perspicacious.org

Get ready for this one, kids.

I'm not coming home on the 1st. Instead I'm flying tonight from Fairbanks to Seattle. Then I'm getting Greyhound passes with two girls from camp and traveling to Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and the grand finale, Memphis, Tennesee. They'll continue home to West Virginia from there, and I'll take to bus back to Albuquerque. We'll sleep on the bus and tool around during the day. I have to do more of this stuff before I get too old.

The last week of camp was fun and hectic. 3 weeks was just long enough, I think. I have many stories that will have to wait until I get home.

I'm back at the Girl Scout council office in Fairbanks for my 24 hours off. 24 hours is not very much time. By the time we get here, have a nice dinner, buy some groceries, and hang out it's pretty much over. Last night we went for a while to the Eskimo Olympics. We saw the one toe high kick, but missed the ear weight competition, 4 man carry, and blanket toss. I don't know about the ear weight, but the other competitions are based on actual Eskimo survival skills, which is sort of cool. After we hung out there for a while we went to one counselor's cabin outside of town. It was adorable- cute little porch, wooden furniture, sleeping loft upstairs, and no running water. It's pretty common here to have no running water; in some places the permafrost makes it difficult to lay pipe at all, and it has to be super insulated to deal with the low temperatures. So there are showers at most businesses and schools, and places where people can fill big water jugs.

For the past week at camp we had 5 groups of 9-11 year olds. They were a lot more fun than the little ones we had the previous week. We'll have the same age group this week, and then camp is over. It's really short. I'm planning now on spending a night at Chena Hot Springs Resort and then driving south to Valdez with some other counselors. Our plans keep changing, though, which is making me insane. I'm going to try to get reservations for a cabin at the hot springs at least. In Valdez we'll camp, so that's not a problem. The only other thing we need to worry about is the ferry from Valdez to Anchorage.

My birthday was fun. The cook made me a cake and a lot of the kids made me cards. My parents sent a box with all kinds of random stuff. And the sunset (at midnight) was gorgeous and there were baby beavers swimming in the lake. I'd do it again.

I guess that's it. I've been here almost a month. Wow.

I still haven't been eaten by a grizzly. In fact, I haven't even seen a grizzly, except for a couple that saw from really far away when I was at Denali. I did see a moose from really close up a couple of days ago. A mother and baby were swimming around in the little lake at camp, but they were pretty far away. When I glanced up again they were maybe 20 yards away. I said, "Um, let's go inside now, girls." We got to watch from the porch. I also watched a bald eagle swoop down toward the lake. Pretty cool. There's a beaver, too, but that's not as exciting as moose and bald eagles.

Camp has been pretty fun so far, but it is absolutely a mosquito hell sometimes. I've been lucky and haven't been bitten too badly, but my ankles have a few bites. I think I also have one on my butt. I must have gotten that one in the latrine. Nice. Other than the mosquitos it's pretty good.

We had a group of brownies (6-8 year olds) for the past 3 days. They were awfully cute and affectionate, but also homesick and dependant. Next week we have a slightly older group. The rest of the counselors are great. It's a good group– everyone seems to be there for the right reasons.

The facility is pretty small. There is a (really) small lake where the girls swim and canoe. The water is absolutely frigid. I jumped in and I swear my lungs shrank to the size of raisins. I stayed in the water for a minute to see if I'd get used to the temperature, but I just got numb. I haven't been swimming since. I think, though, that the day will come when swimming in frigid water is preferable to getting eaten by mosquitos. What else? There is a small dining hall and rec room, and maybe 10 or 12 cabins. The cabins have screens on the windows and heavy shutters, and it's quite dark inside even though it's light outside basically all of the time. I thought about getting a mosquito net for my bed, but settled for two mosquito coils and 3 cans of bug spray.

I don't know what I'll do after camp. I'm thinking about bussing it down to Valdez to see Prince William Sound. I have 4 whole days to travel plus one day to get back to Anchorage and the airport. I'm on the downslope of my trip now.

More next weekend if I get the chance.

"The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare."

There is this sense of permanence here. Everything is wild and untouched and so, so quiet. Yesterday I hiked alone in the rain in a land with no trails. It took guts. Once I got away from the road I was completely and totally alone. More so than I ever have been before. I walked along the gravel shores of one of the park's braided rivers. The rivers are made from glacier melt and wind through the valleys, splitting and coming together many times. There were mountains and glaciers ahead of me, their tops hidden by the clouds. I saw no other people. Two wolves drank from the water ahead of me, but ran when they saw me coming. Birds drank from the cold water, and perhaps a caribou or two, though they were so far ahead it was hard to see.

Eventually I reached a point where the river was impassable. I made my way back to the road and hopped on a bus out of the park. It was the most difficult and most amazing thing I've done here.

Today I'll catch the bus up to Fairbanks to start camp. It's been cold and rainy (I even saw snow falling briefly yesterday,) but today it's sunny with a nice breeze. Maybe I'll be able to see Mt. McKinley. All for now.

So much summing up to do… During the day I remember all of these things that I want to write about, but by the time I find internet access somewhere all I can think to tell you about is the weather. Sorry about that. And the ambiance is never quite right wherever I do find a computer. Right now I'm in the office at my hostel near Denali National Park. It's cold and rainy. But enough about the weather.

I took the train here from Anchorage. I'm glad I decided to do that instead of taking the bus. It was more expensive, but I got to walk around and I didn't get stuck with a bunch of smelly backpackers. I shared a car with a family with 3 little boys. They did pretty well for about the first 5 hours of the trip, but toward the end the boys were hanging off of the overhead bins like monkeys annd crawling under the seats. Mom wasn't even trying to get them to behave. I taught them how to play poker. Hope their parents don't mind.

Tomorrow I'm taking a shuttle bus into Denali. There are all kind of restrictions about when and how you can get into the park. Shuttle buses run every half hour to different destinations within the park. The one I'm taking tomorrow (and I was lucky to get a seat at all,) takes 11 hours (!) and goes to Wonder Lake, on the far western side of the park. I may not ride it the whole way, though. You can stop the bus anywhere and get out and hike. There are no managed trails, so you just find a place that looks good and go for it. You make your way back to the road and a bus will pick you up going the other direction. I don't think I'll be brave enough to do that tomorrow, but I will on Friday if the weather is decent. I didn't get to see Mt. McKinley today because of the clouds. Supposedly it's visible one day out of every three, so I may luck out before I go.

I take the bus to Fairbanks on Saturday, and camp training starts on Sunday morning. I'm getting used to the light. I'm not getting used to the mosquitos. I have repellant with 100% deet. I've tried not to use it because I can live without smelling like deet. And because it's possibly a carcinogen. But don't think I won't take that option over hordes of ravaging mosquitos out to suck my blood. I'm all about living in the now.

I nearly killed myself today trying to put on my backpack at the train station. It's pretty big and heavy to begin with, but it was even more so because I bought a bunch of food to bring with me here. I slipped on the floor and fell over backward. It was pretty suave. A nice older man helped me up. And laughed at me. And gave me that, "Are you sure you're old enough to be doing this?" look. I just shrugged and said something witty like, "Sure is slippery right there." Yep. More tomorrow if I don't get eaten by a grizzly.