"It was Better Then"

I was paging through the October Smithsonian Magazine and came upon a black and white snapshot and accompanying essay, "Salad Days" by Gore Vidal. The photo was by Karl Bissinger, taken in 1949 in a Manhattan cafe garden of five up-and-coming young artists: a ballerina, two novelists, a painter and a playwright. Besides giving background on each of the five, Vidal explicates photographer Bissinger's genius at depicting America's cultural arts rise when we weren't at war for a few years after WWII. The urban literati as photographed in 1949 "perfectly evokes an optimistic time in our history that we are not apt to see again soon."

It seems as though each generation has a time of young optimism that, when they look back at that time and tell the next generation "My generation's time was golden, times will never shine quite as brightly again."

Soon after I finished college and moved to Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska to teach, I was hosting in my little rental log cabin, a crafts buyer from Anchorage. He who was in the village to purchase the handcrafted Anaktuvuk masks to take back to Anchorage to sell. The middle aged man was talking about Alaska, pre-statehood and was lamenting that those wilder frontier-like days were gone for good. As he talked on I had the thought, which I kept to myself, that he was actually grieving the loss of his youth more than the disappearance of the frontier. For me, the Great Land of Alaska was wilderness frontier. In my youth it was all new to me and I was just starting to make my way in creating a life and identity there. Though I listened to this craft buyer and learned a bit about life from a generation before me, I didn't grieve over what was lost from before.
Now, as I look at the future I see an increasingly dismal picture: a middle class that is diminished, a planet that is growing increasingly polluted and crowded, and changes that are bleak. Life looked better to me in the past. Then I look at my children and many other young people who are starting out in young adulthood, I see that spark of fire in their eye and optimistic energy that recalls that time when I was young and only looking forward to life's challenges; and not having any of an older Alaskan generation's swan-song about "the (better) good 'ol days."

Fall Flowers

I was a bit disappointed by the washed out colors of these flowers, which may be from using a flash...


Pink Turtle Head

Winter Hardy Yellow Mums

Maroon Winter Hardy Mums with Wormwood to the right and leaves of High Bush Cranberry in upper left

Busy Weekend

I have been busy splitting up maple and apple wood for next winter's heating wood. On Saturday I helped prep lunch for the retreat that Lynn was at. Randy Little told me about the pellet stove that he bought and had installed in his house. He says that he is well satisfied with it and plans to save a lot of money on his heating bill. It sounds like a trouble-free way to go. I would wait for a pellet furnace to be developed with an extra big hopper and the blower power to hook it up to the existing duct work in our house.
My back is sore tonight. I bucked up some downed apple trees on a side slope. The wood is nice and maroon colored, dense and will be prime for heating next year.
I must get some pictures of some of the flowers that Lynn has still blooming in her flower gardens around the house and post them here.
A little snow on Friday; just a trace.

Last Color of Autumn

The day dawned with sleet that turned to snow for a short time. I always feel excitement about the snow, especially when it first arrives. So the excitement was brief as the snow melted as soon as it hit the firmament. Snow in the far north always meant another mode of transportation on the ground; the chance to ski and snowshoe as well as use the dog team and snow machine. When living elementally some things are easier with snow. Many areas of muskeg and tundra are almost inaccessible in the summer when the wet, unstable ground and bugs are taken into consideration. Much easier to have snow fill in the sedges and uneven ground and there are no bugs to contend with. Mukluks and light, warm parkas make winter time travel with snowshoe or ski a delight.
But we're still not there yet in the Copper Country. Still a lot of autumn to meander through before the snows get deep around here!

The wind has stripped most of the leaves from the trees, but as this picture shows, the cherry trees still have a bit of orange foliage and the burning bush is in full color. The tall aspen are mostly stripped of leaves, though a few still rattle in the wind. The sun is nearly cutting through the mist and clouds. The weather report is for some sun this afternoon, though Lake Superior often makes weather reports more uncertain predictions.

