two bike rides

i'm playing catch up with blogging the events of the last few weeks.

three years ago i began planning for a bike trip through denali national park. my original intention was to bike 40+ miles of the park road in the middle of the night on the summer solstice in june 2011. some are familiar with the story- a month before the bike trip i developed a nasty case of sciatica, cancelled the trip two days before i was scheduled to do it, and spent the next 5 months in bed waiting for insurance to approve my surgery. after moving to the st. louis area shortly after my surgery to help my family after my mom's stroke and subsequent 6-month coma, the bike trip that never happened was like a bug bite that constantly itched. i thought about it constantly. when i returned to alaska in early september, the first thing i did was to go to denali to do an abridged version of the original trip i had planned. this time of year the park no longer operates buses through the park and the park road is open to private vehicles up to mile 30 (the teklanika rest stop). i did two 1-day trips on the bike during my week in denali:

day trip 1: i got up at 5a and drove to the teklanika rest stop at mile 30. it was about 35 degrees out and looked to get warmer so i dressed lightly. my goal was to bike to a couple miles past the toklat river (mile 52) where a wolf pack had a den. my sister em and i were fortunate to watch the members of that pack for over an hour in 2010. the road starts out flat for 3 miles, then climbs through igloo canyon to sable pass. at this point i'm about 10 miles from where i started. the warming up that i thought would happen never did, and although i just pedaled uphill for the previous hour- i'm still cold. every article of clothing i packed along was put on. from sable pass the road descends for several miles to the east fork river. midway through this descent is where i saw my first bear- a big, beautiful chocolate colored male grazing on blueberries. i stopped to take a few pictures- not because they would turn out well because he was far away, but because i needed to warm up. the descent is pretty fast, so on a 35 degree morning and cruising downhill at 20+ mph- that makes a windchill of 23-24 degrees. snot covered my face and my arms and shoulders were shivering. mind you- these are not complaints and i wasn't complaining at the time. during the past two summers in st. louis, i was constantly wishing to be cold. i got what i asked for- and i was thankful. i ate several spoonfulls of peanut butter and did some pushups on the side of the road. after 10 minutes i was warm enough to finish the descent to the east fork river. once over the east fork, the road then heads upwards again to polychrome pass.

by that point the road is carved into the side of a mountain with no guardrail to stop you from falling hundreds of feet to the east fork river below, if one were to lose control. to call the views spectacular would be the understatement of the day. the pass- and the mountain- are named for the colorful exposed rocks along the road. by this point i'm using gears on the bike i've never used before. they are the gears that look like you're pedaling fast but in reality you're moving very, very slowly. other than a couple park vehicles that passed me, i'm the only person around. the silence is wonderful. reaching the pass called for a celebration, so i broke out the peanut butter, chocolate chips, and powdered gatorade and had myself a one-man party. the shoulder seasons are definitely the best time to access denali national park. the fall colors were just days past their peak, but still beautiful, and contrasted well with the snow that had accumulated on the peaks. and not a soul or bus in sight.

