The end of a great adventure - or is it????

Hello everyone
Well, tomorrow I will take my last run into the park for the season. Going to Fish Creek - its way up there. It's hard to believe it has been almost four months since I left home, and then at the same time it has been almost forever. I ran out of deoderant Monday! Can you believe that?!? I had to go to the mercantile and get me some more - one thing you cannot do without is deoderant! Did laundry for the last time last Saturday. I had run out of laundry detergent, too, but that's not a problem - just use hotter water and lots of dryer sheets! Spent last Sunday afternoon and evening with Gary and Pamela at the campground. They have become good friends and I will miss them. They should have a really beautiful drive home. Some people left today and so we all went to the local pub last night for some good-bye toddies. It has been rather cool - I think winter is just around the corner for this place.

I'm sending you one last piece of writing. Hope you have enjoyed reading and much as I have enjoyed writing. Who knows, maybe I will put it all together in a book some day.

I have missed all of you terribly and am excited to get back home. I have a lot of catching up to do with all of you and a few rounds to buy. Looking forward to some fall golf and, of course, some hunting. I'll be catching a bus to Anchorage Friday and then a non-stop flight to Chicago via Alaska Airlines. I guess I'm going to lose three hours on my flight home - that will take some time to adjust - and Linda tells me it's getting dark there at night!! Ha!! It will probably take some getting used to going to bed when it's dark outside. We may have to leave all the lights on in the house so I can fall asleep. I understand there is going to be a party in a couple of weeks - see you then, if not before.



The final chapter??

. . . . . Coming to this far-off land has been a trip of unknowns, a path that I needed to walk. I was afraid of stumbling as I went along, but I had to travel it - I was possessed by injustice. It had rung loud and continuously inside of me and the sound had begun to swell like the vibration of a great bell and I was in fear of it eventually filling my whole subconscious being. This sound that kept hold of me operates slowly, like the germ of a cancer. It breeds within and sends out tentacles and grows. Their first effect is not desperation but rather a restlessness. I find myself feeling that something is obscurely yet radically wrong with my life. I have learned that I am not wrong. I have no control over what others may do or have done. I control my own destiny. I need to cure my own cancer - chase away my own demons. I have made it this far with the help of my always loving wife and kids and no doubt I will make it back down the path that has a start and a finish. Time can cure all they say. I know that change can also cure. I am not McCarther, but I saw and I concurred. I will soon return home from my far away summer place, sleep in my own bed and feel the touch of my loved ones - return to a more normal life. Still, only then will I know if I have cut the tentacles of the cancer that have tried to choke me.

I have tried to put into words some of what I have felt while being in the north land but I have so many things to tell of what I have seen. Incredible sights. Dall sheep smacking heads together on top of a mountain that is five thousand feet high and one slip or false step and they would fall. Golden Eagles locking talons at eight thousand feet and falling to the earth - letting go just before hitting the ground. A female grizzly turning and slapping a male as if to say "not now, I've got a headache!" Parka squirrels standing to attention while on look-out duty for Merlin falcon and sounding their alarm when danger is near. Twin calf moose being born just 60 yards from my front door and walking by on wobbly legs that were not quite sure what they were doing. Now I see only one of them and it is unbelievable how much it has grown. The bulls have started to shed their velvet and their massive antlers are snow white, some as large as 60 to 70 inches across. The caribou's antlers have turned blood red in the progression of the seasons. The pica has stuffed his den with grass that he has gathered all summer and it has dried into hay and he is ready for the long winter. The fireweed has bloomed and shriveled and beckons the end of summer. The Arctic tern has started its 25,000 mile trip back to Antarctica. Nature's loom has been woven with its colors of spring, then summer and they have faded - now the crimson colors of fall dominate all that the eye can see. All this I have seen and more, much more, and still there is more out there to see and try to understand.

Time cures all and time concurs all and my time has all but ended here. I will leave soon and all that I have seen and done I will take with me in my memories. My memories will be like a door blowing in the wind - sometimes sucked open and sometimes blown shut. But if you find it closed, all you have to do is knock - and it will open.