SOUPsnowsnowsnowCraigsnowsnowsnow

A couple weeks ago it got cold. Single digits for a long time. Then, it started snowing. Usually, in Alaska, snow means warmer. This winter, it did not. We got several feet of fluffy, quicksand-like snow that moved around with the slightest breeze. Every time you shoveled, it undid your work, almost as you were doing it. Then came the wind. One night a few days ago, it blew. I could feel the house shake. In the morning, the already impressive drifts were incredible, sculptures, really. Knife-edged cornices, scoured spots where snow had been the day before and drifts well over my head in two places just on the way to my house. The snow was dense, too - and walking to my neighbor's house just a few hundred feet away, took serious effort. Ice jams on the roof backed up, causing minor floods near my stove that produced an amazing explosion-like sound when they splashed on the hot stove. Winter - the extreme version.

Yesterday I went out and shoveled for two hours. It was slow going, the snow, and just as I finished, it started coming down again. Now, it's nearly a white-out, piling up fast, creating stratus lines of fluff against the sliding glass door in the living room. More shoveling coming my way if I want to go get my Full Circle box.

The kids are now in Hawaii - they left Saturday night and won't be back for three weeks. Craig is also gone, as of yesterday, for two months. It's an interesting feeling - all this snow, quiet, calm, inspiring me to be home more. I'm sure at some point I'll start to need some sort of outside conversation, but at the moment it feels good to be alone, quiet, thinking.

This winter has seen the opening of another chapter in my life, one of introspection and a revisiting of the valuable things in life on an emotional level. I've never searched for a meaning to life beyond the general enjoyment of my family, friends, environment, etc. But more recently, a focus on deliberately considering what I pay attention to and indulge in on an emotional level has changed things in a big way. It's a shift. It's almost impossible for me to explain it to anyone yet. I wish I could. It's a feeling of inner peace. Of finally being comfortable, accepting, letting go of a lot of things, stories. Seeing people for who and where they are, with compassion. It has opened things up for me, made me embrace vulnerability and joy in a whole new way. It led me to Craig Matthews, my neighbor for 12 years, who I barely knew until recently, with whom there is a beautiful harmony. It led me to the writings of Richard Moss, whose very voice instills calm, and whose words give the world I live in a different shape.

Life is extraordinary in this way. Things come to you when you are ready for them. And when I needed time and space to be quiet, I got it. This morning, I read, practiced yoga, sat on the mat for a while and practiced quieting my mind. I love this about life - there is always something new to learn that adds another layer of depth to what is already an abundantly joyous life. Today, my great accomplishment is making an incredible lentil soup. What a joy!

And the snow falls and falls.

4 years

Yesterday, at about 11 a.m., I met Théa.. 4 years ago. Her birth, much like her life, was both fascinatingly powerful and surprisingly challenging. But the rewards of meeting that challenge are huge. Every day, she makes me laugh, sometimes snort with shock with her antics, sometimes laugh in glee at her wit. I am so grateful for the experience of being her mother and in awe at the amazing person she is. Look out, world.
As per the typical style, no one celebrates just one birthday any more. It's a collage of days, and with Théa, those days come right smack at the tail end of everyone else's holiday. Excellent. This year, at least, I was able to get a bit of a plan going early, thinking about what to reserve for birthday and what to give at Christmas. But still, it snuck up on me. Sigh. Nonetheless, the birthday party, complete with a rainbow-colored cake with stars on it (OK, wasn't exactly purple on the inside, but that's hard to do, really) - and fairy wings, constructed by her father, Mike and Craig, and lots of glitter glue, and lots of friends to celebrate with. Good times. Her real birthday was good, too. Matt got to spend the morning with her and then I took her out to dinner with Mike and Ella later. Capping the night off was a movie at Craig's, a new book - "Listen to the Wind" and the world's best popcorn. Today, she slept in till 10 a.m. That's going to be a bit rough when we have to get up at 6:20 tomorrow (probably me who's going to be roughest) but we'll manage.
Shortly thereafter - Sunday morning - the kids go to Hawaii for three weeks. I'm partly sad to miss their snuggles and hugs and general banter, but I'm looking forward to the solitude on other levels. I've been trying to work through some things on a philosophical level, and they require long periods of time and introspection - not stuff you find very often when you have children on hand. I'm also interested in minimizing the stuff in my life again - things have taken over and I want to get control on the chaos. I find it detracts from my life. I've also got work projects - a new paper to put out - and the high tunnel to focus on. And possibly a trip to Kodiak to see my friend Judy's new digs, I've never been on the ferry and it sounds awesome. And last of all, hopefully, a trip up north, probably to Barrow this time. So I think that aught to do it. That and lots of skyping and facetime.
But for now, I'm reveling in the joy of time with the kids, new friends who are wonderful additions to my life, and chances to reconnect with everyone, and the joy of knowing that the holidays are finally over again. Hurray!