 from polychrome pass the road takes a long descent to the toklat river valley. the wolf den is just a couple miles past the toklat river, so it's not even 10a and i've almost reached my goal. it's warmed up to at least 40 degrees by now and i'm not the popsicle i was on the previous descent. as i crest the hill above the toklat river valley, i run into an impenetrable fog bank. the entire western side of the valley is covered in low fog and visibility is close to 0. realizing that my chances of seeing the wolves are nil, i stopped at the toklat river for lunch and while eating decided that i would head back in the interest of not over-doing it on my first day in the park. i'd already biked 22 miles, so 44 on the first day is more than enough. after lunch i turned back towards the way i came and walked my bike for about a mile to enjoy a slower pace, and allow myself to digest. it was at this point that my right thigh exploded and spewed soft tissue all over the road- at least that's what it felt like. that's fine, i'll just walk a little further and a little slower. ok, now i have a full-bore spasm in my right thigh. it's contracted so hard that i'm certain that i'll be walking the 21 miles back to my rv at the teklanika river. but it felt great while i was biking, so i decide to get back on the bike and take it slow. the spasms stopped and the pain went away immediately- but then my left thigh exploded. i'm pedaling with just my right leg and have my left foot disconnected from the pedal and just hanging off to the side. there's no way i was going to make the climb back up to polychrome pass pedaling with just my right leg, so getting off and stretching sounded like the second best idea (right behind curling up in the bushes and taking a nap). within minutes i had the pain and spasms stretched out of my thighs and was back on the bike. the climb was painfree and easy. after a pee-break at polychrome pass, i did a double-check of my brakes as it was imperative that they were in perfect working condition on the descent down to the east fork river. it was thrilling, biking down the park road along the cliff- not because i was going fast but because of the exposure. there was nothing but a several hundred foot drop to my right for several miles. midway down i encountered the first person (other than a couple park staff members) i saw all morning. he was a 50-something guy with a rip van winkle beard, helmet on crooked, fogged up glasses, and wearing what looked like nothing but shorts and a windbreaker. he was happy as a clam. we stopped and chatted for a couple minutes. he'd been biking the park road once it closed to buses for 20+ years, and every year was just as awesome as the previous one. we wished each other a good day and i continued down to the east fork.

the climb back up to sable pass was the part of the day i dreaded most. it was the longest slog uphill, i was tired and i was ready to be done biking. it took me almost two hours (and several stops along the way) to reach the pass. the only thing that kept me going was knowing that if i continued to pedal that at some point i would get there. i thought about how that could be a good metaphor for life. i thought of the times in my life where i kept pedaling, the times where i stopped pedaling, and where those decisions led to. i thought of all the times in the past two years that i was in st. louis daydreaming about this trip, and here i was with my nose running, legs aching, feet sore, and hands cold and it was fucking awesome. i charged up the last half mile of the pass, threw my bike down and was about to roar to the heavens when i realized that i couldn't stand up straight because of the ache in my legs- so i got back on the bike because it was the only steady place to be and continued on. i stopped at one point in igloo canyon to photograph a mother and two cubs up on a hillside. at that point my hands were so cold that i thought i was pressing the shutter button on the camera, but instead i was just pressing the camera body. the bears could've been riding on the back of a moose doing circus tricks with flying dolphins in the air and i wouldn't have got the shot. i got back on the bike and continued downhill. after about 500 yards, my bag containing my telephoto lens slipped out from the bungee net securing it to my rear rack fell off and bounced along the road. shit. thankfully it was in a padded case and no harm done. i got back on the bike and continued on. after 100 yards the bike lurched forward and forced me to a stop. one of the straps from the fanny pack i lashed to the side of the bike had come loose and caught itself in the rear wheel hub. i just want to go home and eat something and be warm. it took a pocket knife, a pair of pliers, a couple strings of profanity, and dexterity i thought impossible because i couldn't feel my fingers to get it unwound from the hub. once i arrived at my home on wheels, i got undressed as fast as i could and climbed into the warmest, fleeciest clothes i had and climbed into my sleeping bag. i was sore and raw and chapped and happy. i watched as cars drove up and the people got out to look at the teklanika, and then get back in their cars and drive away. i was glad that that's the extent of recreating that most people do because it allowed me to have 20+ miles of the backcountry to myself, except for the biker i met on the way down from polychrome. then i passed out for the next 12 hours, and when i woke up- i wasn't sore. i didn't feel like i just biked 44 miles in 30 degree temps in 11 hours. that was pretty great.

