Alone among the artifacts

Since I returned from Anchorage late this morning, I have been alone in this house and office and I will be for the rest of the week, or at least until Thursday evening. About the only way I will interact with other human beings is when I go to breakfast at Abby's and pull up to the Metro Cafe drive-through window or maybe even go inside once or twice.

There are some good things about being alone. I have a huge amount of work to get done, and I won't have any distractions, save for the barriers in my own mind. Once I punch through them, I should really be able to dig into things and get a lot done. All around me, I see plenty of artifacts left behind by those who sometimes share this house with me. Their presence is still here, even though they are elsewhere.

Who do you think this particular artifact reminds me of? Two people, actually. Margie, who sketched the train to serve as a homemade coloring book, and Kalib, who colored it and added the tracks, smoke and grass.

Coffee break time

Evalina, Metro Cafe. Now I will drive home and drink my coffee as I go. I won't go the long way, because I've already been to Anchorage and back today.

Note, 5:05 PM: To any readers who may have checked into this blog in the past 50 minutes only to see very strange things, like this post repeated multiple times but with no image included, or to see one, two, or three empty posts, all titled "Y," I apologize but also put the blame squarely upon my blog host, Squarespace. I will not bother to explain, only to note that, using the app, I tried to post the full post multiple times and each time Squarespace failed and mucked it up.

Honestly, this Squarespace app is far and away the worst app I have dealt with. More often than not, it fails one, two, or three times before it succeeds. Sometimes, when it fails, it posts nothing. Sometimes, it posts the text with no picture. Sometimes, a single attempt will result in two separate posts of the same text, each with no picture. 

This time, I must have tried at least 15 times and it failed every time and never uploaded the picture even once, although it did sometimes upload text and sometimes not. I could not complete the post with the image included until I returned home and did so the old fashioned way.

SQUARESPACE!!!!!!!

The drive home: I contemplate the summer that really was, yet never happened

"Really was," because the summer that just ended was one even folks in the Lower 48 would have recognized as summer. After what had seemed to be winter eternal, we basked under unprecedented amounts of sun hung in blue sky. We warmed our bodies in temperatures consistently reaching into the 70s, 80s and even into the 90s, something we had never before experienced in our 32 years in this place.

"Never happened," because I spent almost the entire summer chained to my desk and computer, assembling work I had shot in winter. It is supposed to be just the opposite - I am supposed to spend the summer out shooting the amazing things that happen in this magnificent land and in particular its northern reaches, to break away away now and then to fish, to hike, bike or canoe. Then I am supposed to assemble my projects in the winter when it is cold and dark. Yet, only at the end of summer did I get to get out and spend a fantastic week working in Nuiqsut in early August and then three great weeks back in Nuiqsut and out on the cold and windy Cross Island Beaufort Sea whale hunt. I had no time for personal and family outdoor recreational activities that could not be done in one afternoon in close proximity to Wasilla.

I now have a plan to get on track, to spend October through March intensely working at desk and computer so I can be free to get out and shoot next April through October and to take little breaks to go out into the country and just enjoy. I hope it works. 

I take Margie to babysit, part four, final: off they go

In less than two minutes, Kalib and Jobe were buckled into their dad's car and he was pulling out the driveway to take them to their respective destinations. Now, I am going to turn around and drive what I hope will be about 50 minutes in the opposite direction, get back home, into my office and see what I can make of this day.

I take Margie to babysit, part three: Lynxton puts on his backpack

Finally, the traffic jam broke and we skedaddled on into Anchorage. Whereas I had anticipated we would arrive about 10 to 15 minutes early, we arrived 15 minutes late. Kalib and Jobe had put on their backpacks and were ready to go out the door and off to school and daycare. Somehow, Lynx had adorned himself in his own backpack and was ready to go off with the big boys. He would not be allowed to. This would make him most unhappy.