Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

Well, the gloating that I did the other day about not having a white Christmas was short lived. These shots are of Christmas day. My daughter Jen and I went out for a walk because it was too nice to stay inside. Actually, it was cold that day and windy, but the rain  had stopped and it was so nice to see the sunshine,so  we decided to get outside for a bit. When I woke up on the 26th, there was about four inches of snow on the ground and more coming down every second. Let that be a lesson to you folks- it doesn't pay to gloat over your good fortune, at least not if you're me. It always comes back to bite you in the backside. I hope the kids that got bikes for Christmas got out and rode them while they had the chance. The sledders are the happy campers now.   I hope everyone had a delightful Christmas. When you get to my age there isn't a whole lot that you need as far as gifts go. It would be great if you could ask Santa for a years worth of good health, two month...

It's nasty outside again today. I'd kind of like to go out and get some pictures of the area for anyone interested in looking at pictures from Alaska. However, there isn't much to see right now- dirty snow and rain, plus sheets of ice. We were supposed to have gotten six inches of snow in just a few hours today, but it didn't happen. Personally, I'm happy. The way things are going this year, it may be a brown Christmas. If anyone gets a bike they ought to be a happy camper.The poor kids who got sleds will be a little bummed out. Hopefully no one will try sledding down the graveled street. That could play havoc on your plastic sled. Maybe in Bizzaro world that's what they do- run a toboggan down a steep rocky cliff- but I wouldn't recommend it here. The very idea reminds me of Terry Shepard though. He's affectionately known as the Hobbit by his friends. He used to take a plastic sled and load it with groceries and mail and whatever else he had in his car ...

Since we're only a little over a week away from Christmas, I thought I would do a post about our Christmas tree. O Tannenbaum is a German song about a Fir or Christmas tree. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, ours isn't real. The down side is that I doubt that anyone would care to compose a song about a plastic Christmas tree. As far as I can tell, that, and maybe the fact that it doesn't have that nice evergreen scent are about the only downfalls I can think of. I don't have to worry at the start of the season about going out and finding the perfect tree, trudging through  knee deep snow, across creeks that are just over the top of your boots, and all the hard work of sawing the poor thing down. I always know where our tree is and pretty much what it's going to look like when we set it up. I never step on any sharp needles that have worked their way into the carpet, hiding in the fabric, waiting for me to walk  by with bare feet. I don't h...

 I was coming back from the store or some such place a couple of days ago when the sun started to burn off the fog. I like to get pictures when that  happens, it gives the landscape a whole different perspective. Obviously it doesn't do any good to take pictures of the fog before the sun comes out- they would all look the same- kind of like a grey wool navy blanket. In the short time it took for me to get my camera from the house and return, the sun had already dissipated a good deal of what I was trying to capture. Nonetheless, I decided to get a few shots off before it was all gone. Being out on a boat when the fog sets in can be a bit unnerving. I recall one time, before I had a GPS to help guide me, I was in Cross Sound in thick fog. I think I already had the gear in the water before it set in. There were a number of boats in the area and all I had was an old radar that had a hood that you had to look through to see anything. About half the time it didn't work at all, and...

 Down throught the years I attempted to quit smoking on a number of occasions. When we moved to the farm I actually quit for about five months, though at the time I really didn't want to. When the opportunity presented itself to buy cigarettes, I eagerly took advantage of it. Off and on I would quit for various amounts of time. When I finally made up my mind to quit for good, I needed some kind of crutch to replace the tobacco. I turned to chewing gum. I've always chewed gum to one degree or another, but in the past eight or ten years I went whole hog into it. As you can see, I don't buy gum just by the pack, I buy it by the carton. For one thing, it cost about half as much to buy it by the carton at  Costco than to purchase it here in town. Plus, a single pack of gum only used to last me about a day. There are eighteen sticks in one of these Trident packs. Now, unless I'm really stressed over something, I only go through half or three quarters of a pack. When I worked ...

    The ground outside is still covered with tons of snow which I don't find very attractive at all- especially when it's starting to melt. It gets dirty and looks really ugly in my opinion. If I didn't know that there will be many more snow days ahead of me I might get excited about the dirty snow-the dirty, dirty snow. It's usually a sign that spring is coming, but I'm not going to fall for that. A couple days ago the wind was whipping and the rain was falling like pouring pee out of a boot. There was even thunder at about 6:30 in the morning. That's a rather unusual occurrence here. In my thirty five years here, I only recall seeing lightning maybe twice, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've heard thunder here. I'm not sure why that is- it may have something to do with all the moisture in the atmosphere here. In any event, I once again am not going to do a blog post on snow. I opted instead to do one on the feeding frenzy go...