i'll be more succinct about bike ride #2 two days later: there was a 1/2 inch of snow on the ground when i left teklanika. there was 1 inch at sable pass.  i was dressed for cold weather and a cold thought didn't enter my head the entire time. i took the descents much slower because i did not have tires made for snow. the uphills were more laborious because gaining traction was difficult. it was beautiful to see the park covered in snow. on the ascent to polychrome, the people in the park vehicles that were passing me gawked at the goon biking in the snow. despite the slower pace, i was having a great time. just past polychrome pass (where the snow was 2 inches deep and still falling), there was a herd of male dall sheep grazing just off the road. i ditched the bike and pulled out the camera and tripod. after a few minutes they went about 80 yards uphill, so i went 80 yards uphill. i brought hiking shoes, but i might as well be wearing frying pans on my feet hiking up the route i chose to get the best vantage point of the sheep. they laid down and watched with amusement as i fell my way up the hill. i finally reached a point directly across from them, snapped several photos, and ate some frozen blueberries that were all over the hillside. god, they were good.

it became clear that i should head down to level ground before i injure myself in a location that i likely wouldn't be found until late spring. as i turned to leave, this was staring at me 20' away:

he continued to stare as i fell down in surprise and again while attempting to set up the tripod. it seemed like the slope i was standing on- covered in snow- was close to 90 degrees, maybe 85. he clearly wasn't afraid of me because he knew he could knock me right off the side of the mountain. he also had his two big brothers with him.

after a few photos i reached my bike with just a few scuff marks on my butt and knees from falling. i decided that was a good point to turn back towards teklanika. it was still snowing and soon it would be impossible to bike through the snow. as i loaded my gear on my bike, i noticed that the back wheel had come off. i don't know how or why. i certainly wasn't going to bike the descent from polychrome to the east fork, through snow, with a back wheel that might come off at any time- so i walked. as luck would have it, an employee of one of the private lodges at the end of the park road driving a load of supplies to the park entrance stopped and offered a ride. of course i took it, that meant i could be back by lunch, get a nap, and be warm and well-fed for the second half of the day. he was just out of college, just spent his first summer in alaska, hadn't been out of the park since may, and dreaded having to leave and fly back to maryland. he'd been bitten by the alaska bug and vowed that he was coming back next summer and staying for good that time. when he dropped me and my bike off, i offered him two beers for picking me up (earlier i had asked him what he was most looking forward to on his return to civilization and his response was "a beer").

with all the new snow and more in the forecast, i knew that was the end of my biking in denali on this trip. it wasn't exactly how i had daydreamed it to be so many times the previous two years, but it was perfect none-the-less. i look forward to doing it again next spring before the park opens to the tour buses, and again on the summer solstice, in the middle of the night when it's bright enough that no flashlight or headlamp is necessary.

friday morning (10/11/13) graeme and i will be leaving anchorage and heading north for the next couple months. our goal is to photograph the aurora borealis from several different locations between trapper creek and fairbanks. we'll decide where we'll go first based on where will have the clearest skies this weekend. internet access will be sporadic, but will update when i can. here's a snap of the northern lights from last night. it's taken from the driveway of the house i stay at while in town. anchorage is to the north between us and the lights, so it casts an ugly orange glow that i look forward to not being present in the near future.

i'm tired, was up until 3a watching the lights last night, and ran around like a moron today trying to get ready to leave. i've just typed a lot, there was a lot to remember, and i'm sure there's typos and abuses of grammar. i promise future posts will not be so long-winded.

monday

graeme and i are still a few days away from hitting the road. i've been putting in long days getting the rv insulated and ready for the soon-approaching winter. my nights have been spent customizing and organizing my new website.  i'm done with my dog- and house-sitting duties in anchorage and can now focus solely on getting my act together so we can head north. the weather in anchorage has been really nice the past week but i've been so busy that i haven't had a chance to get out and enjoy it other than on short dog walks- that's a lie, i actually did get to potter's marsh on friday and snap a few of the trumpeter and tundra swans migrating through:

and also made it to powerline valley early one morning to watch the moose rut. every fall a couple dozen moose congregate in the valley to decide who gets to mate with whom. i only saw a few moose that morning but will try again later this week before i leave town:

fall is about three weeks late in anchorage this year and it's been unseasonably warm. a big storm is headed in from the aleutian islands tonight and bringing with it lots of rain and wind gusts up to 90mph. i'm so excited that i may not sleep. i get excited for inclement weather.

