Same River, Different Sky

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Keely

I took my class for a walk (or, rather, they took me) before journaling today. It was snowing heavily for a while this afternoon, and I grinned and leaned into the sky, letting the kids run ahead. The girls threw loose snowballs that exploded in small halo-bursts around their heads, their giggles and shrieks muffled by their gloved hands, thrown up to block the blast, and the snowfall. One of the boys drank from the washeteria hose as we walked by, the only person I’ve ever seen drink from any hose in February. The snow scrubbed the smell of snow-go exhaust from the air, laying it down with it’s snick, tick lullaby. Walking, I loved the way the new inch of snow compressed to silence and pad my footfalls. I loved the way my tracks were softened almost immediately by more snow falling from the sky. It gilded everything: the girls’ long hair, the shoulders of our sweatshirts, the knees of our jeans. Sticky. I felt it falling on my face and prickling as it melted. I stuck out my tongue and caught a few flakes. Snowfall tastes like pop-rocks: not so much a flavor as the expectation of one and the shock of an instant’s sensation instead.

Back at school, we peeled off our damp outerwear and cracked the outside door, warm from the exercise. The open door let in cool air and the thick silence of new snow. I reminded the kids to write their experience the same way their brain does: in five dimensions. They aren’t very good at it yet, but that leaves us with plenty of room to grow, a natural objective. We’ll try again the next time the weather is fine.

On walks through the village, I’ve taken lots of pictures that I haven’t been able to share because our internet is lousy for uploads. I smooshed these down a lot to get them through, and I know they’re grainy, but I think they’re still lovely.

In other news, today marks the one-year anniversary of this here chasing piggens project. A year ago, I was burning my Christmas tree in the homestead driveway and enjoying the first daffodils.

In the Elephant Graveyard

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Keely

At the base of the bluff, where the willows get thicker as you near the river, there’s an aging collection of vehicles and heavy equipment. Covered in snow, it looks like it was just left behind, parked all higgledy piggledy, after some whopping demolition derby. How did it even get here to begin with? Was it shipped in pieces in small planes, then assembled, used for its intended purpose, and abandoned with unlocked doors? I have a long list of questions (lots about services like water, waste, power, phone, internet, television – things that people access here but in mysterious ways) that gets, somehow, a little longer with every answer I get.

The Elephant Graveyard at sunset, some days ago.

In the cab of an aging dumptruck.

I went walking in the elephant graveyard today, and explored a little on a snowmobile trail near the old airstrip and along the river. I’m pushing my comfort zone more with each walk, growing comfortable with my surroundings and making little dents in the vastness outside the village. I’m always surprised when I round a bend in the trail and find another log house, chimney puffing cozily. I haven’t grown accustomed to the idea that one can live without a driveway.

The sun hit the roof of the school full force today. The brightness of the colors took me aback. I’ve grown accustomed to the softness of the light, which hasn’t touched the ground with full strength in months. The angled light makes the world sparkle, and I think I’ll be sorry to say goodbye to the short days of winter. I like the dim-lit silence of the spruce trees and the deep, muffled silence of the snow. Sometimes, if I’m walking and I stop to look around at just the right moment, I can hear nothing at all. Usually there’s a chainsaw or a snow-go tearing into the quiet, but sometimes there’s an instant of absolute stillness. I think the light will whip the cover off the birdcage.

When I’m out hiking, I still haven’t figured out where to draw the line between too-safe and unsafe. I’m a bit of a scaredy cat when I’m walking on my own, and I don’t think that’s totally insane. I am in wolf and bear country here (yes the bears are hibernating, but I’ve heard that they sometimes aren’t, so there’s that), and I’m a small person, usually walking alone. A few years ago, a young teacher who went running in her village in southern Alaska was killed by wolves. Scientists ruled it predation, as the wolves involved were not starving, sick, defending a kill, rabid, or habituated to people. It was the first and only such predatory attack documented in Alaska, which is comforting, but only to a point. Large predators almost never attack people, and I know that, but most people aren’t hiking alone in winter in the wilderness. I don’t want to be kept close to the village by fear and miss out on everything (I’m dying to go further, but I haven’t found a walking buddy yet), but I don’t want to be foolish. The scary stuff is out there, but so is all the amazing stuff. Close to the village, you hardly see tracks in the snow – so far, I’ve only seen rabbit tracks once, and, on another occasion, marks from where a raven touched down, each feather leaving a perfect imprint. It’s no fun to be stuck between fearful and foolish with so much out there to explore. I need to find the trail between and zip through it into the open country.

