A journey is but one thousand steps

Having recently relocated my family from Alaska back to Canada's middle province of Manitoba the steps have at times seemed like one thousand.

The packing, loading and inventory for Canada Customs.

The last minute maintenance on the van.

And the driving.  Lots of driving.  On ice, snow, gravel, and sand.

But every day was a step.  And every step brought progress, and progress brought renewed strength and clarity.

Not unlike the rest of our life - our character, our integrity, our morality.

Our children used to train with a renowned sensai, Katsutaka Tenaka, in Anchorage.

One of his daily mantras he had the kids repeat was

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

Because every step is taking you somewhere.

Going where no kitchen has gone before

Three weeks in Cordova isn't a lot of time.  Not when you're remodeling a basement room into a functioning kitchen suite.  But with perseverance, some help, and a whole lot of work, amazing things can happen.

We relocated temporarily back to Cordova from Anchorage while Theresa was studying for her board exam and I could do some house maintenance for a friend.  This is one of those times when you feel good about being able to bless someone that has spent her whole life giving to her community; in service, support, or encouragement.  But this time grace comes not from her giving, but from receiving.

Too often we have trouble with the receiving part.  We can make it on our own.  We don't need help.  We're fine.

But the truth is in being able to live with both hands open - one to give, and one to receive.  If either hand becomes clenched, then our lives become unbalanced; either from only taking what society has to offer and giving nothing back, or from giving and never being able to receive.

Both take work.

Both have their reward.

Both define community.

Those Golden Hills

A short drive north from Anchorage puts you in the Talkeetna Mountains.  These rugged, granite peaks jut viciously into the air proclaiming their dominance over the landscape, inspiring awe and reverence to anyone that ventures into their valleys.  We drove up into Hatcher Pass this past week and spent a few days in the majestic beauty of this area of Alaska.

Robert Lee Hatcher staked the first gold claim in this valley in 1906, and the next thirty five years saw his claim develop into a booming mining consortium that at its peak mined 34,416 ounces of gold in one year with over two hundred men blasting away miles and miles of tunnels into the rock.

The remains of the Independence Mine is mostly in ruins, but some of the buildings have been restored as a heritage site.  An interpretive trail winds through the rubble giving a brief, unique glimpse into the lives of families that lived in these hills prior to World War Two.

Children played and taught themselves to ski in the surrounding hills after a day of learning in the small schoolhouse that was incorporated into the mining camp.

The sawyers found time to make them toys in between milling timbers for cribbing in the mine shafts.

 

And the men cycled routinely through the underground, blasting, pounding, and loading their ore into buckets and hoppers in search of the flakes of gold that swept them all into this forlorn, isolated valley in the far north.

Today the hills are silent with only a placard or two adorning the rusty old equipment remaining as a witness to the vibrant, thriving community that once found its future in this valley.

As we drive away, the image of an Atlas Imperial inline 8 cylinder diesel generator, producing 275 hp at 514 rpm tugs at my mind.

I would like to have heard it run.

Trying to be French

There is nothing better to soothe and quieten my soul than the repetitive staccato of the pattering rain falling softly from the mist outside my window.  It's a day of gentleness, peacefulness, and contentment.  A day to put my feet up and grab a good book.

If there is but one fault in our family, it is in our obsession with books.  Our kids read books voraciously; we pack them out of our public library by the bagful.  I, in moments of weakness, order them online through half.com or paperback swap.  And at $0.50 per softcover, the local Salvation Army Thrift Store has contributed many times to a rapacious library that I know I can't possibly consume or contain within my lifetime.

Still doesn't change the obsession.  There is something about written thought, preserved on paper, that lures me over and over into a longing to embark on another literary journey.  And without doubt, I have many of such journeys progressing at any one time - all so compelling, all so inviting.  To wander through worlds of stories, ideas, places - each page opening up new avenues and streets I didn't even know were there.  Who can resist such a call?

"The French have a word for this.  When someone goes for a walk with no particular destination in mind, willing to go wherever the wind blows him, that person is a flâneur.  He saunters.  He strolls.  He takes a right out of his apartment building one day, having taken a left yesterday.  He walks until the smell of fresh bread leads him to make his first turn, down a side street with a bakery.  He continues his walk with a fresh Danish in his hand, until a jogger passes him with a sleek gray dog on a leash.  The jogger turns right at the next light so the flâneur does too, going about half a block before he finds himself in front of a stamp and coin store that has always intrigued him.