last week a friend i met in denali two weeks before stayed with me the night before his flight back to france. he'd been in alaska for a month and had seen more of alaska in that time than i had in the 5 years i lived here previously. we crossed paths while viewing a bear far off in the distance from the park road in denali. he (his name is jean-baptiste- the "p" is silent, i learned) had the impression that there were bears on every street corner in alaska and this one 1000 yards away was the first he'd seen in the two weeks he'd been here. he was a little disappointed about that. we hit it off well enough that i offered to guide him up igloo canyon the following day where his chances of seeing a bear(s) were good. he was very appreciative and i was happy to show him around. i've been smitten with denali national park since i first visited it in 2008, and always enjoy sharing it with first-timers. the next morning we met at 7a (side note: it was 8 degrees outside and 20 degrees in the rv that morning when i woke up), drove to the closed gate at the teklanika river and hiked the remaining 10 miles to the top of igloo canyon. we stopped and sat on the side of the park road for lunch once we arrived. while eating our sandwiches (summer sausage, pepper-jack cheese, and avocado on a wheat bagel), a pika (small ground squirrel that lives in the mountains) came out of its hole looking for a handout:

we laughed and shooed him away without sharing our lunch. thankfully i've developed the habit of looking behind me every few minutes when out hiking in alaska. while we were being entertained by the pika, i happened to turn and look to see these three rambling down the mountain towards us and only 40-50 yards away:

"HOLY SHIT- BEARS!" is what jean-baptiste says came out of my mouth, and insists that i'll be famous in france because of it. our lunches and camera gear were spread out all over the side of the road. we gathered it all up as fast as we could and headed up the road to get the park's mandatory 100yds distance between us and the sow and her two cubs. we then watched and photographed them as they ate blueberries for the next hour and a half. experiences like this are one of the many reasons i missed alaska so much the past two years. despite being tired, sore, and our feet feeling like they'd been walking on cheese graters, jean-baptiste and i smiled the entire 10 miles back to our vehicles. oh, and on our hike back we ran into two guys on bikes returning from spending the past couple nights in the park. oddly enough, they also happened to be from france. they and jean-baptiste then spent the next 20 minutes speaking in french while i sat on the road and smiled at the serendipitous meeting of the three:

so back to the original thought about jean-baptiste's last night in anchorage. i picked him up after he dropped-off his rental car and took him to the moose's tooth for the pizza and beer he owed me for getting him up close and personal with the bears. after dinner we went back to the house i was dog-stting at and settled in for a night of editing photos on our laptops. the northern lights forecasts had been quiet the previous several days, but i thought i'd check anyways since it was jb's last night and it was the other sight he was hoping to see while in alaska. it was 930p, anchorage was covered in low clouds, and we had to be up at 4a to get to the airport for his 6a flight back to france- but i checked anyways. the 1-hour forecast was "active++". i'd only seen the forecast that high one other time, and the lights were spectacular that night. jb and i threw some warm clothes on, tossed our cameras and tripods in the car, and headed north in hopes of getting out from under the clouds. we stopped for our first cup of coffee in wasilla. still cloudy and raining. we went further north. it stopped raining and by the time we got past willow we could see green through the clouds. the northern lights were out but the clouds were still thick enough that we could only make out the colors. we stopped at the side of a lake and set up our cameras. from what i could see at that point, the aurora covered 80% of the sky and directly overhead i could see green, red, pink, and purple through the clouds. we were missing possibly the greatest aurora borealis display i'd ever seen in person or in pictures. we shouted and cursed and raised our fists at the clouds to get out of the way, but they didn't listen. we hopped back in the car and drove to talkeetna, hoping that there was less cloud cover there. we arrived at talkeetna at 1230a, the clouds were thicker than back at the lake, it resumed raining, and jb had not packed for his 6a flight yet- so we turned south and headed back to anchorage. feeling sore about missing such an amazing display, we barely spoke on the 2+ hour return trip. this is the best view we got of the northern lights that night:

if you haven't already, search out photos online of the aurora display from that night. they were seen as far south as oregon and south dakota- and to call them stunning would be the understatement of the day.

