Alaska: July 1

Pulled my camera out today and had some fun in downtown Anchorage. Here’s what I saw:

Yellow submarine -- ish.

Side Street Espresso in downtown Anchorage.

Waiting for company...

Come in. Drink coffee.

This coffee shop was delightfully old school: No wireless. Wide array of books to peruse.

The inside of Side Street Espresso is pretty eclectic. Kind of Russian Orthodox meets political cartoonist.

The owners of Side Street Espresso do levitation magic on the side.

There were markers in the bathroom so you could draw on the mirror. I had fun.

If you drew poorly on the bathroom mirror, you could admire these caricatures instead.

Let's be clear about this, you crazy tourists. This IS NOT the Imaginarium. Now go away.

Alaska: June 30

Vacations are not always razzle dazzle. Sometimes they are doing laundry, playing with the dogs and reading a book. Sometimes they are sleeping in because you stayed up too late fishing. Sometimes they give you time to reflect.

Today was one of those days.

Today also held a touch of sadness as my sister-in-law informed me of some tragic deaths in Kalispell. Two reporters at the local paper, the Daily Inter Lake, were killed in an airplane crash near Glacier National Park. Though I didn’t know them, I had noticed their bylines.

I can only imagine the grief and numbness their family members, friends, and fellow newsmen and newswomen must be feeling. A newspaper depends heavily on the contributions of each and every reporter, designer, editor, ad salesman, receptionist and pressman to keep its corner of the world in-the-know. When two members of the team disappear, the loss is felt deeply, and it is likely intensified under the stress of ceaseless deadlines and picking up the slack.

My sympathies go out to my fellow journalists. Callous though the lot may be, I do believe we feel each loss in our community – be it the war reporter shot in the line of duty or two lively young women who were fresh out of college and just looking for a day of escape from the daily grind. I lift my coffee in their honor.

Alaska: June 29

Josh got off a little early today and we hightailed it down the Peninsula to beat traffic and be on the Russian River by 7. That’s right: We did a midnight fishing run.

Fishing license and fly rod in hand, I cast my line into one of the world’s renowned rivers. I was seeking sockeye salmon – and another good story to live.

I caught the latter, but the first was more elusive. I did snag several river bottom stones, a few tree limbs and Josh’s line here and there. I also dragged out a nice 5-pound rotting fish carcass. But it doesn’t matter. We fished until nearly midnight under long rays of light and drove home wet and happy.

I challenged the Russian River to a duel.

We fought long and hard.

I won, but the prize was kind of rotten. I told the river it could keep its stinkin' fish. =)

Alaska: June 28

A quiet day of exploring downtown Anchorage and researching what grand adventure we’ll have this next weekend. I’m thinking canoe trip to a remote cabin. Or backpacking because I've never been. Yeah, it's sad. I grew up in the West and somehow missed out on backpacking. I just never had the gear. But I'm okay with taking my first baby backpacking steps in Alaska. That sounds alright with me. Whatever we end up doing, I know we will fish and hike and cook and soak in as much of Alaska as we can.

Me thinking on the Homer Spit. A random photo that has nothing to do with this post other than that I'm thinking. I like thinking in Alaska. The landscape welcomes it.

Cook Inlet around midnight.

Random photo from my first few hours in Alaska. Taken on Cook Inlet around midnight.