"Since he is a flâneur he has time to go in.  When he comes back out, he knows that Bhutan, of all places, is known for its postage stamps, which include Walt Disney characters as well as commemorative issues featuring the British royal family.  After that, he chooses his turns based on the associations with the names of the streets, ending up on one he has walked many times before.  This time however, the window boxes in front of one house are full of of freshly planted red geraniums.  He knows the smell so well that he does not know if he is really smelling them or only imagining that he is smelling them.  Either way, life is good for this flâneur.  Because he is going no place in particular, he does not miss a thing.  Plus, this pleasure is affordable.  So far this morning has cost him $1.49, the price of a cherry Danish."  (p. 81 Taylor, Barbara B.  An Altar in the World.  2009 HarperCollins)

Books do that for me.  So today is such a day to embrace the call of the flâneur; pick up that used tome and wander unfettered to see where it will lead.  

Call it a tincture for the soul.

The spattering drizzle is waiting.

A Good Day to be in the Meadow

I went out today looking for a chocolate lily.  It's been blooming everywhere but as yet I haven't photographed it this year.  We had a good rain overnight and the grass was glistening with water drops.  It was a good day for a walk in the meadow.

A good day to try to process some thoughts banging around in my head.

Global Inequality.

It's obvious - I live in a wealthy country.  But the extent of the wealth becomes obscene when measured against the average annual global income.  $9000.00.  That's it.  Average out everyone's income around the world for a whole year and that's what you get.  I'm no Milanovic, and there are all kinds of words and formulas like PPP's (the average income does increase to $11,000 in PPP's) and Gini's that are way beyond me, but I understand enough of it to have that bother me.

Well, to borrow from a well known 12 step program, "Make a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves" is right close to the top.  A good place to start.

OK, I was born in a wealthy country.  I was a sick kid; intussusception requiring surgery within weeks of my birth, adhesion's in my early twenties requiring further surgery, and cancer landing me back in surgery at age 27.  All provided and cared for by the Canadian Health Care system.  A geographical roll of the dice that landed in my favor.

Education?  No problem.  I even had the intellectual capacity to shirk my way through most of my physics and chemistry.  Actually squandered the opportunity - just did enough to make it through.

Went on to fly helicopters for a while.  Did OK.  But a shop teacher told me a long time ago that I had gifted hands.  It's easy for me to tackle things that are mechanical or equipment related.  It comes naturally.

The genetic dice roll if you will.

All a gift.

According to the UC Atlas of Global Inequality someone born in Burundi wouldn't quite have the luck of the draw that I did.  First off, with a mortality rate of children under five reaching close to 20%, even the healthy kids have a lousy shot at the deck.  Not to mention a kid with stomach problems like I had.  I wouldn't have stood a chance of surviving.  And education?  Let's just say with the current illiteracy rate close to 50%, I won't be expecting to see any popping up in my blog audience stats anytime soon.

 

It makes me wish there was no currency in the world.

No corporations or corruption.

No capitalism.

No consumerism.

It all feels pretty ugly.

Not much I can do about that poor chap in Burundi though.  But the scope of inequality within our borders is just as disturbing.  I'll go back to my native country for a few statistics.  According to Hennessey's Index for February 2011, one child in ten lives in poverty.  1 in 4 if you're aboriginal.  This is in Canada!  The average compensation of the top 100 CEO's for the same year - $6.6 million.  And trust me, the picture in the United States is no better. 

I feel pretty helpless about that.  What can I do?

I guess it starts with awareness.

Then follow with my feelings of entitlement.  If it's all a gift, what can I cling to with a closed fist?

Nothing. 

I found my chocolate lily.  But I'm too late.  The season to consider them appears to be over.

There's something strangely disturbing in that.

A Photo Study of Seldovia

I'll let the pictures speak for me.  It was a wonderful weekend in a beautiful town.

