April 2006 Archives
With temperatures reaching a whopping 54 degrees on Sunday the 23rd, it was high time for some home improvement (not to mention our last sno-go of season, sniffle, sniffle). Keith scrambled on the roof, under the roof, inside the roof and everywhere in between to hoist our wireless internet reciever to a better spot. Better, that is, than hanging over our front door light, positioned with duct tape and an empty yogurt container.
It certainly took some perseverance. And barefeet--check the shot below. But he did it. Quite perfectly too.
Spent Saturday morning rigging a hanging greenhouse at our front window. Four days after planting we've got germination from two tomato varieties, honeyleaf stevia, chives, basil, rosemary, thyme, carrots, cosmos, chamomile and oriental poppy. Shouldn't be too long before we've got rows of leggy plants, stretching for the sun 17 hours a day will do that to ya.
Thanks for the honeypot mom, unfortunately a piece broke off during shipment. But Keith superglued it all back together alright. Oh, yes he did.
Plenty of time for a rainy-day pit-stop at the San Diego Zoo for me, after an early childhood disabilties conference.
In the states I enjoyed sushi thanks to the ever-accomodating V and L, sushi again, hamburgers, sand between my toes, a nice sunburn, movie theaters, pool-swimming, public transportation and lots of salads. After a week outside, I couldn't wait to get back to the village. Frontier and Warbelows teamed up to help me pack in 150 pounds of supplies.
Got a steal at the AC on a frog puzzle, which quickly consumed our dining table. With a few weeks of effort, and some reinforcements, friends Daniel and Cliff who we lured in with promises of beef stew and card games, we powered through to completion. Aaah satisfaction.
Back in mid-winter a co-worker of mine was called that her thirteen year old son had thrown up in school and was sent home sick. He took himself home on his sno-go. When she got home after work she walked in to find her son jumping back onto the couch. And there was a campfire roaring out in the yard.
Turns out he was flying into Fairbanks the next morning and his grandmother had called and asked him to cut her some salmon strips and bring her some campfire tea in a thermos.
I'd heard of this campfire tea before when other schools in the district sent some students in for a school carnival. One of the competitions, besides snow-shoe races and jig contests, was tea-making, during which the competitor makes the campfire and then heats the tea over this fire, all the while racing the other competitors to be the first to make hot campfire tea.
My coworker assured me that campfire tea doesn't taste like regular tea, that it's much better. Back in her home village the women sit up at night in the winter sharing their campfire tea that's been made over an open fire beside the house.
So, mid-March, Keith and I tried our hand. We didn't set any Carnival records, but with some ingenuity, we harvested a little tree from the woods, propped it over the fire with a small branch, punched holes in a tin match container, wet knitting yarn and hung up some water to boil.
Keith may have been a little wary of the slightly metallic taste of the Chai Spice Black Tea. But sipping out of our new KZPA mugs by our fire in sunny thirty below, I started to believe in this whole campfire tea concept.
In early March Keith and I exchanged a pack of Red Bulls, a mix CD and our bumbling helping hands to go out mushing with Richard Carroll. The first time we stopped by his house he invited us in immediately and sat us down with hot buttered rums for some conversation. We saw the vaccinations he buys in Fairbanks to administer to his dogs, the little booties some wear to protect cracked pads from the cold snow and ice, and his pile of guitars and amps. He invited us out the next day and we went over straight from work.
I started sitting in the sled, while Keith stood on the skis of his own sled behind us. Richard led us out and over a steep bank onto the Yukon; he was sure we'd dropped Keith. But when he got the chance to look around, Keith was running along and jumped right back onto the skis just fine.
Richard soon stopped the dogs for just a moment to switch places with me and we were off again...the dogs just won't stand still for more than seconds on the trail. And there were 18 dogs in front of us.
When we were going, it was so so quiet on the river. The team pulled strong over a packed trail, the skis barely made a sound in the snow. The sky was big over us, the river vast.
When we paused to turn the dogs sharply I got all twisted up between them, and they tumbled over each other and their ropes. One even slipped out of his collar. Keith held the anchor in the snow while Richard got the dogs back in order. I tried to stay on my feet, and dragged a couple dogs back into place. A few minutes later we were off again, and back home to Richard's dog yard.
Great, great, to say the least.
Today marked the final day of Fort Yukon's annual spring carnival, a weeklong celebration of springtime. Today was also the final day of the dog races that were part of the carnival. A visiting musher from Fairbanks took the men's cup, and the Lady Eagles' coach took the title in the women's round.
A few of the local AM radio folks had a generator-powered portable transmitter, so anyone in the whole Yukon Flats region could tune in to hear the play by play. Here's some photo footage:
the typical ten-dog team takes off, out of the chute, going whole hog and the double-pronged hook in the musher's right hand (which is tied to the sled frame) is his only hope of stopping when all his dogs are pulling. if something gets tangled, or the dogs don't take the right trail, the musher will take the hook in his hand and slam it into the snow flying by. if the dogs slow enough, he can step on the back of the hook, to set a temporary brake. even if he's standing on a well-set hook, at the start of a race, dogs will still drag the musher standing on his hook, sled and all... it could take three assistants, each holding a group of dogs by their harnesses, to contain a team.
the finish is a different scene. the musher pushes the sled along with a series of kicks as the dogs tire. he's shouting encouragement, and the crowd at the finish line whistles and claps 'til the dogs come home.
once through the finish, they're tired. mostly, they stand around long-tongue-panting. some of them lie down, some sit, some stand-too tired to do anything else. some dogs start gobbling up mouthfulls of snow.
check out a product of google's new page-creator: The Minute Desert for now, it'll have a few links and little else...
our first supply-run to fairbanks included a few diversions. this was one of them:
the world ice art championships, this year, seemed to be heavily sponsored by Blue Sky Studios' "Ice Age" - frozen woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers abounded.
