I was lying in bed last night, about to go to sleep when I heard a sound that was so much a part of our lives in Alaska, it was the sound of that long zingggggg as the ice cracks. Last night the effect was not as clear throated as in the Hight Arctic along the Kobuk River, but it was there just the same. Let me tell you about the Kobuk.
The Kobuk is the largest clear water river in northern Alaska. It flows for 280 miles along the southern flank of the Brooks Range. The northern arctic caribou herd crosses it twice a year. I witnessed one crossing. It contains arctic char, shee fish, salmon and trout. It’s an ice highway in the winter and a water highway in the summer. Our village was nestled on its bank on the confluence of the Squirrel and Kobuk rivers.
When we were leaving Diomede, our boss Dick Francis, told us we could have our choice of three village schools Elim, Brevic Mission, or Kiana. I guess it was our reward for spending a year on Diomede and earning our stripes. The bush pilot who had brought Dick our to Diomede said “I’d take Kiana, it’s the most beautiful village in Alaska. And it was.
Kiana is about an hour north east of Kotzebue by bush aircraft. And bush aircraft is how we traveled. Our bush pilot was Lee Staheli and he lived about a quarter mile down river with his son Lee-Lee. Lee was quite a rascal. He’d flown PBYs in the Aleutian Islands during WWII, bootlegged, guided polar bear hunters and did whatever else it took to survive. He was a cross between Steve McQueen and MacGyver. He loved the ladies and the ladies loved him.
Back to Kiana, It got seriously cold in Kiana. Normally in the winter it would run from zero to -30. This was the best weather because the air was stable, the river frozen, and life was good. If it got colder than -30, you’d best stay indoors. Equipment failed a little too often when it got below -30. Solid metal landing gears might snap like a piece of licorice slapped against the edge of a counter top.
When the temperature was zero to minus thirty, you could go outdoors. You could cross country ski, and we did, learning all the obscure nuances of ski wax along the way. You could hunt, you could go down river to Noorvik to visit friends. You were mobile. You could take the mile long road up to the garbage dump and turn off your snowmobile and lay back on the seat and watch the northern lights dance heel to toe across the sky.
In comparison, where I grew up in Western Washington was and is, rain country. When the monsoon season sets in around mid October, the rain becomes relentless. It’s not that it rains in biblical proportions at any one time, it just that it never seems to stop.
People stay inside. They look out with faint hope, to see if the sky might be clearing. If it does, they might be able to rush out to accomplish some task and return with soaked socks. In Western Washington, you get wet, often soggy, occasionally soaked.
This was not so in the high Arctic. It was a dry snow. It was a snow that fell in late fall and traveled back and forth until spring break up. The Kobuk Valley is, by definition, a desert. The snow you saw in May was the same snow that fell in October.
Because the winter was long, and the cold was deep, the crystal clear water of the Kobuk froze very solid, dense, and thick. The Kobuk’s entire length was once continuous sheet of ice.
When the sun returned to the north, the tundra would start to warm, the snow and ice would start to melt. The water would swell the river and would lift the ice. Water would flow along the two sides of the river. Then, as new stresses were applied to the ice, it would begin its annual song.
Ice doesn’t snap apart, a crack appears and then it travels along the ice at warp speed in a long zing. Our bedroom was on the riverside and our house was on the bank. Spring night after spring night as the sky was filled with the northern lights, we would drift off to sleep with the river singing its own unique lullaby, we would drift off to sleep with break up not far away.
The ice on Big Lake was neither as loud nor as long, just a single zingggggg. But it took me back, to the frozen North just before break up. And it made me smile.
I’ve been working on some watercolor paintings this fall. They’re both from the town where I grew up. The light house was at Blaine, Washington, right on the Canadian Border. Before I was born there was a family living there and the kids were rowed in every day to attend school. By the time I came along it was gone. The other painting was down at the end of the dock, where they had the “stink plant” It was where they processed scrap fish into fertilizer. I later figured out there was no such thing as a “scrap fish.”
The LighthouseThe Stink Plant
I had prints done of both paintings. I had 40 done of the lighthouse, numbered and signed. At the moment 34 have been sold and six are left. If you’re interested they’re full sized and sell for $50 plus $7.50 S&H. I just now got the bottom prints back. I had 20 done and five are gone. They’re the same $50 plus $7.50 S&H. You can reach me at dick@dickssaga.com
It’s raining here this afternoon. It can’t seemed to make up it’s mind if it wants to snow, rain, or most likely something in-between. If you look across the way the rain has reduced the hills to a blur. I enjoy it. It’s not boring weather and around here it has a mind of it’s own. The poor weather people in the media in this neck of the woods must need counseling.
