and read a book.”
Sometimes, like tonight, I sip a hot drink, make sure the faucet is still dripping (because my pipes are not under any magic ground), and imagine I see air swirling just right to free us from the high, with ample fresh snow.
The Winter Solstice is as good a time as any for lowered expectations, don’t you think? Sunrise today, 8:47 am. Sunset 3:07 pm. That’s 6 hours 22 minutes and 29 seconds. Our Vitamin D nadir.
Last year on Winter Solstice I was beautifully surprised by a “luminary” ski on Montana Creek. This year, we have very little snow, plus I know someone’s planning this thing, so I’m not likely to go; I’d rather carry the glow of last year’s memory.
Solstice Luminary Ski 2021 (5 pm)
I didn’t set out to write about surprise, exactly, but maybe I did. (And maybe that’s why I write at all—to tend the little surprises that occasionally come up like fish through an ice-fishing hole. Maybe this blog keeps one or both of us from ice fishing. Apologies if reading it is a lot like watching ice fishing.)
Let’s face it; the universe is rigged for low expectations, and that may not be such a bad thing. (We have the gift of four extra seconds of daylight—and they may even include a snowflake or two—tomorrow.) In my last post, I wrote about the expectation of fresh deer or other animal tracks after the snowfall. Disappointment came in the form of one porky.
Lone deer heading back up hill.
The next day, with no fresh snow and absolutely no expectation of deer tracks, I saw that a nice deer had signed his way across the trail and up the mountain. I was reminded of a spring morning years ago when bro Dave and buddy John and I were out before work trying to nab an elusive (and delicious) spring king salmon. We were pushing our get-to-work timeline to the last second. Finally, when Dave said, “I think it’s time,” on the word “time” two beautiful chrome kings struck and made us blissfully late for work. (We’ve tried that trick a thousand times since then.)
As every fisherman or deer hunter knows, the point is often you have to stop trying, lower your expectations, change your focus, disengage from the quest, and maybe invite the chaos to happen. I’m sure that happens in love and other arenas where I tend to be even less successful than I am as a deer tracker.
To make matters worse, the writer Brené Brown minces expectations into two: “stealth” (unexamined, unexpressed) expectations versus “expressed” expectations. And the kicker is that both are the onramps to disappointment. “Disappointment is unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment.”
Luckily, my old go-to Pema Chodron backs me on this lowered expectations project. In fact, she even helps me to gift wrap it (thus relieving me of some of my late-Christmas-shopping guilt, too).
“The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness. When we feel resentment because the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and its bite. When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead. When we worry because the wind is shaking our windows, we could meet the wind and hear its sound. Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves.”
Pema chodron, _When things fall apart_
I’d like to say the dog at my feet, who just let out a disappointed sigh that I’m not quite ready for the morning walk, could be my teacher in this approach. But I know her disappointment.
I’m more inclined to go with the Spanish (who seemed all too ready to meet the iciness and bit of winter with surprise — and very poor heat systems) when I lived in Spain. I love the fact that the verb “esperer” can mean “to hope,” “to wait,” and “to expect.” I appreciate that messy “no pasa nada” sort of blend that takes the edge off of expecting.
Years ago, my fourth grade students and I queued up for what was sure to be a cheesy tour of an old gold dredge in Skagway, Alaska. “What’s the first thing you need for gold mining?” Charlie, the tour guide asked.
Students shouted “A map!” “A shovel!” “A gold pan!” and the like.
Charlie (who hadn’t read his Pema Chodron, but still…): “You’re all wrong! It’s HOPE. And Hope is FREE! Follow Charlie.” (Maybe I should have named Cedar Charlie.)
It’s 8:34 am, and just about past head-lamp light in the woods. By my reckoning, Cedar, I still have time to twist this brood into some kind of conclusion. Brown suggests we enlist a partner to be our “expectation checker” to make sure we don’t set ourselves up for disappointment. (She also suggests disappointment is an opening to to allow us to really connect with one another on a deeper level. That sounds a little heavy for the Solstice.)
You ready, partner? Esperamos, I guess. At least we’re not going ice fishing.