LIVING THE BASICS ON THE UPPER YUKON

When my wife Lynn and I moved from Homer in south central Alaska to Eagle on the Upper Yukon to teach. We rented a little frame cabin for our first winter.The cabin was on the edge of town, had a great place for keeping the dog team and an old house trailer for storage. Secure storage for food and other supplies is a necessity in the north, in remote areas where you don't have store access to supplies. Eagle had a couple of stores where canned goods and the basics could be got... for a price, but we enjoyed home made food instead of the fare usually offered in small stores in the bush.
The rental cabin had a small oil heater in it but we were into heating with wood. My father had crated and sent up, as a Christmas present, an Ashley wood burning stove two years before. Lynn and I were then living together and beginning a life together at a rented log cabin 20 miles out of Fairbanks on Chena Hot Springs Road while she finished up getting a teaching certificate.
The cabin at Eagle that we were renting didn't have electricity so the electric blower on the Ashley stove was of no use to us. Not bad, we were thinking.. We wanted to sharpen life down to the essentials, live elementally without most of the conveniences that were always taken for granted in our childhoods. Eagle was the kind of place that is a walkable community and many people didn't own automobiles. We had an old pickup truck and a decrepit Volkswagen Beetle. When the snow came that year, both vehicles were parked for the winter, covered deeply in snow as the winter progressed. We had freighted in staple foods for ourselves and dog food for the dozen huskies that I had been raising , training and transporting from place to place since I started dog mushing in Anaktuvuk Pass. I still had my chainsaw from my days of heating and cooking with wood in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I hadn't had electricity even then and still had a couple kerosene lamps that would be of use in Eagle. Now I was back into the type of life that I had enjoyed then, except now I was married and sharing this life with a woman who was as excited as me about living the almost- pioneer life.We were both looking forward to the dog team getting regular use for transportation as well as hauling water and wood.
The Eagle City Well House, built in the end of the 19th century, was still in use by most of the town. Water was still pumped by the wind mill into the large redwood tank up above the hand dug well.Most people didn't have indoor plumbing and used outhouses.
My parents came up to Alaska for a visit and my father helped us move our belongings to the rental cabin. My parents were enchanted with Eagle, though my mother was not too keen on living like a pioneer. When we moved in and started school teaching we were very busy but life was full and fun. Cutting wood on Signal Tower Hill on the weekend, shooting grouse, and setting up housekeeping kept us busy. Meeting all kinds of characters in the town and out on the country, fitting into the school scene in Eagle and running the dogs out to the school, three miles from the town, this was the rhythm of our lives. The river people, young live-off-the-landers were in their heyday then. Dick Cook, Charlie Edwards, Monty Warner and a host of others were all visiting Eagle to pick up their mail and supplies before going out to their cabins and trap lines for the winter. Charlie Edwards became a good friend to me in the first year. He came around bearing gifts of salmon and then in the early winter he and I mushed out into the Seventy Mile River country, my first time traversing the trails up Boulder Creek.
By the time the spring was coming we had decided to get some land and stay in Eagle. With Dale Richert's help we found a couple of city lots for sale on the buffer zone at the edge of town. The lots were on the side hill with no access except a trace up along the city line. We would have a decent cabin site , place for a garden and the dogs could reside just over the property line in the buffer zone. I ordered a tent from Alaska Tent and Tarp, we put it on Charlie Edwards' lots in town while there was still a couple feet of snow on the ground. We had moved out of our rental cabin because, after all, we could buy the wall tent with a month's rent saved and we also wanted to live in the tent in the spring. Lynn had gotten together a high school trip to Britain, on an airline special where we could fly into London for less than a flight to Seattle. We left the tent for a 3 week period for the trip. When we came back the snow was gone and we were putting any spare moments into prepping the site for a garden and figuring out our cabin. The wall tent was a cozy abode for us with its little Yukon stove and a pole bed. The multitude of warblers and nesting robins made the woods alive with morning cheer.
We got 8 foot 2-sided cabin logs and vertical studs ordered from Mike Potts, a local trapper, homesteader and logger. We took a promising art student from Eagle Village, Howard David, with us down to Homer for a few weeks where he got instruction from a local artist, Gary Lyons. I brought Howard back to the Eagle Village, leaving Lynn in Homer for a few weeks longer while I started work on the cabin.
I was amazed that my sweet mate's garden that she had planted before we left for Homer was not only sprouted but was flourishing with no human care. Getting the logs and materials to the cabin site was accomplished with the help of John Borg, who had a large wagon and bulldozer. John also pushed out a level pad, as our plan was for a cabin that was earth bermed on 3 sides to better insulate from the cold. It tended to rain every afternoon and this watered the garden but also made building in the woods a wet misery filled with mosquitoes.
Gary Lyons had given us a log building book that had a chapter about piece en piece log building, a French Canadian method. With the materials at hand, this became our building method of choice. The building went forward. We moved in with the snow flying, still putting in windows and a door.
We had a small cast iron Vermont Castings Resolute wood stove and a wood cook stove that was in a warehouse of the Eagle Commercial Co. Lynn went into Fairbanks for building materials with the truck and surprised me by bringing back a hardwood freight racing sled that would be capacious for everything: laundry, water, wood and our first child. Lynn was pregnant! We moved up the dogs and tent and settled in for the winter. One acquaintance, Steve Nelson, said that he heard me that first winter, cutting wood with the chainsaw at night to heat the cabin. The little wood stove often had to run cherry red to heat our place in the far below zero weather. The manufacturer must have figured heated square footage based on a well insulated house in a temperate climate, not the sub Arctic. With both the wood heat and cook stoves going the cabin was extra toasty. Lynn was on a different schedule at the school. She was half-time so came back and would get the stoves going and heat the cabin as well as get food and dog food on before I got back in the late afternoon. I made a little plank komatik for her so she could mush out to the school with 3 dogs pulling her. She could sit on the low basket and be comfortable and safe. As she got larger she was concerned that she might fall off a basket sled while standing up.
As far as being out on the land in winter, both of us were well used to temperatures of 60 below and Lynn was a good seamstress of mukluks, moccasins and parkas. I had my arctic gear from living with the Inuit above the Arctic Circle.
In later years we added a porch and then a log arctic entryway on the porch to our little cabin. The wall tent gradually rotted away from the bottom up and was discarded in favor of a large two story shop. A log sauna was put in just a couple of steps below the cabin and our three kids that came along soon after the cabin was built were all used to taking their bath in the sauna. We lived in our cabin for seven years and then moved into our large log home, but that is another story.