The mama deer and her teenager stopped by in the rain to ask if I might have an apple. I allowed that I had asked the lovely Rebecca to purchase a bag of apples at the store. I told them further that she had indeed purchased the apples and they were close at hand. To this they replied with a look that said “and step lively if you don’t mind.”
Elsie the Mamma Deer
I’ve been thinking a lot about the critters the past few years. And in doing so, I’ve arrived at a different understanding about my relationship with the critters.
There was a time that I was not as friendly with the critters of the world as today. When Becky and I were living in Alaska, the practice was to hunt or fish for the family meat. I understood that a man needs to go kill things so that his family can have the protein to grow healthy.
We were living in Kiana which is a very beautiful village at the confluence of the Squirrel and Kobuk rivers. The Kobuk was two hundred and eighty miles long and the largest clear water river in northern Alaska. It teemed with salmon and shee fish. The shee fish is about the size of a salmon and is called the tarpon of the north. It has amazing white meat that is delicious.
A trip to the village post office and I was fitted out with a hunting and fishing license. The fishing license allowed us to have a 30’ subsistence gillnet I understood nets, I’d been a commercial fisherman.
Lee Staheli was our bush pilot. He’d been a sergeant-pilot during WW2 in the Aleutians. He flew a PBY Catalina hauling freight and dignitaries up and down the chain. In the summer he wore a shinny red jacket, brown pants, a crew cut and three days growth of beard. A couple of years ago he was inducted into the Bush Pilot Hall of Fame.
Now Lee and his kid Lee-Lee lived down on the bank of the Kobuk in a cabin that looked like it was a painting in Alaska magazine. Inside it had a spool and some stumps for furniture. It was kind of rough living but Lee was trying to get an air taxi service off the ground so to speak.
I’d had a Thompson’s 18 footer shipped up by barge. It had a 70 hp Johnson that I’d bought brand new for around a thousand bucks. I look at the boats out here on the lake today and they’d laugh at me with that motor. But, it performed it’s job well.
So, my care package from home arrived in the form of a 30’ gillnet which I loaded into the Thompsons and headed down to Staheli’s place on the river bank, about a quarter mile down river from town. We figured out an anchor and buoy system for one end of the net and a shore anchor for the other end.
We used the Thompson’s to set the net and then pick it. The net almost always caught 30 fish. It didn’t matter if we set it for a couple of hours, or overnight, 30 fish. Some combination of salmon and shee fish. We’d toss ‘em in laundry tubs
Staheli looked at our wash tub of fish, shook his head and put a plank across the top of two 55 gallon empty drums. He went in the house, got some knives then brought out a propane burner and a pressure cooker. Staheli was like that, had what you needed when you needed it.
We were in the canning business. Becky and I would gut the fish, guts and head into the river to be recycled, meat cut to size and stuffed in the cans. We canned salmon for days. We had so much salmon the Famous Snoopy, the five thousand dollar circus dog that you’ve heard so much about, started complaining and wanting dog food again. Let them eat salmon….or cake…or in Snoopy’s case both.
And of course I hunted caribou and moose, with some success. I won’t go into detail, but in the end I didn’t find much enjoyment in the process. I mean, I did it because it’s what we could afford, but frankly hunting is just a lot of hard work so you can eat. And in my case the hunting often took place at -30 degrees. It’s so cold you need to wear a down filled face mask and wear goggles. When you breath in the hair in your nose freezes like tiny daggers.
When we came back to America from Alaska I was happier going to the supermarket and buying what we needed. It was less bother.
So, Elsie the deer brought her teenager by and I leaned against the house cutting slices of apple for them. Every minute or so, they would both lift their heads and their ears would rotate scanning their environment for danger. The rain kind of muted the sound so they were a bit skittish. They needed to be doing deer business, and being constantly alert for danger was their deer business. She’s had two fawns in the spring, and now only one. Cougars need to kill a deer every seven to ten days.
Deer have deer business, bears have bear business, otters have otter business. I’ve tried to become respectful of this and intrude into their business as little as possible. When my dock became unsafe and I had to remove it, I worried about the otters that live in the space between the float and the deck above. Instead of destroying it, I pulled it against the shore. Problem solved. I’m sure eventually I’ll get a letter from the county telling me I’m being environmentally unsound.
