I hung out around some neat volcanoes

Mt. Etna rises an improbable 11,000+ feet, just about next to the sea.  I trundled partway up to gaze at some of its craters.  In places the trail and scree consistency reminded me strongly of a favorite path in Antarctica.  Our guide gleefully led the way down, jog-skipping, kicking up clouds of dust, relieved to leave behind the Arctic gusts of 70F air that had buffeted us, necessitating a wool cap and two jackets.

A couple days later, I took a ferry to Vulcano, a small island north of Sicily.  A great diversity of rocks and minerals crowded together there, with a black sand beach across the way from a sulfurous hot spring next to the bubbling sea.  Here, too, was a magnificent crater to climb up to, seething above the idyllic beaches.

Unfortunately, I somehow caught a cold.  There was a lot of lazing around my Airbnb, alternately reading the Victorian literary classic "Vanity Fair" and listening to the comedy podcast classic "My Dad Wrote a Porno."  I willed myself the energy to kayak along the cliff-y coast and explore some caves with my wonderful guide Eugenio.  He was affable, informative, fun; he shared stories about the island's geologic history, its role in Italian film scandal history, and his personal history rescuing goats stranded at the base of ravines.  He equipped and encouraged me to swim through some small underwater caves, which was somewhat terrifying and pretty cool.

I took another ferry to Stromboli, which is in fact a volcanic island and not a pastry.  The village of Ginostra boasts a population of 40, with a couple cafes and tiny shops, a beautiful and savage beach, and a view of the almost constantly active volcano.  There is no better place to recover from a cold, cook in a semi-outdoor kitchen, and let the warm wind and wild waves and window-rattling seismic activity realign one's sense of perspective.

One night when several of us watched glowing rocks spew into the air, an old guy struck up conversation.  He happened to be a French volcanologist, there to place sensors across the mountainside.  He explained some of his research and enjoyed the colossal blasts with unjaded wonder.  He also shared with me some favorite patisseries in Paris, which intel I'll follow up on in a few weeks.

scampering down Etna

sulfur pond and geothermal sea

adventurin'

I guess a high school marching band from Malta came? And played songs from "Grease" and The Killers...

the eponymous Vulcano

my deck on Stromboli

stirred up seas

Stromboli at dusk

Stromboli at night

Vado a Sicilia

I'm pleased to report that 20 years later a non-negligible amount of Italian remains lodged in my brain, even after two overnight flights on the heels of Cottonwood partying and fraught Anchorage life re-assessing.  When I finally arrived, weary and bedraggled, at my Airbnb, I chatted ungrammatically but coherently with host Claudio about working in Alaska and the logistics of my friends' wedding in Sicily.  No one has been too thrown off by me saying the Spanish "es" instead of "è" or "bueno" instead of "buono" that has crept in courtesy of my early-summer Duolingo practice.  I even understood an explanation about sorting various recycling.

The vibe is pretty beach-relaxed down here, but still I feel self-conscious in my increasingly grimy two shirts.  The hot bright sun, the gut-bomb fried rice balls (arancini), my bone-deep fatigue -- it's taken a minute to adjust to leaving Alaska.  (Is week-long jet lag a product of too many miles, or middle-aged mileage?)  Luckily, a handful of Coldfooters was here to ease my transition, and provide camaraderie for dancing.  Actually, compliments to Cleo and Ronny's friends and family, who ALL danced for hours, from wedding DJ favorites like "Mambo #5" and "Celebration" to the salsa and cumbia that had the Venezuelan guests and the catering staff joyously flaunting their moves.  Those of us departing *early* left at 2am, after late-night spaghetti was served to fortify those dancing 'til dawn.

And now I'm into freeform vacation mode, treading city streets footsore and antsy-me, reading six-month-old NY Review of Books, cooking pasta and transporting olive oil around with me.  Sometimes it feels like seeking some kind of transcendence through some kind of groundedness.  Instead of eat-pray-love, it's walk-read-eat.

dancing of the hora

me and bride Cleo, photo credit: lovely drunk woman 

I think we made 25 half-sheet pizzas for Cottonwood

rose hips and falling leaves

Pizza pizza

The sun is cast over the page I write on like a stage light.  It's vying with a sky full of clouds to angle down through the screen door of the Bacon Barn, our staff living room.  There's a hexagonal coffee table topped with a chess board, bins stuffed with costumes, rough shelves full of disparate books, and a creek flowing nearby.  The wind has been blowing hard for several days -- I can't kayak, but it has been fun bobbing around in the chop at afternoon swim club.  