Here is our south side of the earth bermed cabin with the earth bermed up 4 feet. You can see the vertical studs on the corner and at 8 feet in the middle of the wall. The studs had a spline that the horizontal logs could slide on as the logs will shrink and expand a bit based on temperature and humidity, so the ability for them to slide upon the spline will allow them to stay tight against each other so that air will not infiltrate between each log. We put in the gambrel or barn roof so that the upstairs would have a short pony wall and thereby have a full upstairs - important in a 16 x 16 foot cabin with, eventually, 2 adults and 2 children were living and sleeping there! The oil barrel at the corner of the cabin was a new convenience by the people who bought our cabin from us. After we moved out of the cabin we had electricity put in when it was available so that renters could have this convenience.

This is the view from the dog yard of the cabin and sauna. The people who bought the cabin added the little room on the left end of the porch for their computer room and put on the ugly steel door on the outside arctic entryway. They also quit using the sauna for what it was built for; now it is a storage cache, complete with blue tarp on the roof. I don't know what became of the green steel that used to be on the roof. The spruce trees that sheltered the sauna are log gone.


The walls of the sauna were saddle notched and long-log-scribed for tightness. Many a relaxing evening were enjoyed in our sauna. The kids knew only the sauna as their bathing apparatus. Sometimes they would get too hot in their wash tub so we would step out onto the little porch with overhanging snow covered spruce branches and shake a branch, sending a frigid dusting of powder onto our steaming bodies! Then we would rush back into the sauna to get warm again.

Oct. 21: Cliff Drive Climb

Our seemingly constant rain pattern was broken briefly this weekend with partly sunny weather, but rain was always a threat, at least in my mind. Muir helped on Saturday with the chimney liner and this made all the difference in getting it put in. Then he went out on his motorcycle to Cliff Drive up in Keweenaw County to camp with a couple of his friends, Travis and Jay. I hooked up the new wood stove and set the first break-in fire.

Lynn and I went up to Cliff Drive on Sunday morning and found Muir's camp at a place that climbers frequent, the Ice Falls. The day was crisp and clear with the yellows and oranges of aspen and tamarack trees brightening up the landscape. The climbers' camp site was on the top of the cliffs, directly on the basalt rock shelf. The wind was blowing faily strong up on top of the 300 foot cliffs and Muir's sleeping bag had blown off onto the ledge that we were going to rappel down to. Travis set the top rope and then I went down with Muir's self-fashioned swiss climbing harness of a piece of webbing. Then Lynn went with a bit of squealing in fear. But the view was wonderful with the sun on the autumn woods after the climb up.