Harbor

Otter

Canoe Jousting

A Wooden Boat and Water - ahhhh, Tranquility

Chainsaw Carving

Church Bells

Birdhouse

Coffee House

??? - Only time will tell

There's a Moose in my Meadow

The ongoing quest for photographs of the animals in our yard continues and this weekend it paid off.  He came sauntering into the meadow in front of the house from the north, leisurely ripping large mouthfuls of grass as he went.

 Then, directly in front of the front door to the garage, he stopped, finding a particularly delicious patch of foliage.  I grabbed my camera and slithered out of the door, keeping an old wooden barrel between me and him, praying he wouldn't spook and leave me naught for my efforts.





He saw me, but found me uninteresting and continued to munch while I was able to watch and snap to my hearts content.









This one I just caught passing through.  He wasn't nearly as interested in sticking around, and I wasn't about to try and entice him to change his mind.

Must Take All

In the home where we have been staying, the phone line and internet connection has been essentially disabled for the past week.  There is such severe interference on the line that voice communication is almost impossible.  The response from a service desk personnel to one of my calls for repair could have been amusing if it hadn't been so frustrating:

"I can hear someone is there but I can't understand what you're saying!"

The phone line needs repair, you goof.

Unfortunately, Alaska Communications Systems, the provider for both our phone line and internet, has a Policy that the account holder, and only the account holder, can order repair work before they can issue a service ticket.

Unfortunately, the account holder is on a boat anchored outside of Puerto Williams, a small isolated city of roughly 2000 people on the Beagle Canal in the far southern tip of Chile.

Unfortunately, the satellite phone the account holder carries for emergency communication ends up dropping the call before the interminable maze of routing messages and holds can be navigated in reaching the ACS service desk.

Unfortunately, the email capability the account holder has through their single sideband radio on their boat isn't acceptable to ACS because it doesn't originate from one of the two email accounts they have on file for the account holder, even though it clearly states and identifies the account holder and that they wish to have the phone line fixed.

It's one of those policies with a huge, bold, capital "P."

To be fair, I suspect the competent folk at the ACS service desk are aware of that.  In my last conversation with them they were actually quite apologetic and conciliatory - he kept answering my questions with the disclaimer: "What I have been told by our business office is..."

In other words, please don't shoot the messenger.

Days like these aren't easy nor fun.  But life's like that.  One day you might find a great treasure at a garage sale, then the next day all you can do is build the box that will help you hold and remember it.

And you must take all.

Western Red Cedar, Tung oil finish

Boneshakers

Theresa has been starting to ride her bicycle daily to work which I think is quite an accomplishment.  It's a 25 mile round trip, and the benefits she gains with the drop of elevation in the morning is paid dearly on her uphill climb home.  It's a testament to her endurance and inner strength that she continues to leave each morning, pushing her bike out of the garage with panniers stuffed with her lunch, change of clothes, and books.

Bikes are modes of transportation that have been around for quite some time.  About.com records the earliest form of two wheeled transportation to be

"in 1790 by Comte Mede de Sivrac of France. Called a celerifere, it was a wooden scooter-like device with no pedals or steering."

From there we gained the velocipede, the penny farthing, and pneumatic tires by 1888.  Today bicycles have advanced to include all kinds of exotic components and carbon fiber.  Take a tour of your local bike shop - the sticker shock will reveal just how far this technology has come.

But our bikes are old.  We love them, and they have seen a lot of miles.  Both are Gary Fishers of mid 90's vintage that, along with all of the local use, have taken us on two self supported tours through the southern mountains of British Columbia; a road tour of Highway 1 between Calgary and Vancouver, followed two years later by the abandoned and scenic Kettle Valley Railway between Castlegar and Hope.  

And they've been abused.  For the last eight years they've seen a lot of their life strapped to the lifelines of our sailboat.  They've hauled propane, groceries and kids with the help of a Chariot double trailer and navigated the trails and loops of Unalaska Island in the Aleutians.

It's not surprising they're showing wear and tear.  It was high time for some sorely needed attention.

I began by digging through my toolbox and locating my bicycle toolkit.  Bicycle maintenance is an interesting diversion from the standard fasteners, with toothed sockets and slim metric wrenches becoming the requirement.  Stripping them down revealed a few dry bearings and pitted races in the drivetrain.  New pedals, chain, and a bottom bracket cartridge soon had the wheels spinning again like new.