Alaska: June 27

You know those soundscape CDs that are supposed to help you sleep? The ones with birds chirping and waves rolling onto the seashore? I woke up this morning wondering if the people who create those have ever slept on a beach. I mean really slept on a beach – in a tent, with two dogs, dozens of feet from the incoming tide.
It’s not exactly peaceful. But it is fun.
We camped on the Homer Spit last night, pitching our tent in a long line of tents, trusting that night’s first homesteader to know just how close we could get without waking up in a house boat.
Once the freeze dried lasagna had been consumed and the hot cocoa was warming our hands, we sat upon a log and watched the tide begin to roll in. Then we climbed into the tent and tried to sleep. Keyword is tried here.
Though the hour was late (well after midnight), it was still light. For someone who has never suffered insomnia, I am now more compassionate towards those who do.
And though the rolling waves sang a lullaby for a while, they became a raucous drinking song the closer they came. They whooshed and crashed and whooped and slammed their beer steins on the table. Right around 3 in the morning, when the water was a stone’s throw from our tent, the waves started dancing and stomping, too. Whoosh, stomp, holler, swing your partner round and round. Whoosh, stomp, holler, swing your partner round and round.
I managed to doze through most of that revelry. It was the bar fight at about 3:30 that woke me up with my heart a racing. Tables were overturned. Chairs were slammed on the wooden floor. Everyone was yelling.
I felt surrounded. I felt like I’d pressed my ear against the biggest, loudest cone shell on earth. I could hear the ocean, and the ocean could hear me. I could feel the ocean’s crushing power and smell its life and salt and death. I felt like I was in the ocean and the ocean was in me.
And then, almost as quickly as the crashing and whooshing had begun, it receded. The ocean waves became a lullaby once again, and I slept in the real soundscape of ebb and flow, ebb and flow, ebb and flow in Alaska.

Alaska: June 26

The Salty Dawg Saloon in Homer deftly shoulders its dual responsibility as the local’s bar and one of Alaska’s more infamous tourist stops. I feel welcome as I walk in gawking and fingering my camera’s shutter button, but at the same time, I also feel like I’d better leave the local’s table and the pool table alone. Look but do not bother. Appreciate but do not stay too long.


Locals and tourists are instantly recognizable and categorized. Tourists wear sandals; fishermen who work the spit day in and day out wear rubber boots and overalls still smeared with halibut guts from the day’s catch. The fishermen are smarter. It is a rainy, salty, muddy land in which clothing choices are more esteemed if they are practical. Forget Chacos and North Face. If it’s warm and waterproof, you’re as hip as you need to be.


Josh and I walk to the bar. He orders a locally brewed Homer stout. I order Alaskan White, a wheat ale brewed in the Last Frontier. We find a spot in the corner, sit down, and watch the bar fill up as the hour grows late.


The fish stories grow louder and larger. Laughter rolls through the saloon in swells like the waves crashing onto the shore of Kachemak Bay. The beer in our bottles eventually becomes just a few drops clinging to the bottom. It is time to go, but before we do, we have one more task to make the experience complete.


Sometime in the Salty Dawg’s history, someone wrote their name on a dollar bill and pinned it to the wall. Now, some odd years later, nearly every inch of wall and ceiling is covered with thousands upon thousands of bills representing visitors from hundreds of places. Minnesota, Montana, Florida. Anchorage, Boston, Seattle.


Wyoming. Go Cowpokes. Josh and Hannah.

Josh outside the Salty Dawg.

Me inside the Salty Dawg.

I write. In Homer.

This is it! I write this post from a coffee shop in Homer, Alaska! I am sitting in the Spit Sisters Café on the Homer spit. It is raining outside, and nearly every person who comes in is decked out in rubber boots, yellow rain gear, and warm, wooly hats. People don’t seem to be concerned with appearance so much here. They wear what they’ve got to wear.

Out the window – which is glazed with steam from coffee-warmed air kissing drizzly rain through the pane – there are boats coming and going and rocking and bobbing. Some are sleek. Some look like Victorian houses set upon a hull and set adrift. They are green and white and red and blue. I imagine some are used for weekend wanderings, while others are a person’s very livelihood. As we in Montana and Wyoming look to cattle for our meat, milk and money, residents of these small fishing towns look to halibut and salmon. People here are wet, rubber clad, and smell of fish, while our skin flakes off with the desert dryness and we smell of hay and manure beneath the straw brims of our cowboy hats.

Look at me. This long-awaited writing destination has brought forth strokes of cliché. Ah well. There must be a reason so many writers write sweeping prose about the stuff of nearly extinct ways of life. As our culture progresses rapidly into this technological age, we are bound to look back fondly at work that maybe wasn’t so syrupy sweet as we make it out to be. But that is what memories do: They polish off the scratches and dirt and reflect back to us a shiny remembrance that somehow helps us to face a murky future.