Lynn at the start of our hike at the base of the Cliffs and then up to the top. She plans to have surgery on her right knee next month. She was frustrated on our Cliff foray to not have full mobility.


Muir setting carabiners in the already drilled bolts on a pretty tough rock climbing route. Travis went after him but ended up slipping and falling about 14 feet between safety points. He reacted quickly and so no harm done!

October 18 over 151 Years

Thursday, October 18, 2001
Another rainy day, complemented by driving wind.The tree leaves are being stripped and flung afar! Hopefully the strong wind bodes well for a weather change later, with rain diminishing. A good day, at present, to sit close to home - inside.
Below is an October 18, 1856 journal entry by Henry David Thoreau that strikes a deep chord of sympathy from me, a kindred feeling across the ages. It is of man's usual absorption of interest in man alone. The theme of life is upon man's back; not the theme of life being all of life, but how an aspect of life relates only to men.
The majority of society can consider a movie star or sports figure noteworthy of their full attention and yet the natural world, which sustains our life, is only noted when it relates to man. People will all slaver after the newest consumer device, be it an "i-device", automobile or a new garment while a simple life is is not even considered as relevant. A materialistic existence with posh comfort and insulation from the natural environment, from which we are derived, leaves us self-centered. Our government at this late date begins to acknowledge the global destruction wrought by climate change and the sure effect of spewing carbon dioxide from petroleum into the atmosphere. We are all accessories to the rampant industrial materialism that is spreading on this planet. I don't see an end in sight other than the planet continuing to degrade. Only through a lifestyle change, by all or at least most, will we stave off the worst of global climate change. The carbon loading is like a massive train that is gathering speed and is soon to be runaway. A fundamentalist Christian that I know, Mike, believes that Al Gore and others of his ilk are all tools of Satan, who are diverting people away from being saved by Christ who will come again and establish a perfect world anyway. So those in the Gore camp are all just trying to postpone the inevitable end of the world. So let people live like drunken brides and industry burgeon further in this fallen and depraved world...
Mike says that the sailboat that he and his wife plan to sail around the seas, ministering to others will encounter less islands since many have been inundated by flooding from melting ice caps, but he must keep focused on Christ, because this world is just passing anyway...

Be all the above as it may be, below is Thoreau. To him, Nature is "the only real elysium" and "the life is everything." Thanks be to a sane voice in the babble:

"Men commonly exaggerate the theme. Some themes they think are significant and others insignificant. I feel that my life is very homely, my pleasures very cheap. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed most words in the English language do not mean for me what they do for my neighbors. I see that my neighbors look with compassion on me, that they think it is a mean and unfortunate destiny which makes me to walk in these fields and woods so much and sail on this river alone. But as long as I find here the only real elysium, I cannot hesitate in my choice. My work is writing, and I do not hesitate, though I know that no subject is too trivial for me, tried by ordinary standards; for, ye fools, the theme is nothing, the life is everything. All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth, but the pyramid of our experience, or our interest in it, rests on us by a broader or narrower base. That is, man is all in all. Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes." H.D. Thoreau, 10/18/1856

Sun to More Rain

Well, we apparently had our day in the sun and today we got up to rain - steady to hard and with no end in sight. After a summer of drought and the big lake continuing to drop, marshes and streams drying up - I should be just plain glad. but my chimney lining and fitting the new Oslo stove into the living room is faltering to near standstill. Gabe, who got into a skunk on Sunday when he and Dixie went "walkabout" is still out in the doghouse until he gets less aromatic. It's frustrating to not be able to continue on with the changes on the chimney. Woe is me in my self-absorbed little world...
I ended up getting out a new chisel and attacking the present 9 inch living room flue outlet; and with the use of a large iron pike I chipped away the 9 inch galvanized thimble. This left my knuckles rough and bloody, but now I have a hole in the hearth wall that is ready for a new thimble of a bit over 6 inches in diameter. The actual flue pipe from the elbow will fit through to the stainless thimble on the chimney liner. Hopefully by the end of the weekend, I'll be able to complete this project, weather being just one determining factor. Getting an insulated 6 inch pipe in the used clay liner is going to be a tight fit. It will be all worth it if I have less creosote build-up and a more efficient and more pleasing wood heat.
The aspens that border our garden and can be seen out of our south windows are turning yellow now. They are tall and catch every breeze and whisper - one of my favorite home place natural sound.
I am going to Marquette with Lynn and her group tomorrow and going to see the Fillmore's again. I have to retrieve my parka and headlamp that I ended up leaving back there on Saturday. I can also get a few supplies at Menard's, return some stuff there. And the rain continues...

