Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  For a number of years Chris and Terri  Budke, the pastors at our church, have thrown a party in May. It's held out behind their house on the tidal flats. Last Sunday in lieu of church we all gathered for a baptism as well as a party. Actually the two go hand in hand very well. When Sunday morning came I was wondering how it was all going to pan out. The weather didn't look very co-operative. There were clouds and it looked like rain was in store, but as afternoon approached the clouds dissipated and the sun came out and it was a gorgeous day. The time for the party was set to coincide with the high tide to allow for the baptism. On low tide the flats are devoid of water. While the air was warm, I'm fairly certain the water was pretty doggone chilly to put it mildly. Nonetheless, four people wanted to proclaim their faith publicly and opted to be baptized on the flats. Tim and Shelly Yandell, Jenny Miller and Jeremy Johnson all to...

  Today is May 19, my daughter Jennifer's birthday. I won't bother telling you how old she is- those that know her well already know how old she is and for anyone else it doesn't really matter. In any event, it's mid- May. Even in Alaska the weather usually starts to warm up by now, but  not this year. The calendar says it's spring, but nature says its only kinda spring. So far most of the leaves are still being fairly reluctant to make a full appearance, sort of like when you're standing on the side of the swimming pool dipping your foot into the water to see how cold it really is. There are a few herring showing up and the birds are in full swing  doing whatever they do- hopefully eating bugs, but it's still pretty cold. Of course that doesn't keep the dandelions from sprouting. Just about every yard  is displaying a sea of yellow blossoms. It looks like Dandelionville around here - a gardeners nightmare. We've had several cru...

      If you follow this blog you'll notice that I haven't been posting quite as often as I'd like to. It's that time of year and I have to spend my time getting the boat ready. My most recent project  has been an aluminum mast that I bought three or four  years ago from my friend Barbie. She owns the F/V Talache, a nice double -ended troller that she purchased from my friend Buffalo Bob. Buff had the aluminum mast made to replace the wooden one that was originally on the boat. When I bought it I noticed that there were no cleats to tie the lines up and no ladder to access the mast light on top. I asked Buffalo about it when I spoke to him a few weeks ago. He said that he had just signed the papers for the boat over to Barbie and was in the process of putting her check in his billfold when the top three feet of the wooden mast broke off and fell onto the top house while they were talking on the float. He didn't ...

                    Doing a blog post should be a fairly simple thing, and no doubt for most people it is, but keep in mind that it's me we're talking about here, so nothing comes easy. I've tried unsuccessfully for the past hour to get these pictures to download in the proper order. As you can see, they aren't arranged in a way that would make sense. I wanted the last picture to line up at about the same spacing as the previous two, but noooooo... that's not about to happen. Then when I tried to type the text, it automatically started to underline everything and all the words were in blue. I have no idea why. It's become the normal now. I don't know why it does it and I don't know what I do to make it stop, but somehow it magically does. I wish I knew what I did to make it stop so that I could do it next time, but I'm an old guy and things concerning computers don't come easily to me. Oh well. C'est l...