Some questions you might ask

In all the hub bub of a PhD it's easy to forget the balance in life. I've been trying to find that again and last weekend spent a little over 4 days canoeing the 109 miles of Birch Creek, which is a few hours drive out of Fairbanks. With me was Kyle and of course Spruce. Fantastic weather, northern lights, colors at their peak, fun rapids ...what more could I ask for!











If you look carefully, you can find mama bear and a couple of baby bears. Elsewhere, were moose, caribou, wolves, and an endless line of beaver tracks.

Some Questions You Might Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

Mary Oliver

"Happiness only real when shared" -- Chris McCandless

A trip back to the old country, great times with relatives and family, sharing my cousin Ben's wedding with Anna; and a special and growing (re)-connection with my sister Helene. I think of Carine McCandless and her reconciliation of loss. She's quoted as saying that her brother Chris was "an amazing person. Everyone can benefit from the lessons that are available within this great book [Into the Wild]and inspirational movie about him." For me, it will be of the happiness of making time to share with a great sister.

A River Runs Through It

A beautiful day on the Shenandoah River, about an hour and a half away from DC. Blissful to be out of the city among the smooth flows and little rapids, waters running over rocky shelves every kilometer or so. The river was lined with large trees, interspersed with a healthy ensemble of great blue herons, little blues, egrets, kingfishers, and ospreys. Huge carp prowled in the shallows and feet were immediately nibbled on by a throng of little fish if you stood for more than a moment. People pay a lot for these fish pedicures at spas around here (go figure), but for us, it was just part of the package. About 20 km of paddling and much to smile about.




Sash (yes that is confusing), Crystal, and Mehzabeen

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

Norman Maclean

The Streets of New York

Everyday I try and rationalize these new surroundings, make sense of it all. It's exciting and disturbing in equal measure; an experience that feels important but one that is maybe more type II than type I fun.

This guy was equal measure opera, irish jig, and something I can't put my finger on...



early morning on the walk between Penn Station and Central park



Plenty of ritz...


and trying to get it all in focus...


Outside of that, it's seeing a host of birds I've never seen...even cardinals are a new wonder...racking up the miles on some great bike trails...enjoying work...planning some adventures...and hoping that Ahmedabad settles back toward a peaceful state quickly.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Into the Sauna (aka DC)

The time came for the big move to DC, and Tupac was being careful to only sleep in places where he'd not get left


Arrived just before the 4th of July and watched the firewords from a neighborhood rooftop. These are the National Mall fireworks so I'm pretty close.


The sun streams into the apartment in the mornings, it's a nice time of the day...cool before the heat...

They can be like a sun, words. They can do for the heart what light can for a field.

St. John of the Cross

Thorsborne Trail and Neruda

What better way to celebrate completing the PhD than a trip to Townsville, Australia to spend some time with Dipani. We traveled to Hinchinbrook Island and the Thorsborne Trail. It's a permit trail, so there was only a few others on it with us, and for the most part you'd never have known that anyone else was there. A mix of hiking in the forest and along beaches. Very beautiful, and even whimbrel was there - reminding me of Alaska!





Relaxing breakfasts on beaches watching colors change as the sun came up - espresso and bagels!




Warm water for swimming...


and the final few miles to the boat pick-up...highly recommended!

I want to tell you
the ocean knows this, that
life in its jewel boxes is
endless as the sand...

Neruda

Mountains

The day seemed less than promising as we passed through hail and rain on the way north, but it turned out to be a stellar hike along the Pinnell Mountain Trail about 100 miles northeast of Fairbanks.

Runrig

But mountains
Are holy places
And beauty is free
We can still walk
Through the garden
Our earth was once green

The Russians are Coming!

Like the prow of a Viking ship, sail billowing behind, the Dew Line radars of Anvil Mountain sit high above Nome; they mirror the same radars above Anadyr in Russia. There was something magical walking around these icons of the cold war with Russian colleagues - laughing and taking pictures only 2 decades after glasnost.





Spring is hitting Nome after snows just a week ago.



Musk ox are always a thrill...



and a bird watching trip out past Safety Lagoon produced a slew of birds as they migrate into these productive waters - among them red knot, bar-tailed godwit, tundra swans, and the always special harlequin ducks. It'll be my last time here for a while and it was nice to share it with Gay Sheffield as she celebrated a birthday, a new job here in Nome, and a new house by the Dexter Roadhouse. A 100 years ago she'd have been a neighbor of Wyatt Earp of all people!