Cold Safety

Yesterday I held a safety course for 4 Chinese students on fall break from University of Michigan. Three young men and a young lady. They wanted to do a full safety course that would qualify them for renting sea kayaks to go to Pictured Rocks and camp for 1 or 2 nights. Carl, the owner of Northern Waters Adventures said that the group claimed to have backpacking sleeping bags and gear and were prepared with synthetic clothing as per Northern Waters orientation literature that had been sent out to Ying, their group leader.
I was up at 4 AM and left home at 5:15 for Munising with a stop at The Pines in Baraga for $2.80 per gallon gas, then a longer stop for breakfast with Tim Fillmore in Marquette. I arrived at 8:45 at Northern Waters quonset warehouse, loftily named "adventure headquarters". The ride over was in darkness with a bit of cold rain and even a little snow for a time. As light returned during the 140 mile trip, there was an occasional glint of sun out of breaks in the dark and fast moving clouds. I enjoyed the start of the day on the road with the color change in its variety. I wasn't looking forward to the cold northwest wind off of cold Lake water, but soon made up my mind to not get wet in Lake Superior water but go to Deer Lake for the on-water portion of the course. Much warmer and more sheltered.
The "leader" of the group, Ying had the greatest understanding of sea kayaking (he'd been on a day trip and had paddled a recreational kayak) as well as seemed best at the English language. Filling out the liability release forms was very "sketchy", as the group was obviously not reading the forms. The 4 neophyte paddlers were very inattentive. There were 2 other female members of the group making three couples. The 2 other girls were not involved in the course but were supposedly along for backpacking and were in town in a separate car. They were supposed to come to the quonset and kind of "be around". The group of 4 were talking on cell phones, among themselves, and there was a general lack of focus on what they were spending a lot of money to learn to do. They had obviously not read or perhaps comprehended the orientation literature, or what Carl had sent them on clothing and there were no backpacks in the car. Only Ying had one synthetic shirt and it took a few minutes to get them to understand why cotton was a bad thing for paddling and camping in around freezing conditions. After going through "weather, wind, waves and water", slowly with many starts and stops for cell phone calls and breaks, they began to realize that 6 to 8 foot waves with winds out of the northwest onto exposed Pictured Rocks meant that they would have to go elsewhere for their trip. Grand Island in sheltered Murray Bay was what I promoted as their destination. After the end of the "beach talk" and after waiting for the 2 girls to show up, we headed out to Deer Lake, caravaning with the trailer and van followed by the 2 small cars.
The lake had a raw wind at about 15 mph down the length of it but much warmer water and no crashing surf like on Superior.
After paddle strokes we headed out with Li, the girl in our group, being very unsure of her stability in the kayak. I worked with her for awhile and then we all started doing paddle stroke exercises and then rudder use. On both strokes and rudder, voice commands in English were inexactly followed: right might be left and reverse may be turn right. But they did get practice. Wet exits and T rescues again fraught by a language barrier, but Ying helped to facilitate by translating my English to Mandarin so they were able to get in their boats.
Li, the last to capsize was nearly hysterical upon surfacing but after getting into the boat ended up wanting later in the progression to also do the paddle float self- rescue. She commented that back in the kayak she was warm, and the water wasn't as cold as the air. The four of them all did the paddle float self rescues in spite of the wind pushing us rapidly to shore. Our group returned to shore jumping out of the kayaks, shivering in the cold wind, when Ying discovered that he didn't have his keys, they were with the 2 girls who had left in their car. So the 4 dripping wet and pre-hypothermic kayakers couldn't get their dry clothes in their locked car. I got the van running with heater blasting and they sat in the van and dripped for 40 minutes until the 2 non-participants got back with their car keys. When we finally got back to the shop Ying said that they had decided to not paddle out for camping but would pick up the boats the next day with just 3 of them doing day trips. One of their party was going to return with the 2 girls to Ann Arbor. So they at least saw that they were in over their heads for camping out in the conditions that fall offers, and that kayaking on Superior was not to be taken lightly.
When I could get free, at about 6 PM I headed out to Marquette and stayed the night at Fillmore's, played music with Tim and visited with Kyra and the kids. Saturday was a crystal clear day, the first in what seemed like days.