I like the idea that critters have their own agenda. I enjoy watching them going about it. We live near a vast forest land and every once in awhile one of the forest critters will wander past to say howdy. Three cougars up at the store end of the lake walked across the lawn going down to have a drink from the lake, a mamma and her two adolescents. The property owners took pictures and put them on the Big Lake group. Folks said “You ought to shoot ‘em.” I wrote back, “No need to shoot ‘em, they just doing cougar business.”
It was late December and we’d had a storm. This was not your average storm, but a storm driving freezing rain with hurricane strength. It came during the night and coated the north end of the school in a solid sheet of ice. The strength of the wind pushed the north side of the building causing the building to flex like a parallelogram. The school maintenance man braved the storm to ask us to come up to his place until it was over, we didn’t…we would now.
The wind was compressed as it passed through the Bering Strait. It produced a sound as it flowed around the building that I had never heard before, it was the sound of being in the belly of the beast. It was the experience of being inside a massive river of air at full song.
In the morning we went outside to survey the damage, we were greeted by the sight of our radio antenna in pieces on the ground. The ice had built up on it until it looked like a white coaxial cable, then it had shattered into dozens of pieces. It was our only contact with the outside world. We had planned to attempt a radio/phone patch to hear our parent’s voices at Christmas. It was not to be.
Our school advisory board has told us it was traditional for the school to close between Christmas and New Years. School shaped our lives as we lived upstairs over the school and kids would be with us all day and often in our quarters in the evening visiting. We were looking forward to the holiday, but we were feeling a bit isolated.
Our moods started to lift that afternoon when we had a visit from our maintenance man’s wife. She was painfully shy, having lived her entire life on Diomede. She had brought two pairs of gloves she had knitted for us.
“You must not dance with your hands not covered.” She said.
“Dance?”
“Yes, with the drums tonight.”
Becky and I looked at each other. We turned and thanked her profusely and each tried on our pair of gloves.
“How is the dance done?” Becky inquired.
There upon we received our impromptu dance lesson.
That night the people of the village, a little over a hundred people, gathered at the school house seated in neat rows, the men on the right and the women on the left. Becky and I sat at the back of the room, her on the left, me on the right. We’re fast learners.
In front were three drummers. Their drums consisted of animal skin stretched over a hoop wider than than a man. It had a single handle on the bottom. The drum was held up in front of their face and was played by striking it with a thin long rod.
Once the drummer had established a beat, the men would start the singing. It was ancient music used to tell the stories of their lives. Songs of celebration when they had taken a whale or played to mourn someone lost. They played as small tendrils of cold white air seeped in around the window frames like ghosts of midwinters past. Even not knowing the words it carried you away, connecting you with a past world.
After several songs set the tone, people began to dance and act out the music. The women wore fur lined kuspuk, a hooded over dress, and gloves. The men their best clothes saved for the occasion. The dancing seemed like it would go on for ever and we were starting to feel as though, thankfully, they had forgotten us. They hadn’t. The drums ended one song with the three rapid beats…and a room full of heads turned toward us. There was no option, we got up, gloves in hand, and walked up the aisle between the men on the right, women on the left.
The music started…we danced, keeping time with the music. As it rose, we danced harder..and as it grew softer, we slowed. Once more it grew louder and anticipating the three beats marking the end of the song we gave a small jump, landing on the last beat and then silence. Then laugher and applause. Apparently the jump at the end and getting the timing right had saved the game for us. It both amused them and ended the evening on a high note. They had saved the last dance for us.
We went to bed that night feeling more uplifted. We had taken part and given it our best shot and it seemed to have gone a long way into becoming a part of the community.
The next night was Christmas Eve and a pinocle tournament. They had saved one carton of cigarettes for this event and it was a prize beyond money. The last cigarettes had been smoked sometime in October. The village shaman morphed into heath aid informed me I was to be his partner. He figured I was about the only man on the island that didn’t smoke and after we won, the prize would be all his.
The way the game worked was that each pair kept their own score at the table. We would play four hands, the winners standing and moving to the next table. I began to notice a point gain between the standing up and sitting down again in our favor by a good margin. I started to inquire, but the shaman’s look told me not to bother.
