What's in the polenta? A lot of butter.

 I'm writing by candlelight primarily for the ambiance as the sun is still coming through my screen door at 10pm.  Yesterday we moved into our tents, and I've got a pretty nice setup with my bedside table doubling as a desk (I have a milk-crate-cushion chair).  We painted our ceilings white to help brighten things up, and with canvas wells and east- and west-facing windows I'm catching a good deal of our twenty or so hours of daylight.

For two weeks we've been collecting brush, splitting logs, shoveling gravel from the beach onto pathways, cleaning, organizing, and otherwise preparing the Kenai Backcountry Lodge for summer guests.  We are on a remote bit of Skilak Lake, a short boat ride or loooooong paddle from the road system.  Food and propane and replacement axes come in, trash and used toilet paper and thoroughly-danced-out leisure suits go out.*  We have solar panels, a generator, a couple wood stoves, and filter our water from a creek.

*Costumes are encouraged on many occasions, especially staff dance parties.

Today was my first full day in the kitchen, for a mock (run-through) dinner.  Ahem, friends: did you know that it has been EIGHT years since I was in culinary school and worked in fine dining?  That inventive garnishes and conceptual flourishes -- if they ever remotely took hold in my repertoire -- have utterly atrophied during my subsequent tour of industrial kitchens and humble cafes?  And now they want me to plate four courses.  And now my kitchen boss is making savory agar-agar jelly pearls for his Japanese molecular gastronomy.  Shit, man.  So I tried to play to my strengths and made a bunch of Italian food.  Runny polenta, you have carried me through yet another challenging situation.  And thank you April Bloomfield for acquainting me with how wonderful and useful fried rosemary is.

Weekend group hike up Cottonwood trail led us to 'bous.

Weekend group camping trip at the Skilak Glacier lagoon was more than pretty-ok.

tent home ❤️ 

Remix

"For all the sad words of tongue or pen,

the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"

-John Greenleaf Whittier

----

The rucksack has primarily contained sweaty cheddar of late, as I drove through the prairies and through the pines to Colorado and back.  Kelly treated us to a large chunk of pecorino romano, and I got some comte at one point, but I guess amicably breaking up doesn't provoke my dairy binging.  We did indulge in a lot of Mexican food, and enjoyed many delicious meals with his family.

I will tell you the funny parts instead of the sad parts; I love Kelly and wish him well in all his endeavors as I head back to Alaska for lots of sunlight to brighten up.  And so, funny parts of traveling to Colorado and California:

- I stayed in a fantastically restored Victorian AirBnB in Council Bluffs, Iowa, containing 3 large parrots, 16 parakeets, and their crazy-bird-lady owner, who immediately roosted them on me.

- We stopped at the self-proclaimed world's largest gas station, outside Las Vegas, with 96 pumps; this is wryly funny to me as it was so appropriately named "Terrible's."

- While visiting Kelly's parents' nudist neighborhood, we admired the let-it-all-hang-out spirit of a dozen singers at karaoke, saw tennis played in only hats and shoes, and walked past a naked guy using a skill saw.

- Back at the RV place where we had planned to stay the summer, a gorgeous clear evening set in, and we sat peacefully enjoying the bucolic farm valley and mountains beyond, while one very agitated and totally goofy-sounding cow restlessly clomped around, her bellows echoing off the hills for nearly an hour, making me giggle with every mooOOOOooOOOooo.

- Upon my return to Michigan, the Pixleys all convened at dad's first race of the summer, where it was too windy for me to set up a tent so I curled up in the back of my worn Subaru in the midst of priceless vintage sports cars, and my nephew found a very large, very dead bullfrog. 

MMMOOOOOOO

My postcard from LA

Vernal Migration

Alaska is playing the long game to win me as a resident (at least part-time).  Happy summer of 2016 memories stayed fresh until enthusiastically renewed in the summer of 2019; now winter has nearly sealed the deal.  ENDLESS skiing, muted slant-light, Ice people sprinkled all over, a variety of weird remote places with high pay to explore...I'll be back again.

After leaving the cocoon of Coldfoot and grouchily (me) reentering society, Abby and I skied our hearts out with the help of two lovely ladies in Denali.  We also enjoyed the benevolence of local skiers in Homer, who maintain miles of trails atop the hills overlooking the Cook Inlet and peaks all around.  After lots of sightseeing and driving, I felt gratitude beyond expression to relax in Seward with (Shuttle) Josh and (Baker) Karen.  We hiked in the sun and had a bonfire in the not-sun and talked and ate good things.

So why would I leave such paradise?  What could possibly draw me back to moderate latitudes?  There is a tired person currently muddling through a layover in L.A. after flying from that other paradise, New Zealand, making his way eventually to western Colorado.  And I need to pile some of my stuff in a car and meet him there for an incredibly long and long-awaited hug.

The Caines Head trail is mostly ice, so there was a lot of butt-scooting to get down to the beach.

Whittier is accessible through a tunnel shared by the train and cars; the train couldn't make it through all the snow and we thought we might be trapped, which would've been ok if everything weren't closed.

Abby + old concrete + Seward sunset

With Apologies to Sonnet 130

Coldfoot's warmth depends not on the sun;

ground beef blood and pallet fires bright red;

the snow is white, and also gray, and dun;

if hares bound quick, their quickness saves their head.