A Bit On The Inuit (Dog)

A busy day for me with preparing for traveling over to Munising at 5:30 AM tomorrow to do a safety course for what must be a group of hardy paddlers (the weather is really raw and predicted to be just as raw tomorrow and this weekend).
I am heating the house in this shoulder season with the basement wood stove, my father's excellent Jotul 118. I was up early and getting the stove filled and heating from the coals left from the night before.. Much of my morning was trying to get in touch with Sam Raymond at Copper Harbor to arrange to pick up the Tandem kayak that Carl, over in Munising, bought from him. Prepping to go up there to pick up the boat with a set of cradles on the roof rack and all set to go for the 1 hr. drive. I stopped at the Keweenaw Co - Op for a bit of salmon chowder which was surprisingly HOT and not at all to my liking. The day was dark and looking like rain in the morning. During the ride up the sun began to glint in between misting rain with a prevalent big wind.The color change is on the downtrend but was especially nice with a bit of occasional sunlight. When I got up there I had to wait for an hour to get the boat as Sam was in a meeting with some township people but then finally got on the road and back in time to make up my own salmon and cod chowder that was appreciated by all (Muir and Lynn).
Now to get packed and on my way after a rising-time of 4 AM. I plan on stopping over at Fillmore's Marquette house for Tim's breakfast at about 7 AM or a bit later.

This dog is one of the older but still Alpha male dog's at Paul Schurke's Wintergreen Dog Sled Lodge. He is named Carhartt and is one of my favorites. He is a very self assured dog and very photogenic as well as a strong puller. Inuit dogs are known as fighters and they definitely do that, being as with pack canines like sled dogs are, they have a strong hierarchy or pecking order. Males generally fight with males and females fight with females. Female Inuits are generally submissive to the males.
Carhartt is past the fighting though: as he ages he will probably be challenged for his alpha position by younger up and coming males. Wintergreen's kennel setup is really well managed. The doghouses are very functional with flat roofs and with a slot on the back side for the dry dog food to be scooped and emptied into the house so that the dog can eat without having to contend with other dogs being in view.

This is an Inuit from out of Yukon Territory. Two friends in Eagle, Alaska, Charlie House and David Helmer, run Inuits . This dog is at David's kennel and shows a common red color and markings. Often the Inuits are stocky of leg compared to huskies and some malemutes. Charlie is line breeding an old fashioned very large and leggy Maloot (like a malemute) with his Inuits to come up with what could be called a "polar husky": a 100 pound dog with the heavy Inuit coat and toughness but longer legged for deeper snows of the area that he mushes in. The heavy coat is being bred out of some Alaskan huskies used for racing, as they will not overheat with shorter coats. The difference on the trail for camping is the short coated dog takes more food to keep warm, tends to shiver when not in harness, and after being picketed out for the night on snow will melt out a deep depression where the dog lays. The long haired dog is so well insulated that very little heat is lost to the snow.

Summer 2007 Family Pics

October 10, 2007 A very raw day - windy, rainy and about 40 degrees, northern juncos stopping from being blown around. In the grass under my feeder they are picking up dropped seeds and leavings. I am still trying to see my way through the chimney modifications that we need to heat this year with wood efficiently and with less hassle. I need to get a finishing piece, a kind of collar to go around the pipe where it goes through the wall into the liner T.
Totally hypothermic weather to have to be on the water. I hope things improve for the Friday safety course over in Munising.
This weather that we've been having for the last few days recalls St Lawrence Island fall weather with the wind and rain and nastiness of it. But windy, rough weather would blow in marine life for easier access by the shore dwellers. I remember well one domestic scene there: Taking out the honey bucket to the sea-side in the early morning; gray light faintly showing a wind roiled surf rushing in on pea gravel filled waves. Among flotsam and sea weed there were oompahs, little filter feeders being gathered by parka-clad Native women. The waves coming in made a swish sound as thousands of pieces of gravel were stirred and rubbed together. The briny sea smell being added to the mix of impressions on my senses. Timing myself to the rhythm of rollers ready to wet me to the waist, I hold the honey bucket parallel and downwind of my body and give it a swing to flush its contents into the surf. It was a clean flush and removal of my house of school teachers bodily wastes into the ocean. "No oompahs for me", I told an older woman later that week who had seen me, the school's principal out emptying the bucket; an odd and never before seen view of a the gussuk man doing what she saw as women's work.