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

Madman Across the Water

I started my bachelors with the album "Too Low for Zero"; moved onto "Live in Australia" during my Masters; and now wrapped up the Ph.D with a live concert by Elton John in Fairbanks -- of all places! Elton put on a great concert lasting 2 and a half hours - definitely a Fairbanks highlight.

Your Song -- Bernie Taupin

It's a little bit funny this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide
I don't have much money but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where we both could live

If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one's for you

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss
Well a few of the verses well they've got me quite cross
But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song
It's for people like you that keep it turned on

So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue
Anyway the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

Big Day Tomorrow!

The Storm before the Calm...

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you --- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

Edward Abbey

Green-Up

Some days are memorable for the intangible beauty held in a moment. Today it was with Kyle on the Angel Rocks trail, looking out at the effervescence of green that is spring.

Below is one of my favorite poems

On the Nature of Love

The night is black and the forest has no end;

a million people thread it in a million ways.

We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where

or with whom -- of that we are unaware.

But we have this faith -- that a lifetime's bliss

will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.

Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs

brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.

Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:

whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.

I call that person and cry: 'This life is blest!

For your sake such miles have I traversed!'

All those others who came close and moved off

in the darkness -- I don't know if they exist or not.

-- Rabrindranath Tagore

Euro Bike, Spring, Mountains, and Quiet Roads

Took a trip out of town with the Ridley and some great mountain air. Warm enough to be in shorts and short-sleeves - a really wonderful roundtrip between Black Rapids and Paxson Lodge (about 60 miles), and pretty much nobody on the road. Diane Ackerman's words come pretty close to the feeling of sitting in the warmth of the sun, ice dripped all around, a caribou on the hillside, gray jays rather than blue jays flitting around, and knowing that all that is so terrible in the news at the moment is far away from this place:

When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.

Isabel Pass was still pretty icy and summit lake mostly frozen. Swans swam on the few bits of open water and the Deltas glisten in the distance.

Weddings and Friends

Flew down to Anchorage last week for Matt and Becky's wedding. Matt is the son of Vera who I collaborate with at the Eskimo Walrus Commission; and just co-authored a manuscript in Ecological Applications with. It was a beautiful event, and had a chance to catch up with two of my favorite people - Vera and Chris. It was great to see Chris with a smile after a year battling cancer. The world is a better place with her in it.

On Marriage by Kahil Gibran

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Fairbanks to Stockholm to the San Juans

Stockholm was a welcome respite from the freezing slush of Fairbanks...

Beautiful facilities at the University...

But it was the wandering, tasting, and reflecting that were most captivating

The Morning Wind Spreads
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up and take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe before it's gone.
Rumi

and then a stop in Seattle and a trip to the San Juans via the tulip festival and Popeye the Harbor Seal

The way to heaven: By Chung Dong-muk

I followed a green glimmer
that sparkled after the rain
And realised I could walk
all the way to heaven.

I embraced all those stories
I heard along the way
Not glancing back to see
How far I had walked.

I walked on and on,
And realised I could walk
All the way to heaven.

The way was clear and bright
As the dew of early morning.

Life's Good ON the Snow

I'm riding shotgun down the avalanche

Tumbling and falling down the avalanche

So be quiet tonight the stars shine bright
On this mountain of new fallen snow
But I will raise up my voice into the void
You have left me nowhere to go

S. Colvin - J. Leventhal

2008 All Alaska SweepStakes

Back to St. Lawrence Island for meetings and catching up with friends - that's Apa (aka Little Buddha from last year) - who gave me a wonderful baleen carving.



We got back to Nome an hour after the Great Alaska Sweepstakes started but I stayed for the finish - what a treat.

It's the first time in 25 years that the SweepStakes has been run - a 408 mile dog race from Nome to Candle and Back - no mandatory breaks, winner takes all - and that "take all" is $100,000; quite the incentive to win! A flat out race - some around here call it "old school racing." In the end, it came down to less than 9 minutes between Mitch Seavey who finished in 2 days 13 hours, 3 minutes and second place Jeff King (who also finished second in the Iditarod).

Here's a tired Mitch and his two leaders!

A Poem from Leonard Cohen (click here for more Cohen)

--Love Itself--

The light came through the window now
straight from the sun above,
and so inside my little room
there plunged the rays of Love.

In streams of light I clearly saw
the dust you seldom see,
the dust the Nameless makes to speak
a Name for one like me.

And all mixed up with sunlight now
the flecks did float and dance
and I was tumbled up with them
in formless circumstance.

I'll try to say a little more:
this Love went on and on
until it reached an open door -
Then Love itself was gone.

The self-same moment words were seen
from every window frame,
but there was nothing left between
the Nameless and the Name.