All Points North

On July 9th, Ben and I headed North to Fairbanks for Blaine and Katie's wedding. We took a week to drive nearly 1,600 miles to not only attend one of the best weddings I've been to, but also to take in the Interior and drive back via the Richardson and Denali highways.


We stopped at Tern Lake to make lunch sandwiches on the way from Homer on Day 1. That night we camped on the banks of the Susitna River, just below the Parks Hwy bridge, north of Talkeetna.
I only took 2 pictures at the wedding. It was so much more fun to be sitting there and participating and taking it in than trying to record it all... Katie and Blaine both looked beautiful, and the par-tay afterwards at the Mushers Hall was a damn good time.
I was honored to be asked by Katie & Blaine to start off the wedding ceremony with a reading, The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer:
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dreams
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."

It doesn't interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after a night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

I was surprised by how nervous I was after I began - apparently you couldn't hear my voice shaking, but I was so overwhelmed by what I was saying, the people before me, the marriage of these two who I love so dearly....I could feel my voice and my hands and my throat and legs all shaking.

Some photos from our trip home, along the Denali Highway...and then stopping in Houston to buy Charlie $50 worth of "pretty fireworks". It was fairly priceless to watch Ben ask the fireworks selling girl which ones were "the pretty ones".


Lots of time was spent assessing the landscape and the Gazetteer...heaps of great trips abound! So exciting, in fact, that I went and bought myself an Alpaca Packraft when we got home...

F.i.S.h.I.n.G.

Last year I worked for the International Pacific Halibut Commission. Nearly 150,000 dead halibut passed my hands, I waved a wand over each - concurrently blessing them and checking each for a tag in its head. But never ever have I personally killed a halibut.

A few nights ago Jeff finally came home from his brief respite with 'employment' with the fantastic idea to gear up and head out on the Bay to assess the halibut situation out there...beautiful. I went out to the garden to finish planing some flowers while the boys got rods and reels and bait and the proper fixin's for an evening of fishing.

And beautiful it was! No halibut were found, but I caught an Irish Lord (a oft berated fish of little value to fisher-folk), and Ben and Jeff reeled in a small handful of p. cod - great for bait, apparently! Kaya hated the boating part, but loved the fishing. Shaemus couldn't really care less really, and slept through most of the fishing part, and Pemba loved every minute (evidenced by her full-body trembling and occasional 4-paws on the gunwales).

River Rally 2009

Just pictures for now - it's so beautiful and SUMMER outside, it's hard to buckle down and post much on the blog. Last week I went to Baltimore, MD for the River Network's annual conference - River Rally!
I **loved** it. Loved the people, being in the City, loved the field of work and the passion. I was humbled by the sheer number of people that believe in the power of stories, the importance of community. I left feeling inspired, empowered, and oh-so-thankful to be back home!

Hope, Alaska

I told Ben that I was determined to go and sleep in a tent, and not in the backyard. i didn't have to work on Monday, Memorial Day, and was long overdue to get out of dodge for a little bit. Plans hadn't been set, and come to find out it was the opening weekend for Saturday night music @ the Seaview Cafe in Hope - quite possibly my most-favorite-town-in-Alaska. Ian and friends joined us on Saturday, and we camped in Hope. In Hope - as in, the most populated place on earth (or so it felt) on Memorial Day. We were at the end of the road, in between a parking lot and Turnagain Arm, surrounded by people and city-folk reveling in their camping holiday weekend. Not *entirely* what I had in mind, but I got what I wanted - sleeping in a tent! The music on Saturday night was fantastic - an AK band the Whipsaws - it was great to see Ian, and we hiked up Point Hope on Sunday .. beautiful and alpine and steep and sweeping. Loved it.


Who knew so many people could fit in this wee-area??!?
Ian , getting his ducks in a row before a run /hike

While Ben & I were up on Point Hope, we saw the bore tide coming in Turnagain Arm! This is a crazy phenomenon which has something to do with how shallow the arm is and how much water floods in during certain tides. Turnagain Arm is not a place for recreating - the mud will suck you in, the water will wash you away. But it's certainly beautiful. And funny to see so much water with no boats on it....

Pesto from stinging nettles

(from Two Sisters Bakery)

* A big bunch of young nettles (~8cups), picked in the yard (careful to avoid the known spots where dogs and other household members may pee) and boiled for 2 minutes
* 1 cup-ish of shredded parmesean cheese
* 1 cup-ish of walnuts
* 5 garlic cloves
* salt
* dash o' pepper
* ~1/2 cup of olive oil

Spring update - summer's here!

It feels completely like summer. The past 2 days have been warmer than any I've felt in over a year (I don't actually thing this is an exaggeration), the sun doesn't set till after 10pm, and I've been killing some massive mosquitoes. It's entirely possible that we haven't seen the last of frost and cold and a rainy spring, but for now I'm going to bask in the blue skies and hot sun.

My computer is nearly in its death-throes, and so can't really handle much in the way of blog-updating. For now I'll post up some pictures from Chris' first visit, in late-March, when he dropped off Shaemus, a low-tide walk I took on Easter with the dogs, a day trip across the Bay with Ben, Mike, Jeff, Stacey, and the dog pack, and the gardening adventures we've set forth on!

Diamond Creek - Bishop's Beach, Easter Sunday

Chris, Megan & I went to the Bear Creek Winery on Megan's birthday to do some wine tasting of local berry wines. MMmmmm - we had smoked halibut on crackers with cream cheese to snack on as we sipped our way through the wine selection.

Mt Redoubt erupted while Chris was here - ash fall #1 of the year ... what a freaking mess!

We were both pretty impressed with the coating that Homer received.

A few weeks ago we went across the Bay to hike up a braided river, we'll just call it the Woz here since I can't remember/don't know how to spell the full name, for the day. Ben anchored the boat offshore and pack-rafted in with Pemba in hot pursuit... Mike, coming after Ben with a giant stick.

Jeff & Stacey

Back on the home front, work on the garden has begun in full force. Heavy machinery (well, not so much unless you count a chainsaw & rototiller...) and some elbow grease. A lot of the latter, actually. ~700 sq ft that needs to be surrounded by a moose-proof fence, ~150 hummocks to be removed, and thousands of pushkie (i.e. cow parsnip)(which, incidentally, I'm apparently very allergic to) to uproot and battle back. Payback for all of this labor? Aside from warm feelings of a job-well-done (and burly muscles)(and welts from the pushkies), potatoes and onions and spinach and dill and carrots and turnips maybe and leaks and radishes and .... etc etc etc! Yeah!

The Heavy Machinery

And the elbow grease

Baby pushkies. My nemesis, whom I will be battling all summer long. Bring it.

Dogs are so helpful.....they have been working hard checking out all the best places to nap in the shade or sun around the garden.

Ben, assessing the garden situation. A man with a plan. And some wicked-old-tools.

Pemba {hearts} the buoy...

Happy SpringSummer!