later this week i'll share a couple photos from my bike trip through denali. 

chapter two

i feel the need to separate the first two years of this blog from this point forward. you can read the previous several posts to get an idea why. to quickly get you up-to-date: last month i decided to return to alaska, and decided to return in style. i purchased a 27' motorhome, filled it with too much stuff, and drove it from the sweltering heat and humidity of the lower midwest to the cool temps of alaska. a couple days after arriving, i left graeme with my former landlord and headed north for a week in denali national park. after the week in denali, i came back to anchorage and have been getting the rv ready for winter every day since. my intention is to spend the fall and winter travelling in the alaska range in the rv chasing the aurora borealis (and anything else that gets in my way) with my camera. bang!- you're caught up. i'll be posting images on my website (see link at right), and a few images and lots of thoughts here.

before i post a few images, i need to take a few sentences to thank a some people:

1) my family: we did an amazing fucking job coming together and caring for mom. you also made it much more bearable for me to spend two years in the midwest. i love and miss you guys;

2) jerry jeffers: the guy i bought my rv from. he's done a lot for our family and was a huge help to me in getting the rv ready to be lived in;

3) melanie (sic?) webb: melanie has been bringing our family a big home-cooked meal every two weeks since mom's aneurysm two years ago;

4) michelle: my girlfriend for the last several months i was in the midwest. one of the sweetest and most generous people i've ever known. i might be crazy for leaving;

and

5) dan and fulvia lowe: they've kindly allowed me to park the rv in their driveway while i organize and insulate the rv for the next few month. my first couple weeks back in alaska have been so much less stressful than it could have been because they've allowed me to keep the rv on their property.

i have more people to thank, but will spread it out among the next few posts.

there's still some work to do on the rv and some people to see in anchorage before i head north. i anticipate i'll be heading back to the denali area on 10/8. as promised, here's some pics from the drive up. i'll recap the week in denali on the next post.

stay tuned...

hi. it's been awhile. 15 months to be exact. i was reminded that i have a blog attached to my photography site when i was contacted by a nice man in anchorage who'd seen my moose photo in the annual anchorage daily news moose calendar and sought out my site. it's good timing, as i'm leaving for alaska in the morning. i'm not moving, just driving a friend's car up for her so that she can fly directly from chicago and then i'm returning to stl friday the 12th. i should have images to post and things to say throughout the drive, but probably not for a few days until i get north of edmonton. can't wait to get north.

i believe this was the moose photo used in the 2013 adn moose calendar:

end of a year

i've spent the past two nights trying to find the appropriate closing in words to this past year and have come up with little to say. i'm still stunned that things happened the way they did and that i am where i am now. i guess i don't want to dwell on what went wrong- seeing as i've been doing that for over 6 months- but am anxious about having any hopes or expectations for the upcoming year. this week i realized a couple life lessons that i've taken away from the past year, but i'm not going to share them here. they're mine.

the new year started 48 minutes ago and i've spent this entire year so far trying to coax my dog down from the ceiling. the neighborhood fireworks put him up there. also got a call from my dad after i finished the first paragraph. he's at the nursing home with mom and is starting to get sick. he needs me to come tomorrow morning and spend the day with mom so that he doesn't get her sick as well, so i'm going to cut my night short and get some sleep. i'll probably have more to say in a day or so, until then- get fucked 2011.

