But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day. ~Benjamin Disraeli

So many days have passed and they are filled with moments indescribable. We have all felt the passage of time and softly wonder at its inexplicable ability to drag on and on while at the same time fly more swiftly than a hummingbird. I feel this paradox now. It seems as though I have packed lifetimes into 2 small months, but it also seems as though only yesterday I was coasting over the rugged mountains of Alaska, seeing the icy wildness for the first time and experiencing that giddy excitement of dreams about to be realized. There is something both strangely satisfying and unsettling about this feeling and with the summer half over, I feel awash of emotions: proud and satisfied with all that I have accomplished and experienced, anxious that there will not be enough time left to do everything and disheartened that there is still so much more time left before a pack up and ship out.

I have had so much fun the past couple of weeks! After a week off from work, which was filled with fourth of July reverie and many random encounters and projects which included but were not limited to getting skunked out on the lake fishing, baking pizza and rhubarb pie, building a new fence for the garden, running, strumming the guitar and slip sliding up and down Mount Marathon, I took off on another 8 day overnight hitch for work. The day before I left for the hitch, I climbed Mount Marathon. As I mentioned earlier, the trail up this mountain is about 3 miles long and gains 3000 feet. Folks race up and down this mountain in about 45 minutes during the annual fourth of July event. I decided to trek up the mountain on a whim and had on heavy car harts and a backpack with my computer. I figured that if folks could complete the trek in less than an hour in a race, I could complete it fairly safely in at least 2. I was comparing it to a hike up Mount Sentinel. One can jaunt up that in sandals care free, why not Mount Marathon? I was wrong. The first leg of the trail was a 100 foot vertical climb up a rooty rock wall and then quickly transitioned into a nearly vertical mud slicked braided scramble up through the trees. I had to use all of my limbs and grasp at the alders to keep from sliding down. The trail turned into a near vertical rock climb/scramble above the tree line and loose gravel slid out from under my feet or crumbled as I put my weight down. The view was great though and I watched no less then 7 eagles sweep on the air currents above me and out towards Resurrection bay. I had a grand view of the bay and the fjords and hanging glaciers and the town of Seward below me. I encountered several other hikers who had seen a black bear on the trail and who had watched grizzlies playing on a ridge across the way. I also encountered hikers who encouraged me to take the runners trail down the mountain which, from what I could tell from watching the race, was a snowy, then gravely then muddy shoot straight down. I finally reached the top at the one hour and a half mark and happily took in the beautiful scenery. I had been told to take the snow shoot down. Apparently it is the fastest and safest way to go down. I found that hard to believe but figured I give it a try. There was a well defined groove in the snow to slide down (no less than 900 people had done it before me) and I sat down, car harts, computer and all and began sliding down. I figure I got up to about 10 miles per hour and was sliding for a good 5 minutes or so. I was using my feet and my bare hands to attempt to control my speed and direction and got hung up on a couple rocks. The slide finally spilled me out onto a graveling slope and I stood up and shook the snow from my pockets and shoes and then proceeded to careen down the loose gravel shoot. What I thought would be a truly treacherous trek down the mountain prooved to be a really fun careening, slip-sliding adventure. The gravel slope gave way with each foot step and with some practice I was able to jog down at a fairly quick pace. The gravel shoot gave way to a creek lined with slick mud and for much of that leg, I squatted and slid on my feet. At some points I had to hike in the creek and scale down mini waterfalls. When I finally got down the mountain, about 2 and half hours had passed and I was wet and muddy and completely in awe of the men and women who run up and down that beast in less than an hour!

Work was fun. I learned a lot. I learned how to mill boards from native material using a small metal frame and a chain saw and how to use a grip-hoist. I practiced felling 16-20 inch trees and honed my chopping and bark stripping skills as well as my bridge demolishing skills. I wore waders for the first time and shoveled and hauled a lot of gravel. Our project was to demolish a broken bridge and replace it with another bridge made of all native materials. We had to fell trees and strip them and mill boards and fashion them into a bridge. We also had to haul out the material from the old bridge. It sounds like a fairly simple affair and it was, but very time consuming. We had visitors to our camp every evening. Dave and Arrow (belonging to Claire), Molly, who used to be on the crew, and two different Dans (one married to Katy and the other an old trail rat, as well), Adrian and Twig (Will's girlfriend and dog respectively) and Laura and Ivy (friend of all and her dog). Some of them cooked us dinner, while others helped us work and still others just entertained us with their presence and their dogs.