I'm reluctant to plunge forward in any particular direction as I try to squeeze everything from the final week here, and my last page of this notebook.  The next one is waiting in my bag, ready for Sicily and Spain and scribblings barely legible.

Tonight we host our friends from the main lodge for a big party.  I've calculated that a flour sack's worth of pizza will be made in a couple hours.  It's my last professional cooking for a few months at least, if doing so in an old prom dress with gin in hand can still be considered so.

One of the last big guest dinners

little red berries

Palmer Creek fireweed

Our lettuce didn't take off this year but the garden dinosaurs are going strong

before the wind took over

from zombie to dead in just a few days 

Lucky Streak

It's grown cooler, rainier, darker, and even though we continue to swim with elan, sauna and gossip as usual, and plot harmless pranks as robustly as ever, no one can deny the change in the air.  The first coworker departed.  Autumnal hues blush over the plants.  Future plans are no longer far-off abstractions but swiftly approaching reality.  

Hold on -- forget all that salutatory tone, and let me back up to my birthday.  It was a big one, guys, and well celebrated.  Through a fluke of scheduling I had the day off, and my good Antarctica buddy was visiting.  After raining hard all night and morning, the skies parted, the sun shone, and we made our humid way up to tundra.  Aquamarine lake, green hillsides, brown BEAR lazily eating berries a ways off.  I was feeling lazy too, poked around the rocks a bit, then headed back to prepare for Progressive.

Progressive is our annual staff party.  It involves costumes, drinks, and surprise activities.  We sort of bar crawl from one person's tent to the next, joke about/admire their decor, pile onto the floor and bed, and write postcards or play Telephone or Corn Hole or Pin the Antlers on the Caribou.  There were Jell-O shots, kombucha, gin and tonic, and thawed-popsicle-liquid shooters.  There was also surprise cookie dough, wine, and brie to celebrate me being 40.  Only minimal injuries ensued from climbing atop a giant tether ball and jumping off a boat.

Other random updates: I won $30 in poker.  I saw nine mountain goats on top of Cecil.  A bunch of us finally hung out on the big rock.  We discovered it's fairly easy to throw and catch an apple using forks.

Chip Mates ahoy!

Fox Den forking

Spot-on, Luke!

Brock sharing a storybook

Jewel July

We have been gifted with heaps of sunshine the last three weeks, so much so there is a regular afternoon meeting of the Swim Club.  We swim out to the big boat, climb up to roast on its metal top, and jump into the now-refreshing-rather-than-heart-stoppingly-cold water.    

It was downright hot as Luke and I made our way back to what another friend has dubbed The South Side of Heaven.  I had been strategically waiting out the worst of the mosquitoes and watching the weather, and we decided to go for it right after work at the end of the week.  Up trail to tundra, across a not insignificant creek, back behind the first line of peaks that overlook the lake.  We continued into a sort of circular valley, like a boggy tableland surrounded by ranks of mountains.  I struggled both with the steep slope and the EIGHT TRILLION FLIES that accompanied us, who were ceaselessly curious about what it's like inside my ears and on my face.  Thus rather distracted, I did however notice a bright yellow blob in the distance.  We shouted, and that golden creature trotted off with her two cubs, more or less in the direction we also wanted to go.  They were pretty far away and we gave them a good head start, and continued announcing our presence in several languages.  And then -- was that the mama bear again?  No, it was...loping, and bushy-tailed.  Much bigger than a coyote.  A wolf?!

We were sufficiently uninteresting and received no nighttime visitors (other than scads of insects).  I do begrudgingly appreciate them for pollinating the dazzling array of wildflowers.  The alpine lakes we made our way to were absolutely gorgeous, well worth the obstacles.