1849

that's how many days i will have lived in alaska. i'm nearly finished packing and almost moved out of my place.  have several things to do monday, then will spend the night at my friend's who lives right by the airport and will get dropped off at 4a for my 6:10a flight. i'm leaving for a good reason, but i'm not happy about leaving.  tonight's possibly the last time i have internet access while here, and i can't sleep because it's my last night in my apartment in the mountains with this view over cook inlet.  what i see from my window and from my front porch is probably reason #1 that i thought "i gotta get a camera" back in april 2007.  i've been blessed to live and work in some beautiful locations- northern wisconsin, minnesota and the upper penninsula of michigan along the shores of lake superior, the black hills and badlands of south dakota, northeastern wyoming, joshua tree national park, breckenridge colorado, the north san diego seaside communities, the sierra nevadas, baja mexico, and coastal sonoma county- all magnificent places in their own way, but none of them could come close to what i saw on a daily basis from my residence in alaska. i saw colors in the sky at sunsets that i didn't know existed. i had animals in my yard (and one time in the house) that you usually only see in zoos- black bears, brown bears, lynx, moose. "i gotta get a camera".

i think my favorite aspect of living where i have the last 1849 days is that the natural beauty is immediate. i could walk 20 minutes from my house and be above treeline without another soul in sight. an hour's walk from the house felt like hundreds of miles from the nearest town. you do not have to travel far from anchorage to feel remote.  remote is everywhere in alaska. the openness of the terrain is a close second favorite. i love hiking above treeline and on the tundra up north where you can see all around you for miles. i will miss both of those while i'm living in the st. louis area. almost every time i leave my house in alaska i bring my camera because the odds are good i'll see something beautiful. i don't even have to search it out- it's right here all the time. every day when i'd go hiking after work or on the weekends was like going to church for me. i don't know where i'll get that in southern illinois. i've forgotten how to live without having wild, remote and beautiful areas to spend my free time. i never took it for granted while here- not once- but i also never thought i'd leave it. maybe it's good that i'm leaving it.

up until my mom had an aneurysm and got dropped into a coma, and when it became clear that i needed to go to where my family lives (it feels weird to call it "home" because i didn't grow up there) to be of whatever support i could, i was content to live in my apartment with the beautiful view and go on solo hikes every night after work and for most of the weekends with my dog and my camera. substitute cross-country skiing for hiking in the winter and the contentment was just the same, even more so at times. if i could get to denali 3 to 4 times for four-day weekends in the summer, then i was a really happy guy and didn't need or want a whole lot more. in fact, i likely could've spent the rest of my life carrying on like that and probably wouldn't have gotten bored, ever. the trails in the front range that butts up to anchorage are getting more crowded by the year, so i'd probably have started driving further away to find less-used trails to get that quiet and remoteness  that i crave. i might've complained about that, but it wouldn't take me but a few seconds to realize how lucky i was to live this close to what i have (had) here. i guess my point is that i might have gotten stale in a way. sure, i might have mixed it up in a year or so and gone out to the wrangell mountains in eastern alaska to see what that was about. but i also might not have been forced to experience real personal growth. i might have become more of a hermit and a loner (not the dark, freaky kind that hides in the shadows, but one who just spends all his time alone). i might have made enough money to buy myself a cabin up north in the alaska range. if that had ever happened, i would've done what i could to stay there as much as possible- by myself with my dog- and avoid returning to anchorage. the way my life and thoughts were going, that would've been wonderful in my eyes- little cabin in the mountains with a wood-burner and 6 feet of snow in the yard. quiet all day, every day. wildlife steps from my door.

i guess my point with my daydreaming out loud here is that if i had the resources i could easily see myself retiring to a bungalow in the woods away from the world. if i didn't meet my wife-to-be before i did it, then i'd go without. i know a guy from where i used to work. he lives by himself and on a 20 mile atv/snowmobile ride along a trail outside of talkeetna. i've never met him in person because he doesn't come to town, but he's the nicest person i've ever talked to on the phone. he's also blind.  he sounds happy as can be to be living 20 miles from the nearest road in the middle of god's country by himself. i used to be envious of him. i wanted that. i think this move to the more urban/residential city of edwardsville, illinois will do one of two things to me: i will either see the benefits of being closer to my parents, sisters, and niece and nephew, will want to live closer to them and give up having the beauty-on-a-daily basis of alaska (if i did move back to alaska i would make it a point to create extra income to save for two to three flights home each year) and find ways to constructively deal with my dislike of living in a more urban area; or, after a couple years i will have gone so crazy from the traffic, the much larger population of people, the lack of natural beauty, the hot summers, and all around stress of society and being there and not here that i'd buy and drive a camper back up to alaska and live in it somewhere outside of mckinley village 250 miles north of anchorage for the rest of my life, working odd jobs on an irregular basis so i could buy lentils and torillas to subsist on. somewhere between those two is what i'm hoping for, and hope to experience the personal growth over the next couple years that will rid me of the potentially unhealthy desire to live away from everybody and it all.