The new year

It is 2012 - a whole new year. I remember looking at my children when they were born and thinking that they were absolutely unscathed - nothing bad had happened to them yet, and it was essentially my job to keep it that way. A new year is sort of like that. Hopes, dreams, intentions - all placed on this infant year.
I've been reading a lot about hopes and the fact that they are a distraction from the here and now, a distraction from being present in your life right now, this life that is happening as I lay on my couch, body happily tired from dancing and visiting with friends and swinging my children round and round. If that's true, and I suspect it might be, it's going to be a long road to cure myself of the hopes addiction. I have always been a forward looking person - someone who believed that the future held infinite possibilities. Imagining those possibilities was a favorite pastime. So I hope I can get a grasp on that this year - less focusing ahead and more right on this spot.
I have a good feeling about this year. My children have a glow about them most of the time that is palpable - they are loved and it shows. I find them both so extraordinary - such amazing creatures that I could never have imagined that I had much of anything to do with their existence. I believe the things that I care about are good things and the things that I pay little attention to deserve little attention. There is joy in life, rich joy, and I think that is a good thing. Simple things - a lovely meal, good company, a loving hug - are so valuable to me. I'm so grateful for the amazing people in my life who love me, and those who challenge me and make me stretch.
So really, what I want from this year, what I would choose were it up to me, is more of the same. There is little that I want for in this life. I'm very lucky, blessed, grateful.

Been away

A half-hour ago I was shoveling snow while snow fell, a futile effort at best but one I was compulsed to complete to restore order after being gone for what feels like weeks. Then, the skies lifted, lightened, a melon-colored sun burst through the grey-blue snow-heavy sky, and the world lit up. I stood in awe, finally feeling at home again.
I do love my little space in the world, but this week, I have been away. On another planet, sort of. An island, anyway, in a world I've never experienced before. This week, I traveled above the Arctic Circle to Kotzebue, one of the places I cover for the paper, to get to know the town a bit, meet some people, take some pictures, etc. I've been stumbling in an attempt to understand what was so impactful about this trip. There's no way I can roll it all into a neat little package - it was a collection of moments and other-worldliness that is hard to describe.
Here's a moment - a writer friend who lives up in Kotzebue took me out on his Skidoo - they call them snow-gos. I sat behind him as we zipped out onto the ice. The wind bit my face, the air felt different, and around me, there was so much space. A sense of joy welled up in me, and I don't really know why. We scrambled up a snow-packed hill, rising to the top of a point from which we could see for miles and miles. Rolling hills of tundra were dazzled with the unexpected appearance of a golden sun. The wind zipped by us, cleaning the ground and everything around it till grasses came through. It felt wild and peaceful all at the same time. It felt otherworldly. I could not stop smiling.
Another moment - a storm blew in, and winds zoomed through the town. I came out of the post office and was smacked by a wall of wind so hard that it nearly knocked me over. I laughed at the silliness of being an ignorant human in a place like this. Everyone around me was doing their normal thing - just dressed a little more warmly. Goggles, for example, were standard wear. They didn't even drive in cars - they took snow machines and four-wheelers everywhere, even in the storm. Their lives were not built around avoiding any experience of their surrounding environment. How novel.
A third - a midnight walk through the town - I would have walked out on the ice if I had had any idea how to keep from getting lost beyond lost. The moon came out against the midnight dark sky, the air stung a bit, but only in a teasing way. I was alone, but not afraid. Somehow, solitude fit here perfectly. I walked, breathed, thought. I could have gone on forever.
A fourth - sitting across from my friend while he sliced narrow strips off a caribou leg as casually as if he was spreading peanut butter on some white bread. Eating muktuk and seal oil and berries in bear fat. Food from the land, whether grown or harvested, feeds my soul. It's my religion. I was so grateful.
It is always enriching to get away from your world, experience another one, but this one seemed to fit for me in a way that was surprising. I expected to be impressed byt the Arctic, but I didn't expect to fall in love with it at first sight. I did.