I have to pee. My bladder has always interrupted my most philosophical thoughts. I also grow anxious to go see this town of legend and lore. I am going to go walk the Homer spit and breathe in the misty, salty air until it fills my memory with images of steam and coffee-driven creativity and the time I sat here in the Spit Sisters Café and fulfilled a silly – but strong and long-held – dream.

Goodbye for now, world. I go back into the wild.

Alaska: June 25

My last day of working at Earth Acres Farm in Homer, Alaska. The work was hard today. Genevieve and I cleaned out the hay barn to make room for new hay. This involved raking lots of old, moldy hay onto a tarp. It also involved wearing bandanas bandit-style to avoid breathing in the dust, mold, and rotten egg smell emitting from eggs that weasels had hidden in the hay for a midnight snack. Once the barn was cleared of about 250 pounds of old hay, we drug the tarp 300 feet away to spread the seed into the horse’s winter corral.
Our other job for the day was taking down an old wire fence. This involved bushwhacking through raspberry bushes, alders, and pushki (otherwise known as cow parsnip) to wind up wire. A little known fact about pushki is that its juice, if it gets on your skin, can give you third-degree burns if the sun hits the spot it touched. It is photosensitive. Goodness, God created a wild, weird, and wacky world!
I have been so blessed by my time with the Tymraks. They are honest, real, hardworking, hospitable, fun, and socially conscious. I hope I have been a blessing, as well.

WWOOFer bandit.

It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Goodbye little cabin on the bay.

My host family: Evelyn, Willie, and Genevieve. The youngest daughter, Loulou, was away for the night.

Alaska: June 24

Wingo the horse watches me work.

Today was a quiet day. I mainly just weeded the raspberry patches. I started out gung-ho, but by about 4 p.m. I was bored. There is a tedium in farm work that I did not expect. Still, overall, it is enjoyable working with my hands. And it makes food so much more delicious. I feel more satisfied when I eat after a long day of hard work. It feels like a reward, like a prize at the end of a race. I think men were made to work hard. Sometimes I fear that my chosen profession has made me join the ranks of the cubicle-bound, butt-sitting American. But I hope not. I will fight that demise.

The Midnight Sun grows some monster weeds. These dandelions were about 2 feet long!

Me and some big weeds.

Alaska: June 23

My second day of work on the farm. Today, I overslept a bit. The light is doing weird things to me. I go to bed late and sleep in. Ah well. I weeded the strawberry patches today. It was a bit tedious but still enjoyable. I only wish I could be here to enjoy some of the fruits of my labor. Willie said they could mail a can of preserves, though. I may have to take them up on that offer.
For dinner tonight, we had homemade sushi, red salmon, and bacon-wrapped scallops. And carrots. Could you get more Alaskan?! Also, with how healthy I’m eating and all the activity, I think I’ve lost 5 pounds already.
Went for a walk to Yule’s Point above the farm. It overlooks the bay and offers quite the sights. I walked home by myself and found myself worrying about bears again. I’m not afraid, but it definitely feels weird to know it is VERY possible to meet one.

Weeding the strawberry patches.

Fresh caught red salmon.

Homemade sushi.

The view of Kachemak Bay from Yule's Point.

Flowers on Yule's Point.

Alaska: June 22

My first day of working on the farm. I dug giant weeds out of the horse pasture with a hoe. I also used a hand saw to hack down elderberry trees in another horse pasture. We did this so the horses would be able to see their perimeters clearly and not hurt themselves if they should ever bolt. One thing that could make them bolt: bears. It is crazy how much of a reality bears are here. Also, moose are a problem. This morning, a sow and her kid bolted down the hill and through one of the fences.

While digging weeds out of the ground, I saw about 700 spiders scurrying here and there. Not kidding. Seven hundred. But I don't think I got even one spider bite. Maybe they are not so bad after all.

I enjoyed the work very much. Again, there was such simplicity in working with my hands beneath the sun, with a view of the water and mountains all around. I also rode Wingo, the old white horse. Beau, a bay horse, ate my fruit snacks right out of my jacket pocket. And we are all waiting for Red Moon to deliver her foal. It would be so neat to be here for that!!

The view of Earth Acres Farm from my porch.