We played hard, every trick taken a small triumph. Finally, it was all over and the points totals were being written on the chalk board. I knew that our score had been wildly inflated. It didn’t matter, we lost. The fact that we lost made me laugh inside. I think that being a “skilled” score keeper was just an accepted part of the game, and someone else had done better at it than my partner.
While I was playing pinocle, Becky was sitting on the floor with a deck of cards in her hand with all the other women of the village playing snerts. Snerts is like a community solitaire where you play on everyone else’s cards. It is a high speed game that caused a joyous cacophony of squeals and shouts ending in raucous laughter when someone played their last card and yelled “Snerts!”
After the games I dragged out the box of toys that Captain Mo from the North Star III had collected for the village kids and gave it to the village leaders to distribute to the kids. Each present had a kids name on it with a half a dozen spares in case someone had moved to the island since Mo had gotten his list from the BIA in Nome.
I don’t know if the village was aware of it, but they had driven away our blues by fully including us in their traditions. We went to sleep that night in good spirits, still completely cut off from the outside world.
The next morning we got up and got into the storage space under the eves and pulled out the box that had been patiently waiting for us since it came ashore from the North Star III. Our family and friends had gotten together in August and wrapped presents for us. Our friends Jon and Barb and taken a picture of them holding up a sign saying “Merry Christmas.” I have to admit my vision got a bit blurry.
One of the gifts had been a Hickory Farms assortment that we set aside to be eaten on New Years.
Later in the morning the women of the village gathered in the school kitchen to prepare the community Christmas Day meal. Their chatter and laughter filled the school while Becky and I helped convert the large school room into a huge dining room. There were a couple of frozen turkeys lovingly saved for the occasion along with seal and walrus.
These were the months where there was no alcohol in the village and that in itself was a blessing because everyone gathered together for the meal in warm friendship. During the meal people would stand and publicly give gifts. These gifts normally had some significance to them and were met with laughter and applause.
We were surprised when someone stood up and cried I need those two gussaq dancers. All the eyes turned toward us. We were the only two gussaq on the island. White folk. We went forward.
“No children” Andrew our cook cried out. “You are married and have no children. I have decided you need children so I am giving you this gift.”
He opened the package and took out a huge oosik. The entire room erupted into laughter. He handed it to us jointly. We had the good sense to have red faces as we accepted it. It must have worked because the next Chrismas Nathan arrived on the scene.
We were gifted several other things including ivory carvings, fishing sticks and Eskimo slippers, but the most poignant gift was to come a few days later.
Our men had met their cousins from Russia in the fall while hunting walrus, away from the prying eyes of the Soviet lookouts on top of Big Diomede. They had agreed to meet again at Christmas time on the ice between the two islands. When they returned from this holiday clandestine meeting, they brought with them a gift from the Russian school teacher on the mainland. It consisted of a few candies, like salt water taffy, a package of Sputnik cigarettes, some plastic clothes pins and some cards. It was what she could spare for those teachers she knew were living on that island on the American side.
I still have that gift today and have included a picture of it. We sent back that Hickory Farms selection we’d received.
The time between Christmas and the New Year were filled with Eskimo games, cards, and a warm sense of community in a world completely surrounded by snow and ice, totally isolated from the rest of the world.
After not being able to raise us on the radio for two weeks our boss send a message to us on the two Nome radio stations, KNOM and KICY, “Diomede, please come up on the radio.” Eventually we hauled out the National Guard radio and managed to get a message through that we’d lost our antenna in a storm. A few days later when the weather cleared an airplane flew low over the island and pushed out a box that dropped onto the frozen ice in front of the school. It has a complete antenna with the ropes needed to attach it.
It would be another month before the villagers would get enough of the ice in front of the school cleared for a landing strip so planes could finally land. We had been completely cut off from the rest of the world for almost six months. Yet in spite of that, we’d had the best Christmas ever.
When Kip comes to give me a hand, we don’t rush into things. The day starts with coffee, his thermos, my Keurig. I suggestion he might enjoy a fresh brewed cup was met with an arched eyebrow. Again, I hadn’t understood the unwritten law of the west, “real carpenters drink coffee from Stanley thermos.” I didn’t offer again, and it too was appreciated.
So, today was the big day, the machine was coming. Because I didn’t have a truck that could easily carry it, so I paid the money and they agreed to send it out. It was waiting for it’s arrival that had Kip and I into our second cup of coffee and a general discussion of the failures of the Sea Hawk defense, when we heard someone coming down the hill.