But the hills still hurt.  Too bad our old muscles and bones can't be resurrected as easily as our bikes.  But with the gas prices climbing ever higher and higher, that too may be overcome by the end of summer.

Patience and Preserverance

For the last few weeks I've been watching the neighbors next door to see who they were.  I'd just catch occasional, fleeting glimpses of them through the window or hear them calling to each other when I'd be out in the yard, but never well enough to identify them or find out what they were doing here.

The big breakthrough came the other day when I noticed what appeared to be a new building site not far from the house - a few feet up in a newly splintered tree that must have blown down in one of our winter wind storms.  Sure enough, they were obsessed with it.  I could see them flitting around, coming and going.  But try as I might, I just couldn't get close enough to really see what was going on.  The moment I'd get near, they'd vanish.  Then later I would see they would be back, flitting and fluttering around thier particular tree.

But having found their location allowed me to strategize a plan.  Lots of brush nearby; I had an old gray blanket in the car.  Armed with my trusty Nikon equipped with a 70-300 zoom,  the blanket over my head, I attempted this morning to get a few shots.

Turns out the camouflage was a great success.  They didn't seem bothered at all.  And I was able to photograph, identify, and watch with amusement as they continued to build their home one beak-full at a time.

I'm no experienced birder, and the species ended up being a Poecile atricapilla, or common black capped chickadee.  They are frequently found almost everywhere throughout North America.  But they're a neat bird - clear, trilling calls, with legs and feet strong enough to allow them to forage while hanging upside down.

It was a rewarding experience as it was another lesson in the wonderful ways of the world around me.





Plus it's always pleasant to find out that the new neighbors moving in are fellow woodworkers.

The Gift of Seeing

Lady's Slipper Orchid
Cypripedium guttatum
Unalaska Island

There seems to be a perverted connection in our new world culture between "busyness" and "happiness."  We link "frenzy" with "success," filling our days churning out proliferating quantities of activity - all in a frantic pursuit of that illusive horizon.  We're upset if the commuter in front of us is traveling too slow; it interferes with our "production."  Our lives become one endless train of events, each one simply a link to the next, our steps becoming a never ending chain stretching into our future with the fading hope of one day obtaining a reward.

 Grave markers, Dutch Harbor

I think that is why sailing as well as working with traditional hand tools can become so appealing.  They both offer a forced curriculum where the participant can learn a new perception of time - a lesson where finally the eyes and heart can be opened to the moment.   Robert Cushman Murphy, a naturalist aboard a whaling ship in the early 1900's, writes sympathetically about this lack of seeing among his fellow crewmen while becalmed in the Sargasso Sea: 

"Why, after all, should these equatorial children take delight in the experiences that will somehow carry me through until you and I are once again together?  Their comfort is far less than mine, their work more arduous, their privacy nil.  In the face of unfamiliar food, they remember only their palmiest days ashore.  Hope of money, all too likely to dim with experience, is their sole lure.  Their thoughts and desires are centered on whales - whales and a port.  They follow the calling not for its own sake, but only for what it may bring - the lay, one-hundredth, one hundred-and-fiftieth, one two-hundredth, or whatever the humble cut may be.  They are poor observers of things in general.  Living creatures interest them when they can eat them or boil them down to oil, but they are as unconcerned with the dazzling plunge of a tropic-bird as with the glowing, luminescent waters of a Caribbean evening.  Sunsets, and the constellations of night skies, they do not appear to see.  Perhaps their first thought of a star will come when the Daisy, her hold filled, turns her bow away from the southern ocean.  Then we shall all be gazing nightly toward the line until changeless Polaris pops up to guide us home."  (p. 11, Logbook for Grace,Time Life books, 1947)

Petersburg, Alaska

The subtle difference between Murphy and his shipmates is in the emphasis of what the moment could do to them instead of what it could do for them.  Quietness and solitude have very little to offer the mind seeking another notch in the belt of individual profiteering, but the heart longing to be changed will find the moment of stillness invaluable.

Midnight Sun Cafe, Anchorage

Because the true reward is always before us now, not in tomorrow.