Friday and a day off!

Didn't have a run today so it was back to the laundry. It is getting easier now that I have just about all my clothes the same color!! Talked to Linda this afternoon, she is excited to pick Hollie up tonight. Hollie and Bill will both be home during the next two weeks. Well here is some more of my writings. Hope all is going well with everyone. I miss you all.


. . . I am back from the road. It was not as I had hoped, for my speeches weren't needed, my knowledge of dates and places weren't needed, nor my speech on the rivers, creeks, mountains and the animals or the birds. I was sad most of the way in - but then it happened. The one question that they all ask and I had been ready since we started to answer it. I had practiced saying these words over and over. I was ripe with anticipation and skilled to the max. It would flow off my tongue as though I were an opera singer. "How long have you been doing this?" one of them asked, and the words rolled like a quarter out of an old slot machine ..."Well, let me see, my first trip down this road was in 2003".....then it was over. They wanted no more from me. I was good for only one thing - to get them to Tattler Creek. Now I know how the Sunday funnies feel when they have been read and put in the furnace room to be used to rap fish guts in after you return from your next fishing trip. All that practicing for just one half truth. I had so much to give and all they want to know is how long I've been doing this. So I took off my headset off when I see one of them noding off and another with his eyes closed. No, I said to myself, I won't even tell them I am Amish if they should ask later - they had blown it. There would be no sharp wit from me and the vast amount of knowledge that had been memorized. No names of rare birds that I had learned, no biology info that I had studied so hard on - and my Athabascan was perfect - now they wouldn't hear one word of it from me. I just drove and all I could think of was I am Amish, I am, and with a deep breath I said Teklanika like I was a true Alaskan. I thought, maybe they will sense just from the way I had said Teklanika that I was ripe with info on all matters of the universe and especially on the Park. So, with a renewed inner confidence, I put my headset back on and I was ready for anything that they would ask - except how to spell Teklanika!

A new dawn and todays morning was bright. The light that can sneak under the door shows a host of spruce needles and apen leaf bits that had globbed to the bottom of my wet shoes. They probably think that they're going to get to stay inside out of the weather, but I have news for them. I plan to take the Monahan to them when I get in tonight. It's been eleven days without water for anything - no showers close by - no bathrooms - people are getting sick with Norwak disease - but the water source is under 4 feet of ice and the ground under that is froze harder than a whore's heart. This March was the coldest ever on record, but my good luck, which seems to be following me so far, has brought warmer temperatures to this land. This sickness I will not get for I have the luck and a man with the luck has no fear of such things. This day holds great challenges for me for today is my day to break trail. I have rolled out early - ten till four - it will take me an hour and a half to get to where I can shower and get back. But that is ok for I have not slept well. The birds outside the window chirp their song of rest until about 1:30 a.m. and then start in again about 3:30 a.m. with their morning chirps. I don't think Illinois birds can work that many hours in a row with only 2 hours sleep. My thoughts have been on my first run into the wilderness - a place that is like no other on this earth. My babblings cannot describe my new place. I know why the sun will not go down, because it is just as awestruck as I am and doesn't want to stop looking at its beauty no more than I do. But the sun is bigger and stronger than I am so it can take in more of this place than I, for I cannot sleep for just two hours a day only to rise and look at this beauty for another day. I need sleep and my sleep of last night was short, just like that of the sun. IF??? If only I were as strong as the sun - oh, but I will work with what I've got and make the best of it. It is 7:00 a.m. and the wind is out of the south. I have this flutter in my belly. I have had it before and I know what it is. It's fear - a fear of the unknown and the fear of failure and the fear of embarrassment and the fear of being alone. I know the cure. I have opened my mouth and held my nose and licked the spoon clean of this cure before and I know what the name of the cure is - it is "youcandoit" So it's down the road I go and for the first part of the trail I am.........I am............I am............I don't know the words. If I did I could let them speak but they would be pale and drab in comparison to this place so I'll be silent. This place is touched with magic. This must be the part of heaven that God has said, "Ok, you can have a little peek." The farther I go the better the cure and I will put this fear back in my left pocket where I keep it, because in the left pocket it gets very few chances to escape for the left pocket never gets used. The road is dusty but it adds to the mystic of this place. Seventeen miles in as if it were no big deal and an almost white Momma grizzly and her year-old cub are digging for roots in a creek bed alongside the road. The cub is doing more dodging of the dirt and rocks that Momma is throwing. I think back to Bubba Sue & RJ digging in the ditch aside our road. One would dig and the other would stand behind and watch, blinking its eyes and trying to dodge the dirt that was being thrown between the legs of the other - and then they would switch places. And so did the grizzlies. They were no more than 30 yards off the road and they didn't even stop to look at this mover of people which had come to see them dig for dinner. So I whispered softly so that only their spirits could hear me. Not even I could hear my whisper. Only they would know my words - only they would know their meaning. Then, just as I whispered, they stopped digging, raised their heads and their tiny black eyes looked right at me and me only. I smiled all over because they understood we have corn planted behind the house. And this is just the first 17 of 120 miles to go.