We went out to find a gleaming white two wheel drive pick up nose down our driveway with a trailer behind carrying “the machine.”
“Hi, all the guys at the shop were out delivering so I decided to deliver the machine myself”
Kip and I looked at the machine, the trailer, truck, the driver, and finally each other with a look that said this was going to take awhile.
I asked the young woman if she had four wheel drive. She did not. Nose down hill, no weight in the bed, two wheel drive, it was not going to happen. She realized it. You could see the small. OMG feeling going over her. You could tell she was thinking in trying to do something good, she had messed it up.
She had a nice smile, and that helped. A half hour later the truck, trailer and driver were all safely reconnected and headed back to the barn. Yeah, I know, but smiles still count.
So, we had the machine and we wrestled it down the hill, onto the patio and into the lower level of the house.
The machine was a Husqvarna cement cutter in bright orange It was powered by a gasoline engine and had a spinning blade attached to the front. It was and is, a serious piece of equipment. We went to work with the seriousness the machine required.
We attached and tested the water hose. We got the shop vac on standby to vacuum up the water. I found breathing apparatus and ear cups. We opened all the doors and windows. We choked the engine, spun the starter…nada.
Now, every manly man is supposed to know, intuitively the workings of all pieces of machinery with out the benefit of instructions books. We looked at the engine.
“Whadda ya think?
Oooops…. the kill switch was in the kill position.
We had pulled the starter cable six times on full choke and could smell gasoline. We wondered if perhaps we should have another cup of coffee on the off chance we had flooded it. We worked out a compromise, we’d pull the starter cable once…if it fired, we went to work. It fired..
The mighty orange machine was lined up, the water was flowing around the spinning disc, I lowered the blade five inches into the cement.
“Push on the blade side of the handle” said Kip, once again instructing the sometimes clueless teacher. “I’m on it” I yelled back over the din of the engine.
We came to end of the first cut as a high electronic sound started. It had a slow cadence, not fast enough to dance to, but it was persistent. Must be something wrong with the mighty orange machine I though as I pushed down the kill switch. The tone only became louder and more insistent. What else is running I wondered as a second one joined the chorus. However, with the addition of the second beat, it was almost danceable.
Finally, through the fog of construction, breathing apparatus, eye protection and hearing protection a light made it through to my brain. They were the fire alarms going off throughout the house.
Had you been close enough you might have heard a few muttered oaths followed by the clatter as I went off in search of box fans. Along the way Danielle grabbed the kids and headed out for a walk to avoid the toxic fumes. We toiled on.
Now, part of the trouble here is that I hate to ever admit that I hadn’t taken into account every possibility. At our age, it’s far too easy for those of a different generation to exchange glances if everything doesn’t go as billed. But in this case, opening windows had not been enough to mitigate the power of Briggs and Stratton at full song in the basement.
We cut lines for the shower, vanity, toilet and kitchen sink. By working straight through except for our ten o’clock coffee break, we finished up by 1:00. Lines cut, machine coaxed back up the hill and with the help of two grandkids on recess from computer school, neatly cleaned and polished, ready for pick up.
Now the fun part starts, running the jack hammer to remove the cement from between the cuts. Then we figure the fall, and connect the entire plumbing system. After that comes the fill and then pouring cement and finishing it. I think perhaps I should retitle my operation from “remodeling the basement” to “The Year of Old Guys Working Dangerously.”
Going to school in Blaine was rather an ecumenical sort of an affair with k-12 all being scooped up and delivered back in the same bus. I rode bus number two driven by Harold Freeman who had a place out on the Sweet Road.
Now being in grade school, the best way to guarantee your survival was to be invisible. High school kids, unlike teachers, didn’t have to put up with any smart asses. This served the greater good in helping along the socialization process. It also helps with the transfer of information down the chain of command.
In this case, what I was going to be schooled on was the importance of fashion. The two high school girls sitting behind me were discussing one of the young men in their class and remarked that he even had a “White Stag.”
Now, I found this curious so I listened more intently. It turned out that a “White Stag” was a white jacket. Apparently, the wearing of the “White Stag” jacket imbued a person with a certain favorable aura. Or at least it was a good starting point.