The sun continued to shine through during my visit to our sister lodge in the remote Kenai Fjords National Park -- a rare treat in temperate rainforest.  Likewise, my good fortune sighting charismatic megafauna continued.  Puffins! Seals! Otters! Sea lions! Humpbacks, humpbacks, HUMPBACKS: bubble feeding in groups; traversing the bay parallel to us kayaking; breaching and slapping fins on the surface!  We joked with our coworker-guide, pretending to be dissatisfied guests: "No orcas?  Can't you make it breach closer?  Two out of five stars."  We paddled along granite cliffs, coves and caves of starfish and anemones, climbed a waterfall, and watched Aialik Glacier calve massive chunks into the sea.  I also commiserated with a cook friend there who gets just as moldy vegetables as me and flounders in the logistical supply spiderweb.  We traded toothpicks for cocoa powder and wondered if either of us will receive peanuts by season's end.

Amidst all this, we celebrated Christmas in July, a secret Santa with handmade and/or stolen (within camp) presents.  I finished a scarf I've been knitting and made fudge and wrote limericks for my person; I received a beautifully framed lacquered piece of birch bark and pressed fireweed, the purple-pink flower whose blooming signifies the beginning of the end of summer.  It's the next wave of pink now that roses have finished, and ushers in August.

the beginning of The South Side of Heaven 

Twin Lakes

gathered in front of the xmas tree

The sun now sets at a totally reasonable 10:30pm.

sunbathing(!) at Glacier Lodge

the ridge above Peterson Glacier

one of many joyous humpback interactions

our coordination with the company's 100-year plan

Midsummer

It's the middle of summer and all is green 

the mosses are fat, the mergansers preen

I've braised chicken thighs about fifteen times 

I've hiked on the weekends and banged up my knees,

indulged in fine pastries and slabs of French cheese

I've paddled the lake when the wind will allow

and sometimes stay up late to gaze at how

the midnight sun sets in a grandeur of gold

and the flowers bloom boldly without getting cold

you can't see the stars as it doesn't get dark

-- for a few weeks yet, anyway --

we'll dance and joke and party and lark

'til we get to closing day 

It's been a rainy/overcast summer, but when we get a sunset it's usually pretty good.

shy damsels, I believe

camp spot, Grace Ridge

As the lake level rises (melting snow and glacier), the shoreline disappears and plants are submerged.

Carrot cake!

Luke atop blustery Grace Ridge

Tonsina Creek, Resurrection Bay 

Ante Antsy

I've been sitting here in my tent trying to come up with a compelling passage about character traits, how strengths bend back upon themselves into weaknesses.  I wanted to segue from a consideration of how Odysseus's wily cleverness curdles into hubris -- his tragic flaw that sets into motion so much adventure and calamity.  At times, adrift in the wine-dark uncertainty of dinner prep, I find myself spurred on and hindered by an innate sense of urgency.

The articulation of this phrase (and how true it rang) in culinary school was akin to finally receiving a diagnosis for a mysterious chronic condition.  Not an entirely threatening one, mind, maybe something like hyper-flexible joints that can benefit you as a gymnast but also can be arthritic.  Anyway, my default setting for "sense of urgency" is, like, 8 out of 10 for basically everything.  Which is a boon and a curse in the kitchen, and life.

I wish I didn't get so wound-up making vinaigrette for a bunch of rich people on vacation, but it is what it is.  It *is* gratifying when my favorite guide thanks me for an on-point meal and relays the (surely figurative) compliment: "They creamed their jeans over the pretzel rolls."

Long weekends are good.  I take a break from moodily pacing around the cellar, glowering at swiftly molding vegetables, despairingly brainstorming notes on scraps of paper such as: "hide in ratatouille," "smother into submission," and "pacify with mayo."  On weekends, I hike and take pictures of flowers.

Yes, I got ruffled feathers about starting the drive early and getting up trail in timely fashion to enjoy three-kinds-of-cheese-mac-and-cheez at a reasonable hour.  But I relaxed into the mountains upon meeting another guardian marmot at the alpine hut.  I yielded to the unassuming but human-swallowing 8-ft-deep cloak of snow that persists atop the foothills and tongue of Mint Glacier.  No amount of urgency can rush the flowers; they bloom at the right time.

Mint Hut + marmot

yellow guys!

Luke on blessedly solid ground after we floundered up to our waists in snow headed up the ridge

little guys!

some pound cake with RASPberry sauce and RASPberries and fried rosemary