I have seen mountains cloaked in snowy white,

and strived to keep from frostbite on my cheeks;

and on some trails, incredulous delight --

frozen bogs asleep so nothing reeks.

I love to hear the wind through spruce boughs

though such a cold and restless, keening sound;

I did at long-last see a bull moose go;

my skis did schuss their tracks upon the ground.

This place, I think, is hidden treasure, rare

in form, and quite well-worn, beyond compare.

pretty mountains

out re-blazin' the trails

Deadhorse Valentine

I tried to finagle the world's least romantic weekend getaway, but we ended up having to go a few days later.  And luckily, we were gifted with perfect weather: sunny, almost windless, and a mere -30F, which afforded us gorgeous mountain views, a bizarre Mars-like sunset of a cold red ball hovering over barren tundra, caribou and musk ox grazing in the clear crisp air, and even a solitary goshawk sunning himself on a mile marker post.

It was heartening to have five of us in the van as we wound through the Brooks Range and onto the stark, lonely north slope.  Aside from a handful of steampunk-Soviet looking beige corrugated aluminum mechanical sheds and pump houses, it is an austere landscape.  Deadhorse itself was rather buttoned up as oil demand and production are still low; there were a few trucks around, and some single-engine cargo planes.  We shared a fifty-room dorm with only three other inhabitants.  I scored some much-needed toothpaste at the general store and had my first espresso coffee in many months.

It was just a quick trip up and back.  We stopped for a walk near (frozen) Galbraith Lake.  There the foothills and snow over were incredibly reminiscent of the scenery near McMurdo, if you ignored the grasses and stunted bushes.  There's a deep satisfaction in going to the end of the road, as well as returning to our homey camp tucked in with the trees.

One of many scenic places I peed.

Booos!

Pipeline on the north side of Atigan Pass.

It felt like the path to Castle Rock.

Gaiter Maid

Today I skied, jacketless, through four inches of fresh powder.  A relative heatwave struck, treating us to +6F, a swing of forty degrees from much of last week.  I did manage to ski on a mostly windless day in the cold-cold; my breath labored behind my gaiter, my eyelashes thickly frosted and occasionally frozen together.  In the open, the snow prisms the sunlight into drifts of rainbow glitter.  Within the trees, blue-gray dusk is punctuated by golden shafts eking their way through gaps in the thickly woven branches.  And one section of trail proved favorable to a pair of wolves (an hour? a day?) ahead of me.

I wouldn't say I watched the Super Bowl -- I went to be entertained by the handful of deliberately rowdy/intoxicated 30-year-old guys I work/live with.  I believe their pre-game Edward Forty Hands began about noon, and football started at 2:30pm our time.  They made buffalo chicken dip, cuban sandwiches, steak, hand-battered potato wedges, and a miniature Gatorade cooler cake with a jello center for that satisfying je ne sais quoi.

A very industrial nighttime look for the dorm.

Abby and Ben (I think) made the cake, Ben took this photo.

Should I title this "Truck Butt," or "Red Light District"?

It's Not the Heat, It's the (Lack of) Humidity

If there's one life lesson that has really been trying to impress itself upon me over the last year or so, it's the necessity of hydration.  Living in a frozen dessert?  Strenuously hiking above 10,000 feet?  Repeatedly skiing when it's below zero out?  Hey lady: for fuck's sake, drink some more water.  "*This* time," I say (for the umpteenth time), "ok, I got it!"  I guess I took the whole thick-blooded thing too literally, and I don't have Kelly with me to set a good example draining endless water bottles.

But I made real progress wearing my jacket to stave off the cold.  A group of us drove about fifty miles north to poke around some old trapper cabins and cross the boundary into Gates of the Arctic National Park.  I started off with a t-shirt, two wool base layers, thick hoodie, my trusty hobo down jacket, and dad's winter coat, for a total of three hoods and a hat.  One cabin had a wood stove but was built primarily for summer use -- the windows were partially framed, and bits of cotton batting, socks, old pens, and gum wrappers were stuffed around the edges for insulation.  The previous inhabitants left behind a solid VHS collection of '90s movies, some old National Geographics, headlamps, spices and soup mixes, and not totally tasteless nudie calendars.  

After examining said domestic comforts, we set out along a creek, ultimately to its convergence with the Dietrich River (or maybe the river was over the hills in front of us, I'm not entirely sure, but we were in the vicinity).  The scenery was stunningly snow-covered, and we made our way to an electric-blue overflow, where a small fountain bubbled up out of the frozen creek in one place, and flooded the embankment in another so that a refrozen skating rink formed between the trees.  It was like a "Nutcracker" ballet set come to life.

Gates of the Arctic is special not just because of its remoteness, but also because it's free of any trails, markers, or development -- it is preserved wilderness.  Wikipedia tells me it is entirely north of the Arctic Circle, and roughly the size of Belgium.  So we barely nudged our way in, courtesy of the winter-highways of frozen creeks and rivers.

Back here at Camp, we finally had a fire in the Big Tent.  It's an aluminum-frame structure covered with thick plastic, about 40' X 15' with 20' ceiling, and a double-barrel (previously oil barrels?) homemade wood stove.  We got the metal to glow red and toasted a coworker who's leaving for a few weeks of vacation.  In a little over a month I'll be leaving, so I'm trying to keep drinking it all in.

frozen beard guys

enchanted forest

Every other body of water was frozen; I suppose some geothermal heat keeps this creeklet open.