High tunnel reaches new heights

This was a major weekend for the great high tunnel adventure. I sent out an APB on Tuesday night to see if some folks would be able to come help wrestle rafters into place and low and behold, we got a bunch of folks interested and more showed up unexpectedly and it wound up being just enough to get through the tough part of figuring it all out and on to the production mode of getting these huge rafters up and into place.
It was hard to figure out what to do at times - there were so many unknowns, and things did not fit in place seamlessly by any means. Lots of muscling steel things that did not want to be muscled into place. The first day, we got five trusses into place, including the two we already had set up with purins. Mike's strategy was that rather than setting the whole thing up based on one perfectly-level truss, we would attach the purlins to two trusses and hoist them both up at the same time. We did that, and it went fairly smoothly except that the posts had become slightly bulged at the top when we hammered them into the ground, which was fine except that the bolts weren't long enough to deal with the bulge. Luckily, my neighbor Craig showed up with his grinder and ground down all the rest of the posts on day 1 and after that, it was much easier to get everything flowing.
So after getting five joists up, we called it a day, and that night, it poured and rained and blew and it was crazy outside. When I got up Sunday I opened the door to find the water tank had rolled through the yard and was perched near my front door. Yikes. That's a storm, right?
Anyway, didn't figure any of the people who had pledged to come back the next day would but I was wrong - they all showed up and by 1:30 we were running at full steam, having figured out how to assembly-line all the little jobs (inserting sleeves into the top pieces of the rafter to keep the chevron from collapsing when it was tightened, putting on the cables on every-other rafter, etc.
On day 2 we also had use of two 12-foot stepladders that were hugely helpful for getting up to the top parts of the structure, which is 14.6 feet high. Tall, brave people climbed up those ladders all day today, and I never did - I'm a chickenshit, I know, but I prefer to think of it as having a healthy respect for gravity.
We put up the bottom row of purlins on each side as we went and, with three people (one on the ladder holding the center, one on each side, we hoisted the truss up and over the lower purlin and then onto the top of the post. An extra person on the first side is helpful to get the bolt in while holding the end of the truss in place.
Then the second side is hoisted onto the post, and the person on the center lifts their piece into place, and bolts go in, and tada - you have another truss up. There are 19 of them, and at first it seemed impossible, but by the end of day 2, it was going pretty smoothly. Our trusses already had cables attached to them to keep the sides from bulging out. Some people did every third one, but we got a screaming deal on some cable, so we did every other truss with turnbuckles. We put each truss on a jig that Mike made that was exactly 30 feet across at the bottom and then fitted the cable on. That worked well in keeping things moving smoothly, but putting up the trusses with cables on them was a little more difficult than the uncabled ones - you have to watch where you put your ladder or the cable gets in the way, and you have to thread the cable through the purlin, but still, not too bad.
The only other complicated part of doing it this way is that you have to put a new purlin in every fourth one, but you can't put it in when there is nothing else to attach to because it will be hanging out there too far, so we put one truss up without the purlins to support it and then backtracked while holding the truss up with boards from below and attached the purlin to the connecting truss and the new truss at the same time. Then we added two more trusses and did the whole thing all over again.
Not sure if that will make any sense to the reader, but I'm writing it all down because I have googled the installation of Farmtek's Pro Solar and found no one who has written about it and by the time I get too far into the week, I'll have forgotten myself.
Other things we found - when you run into a purlin that doesn't seem like it will fit, try loosening the bolt on the connection of the truss to the post, then repositioning, and tightening again. That seems to be easier than trying to persuade it with brute force.
I'm beat from two days of not only putting up a tunnel, but also kid wrangling (the kids did a great job of entertaining themselves for four hours plus each day while I worked outside - applause to them) and feeding the masses. I feel like I've run a race, and I suppose in a way I have, and what a sweet prize this time. Pretty soon, I'll be ready to sit and look through catalogs and plan what I'm going to plant. That will be quite fun, I believe. Quite fun.