The kid down the street across from the windmill store didn’t wear a White Stag. He wore a motorcycle jacket. I sometimes hung out at his place back in the converted chicken coop made into a shop, with the high school kids. It wasn’t long before a 57 powder blue Ford pulled in and some of the guys got out. One was wearing a White Stag jacket. It was short, thin, with no lining. It was late October and he had that look that said “I’m freezing my butt off but I’m going to smile and act like I’m not.”
I have to admit, that at that point I was somewhat confused about what fashion was and why it was important to achieve it. Being “cool” hadn’t been invented yet, but I’m sure ’57 had it’s own version and it was what it was about. But freezing your butt off seemed a high price to achieve this level of social esteem.
When Becky and I went off to teach in the Arctic fashion was simply solved during the Berry Dairy Days in Burlington when Stowe’s had it’s big sale. Buy what ever was comfortable and warm. Problem solved.
When I went to teach at a suburban school outside of Marysville, I dug through my Stowe’s sale clothes and got out some shirts, ties, and slacks. Wanting to make a good impression and not look too much like the rube from the country I got all dressed up for my first day, tied my best version of a Windsor knot and off to work I went.
I rounded up all those kids, and did all the magic teaching stuff all morning long. I was feeling good about myself as I went to the faculty room to get a cup of coffee. There a rather pious young teacher looked at me with a look of beatific innocence and said “I heard narrow ties were coming back in style.”
And, after all this practice of trying to get it just right, I must still report falling short of the mark. I was in Petersburg on the good ship Ella Marie and needed slickers for the boat. I said “Bobby, if I’m to survive the monsoon that is often Southeast, I need some slickers.
“Consider it done Dicky” says Bobby, and off we went to the store at the shipyard where Bobby was greeted as if he owned the place. “Slickers for my friend, say’s Bobby and I’m ushered off to shelf where I find my size.
Back to the cashier where Bobby is standing…silently. There is a look on his face that says that I have violated a code which should have been know, but wasn’t. The two clerks looked at Bobby with concern.
“Maybe I should have told him, but I just thought…” said one.
Bobby put his arm around me and picked up the bright yellow slickers. We walked back to the shelf that housed the slickers and returned the yellow ones and picked up the bright orange ones. Bobby leaned forward and said quietly, “Yacht people wear yellow Dicky, we wear orange.”
Returning to the till everyone brightened right up, took the cash and sent us on our way back to the dock in the borrowed truck with Bobby smiling happily. “Don’t worry Dicky, you’ll get it figured out.”
Ummmm Bobby, if I haven’t by this time, chances are I won’t.
I used the smoke in the air for a reason not to go for my daily walk. I examined this reason for believability. Was it an excuse or a reason? I examined it some more. The question was, could I stay home without feeling guilt? After a careful weighing of the evidence, I stayed home and dealt with the guilt. It wasn’t easy, it never is.
So, I have one rule, regardless of anything else, I’m free not to walk on Sunday without feeling guilt. I’ve allowed myself one full day of guiltless excess. Where has this come from. I was raised a Unitarian for God’s sake. Unitarians don’t feel guilt, they reason things out to the last possible nuance.
Today I greeted the sun during my walk. It was sort of smokey, but it was fog. I breathed in deep trying to find a trace of smoke, no luck. I walked on.
You know Steinbeck’s thing in Cannery Row about the “Chinaman” that slipped through the pilings in “the interval between day and night when time stops to examine itself.” That’s always stuck with me, that division between night and day. I sort of stumbled into a metaphor about where we are in our country atm, but I didn’t mean to.
So, my daily route takes me up the slow gentle slope of West Big Lake and down the steeper hill to the boat launch where I always tell myself “I’m rounding the far post.” Then I head back up the hill, I figure this is the money part of the walk, where I’m doing the best at pushin’ all that fat out of the little cracks and crevices in my body and giving my heart a little exercise. Once I hit the crest it’s a gentle slope back down to the house. Once I get to the top of the hill I can once again feel worthy that I have done what I expect I should be doing to stay healthy. The other part is, I feel less guilty sitting on my butt on the computer if I’ve done my walk, sort of like I bought some self forgiveness ahead of time.
Once I got back the lighting on the houses across the lake was amazing, so I took a picture for you.
I like this time of year because of the sharp contrasts, it makes the contrast really pop.
So, in a little less than an hour we’ll have the first presidential debate. I don’t want to watch it, but I have to. Civic responsibility and all that. You’re gonna vote for who you vote for, all I ask is that you give the consequences of your vote careful consideration. There’s a lot riding on it.