chris mccandless, of "into the wild" fame, made sense to me. my mom told me that when she was watching the movie that she kept thinking that she was watching a movie about me. i read the book a few days after arriving in alaska 1849 days ago. while i was reading it, i could identify with much of what was said about his personality. there were a few differences- a couple being that i felt like i was more mature (hopefully- since i was at least 10 years older than he when he took off to the school bus) and not as impulsive.  but we were so alike in most other ways that while reading it i though a few times- "i bet chris is an aquarius."  then i got to a part in the book where it stated he was born on february 12th. that's my birthday. i'm a believer in astrology (not the kind in the back of the daily newspaper), and it was clear to me then why he made sense to me- he and i were cut from the same loaf of bread. i'm the chris mccandless that decided to stay closer to town and near a grocery store, but i could see myself getting fed up with the world today and seeking out my own fairbanks borough school bus to live in one day. i don't think that's what i was put here on this planet to do, though. i don't have a clue what i am supposed to be doing here, but i'm hoping as chris and my's birthday approaches and i reach two years away from forty that i start to get a clue.

the two images on this post are both views from my porch. the top one is from a morning last week; the bottom was the sunset this past saturday night. since we've been cloaked in clouds since, i guess it's the last sunset i see from my porch in alaska. i will miss them, and always felt blessed to see such magnificent sunsets on a near-daily basis.

happy birthday mom

today is my mom's 62nd birthday.  she's still in a coma.  my dad and sisters have decorated her room at the hospital and are likely playing christmas music for her.  i've spent a lot of time the past day or so remembering some of the earliest moments of my childhood.  my oldest memories all involve my mom and/or my dad. i'm so blessed to have the parents that i was born to.  i remember sitting in the back of our white w/ burgundy interior mercury couger while my mom sang elton john and carpenter's songs while she drove away from the day care i hated going to because i wasn't ready to be grow up and be away from her yet.  i remember my parents hoping to convince my sister holly and me to eat our spinach at dinnertime by demonstrating the amazing power one gets from consuming green-leafy vegetables. dad- after downing a plate of spinach- pushed our ford grenada down the street while mom sat in the driver's seat steering with the car in neutral.  i don't think holly and i were convinced.  i remember my first bee sting when i was four or five.  i sat at our dark brown kitchen table crying with an ice cube on my arm and dad at the stove boiling a pot of water to pour on the hive that was next to a sewer grate in our yard.  "we're going to get those bees" dad kept telling me in his mean voice, and he did and he let me watch from a distance as he got revenge on the bees that hurt his son.  i think my earliest memory in this life is of my mom holding me on her lap in our living room on a sunny, summer day while she sang "you are my sunshine" to me.  i remember feeling so incredibly sad when she'd get to the line "and please don't take my sunshine a-way" because the thought of someone taking me away from my mom was too much for my 3 or 4 y/o emotions to handle.

it's about as official as it's going to be- i'll be moving home in a few weeks once i've recovered enough from my surgery to get rid of my possessions and clear out my house.  had my follow-up appointment with my surgeon yesterday.  he took out my stitches and remarked that i'm healing well. the disc that he scraped a portion off of will take 3 months to close-up and heal. he's understandably concerned about the packing and moving i have to do over the next couple weeks, but also is sympathetic to my need to get home and be with my family.  i have a lot to do before then, and am not in much of a mood to do any of it- so i think the easiest route (i like easy) is to get rid of just about everything i own.  my main objective is to have everything done by the end of thanksgiving weekend, and then have 3 or 4 days to enjoy my last days in alaska and reflect on my sciatic ordeal the past 6 months and on my 5 years here as a whole.  i feel it's very, very important that i get a few days of down time before i arrive to what is awaiting me at home so that i'm not leaving one traumatic episode and entering another, sure-to-be-long-lasting one immediately afterwards.  my hope was to be able to drive home the week after thanksgiving, using the 5 to 6 days behind the wheel as that time to decompress and reflect, but it would cost almost $1000 more to drive than it would be to fly and i just can't justify spending that right now.