I came home to a ravished garden. Last week, a vole had been nibbling at the peas and the rhubarb so I fortified the fence and made it as hole proof as possible. However, my efforts were futile and upon my return, the broccoli, chard and brussel sprouts as well as the carrots and squash were all suffering if not totally nipped off. Katie had bought a rat trap the day before, so we rigged it up with celery and peanut butter. Neither of us were too keen on killing it but concluded that it had to be done for the sake of our garden. The setting of the trap was a treacherous two person ordeal that too leather gloves and a wooden spoon to accomplish but we left it stealthily in the peas and withing 48 hours, we caught ourselves a vole and squeamishly if not triumphantly disposed of it and reset the trap, in case he had told his friends.

Yesterday, Katie and I went on the Kenai Fjords Tour. It was a rainy, sleety, cloudy day but we still had a wonderful time. The five and half tour afforded amazing views of Resurrection bay and beyond, huge 6 foot ocean swells, and lots of wildlife. We encountered otters, sea lions, orcas, humpback whales, puffins, porpoises and seals. We also saw huge glaciers, 10 stories tall, calving and creaking into the ocean. The cool glacial wind and the icy blue of the compressed crystals were breathtaking. I felt so small in the shadow of this looming mass which is but an arm of the Harding ice field, an even larger mass of ice and rock that covers 100s of square miles of the peninsula. It is amazing to think that underneath these glaciers and ice fields are topographical features that have never been mapped and that are not the same as they were yesterday and when finally exposed will be nothing like they are today. I had hoped have such a glacial experience while I was here and I had a brief emotional moment as I contemplated their imminent extinction as a result of climate change and global warming. I have been toying with the idea of a pilgrimage to see the polar bears. They hold a very special place in my heart for many reasons but I think I will be satisfied with pictures and verbal accounts of these amazing and endangered species. I would only be killing them off more quickly by expending the CO2 to travel to them. Sigh....

Yesterday evening, a group of us went to Hope for open mic night. It was the same crew as weeks before and bonfires before. Essentially, the whole contingent of forest service temporaries and their significant others fill the bar and the mud flats and the outside crevices and mingle to good music. I had a great time and interacted easily with my co-workers and dare I say, friends. I think that time has made me less of a stranger and an outsider. I think that this is a lesson that I will always have to learn. I am often discouraged by my inability to fit in or by others stand-offishness when what is really happening is the slow passage of time. I am beginning to learn the language of Alaska and understand its ebbs and flows and the small community which I have so boldly entered is starting to become less foreign. We are becoming accustomed to each other and my initial impressions of the social dynamics here were perhaps a bit skewed. There are amazing, thoughtful, poetic, compassionate people here. All it takes is time and trust and these things will reveal themselves. I found out that a coworker of mine has spent a year in Zambia working at a refugee camp and then she continues to fund raise for the cause and in my eyes, she has moved mountains and listening to her speak and reinvigorated me. I have spent the past two months worrying about my own trials and tribulations and the stresses of new jobs and social dynamics. Last night, I was reminded of the bigger picture, the world at the large, the passion of people trying to right the wrongs and to find beauty in the mire and to sing heartfelt poems and to dance freely and shout loudly. I thought that this was not here and have felt shy in my wildness, subdued in my goofiness, and laughed at for my conservationist/humanitarianism/environmentalist approach. I think that there are many in this circle of people who may, at first, scoff at recycling or make fun of using nature wipe instead of toilet paper or letting it mellow instead of flushing it down, but in the long run, they are silently working in their own ways to, as I like to say, save the world.

Today, I can almost feel the sun. It has been rainy and overcast for two weeks now. I am in Seward, on the edge of another weekend and another work week. Our projects and eight day hitches are complete and we now wait on edge for a fire call. The spontaneity of a fire call and the need for a fire call has everyone on edge. We depend on it for our winter survival and our summer occupation. Without a fire call we are left to waste time on the compound and flounder for projects and doomed to work in the rotting fish carcasses of the Russian River. But with a fire call, we are occupied for two weeks straight and making more money than we could ever hope for. But we have to be within an hour of the station and we have to be prepared and we know not when the call will come and if it will come at all. The rumors fly and tension is high.

The expanse of Alaska time stretches before and ahead of me. Katie is leaving tomorrow morning early. She will be gone for a month or so. I am excited for her because she will get to fight fire in the states and do what she was hired to do. But I am sad because she has been a good friend, a kindred spirit and a partner in crime. I know that my adventures will not stop but they will be a little more lonely without her. Time is passing in such a way that I am beginning to wonder about fall and the winter. I am beginning to wonder about the next year and the next 5. The last five have flowed by so easily, so quickly...I want so many things that I don't know what to work for in the mean time.