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