Genevieve and Loulou with Beau and Wingo.

Horses.

I'm on a horse. (Old Spice tribute)

A horse and his girl.

Alaska: June 21

Summer solstice! Longest day of the year! Let’s talk about the light here. It is even weirder than I imagined. It’s almost indescribable. For instance, it is nearly midnight right now, and I can still see everything outside my window. Everything. It looks like it is 6 p.m. still. It really never gets dark. When I wake up at 3 in the morning, I can still see the mountains and trees. It is just dusky.
Josh dropped me off at the Homer Stageline bus station at 7:30 a.m. It was in an industrial, ghetto looking area, but the receptionist was nice. After a couple hours some more people showed up. One girl named Annie was also WWOOFing in Homer. She was from San Francisco. I must say it was nice to talk with a fellow novice about our uncertainties about just showing up on a random farm and working. There was also a guy named Tim. He grew up in Anchorage but now works at REI in Denver. Small world.
The bus ride was…long. We had to swing down to Seward on the way, which adds about 2 hours, but overall it was good. The fellow passengers made it interesting. Chuck brought his blue heeler dog; Geraldine had the most hair I’ve ever seen on a head and was a bit crazy; Meryl was from Hawaii and on vacation; Zach was a commercial fisherman on his way to Halibut Cove to work for the summer as a sandman. The drive, though long, was peaceful. Nick, our driver, played classical music that made quiet introspection easy. THE MOUNTAINS! Everywhere you look is so beautiful. I feel my heart expanding into all the raw wilderness.
Willie picked me up from the bus station. He looks like a farmer: jeans, boots, suspenders, scruffy beard. We went to SaveUMore, one of the local grocery stores, and met Evelyn there. The girls, Lou Lou, who is 12, and Genevieve, who is 15, were also there. I went with the ladies to Evelyn’s sister’s house. Sue has a dry cabin northwest of town. There, I also met Ev’s parents, Hank and Marietta, and her other sister Louise. Marietta is French-Canadian and has a thick accent. We had a great dinner and then went back to Earth Acre’s farm where I saw my little cabin.
My cabin is also a dry cabin, so I have no running water. I use an outhouse about 40 feet up the mountain and use a jug of water to brush my teeth, make my coffee and wash my face. It is cozy, though. And simple. With no internet and a view of the Kenai Mountains and the Katchemak Bay out my window, I am forced to slow down. This is good. I had not realized how incredibly addicted to the internet I had become. I really don’t need to be “connected” at all times. I hope I take that lesson home with me.

A sign at the Seward, Alaska, visitor's center. That's a long way.

Dinner with my Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) host family, plus a few extras.

My little cabin in Homer, Alaska.

The view of Katchemak Bay from my little cabin in Homer, Alaska.

Alaska: June 20

Fishing for Red Salmon in the Russian River! We got up early and drove down to where the Russian River meets the Kenai River on the Peninsula. We took a ferry across ($11.25 EACH!) and walked downriver 2-3 miles. Josh fished while I took photos. The sun came out mid-day, and it was really nice. I got a big kick out of carrying bear spray. We didn’t see any bears, but there is something…thrilling…about knowing you could see one at any time because they are really common.
The fishing was pretty crazy. People could only fish below where the ferry crossed the river. If the fish made it upstream past the cable, they were home free. People fished almost shoulder to shoulder. Lines got tangled often, but people were landing 20-pound salmon left and right.
We went further down so it was less crowded. We actually met a guy on the trail who said he was surprised we’d walked as far down as we did. He said most people are too scared of bears to walk so far into the wilderness. HA. Guess we’re fearless. And we had bear spray.
Josh only had a few bites most the day. But once we started walking back, he got into the thick of a line of fisherman and snagged four salmon in about an hour. What a fisherman! I'm looking forward to my turn next weekend! Watch out fish; here I come...

The view on our way down to fish the Kenai River.

The Russian River Ferry.

Fishermen in their fishing waders.

Combat fishing.

Bear combat. Made in Kalispell.

Harried mother duck and ducklings.

Bluebells on the Kenai River.

Josh landing his first Alaskan salmon.

Me. In Alaska.