My neighbor Betty has moved to Haines Assisted Living, and when I visit her there, she asks "What's the news on Mud Bay Road today?" Yesterday I told her a bear was on my daughter's deck next door at 7:00 am. "Black bear?"  no, a brownie,  I said and it was big (of course any bear on the deck at dawn is huge), and then I tell her it  also tore a branch off my big mountain ash tree, the one right next to the window seat, but didn't seem to like the red berries. I said I would put a radio on the porch at night, turned low, and keep the light on all night too.

My artist friend Tresham was speaking through his magical puppets in a sing-song voice, one was a mermaid and one was a wild witchy woman named Esmeralda, or maybe she was Margarita? I did hear him say he gives them all a name like that. He was demonstrating a bit of what he will be up to now that he is no longer on the borough assembly (his term was up and he did not run again) and has turned 75. The good news, he said, is now he doesn't have to be an adult anymore. He was wearing a maroon velvet and brocade jacket that fell to his knees and a necklace of sea lion teeth.

James Audubon  observed, "When the bird and the book disagree, believe the bird." The book says moose eat the same way giraffes do, with their heads up high, plucking willow leaves, but I watched a cow standing up to her belly in a swamp sucking grasses and water for a long time, like a horse grazing. I read that line from Audubon in monk Jack Kornfield's book on meditation, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. 

These days remain so glorious and full what with running and back forth to moose camp, doing the laundry, cooking, packing the cooler, and starting all over again-- and I had two obituaries to write this week in between trips, there's an assembly meeting next Tuesday, tonight is the KHNS annual meeting (5:30 at the brewery) plus a commerce committee meeting at 5:30 too- (I'm not on it, but may stop in as they are discussing employee housing, signs, and permitted commercial tours including the Glacier Point canoe tour that someone died on this summer),  and then there's that book (which I've

Is it okay to call these glorious, dry, warm Fall days "Indian Summer?," my friend Teresa asked as we looked around from the top of Mt. Riley the other day. There we were, in shirt sleeves, in September-- with dry boots too--  

 I was more than a little apprehensive about my trip to ANWR to begin with. Then my cab from the airport in Fairbanks to the hotel was smashed into just as I was paying the driver. It felt and sounded like there had been an explosion. My driver was an elderly gal who screamed about whiplash and was very, very upset. I was worried she'd have a heart attack.

 The big Ford SUV was brand new, she said, and swore and moaned some more. 

Who knew?

I know I said I was working, and I am, or I was, feverishly to make a deadline on the new book (it's still looming) but in the meantime I took a raft trip down the Kongakut River in the Eastern corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from Drain Creek in the Brooks Range down to Caribou Pass. 

I do want to let you all know, that I'm on hiatus a bit with the blog, because I am busy working on a deadline for the next book and my brain feels a bit like my desk looks:

The good news is that nearly everything I have been thinking and doing and living since the Fall of 2016 will be sort of touched on it, so you can catch up then.

It's also still summer, and busy time with family, guests, the garden and the dogs.. yes I'm taking good care of all them, I hope.

It's hot and hazy and the beach peas are crunchy underfoot from lack of rain. There is a burn ban, so no campfires.The sprinkler is on in the garden. Windows are open and the fan is on upstairs. I feel bad enough for the wilted crows in their black feathered coats that I'm not chasing them out of the cherries. We are all Northern creatures and not used to so much sun and heat. I walked in shorts this morning and had to tie my fleece around my waist half-way through. 

I can't believe it's a month since I checked in. I'm fine. No one is hurt or ill or in some crisis. I apologize if I worried you.Time really does fly when you are having fun-- right out the open windows-- and it is not like a boomerang, these moments won't ever return-- and it is  summertime and the sun is shining and the house has been filled with family and I have a fall book deadline.