“You don’t fu….. care about me!” It came from a young woman sitting in a car beside Turtle. “You don’t treat me like you did before. You don’t treat me the same fu….. way you did before we got married.” A young man, stood tall beside her window, hands at his sides, outer calm mirrored in his desert camouflage uniform, defending himself in an even tone. “It’s not me. It’s you,” he said.
Claire and I looked at each other. We both had tears in our eyes. It was our twentieth anniversary, and we were witnessing the beginning of the end of a young marriage. It didn’t take words between us to know what we would do.
By noon our mountain bikes were loaded and we were off. The traffic was not bad, the hills fairly long. We saw the mountain (hooray!), two caribou, a family of ptarmigan, a snowshoe hare, and a huge set of grizzly tracks. We arrived at Sanctuary River with plenty of time to organize our camp and stow our food safe from bears, and from attracting bears. No bears.
This is a direct photo through the windshield of our motorhome, Turtle, of The Mittens in Monument Valley, Arizona. I doubt there is a very expensive RV resort, or Five Star hotel, that could offer an equal view. This was a no service parking spot on the Navajo reservation. Boondock spots (sometimes called dry camping) are free, but we paid $5 for this one. I’d say $5 is close enough to free to qualify.
After a good hard bike ride up East End Road out of Homer, we decided to celebrate the rare sunshine with ice cream for a late lunch. We bought a carton at Fred Meyer’s and took it outside to their …
Turnout boondock on the Kenai near Seward, and we were settled in for the night, nice forest on one side, traffic a good distance away on the other. Alone.
A truck with a camper pulling a boat, typical Alaskan rig, swung in ahead of us and stopped abruptly. The passenger door flung open, a woman jumped out and stumbled into the woods. After a few minutes a man got out the driver’s side and stood looking at the woods, hands in pockets, looked at his feet, called out loudly to the woods. He was still for tedious time, suddenly decided, and hurried into the woods.
Some loud voices, quiet, more commotion further away, then quiet again. We moved from mild interest to slight concern and finally worry. A half-hour passed. Should I do something? What? Was this just a couple’s spat or something more serious?
He’d turned off the truck, but the headlights were still on, the driver’s door open. I hoped he’d seen us, but what if he was blinded with anger, unaware that the drama was not being played to an empty house.
I decided to make sure he knew someone was listening, aware. I walked to the truck, and yelled in the direction I’d last heard them, “Hey! You guys okay? Silence.
Then I had an idea and yelled: “Your headlights are on.” After a few seconds the man walked from the woods. “Yeah, we’re okay. Thanks.” He looked a sad tired man. “I figured you were having a bad day, and didn’t need one more thing to go tits up.” He smiled at me. “Yeah, thanks man.” His smile was soft, sincere. He went back to the woods and she came out with him soon after. He got a blanket from the back and put it gently around her shoulders, and they drove away.
Sometimes you just have to do something. Small things matter.
Just a quick touch of the salmon crazed Alaskans (legal residents) fishing with nets at the mouth of the Kenai River. It’s how they fill their freezers for the year and have a lot of fun it seems. The gulls are happy too!
We’ve a nice half day at Exit Glacier for a hike, and a sunny day to be on Prince William Sound. No time to write, but lots of photos of landscapes, glaciers and wildlife:
There is something about the light here this past week: soft and heavy and long nearly through the night; long and soft and ineffectual. I find it vaguely depressing, sometimes not so vaguely. An hour of blessed sunshine makes it worse, knowing it will go away and take the mountains and the spectral highlights, the sparkle, with it. The sun, slow to come, always going away, soon. I know I shouldn’t feel this way about the North. I feel guilty about, which doesn’t help any. All the beauty; moose, bears, lakes, mountains, and still snow patches and sometimes glaciers. But the light is just not there, just not right, yet.
There were days during the months we spent in Iceland
Not long after entering Alaska from Yukon Territory, Claire found a small lake with free camping through the Escapees listings. It was a short drive down a narrow dirt road, just small enough to keep out the big RVs. We were fairly early in the day and got the best lakeside site. We saw quite a few birds, Claire heard a loon, and I saw a pair of tundra swans patrolling the shore.
We moped through the gray afternoon, napping to the shush of the fountain and studying maps to prepare for some sunny day. Throughout the day, a lone figure moved around the park, sometimes contemplating the fountain from a lonely perch on a park bench. As others came and went, this boy stayed. I imagined that he’d planned to study in the library and was stuck waiting for a ride home once a parent got off work. He looked to be a teenager, but he wasn’t talking on a cell phone or listening to music, he was just sitting.