we're just finishing the 4th snowstorm in the past 6 days here.  i've never seen so much snow this early in the season, and normally i would be jumping out of my skin excited for it and would be out xc skiing until 10p every night.  now it just makes it more difficult to keep my walkway clear and to get my truck out of the driveway.

while the snow covering everything is pretty, it seems to drown out my photographic motivation.  everything is monotone- like we're living in a black and white world.  i tend to be inspired by lots of saturated and contrasting colors.  a macro lens is useless this time of year unless there's frost on the windows.  i find myself lately taking out-of-focus shots like the one above.  maybe it's reflective of my current mental status?  although i'd have to say that i'm more focused now on what i need to do and what has to happen than i've been the last couple years.  the only alaska wildlife i seem to see lately are the ever-present magpies and black capped chickadees.  i'd give anything to have a lynx, or better yet a family of lynx, come through the yard like they did two and a half years ago.  i am really going to miss the wildlife photography opportunities that i'll be leaving behind here.  if i had to pick one subject to photograph the rest of my life, it would be wildlife- specifically alaska wildlife.  it's a different process and experience than shooting landscape or close-ups of flowers or dew drops.  those types of subject allow you the luxury to compose a shot, take a look at it on the lcd screen and retake a couple more with the camera settings tweaked if necessary.  it's pleasant, but doesn't give you the rush that stumbling upon a bear with cubs or a family of lynx does.  often the wildlife doesn't let you compose a shot- they've usually seen you and usually want to get away.  in a chaotic few moments you're trying to ready and steady the camera, check your settings (if they're not preset beforehand for the conditions you're expecting), compose and fire away as fast as the camera will allow you to take them. sometimes the experience lasts only a few seconds.  a good example that resulted in one of my favorite photos i've ever taken was on an early spring morning hiking this year up the mchugh creek trail along turnagain arm.  graeme and i had gotten to the trailhead at 5:30a on a sunny cool day to beat the crowds. i was moving slowly because my sciatica had started a couple weeks earlier, but at the time thought it was a severely strained muscle that would eventually get better.  we were heading uphill on a patch of scree about an hour into the hike when i spotted the tail-end of a lynx running away from us about 20' to my right.  my camera was still in my backpack, but within a second or two i had it out and ran through the short bushes towards the direction it went.  after about 50 yards i came to a ravine and scanned up and down for him, and found him standing on a log on the other side of the ravine looking back at me.  i was out of breath and shaky from sprinting over scree and through the bushes and could barely hold my camera still. it reminds me of the biathlon event in the olympics- xc skiing for a certain distance with a rifle on your back, arriving at a target and after just skiing a mile or two then steady yourself and overcome your racing heartbeat enough to be able to aim and fire your rifle at the target.  there was enough time to take about 10 shots before the lynx took off out of view, and luckily one out of those 10 wasn't blurry.  the whole experience lasted less than 30 seconds, with most of that spent running after him.  it is one of my favorite shots, and was in a good mood for days afterwards.  it's the same feeling as hitting a 30' jump shot in the closing seconds to win a basketball game.  it often isn't something you have time to plan, compose, or even have a conscious thought about while it's happening.  more than anything it's about luck, and if you get one shot to turn out then it makes your day and you remember why you love photography in the first place.  it's not a feeling you can get from photographing flowers or sunsets.

time to get out of bed and resume the process of moving out.  happy birthday, mom.  i hope you wake up soon.  can't wait to see you in a few weeks.