Healy Alaska, Otto Lake exhaled

 The trip down here was uneventful except for about the last 20 miles when the predicted wind arrived a couple hours early. The temperature was warm, too warm. Last night it really started rocking and rolling and by daybreak it has become apparent that the Inn's roof has started to come apart. The few pauses between gusts only serve to set my teeth on end awaiting the inevitable next screeching blast to be exhaled from the surrounding mountains. 

Last night was actually quite pleasant despite the wind. I cooked a T-bone on a Treager wood pellet grill located in a sheltered area and enjoyed a meal of steak, baked potatoes and garden salad with my beautiful mistress while sipping a wonderful merlot. Later the earth moved and I didn't even need to expend much energy to make it do so. The breath from the mountain did most of the work for me! 

Long before dawn our slumber was disrupted by the screech of metal being torn from the roof. The fury outside only grows more angry. I can only imagine what it would be like to be in a wooden sailing vessel on the open ocean in winds like these. The men who came before me must have had testicles of steel!

Dream World

 I find it harder to write now that Cindy is back home living with me. I tend to be a morning person and lonely mornings sitting in the dark contemplating life are much less common these days. Ben Franklin once wrote, "Write something worth reading or do something worth doing." I guess I've been concentrating more on the "doing" rather than the "writing." Cindy is off teaching a CPR class this evening and I am sitting in my living room lit from the soft glow of two oil lamps so maybe I'll try to write something. No promises that it will be worth reading. Sorry Ben.

Alaskans, myself included, pride ourselves in being independent, self-sufficient and just generally survivors. When my wife has the TV on in the morning and the show, Kelly and Ryan disgrace my living room, I become appalled at the de-evolution of the human species. The stars of this show have devolved to something sub-human. I wonder, can they even wipe their own asses? Can they even feed themselves? They have no idea where their food comes from let alone how to prepare it. It is served to them by servants in restaurants or delivered to their door. They are totally ignorant about even basic science. They don't seem to know  how to drive let alone anything about what makes a car or plane go. They shudder at the mere thought of a snowflake in the air. In my opinion they are the epidemy of useless. Has the human species, at least those living in big cities really degraded to such a sack of water?

In the interest of fairness I must also think a bit about my own abilities and those of my independent and self-sufficient fellow Alaskans. Certainly, we robust Alaskans are much better at ensuring our survivability than those worthless dweebs! The recent series of snow storms combined with supply chain interruptions has left many store shelves bare. Alaska connects to the rest of the world with a single highway that makes it way through precarious mountain ranges and across earthquake and landslide prone expanses. We have a couple of deep water ports but these are under developed and prone to many natural and man-made threats. There is no railway connecting us to anywhere. I have often lay in bed at night thinking about how easy it would be to isolate the entire state by blowing up a few key bridges. Our energy systems are just as vulnerable. We have oil but for the most part it gets shipped out as unusable crude to be refined elsewhere and shipped back to be used. A good disaster at a few key electrical sites during a cold winter would kill thousands. Perhaps it would kill enough of us to allow the survivors to to feed themselves from the wild game. That might keep a few of us alive for a short time but since all smelting and metal processing is done elsewhere we would soon be out of parts for our snow machines, cars and boats. I know many natives in the remote villages are proclaiming that they could just go back to the ways of their elders and would do fine. I ask them, do you know how to kill a moose or bear with a wooden spear? Can you harpoon a whale from a skin kayak with no motor? 

Alaska and we Alaskans are far from the independent, survivalists we like to think we are. We get more aid from the federal government per capita than any other state. We can't feed ourselves, cloth ourselves, heat our homes or make our own tools. In reality, we are just worthless sacks of salt water as the Kelly and Ryan I despise on my TV. SomehowI just can't accept this. I guess I'll just go back to living in my dream world.

Started but lost train of thought

 I finally finished clearing my cooking/fire Pit cleared of snow and plan on cooking steak and scallops on it in a few hours. Lots of snout remove but the food was great. Steak just doesn't taste right unless cooked over an open fire.

This post was started a few days ago but never finished. I'll finish it now and start something new.

Restfull

 I received my Covid booster shot Friday afternoon which gave me an excuse to be lazy all day yesterday. Of course the -35 degree temperatures combined with the perpetual darkness aided substantially in this lethargic endeavor. The shot left me with a bit of a sore arm but really with no other significant symptoms other than being tired. Still, it was fun to take a day off from snow shoveling and dedicate the day to the pamperings Cindy was happy to bestow upon me.

Today has no real plans, other than perhaps going for a walk around the neighborhood. My hopes are to see some of the moose but from a safe distance. The deep and crusty snow conditions have left these 4 legged behemoths in rather foul moods as they wander the roads and trails in search of browse. They are not inclined to surrender their clear walking paths to us puny two legged creatures. 

Lazy days are a real advantage and benefit of being old. I look at the busy running about and constant motion of my kids lives and can't imagine that I once was so busy. I sometimes want to tell them to just slow down but any such advice would go unheeded by the young. 

Winter

 

I sit here tonight upon my warm bed contemplating this winter, the recently passed holidays and the dark skies outside my window. The holidays were unusually quiet without the usual family hubbub but quite nice just the same. We were hit with a series of at least three winter storms starting in the week prior to Christmas and extending to the New Year, making life interesting. Winds raged with horizontal curtains of snow until the snow became rain and then transformed again back to snow. I can hardly describe the misery of shoveling snow amidst a pouring rain only to find the glare of ice following my path of hard work. Cindy was scheduled to have eye surgery at 6;30 AM the next morning and the snow returned to rain during the night. I was up before 4 in the morning shoveling the snow off the ice, hoping to clear a path down the alley for the car to travel to the hospital or at least to be able to clear a path to pull her and a sled there in time for her appointment. The car made it. Nearing the hospital I saw a lone figure snowshoeing along the road, barely visible through the darkness and enveloped in white curtains of horizontal snow. After checking Cindy in, I returned to the car and drove back to where I had last seen this ghostly image in order of offer assistance but the apparition had melted into the swirling white wind. It turned out that the early appointment time was a blessing. Shortly after arriving home we learned that the hospital had lost power.

We had planned on celebrating the New Year at Black Rapids Lodge about 130 miles southeast of here but the winter conditions wisely convinced me to cancel the reservations. It would have been a fun escape into the mountains as the lodge puts on a fireworks display to welcome the New Year and also has a great wood-fired sauna, live music, good ski trails and fantastic food and drink. The lodge is built of giant timbers artfully handcrafted together and is a wonderful place to hide-away for a snowy winter night or two. My decision to cancel was a good one, as the highway ended up closing  when it became impassable.

While the New Year escape cancelation was a bit disappointing we at least enjoyed a Winter Solstice get-a-way a few weeks previous. We booked a room at the Marriott hotel in downtown Fairbanks despite it being within walking distance of our house. There we witnessed one of the best firework displays I have ever seen while standing along the frozen Chena River to welcome the Winter Solstice . We ate fresh oysters, and spiced fresh tuna as well as other fine food at the Lavell 's Bistro and made a great night of it without even leaving town. Perhaps I'm a pagan at heart, as I always like celebrating the celestial holidays the most; they being the true reason for the season.