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.