Hello every body! I can't believe it has been over a month since I have had time to really sit down at the computer and write to you. Part of the time the computers have been down - the rest of the time I have just been really busy. Tomorrow I have a day off and no one has asked me to take their run yet so I am going to send you some more of your favorite stories! I have been writing - just not getting anything on the computer.
Last Saturday was Christmas here!! Linda had sent me some ornaments earlier in the summer - everyone used the ornaments they brought or had someone mail them, like I did, to decorate the tree. We had a really good Christmas dinner - all the trimmings and then some. All weekend long we would wish each other a "Merry Christmas" as we passed. Our passengers were a little confused until we explained that we have the Christmas holiday together before we all leave to go back to wherever home is. It was really nice. Have been going to the campground some and playing guitar and enjoying a good campfire. Can't wait to get home and go camping with Linda and Bristol. Only three weeks left for this flatlander. It gets a little harder the closer it gets - my friend Mark (who is a veteran at this) tells me that the days are long but the weeks go fast. I don't know if I'll be back at the computer again after this afternoon but I will sure try. Want to tell you that there are webcam sites out there on the internet that you can go to and see live photos of Mt. McKinley each day. You can get an idea of the weather I'm experiencing. The web camera is set up at Wonder Lake.
Hey, Hollie, Bill, Sara - only 19 more "wake-ups"!!!!!!!


The saga continues . . .

. . . . . . it has been many days since I have set pen to paper. My adventure is starting to almost feel like work. Logged 62 hours last week but did get one day off (laundry day) - lots of overtime this month. But I still have my evenings free to wander the hills and mountain sides. I have come to know this area like the back of my hand. Speaking of hands, with the hours I've been driving lately I have taken to wearing gloves all the time and it has helped with the healing of my hands from all that fast dismount stuff I did on my last climbing expedition. I have become quite the expert on grizzly bears since my arrival. I have always been somewhat of an expert on your common old black bear - and the Chicago Bears - and riding bear back - and going bear foot, just to name a few. But this grizzly is a whole different breed. Their temperment is quite different, we'll say, from bear footin'. Up here it is a full-time job just getting from my room to the mess hall without coming in contact with a rock that can give you a career-ending stone bruise. I know that all I would have to do is put my shoes on, but I want to show off all my bear knowledge whereever I go and how better to do that than going bearfooted when I am not working! I don't know, though, what with the temperature dropping more and more with each passing day - I think I need to think of a different way to project my bear knowledge. The Chicago Bears is out, thanks to my son-in-law, Bill. I had a perfectly good Chicago Bear's blanket in the camper for over two years - he left it there all that time. I took care of it for all that time so I thought it should be mine and I was going to take it to Alaska with me (Linda says, "No you are not taking that - it is Bills). Sure enough, he evoked some silly "I don't mind if you use it when you are at my house" . . . . all the while knowing that with me taking care of it for all those months that by Man Law it is rightfully mine!!! My wife and son won that one!!! So, showing off my Chicago Bears savvy is out. It seems that every one up here is an expert on something or another and with me just fresh from the flatlands I have been trying to find my one true Alaska nitch. And the more I think about it, it has to be bears. Why, just the other day I was out on one of my exploring trips and came face to face with a monster of a grizzly - what a sight to see! With all my bear know how, I knew just how to act as we were eye to eye. Running away from this beast bear footed was out of the question - and without a good Bear's blanket to throw over it so as to blind it momentarily so I could make a quick get away was going to be hard, shoes or no shoes, if it could see me run it would take chase! Being a quick thinker, I also realized bearback riding was out of the question. I had forgotten to put on any gold bond and I knew there was going to be some chaffing involved on my part should I jump on it's back and I was not looking forward to several weeks of recovery from chaffing. I have just finished a three-day battle of swamp ass brought on by a bad batch of refried beans. I was fearful of cross-contamination. Besides, I was sure that the National Parks Department has some law in the books somewhere making it a felony to ride a grizzly bear. The only thing that I could think of at this point is Barry Manalow. So, I dropped to one knee and gave him my best rendition of "Mandy" then went right into an Al Jolson's still of the Coppa, Coppa Cabanna and before I could finish the last verse of "You Light up my Life" it was gone. It is true. Everyone up here is an expert on something. Mine is chaffing.

07/06/2007 ..... reading on . .