Aha's all over the place

I was struggling along with a bunch of different issues - changing relationships, personal challenges, the darkness of winter, the fact that it was 2 degrees outside, and trying to get a bunch of writing done last weekend in my quiet house. The writing wasn't going very well - I seemed to find a million reasons to distract myself, which only made me more frustrated that I wasn't completing things that absolutely needed to get completed. Then on the radio came a guy, Richard Moss, and he was talking about all the stuff that I know - I KNOW - I should be focusing more on. Quieting the messages my mind is sending me, the evaluations, the ego-driven ideas. Allowing feelings to have a cared-for place in your life. Being kind to one's self. All these things I know but don't often put into practice. But that night, it sunk in. I listened to the radio program three times that night, trying to internalize it all. Of course that's impossible, but still. I came away with some wonderful insights. I hope to develop them more in coming months. Look out - I may finally be moving into that Homer Deep Breather mode. Sigh. It was inevitable, wasn't it? I may even try meditation. Gack.

Another thing that happened this week is I noticed my eyes were starting to go. Liam held something up for me to read about a foot from my face and I could not read it at all. I didn't authorize this.

The kids are back tonight, the paper is out the door, and my life shifts on its axis once again. It's so wonderful to have them with me, these wonderful little love sponges. Tonight, they outdid themselves with laundry duty. Théa climbs up on the top of the washing machine and pulls the clothes out (a coveted position) and Liam shoves them into the dryer. Then, when Théa can't reach any more, the roles are reversed. They do all this without any help from me, including the part where Liam drags Théa onto the dryer - very funny. It's not a big thing, but it is. There's teamwork. There's kids doing their part. There's kids feeling like part of the whole. I think, but I could be totally wrong, that a large part of what I value about myself comes from the fact that my role in the farm on which I grew up was a real and valued part. We helped. With everything. It was not gratuitous. It was not optional. And all of that is a good thing. Mike's daughter wrote a piece in about what her family tradition was. She wrote about setnetting. Her dad has a setnet on the beach below their house and every day in the late summer, they go down and work the net. Ella grumbles a lot about this. But in the end, it's something she's obviously very proud of. Parenting. So simple yet so tricky.

Gratitude

Thanksgiving is really one of my favorite holidays. It's about food - good food - soul food from our harvest. But more importantly, it's about gratitude. If there are two things I take from the journey of the past two years, it is the power of forgiveness and the joy of gratitude.
Tonight, after eating a particularly yummy meal with good people, I drove up to my little house, gathered my mostly-sleeping daughter in my arms, and headed for the front door.
"Ooh Mom, look," a little voice said to me. "I am thankful for the stars."
I looked up and the sky was full of a million lights, crisp against the dark sky, more beautiful than the most amazing holiday light display man could ever muster. I stopped and stood there, and actually shed a tear, to think that somehow I might be doing enough to instill in my children a sense of amazement at this world around us. There are beautiful gifts at every turn - a snow-covered tree full of red berries with a flock of birds gorging themselves - the dazzling sight of sparkling snow that looks almost fake in its perfection - the exquisite scent of a roast and a pie cooking together in the oven. There are days that are frustrating, moments that are scary, and times when I wonder if I can get anything right, but in the end, my wonder at all my good fortune wins over, and I am reminded again how incredibly lucky I am to have all that I have and am aware and present enough to recognize it.