Just to keep myself honest, I did watch a little ice fishing today.They got a tiny trout. And all you got is this blog post.
That’s the only story I have to tell this morning. And it’s pretty much the only story of this entire blog.
We got snow this morning and Cedar was a little kid on a snow day. I sent her out at 6 am to do her business while I made coffee . When she didn’t come back, I had to track her in my slippers and headlamp. Her tracks were easy to follow even though it was snowing hard. Funny to “watch” her “thoughts”—up to the neighbor’s yard to check for cats. Nope… “OH, Look!”… stride lengths increase to a trot, and she meets some human footprints and dog tracks coming down the hill. Telltale “pet me, please” circle of tracks, and then she follows them. I found her, predictably enough, grazing on buried dog bones in THAT neighbor’s yard.
As daylight oozed in, I started to get my outdoor stuff on, and Cedar paced back and forth in front of me in anxious zigs.
Once out the door and up the hill, I realized we had “first tracks”on the Big Tree Trail. Cedar’s excitement, I imagined, was a lot like mine on those childhood ski days when we got to be the first to carve a slope.
I caught a bit of Cedar’s mood and looked forward to seeing what stories might await us in the form of animal tracks. Apparently it was a slow Monday morning in the woods.
On the way back, I mused on what story we had left in the snow.
A man and his dog walked the entire trail and back. They crossed one porcupine trail made during the night.
Elaborate, you ask?
A man and his dog walked the entire trail and back. They crossed one porcupine trail made during the night. The man had a short stride. His toes pointed outward. The dog had a normal stride. Sometimes it appeared to be running. The dog often went off trail. The man did not. The dog often came back to check on the man.
What’s the significance, you ask?
A man and his dog walked the entire trail and back. You might imagine that the man was loving winter, that he wondered what it is in his makeup that enjoys these long nights and short days, what ancestral memory he might be playing out. You might imagine, too, that he walked through some sadness, thinking about his distance from the humans he loves, or the icebergs in the lake that may be among the last ever, as the glacier (and winter) recede. But he did keep on walking in that crow-footed sort of way, and his dog kept on crisscrossing the trail.
Both of their tracks were nearly filled as the snow kept coming. But you could still see how the dog kept coming back to check on the man.
Those guys average 467 inches per year, while we just surpassed 85 inches. Yeah, we broke the all-time record for Juneau, and yeah the last three years (all of Cedar’s life and then plenty) have been in the top ten recorded years of all time for rain here, but we don’t have to—or haven’t figured how to—work with bamboo boats on our back. It is no wonder that Cedar is amphibious, though.
The Juneau airport annual precipitation record has been broken! As of 8AM, December 7th, the airport has recorded 85.31” for the year but the record was officially broken by 2AM. #akwxpic.twitter.com/jk3xXEtwZs
A major setback for me and Cedar is the September rains’ work on the Montana Creek (Kaxdigoowu Héen) bridge. This is our go-to ski place. No bridge, no grooming, no daily skis (for a while, at least).
Juneau EmpireLast day on Kaxdigoowu Héen, May 6 last year.
WWMD? (What would Meghalayns do?) I’m glad you asked, because Cedar and I are ready to offer a solution to get us skiing in the next, I don’t know 4,000-5,000 inches of rain, or so.
Checkout these bridges, created by our more-soaked compadres in NE India. They “train” the roots of rubber trees to form spans that outlast rain-rotted wood.
Maybe we can start small. I’m not sure either Cedar or I have that much rain left in us. And it remains to be seen whether spruce and hemlock roots are trainable. In fact, it remains to be seen who is training whom around here.
Possible site of woven spruce and hemlock bridge, circa forever.
When I was 19, in 1984, my college buddies and I stayed in backpack tents all summer, hitchhiking around Juneau each day to find work. It was a Meghalayan sort of summer. As my buddy Dudley and I packed up our campsite in August, I remember the imprints of our bodies in the soft rainforest duff. Little did I know that was kind of an omen, one that a clearer-headed young man might have interpreted properly and never come back.
Ah well, off we go into the wet woods, Cedar doing her happy prance, the old man, straightening out a bit from that fetal position, thinking “Could be worse.”
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