My youngest son Matthew, on graduation day from Houghton High School. Matt is started college at University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities and is working at a coffee shop (Bordertown) and living on-campus this school year. He is in a pre-med oriented program.

My oldest son Muir, sculling around at Pictured Rocks. He is in his second year at Finlandia University working on a 4 year Nursing degree. When I took this picture Muir was assisting me at guiding a family on a 3 day trip.

My wife Lynn, daughter Kate and her boyfriend Nathaniel near Grand Marais, MN, on the Lake Superior shore. Kate was crewing on a sailboat that Nathaniel was the skipper of and since fall is working as graphic designer for the local Cook County News Herald at Grand Marais.

Winter Anticipation in the Fall

A long time of not writing in this blog and a lot of water under the hull and snow under the skis!
After a summer drought we have had large quantities of rain in September and October. The trees were first stressed by a lack of water and now they have a lot of rain and wind to strip them of bright leaves.
My kayak season, which I thought was over is still not quite wound down with a safety course over in Munising this Friday, which Carl the outfitter is going to make monetarily worth my while by paying me for 2 days of work as well as $ for bringing down a tandem kayak from Sam at Copper Harbor.
It was a great season of back to back trips and many small adventures at Pictured Rocks, Grand Island and Isle Royale. I don't think that I've had quite such a busy season of trips in many years. The money flowed into the bank, though it is now flowing out for things that I've wanted like a Jotul wood stove, stainless chimney liner and work on my car and expenses with kids in college.

On this rainy day in October, with so many home chores to do... What am I thinking of, but my last winter's activity. The dog team guiding over in the Boundary Waters at Wintergreen Dog Sled Lodge. Not that it was all fun; a lot of work and the guides are run ragged for what they are paid - at least that's my perspective when I compare it to the sea kayak guiding. But in spite of stress factors and pay, it is a lot of fun, especially for the oldest guy in the whole operation. To be able to keep up on skis with guys that are half my age is awesome! And the $ do add up with tips padding the purse.
My back finally gave out on me during the end of the season with what ended up being a herniated L5 disc. The surgery was fairly non-intrusive with instant relief after a 6 week period of suffering. I doubt that I'll ever be quite as careless in the rest of my life at lifting. Thus far I have a good reminder in a dull sciatica throb in my butt when I don't lay right or go overboard on lifting.
So far this year, since I've been out of the kayak, I haven't spent much time out on rambles or paddles hereabout. Too many projects to complete and chores to do that have been left waiting during my busy summer afield. I did run the south branch of the Ontonogon River with my Pastor friend, Tom Anderson. It was a 2 day trip with rugged and raw weather and a lot of rocks.

I am taking the dog team down from the dog yard at Wintergreen to White Iron Lake, below the lodge. where we set up a stake out yard. It looks like the one lead dog is glancing back to see if I was thrown off the sled as we just came out of the steep and bumpy trail. Wintergreen has Canadian and Greenland Inuit dogs, rather than the Alaskan Huskies that I mushed for many years. Inuits are slower (like little Sherman tanks) but are true work dogs for sledging.The trail down is too hazardous for the guests to be allowed to take the dogs and sleds down on their own. Usually the guides only mush the dogs over places too dangerous for the guests' safety, generally steep and bumpy places. Even so, many of the trips have multiple runaway sleds that the guides have to catch.

This is more like it...That's me on my skis up ahead of the dog teams - The guide is kind of like the alpha dog in the team. (S)he is followed by the dog teams and hopefully takes the right trail at the junctions, breaks trail when necessary, hooks up the teams, teaches the people all about the craft, prepares food, sets up camp and picks the proper places to stop and rest, etc.


This last picture shows a tired lead-dog-man (me) looking over the trail in the BWCAW while I'm gliding along. I may be looking at a beaver lodge over at the base of the woods ( right middle of the photo).