Things are changing. The weather, the trees and bushes, the animals, the people - everything is changing, even me. There is no Dr. Jeckel/Mr. Hide thing going on with me, it's just that by day I am a mild-mannered tour driver with lots of info that I gladly spout like there is no tomorrow. It is hard to shut me up. I find myself talking to people even after they get off the bus and are trying to get to their car and go home. They have asked me questions all day and I have answered them, but always looking in the rear-view mirror and now I can talk face to face and they have no time for me. It's like being inside a Christmas snow globe. I have been wound up and scattered all around on the little frozen pond, in a perfect figure eight, on one leg, while singing a version of White Christmas that sounds just like Bing. All this while a steady snow is falling. I have been perfect performing at the top of my game and then the snow stops falling, my singing starts to sound like Puff Daddy and I fall on my ass!! Maybe I just need to be holding my loves hand and sitting side by side on the couch and talk of how the yard looks after I mowed or apologize for not getting the trash down to the road today because I went and played golf. I think that I am just a little homesick. But the days are short now and my time will come - I need not dwell on these thoughts for it will only make the time seem longer. Still the change continues. The park has lost its hillside of wild flowers and the willows have started to turn to gold. The blueberries have ripened and the air on the primrose has the smell of blueberry pie. The soap berries are also ripe and the sides of the drainage meadows are red with them. The fire weed has bloomed clear to the top and only its purple stem is left to sway in the wind, waving goodby to summer. The cotton weed with its silky tufts of snow-white cotton seem to welcome the fall. Its tops have grown and festered so that now they are ready to keep the rest of the plant warm throughout the onset of fall. But it will all surrender to the long season of the dark and I will be gone, unable to see the changes that will take place. I wonder if I will think of this place after I have gone back to my home, I wonder. Time will tell. I have a passion for this place now. I still see new beauty each day, sometimes in very strange places. Before it was newness and unfamiliarity. But now the wild life seem so much different, the newness has worn off and a feeling of their true magnificence makes me smile each time I see them. They are truly something to behold. I tell people every day that these dall sheep are found no place on earth but here and I get to see them almost every day and it has sunk in that I am so very lucky to have this opportunity. I can't explain the feeling I get when I see some of the sights that I see. Two days ago there was a 500 pound grizzly laying in the ditch right next to the road - its' back feet were almost on the road - I just pulled the bus up to it and opened the door as if it were no big deal to see a grizzly asleep alongside the road. I was no more excited than if it was a horse sleeping in the field over by Borntragers, until later, when all the people were gone and all I could think of was . . . I wonder if he had any Grey Poupon . . . .


8-14-2007 and then,

I know I'm repeating myself but the times are changing is all I can say. Last Thursday was a first for me. Went to bed early - was tired and I needed a nap - so I figure a good ten hour nap would do nicely. I turned in about 8:00 p.m. and just got to sleep when I was awakened by a knock on the door. They needed someone for a secret mission. I figure they were looking for someone with expert climbing skills, or vast knowledge of bears (all kinds) or maybe just an all-around outdoor professional. I knew that it was important, I could tell by the way they knocked on the door - you know, the kind of knock that sends chills through your blood - the kind of knock that could wake the dead. It was a rattattatt knock, sounding just like the old thomson submachine gun that me and Mike used to use for hunting rabbits back in Dovall Black's back pasture, just north of the Flat Branch. OH!!! I remember those days fondly. It seems there was always a slight skiff of snow on the ground and you could always see your breath, even in August. I think it had something to do with being north of the flat branch - it was always colder there. It's funny how this global warming is affecting our climate today, but back in those days it seemed like there was always a skiff of snow to be found. And that is where my Apache tracking skills would come in handy. There's an art to tracking and not many men have the seven senses like me. It was once said that I could track smoke to fire or rain to a puddle or snow to sleet. I can't remember all the things they used to say I could track, I just know that if there was snow in Dovell's pasture in August that I was the guy they always came to and I always got the job done. So I was not surprised when they came knocking on my door clear up here in Alaska. I figure they heard about my tracking ability and needed someone for a rescue mission. It's funny how I can tell all of this from just a knock on my door while I am asleep. But you know, rescuing is one of the things I do best. I can't remember all of the rescuing I've done in my days - like the time I rescued CP from the Mosse after his one-holer. What a mission. And feats like that can span a country. And then there was the time when I rescued the Shriver boys from the boat. My memory of that rescue is not as clear - can't recall if it was sinking or on fire or both - neither scenario would stop me from rescuing. And then there was the time - well, I don't need to say any more for fear of embarrassing some of the people I've saved in the past. There is that fine fog that can possess a man's mind when he is in between sleep and slumber. A fog that can change fiction to facts and half-truths to truths. A fog that can make you think you are in the bathroom when you're not. But within a second the fog can lift and you can say, "Is there someone knocking or is the sound of the rain on your shoes or the sound of rain on your guitar case". But with the fog just nearly lifted it is hard to tell. A warm relief comes over me. Then, at last, I am awake and go to the door - it has all been one of my Sioux visitations - like Sitting Bull might have had. But then, I doubt if he ever tried to take a ten-hour nap.