Hummingbird
Wilco

His goal in life was to be an echo
Riding alone, town after town, toll after toll
A fixed bayonet through the great southwest to forget her

She appears in his dreams
But in his car and in his arms
A dream can mean anything
A cheap sunset on a television set can upset her
But he never could

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

His goal in life was to be an echo
The type of sound that floats around and then back down
Like a feather
But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans
No one could hear him
Or anything

So he slept on a mountain
In a sleeping bag underneath the stars
He would lie awake and count them
And the gray fountain spray of the great Milky Way
Would never let him
Die alone

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

I have now seen Wilco more times than I would have ever thought I would. The first time I saw them at Sasquach festival in Washington in 2004. I had only listened to one of their albums, Summerteeth and only really knew and liked two or three songs including Jesus etc. I enjoyed the show but wasn’t really taken with it as I was with other bands that I saw that weekend such as The Frames. I listened a little bit more to Wilco in the following years and came to really love Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue, especially California Stars and Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key. However, when I found out they were coming to Missoula, I wasn’t particularily sold on seeing them. Sure they had good musicians, but Sasquach had left the impression that they didn’t put on the best show. I decided to opt out of the show but at the last minute decided to go and scrounged up a ticket. I found as much of their music as I could prior to the concert and listened to as much as I could so that more songs would be familiar to me during the concert. They put on a great show though I still didn’t recognize many songs. They were very animated and fun to watch and I had a pretty good view. After that concert, I listened to them in earnest and began to really appreciate there thoughtful lyrics and lengthy instrumentals. However, when I found out they were playing in Anchorage, I was unsure about whether I was going to go see them. I finally bought tickets when I learned half of my crew was going to see them and that a friend from Missoula was actually going to be at the concert too!

The opening band was a local Alaska band called the Whipsaws. I had seen them play at the Moose Pass Soltice Festival and had gotten two of their CDs afterwards. The concert took place in the parking lot of a brewery and there was pub food and beer available. It was pouring rain and everyone was bedecked in raincoats and rubber boots. My raincoat failed the waterproof test even though I had waterproofed it only a week earlier and renewed my resolve to invest in a new raincoat. Ty and I got right up close to the front and jammed there the whole concert, which lasted for a couple hours and included some of my favorite songs. They insisted that they were going to play until the rain stopped. We all laughed at that because the rain hadn’t stopped since the middle of June. They wrapped up the concert with Hoodoo Voodoo from Mermaid Avenue and that made the show!

The rest of my weekend consisted of riding Kelly’s bike around Anchorage and watching fisherpeople catch King salmon out of Ship Creek.

The work week was one of the most dismal yet. Fortunately the rain stopped and the sun came out for brief stints. We spent the whole week brushing the Carter and Crescent lakes trail which is the first uphill trail I have worked on. Brushing and doing drainage work should be fairly easy and straightforward but the morale on our crew has sunk so low that we can’t even eek a good 4 hours of work out of a day. On the upside, I got to see a lot of big animals! I encountered a cow moose and two calves clomping down the trail as I was trudging up. Moose are so exciting to see! They are so funny looking!!! The next day, I spotted a brown bear across the lake from me. It was nosing around in the fire pit and then in ambled into the lake and splashed around catching fish!!! Yesterday, I watched a bull moose foraging on the hillside for quite sometime until it disappeared into the alders. I also watched bright red sockeye salmon struggling upstream in about 4 inches of water.