Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

 I was at a loss as to what to write about today. Several days ago the morning broke bright and sunny so I grabbed my camera hoping to get a shot of Ears Mountain with the fog lifting off the top and the sun highlighting the snow. As it was, by the time I got the camera, the scene had changed so I couldn't get the shot I wanted and I ended up getting a few pictures of some other things. Because the sun has been such a rare occurrence this year, I thought I would document the blue sky over Hill Street, where I live. As you can see, or maybe you can't really see, so I will tell you, like so much of the rest of Hoonah, the houses are an odd collection of tastes and lifestyles. There are white folks and natives and a combination of the two who live here. There are fishemen and a carpenter and social worker and a bookeeper and retired folks and some folks who don't work at all, and I'm not sure if they ever did. How the heck they stay alive is anyone's guess.  There ...

It's good to be home. For those of you who have never traveled in Southeast Alaska before, you don't know what you're missing. We had to be at the ferry terminal an hour before departure, which was supposed to be at 9:45 PM. We joined a whole slug of other cars, trucks, shipping vans and boats and waited. The ferry had to take on fuel, so that delayed the process by about an hour or so. When we finally got on board, we found a spot in the lounge and sat down. The chairs are supposed to recline, and they do up to a point. That point being the most uncomfortable position that you could ever hope to try and sleep in. Jan opted to try and sleep on the floor, which is just steel plates covered with a thin layer of carpet. I can only liken it to sleeping on the floor of a produce cooler. The upside is, there were no little kids running around and screaming as is usually the case on the smaller ferry. I could kick myself for not grabbing the four inch foam mattress that I had boug...