Zzzip! A snowmobile trail that led me from the airstrip through a couple back yards to the post office (closed as usual – school teachers only get mail on Wednesdays in Venetie, due to inconvenient scheduling).

This picture is the closest I’ve been able to come to documenting the glowing thousand-colors-in-one-ness of the snow and sky. The world isn’t white, just crisply prismatic, dramatic it its starkness and its luscious depth. The arctic is white like dark chocolate.

We’re gaining daylight in heaping tablespoons now. I don’t have windows in my classroom, and I think it’s for the best. I don’t get to see daylight much, but I will soon. In the meantime, I’m opening the door a few times a day to suck in the sweetness of the buttery, luminous snow and to stare at the mountain, agog. I grin when the cold washes through the open firedoor and the students look up. I still get a rush when I place myself on the map, a vanishing spark of a needle in a haystack of dark wilderness.

Saturday Ambling

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Keely

I haven’t spoken to another human being in the flesh today. Right now, I’m digging the peace and solitude.

Around noon, I went for my first solo walk around the village. Wednesday, the staff went to get mail and I got the grand tour in the school truck, but I haven’t been able to go see what there is to see on my own two feet on account of the darkness during my off hours. The sun was low, as always, and spilling blue and pink puddles on last night’s thin coat of white snow. I followed my old footsteps toward the school, then walked down the old airport runway toward the Chandalar. Folks on fourwheelers and snowmachines zipped by, and dogs yipped and yowled from across the village. Ravens floated like improbable lead gliders in the still air, so black in a world of pale pink and blue, their voices crackling as they chatted among themselves about some loose garbage near the community hall.

Sound carries differently in the cold. Everything pops and snaps, louder, sharper and closer than it should be.

I picked my way along the thick tracks left by the fourwheelers and snowgos, wondering if there are rules I should know about where I can and cannot or should and should not walk. There are a lot of trails, but there’s no system of roads and driveways that I can identify and understand. I didn’t want to invade anyone’s space, so I smiled at everyone who rolled by, looking bemusedly at me, and stuck to the wider paths away from the houses.

The cemetery is at the end of the old runway, and I explored a little, hoping there’d be no disrespect perceived in my paying a visit to the dead. The markers are mostly wooden, carved with the names and dates of the deceased, and many of the graves are surrounded by waist-high wooden fences. Most had some sort of weatherbeaten garland of plastic flowers. I’ve always felt comfortable in cemeteries. I like the quiet, and I like wondering about the people and their stories, hinted at by the headstones. At home in Maine, graveyards are often in some of the prettiest places, overlooking the ocean or tucked away in cool clearings in the mossy pine woods.

I spent a moment standing in silent company with all those carved names, looking down the bank at the flats where the sun was peeking over the horizon. I didn’t stay long. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Instead, I strolled down the bluff, a little nervous to be leaving the village proper, but enchanted by the empty flats and the frozen river, and willing to take up my courage and have an adventure. I’m sure I’ll soon feel silly for being unsure. I never stopped hearing the village dogs and the snowmachines, and I wouldn’t have been out of sight except for the bluff. Everything is new now, though, and I don’t know what’s safe and what isn’t. How far is too far to venture alone?

The village used to be located at the base of the bluff, but there was a huge flood and the community moved up onto the plateau. I rounded a corner on a snowmobile trail and came across an old church, open at all its doors and windows, empty except for an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. I ventured a little beyond it, but felt too timid to go out onto the ice alone, even with the reassuring vehicle tracks to mark a safe path.

I turned back to walk home, this time cutting a new path closer to the buildings, more sure of my place here and of the conventions for passersby. I saw the daily plane come in to land, a noisier and stiffer hunk of improbably airborne matter than the ravens, and thought about going to meet it, but decided to save that adventure for another day. I was ready for a hot lunch, a book, and a cup of tea, my fingers were stiff from taking pictures in the cold and my eyes, the only part of me exposed, felt sticky.

When I got home, I wiped my eyes, realizing as I felt the chill dampness on my fingertips that my lashes had been frozen together. That accounted for the sticky feeling. When I went out again this afternoon, after another turn around the village and a short exploratory walk in a new direction, I took a picture. The moisture from my breath freezes on my lashes and the fluffy wool of my hat. I look pretty glamorous, don’t I? Frosted eyelashes are all the rage these days.

In which I vacuum seal some chocolate cake

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Keely

It may look unappetizing to the uninitiated, but that is what is known in my neck of the woods as The Chocolate Cake. After you’ve tasted The Chocolate Cake, you can never eat other chocolate cakes without regret. It’s a Cook’s Illustrated recipe for “Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake” if you’re interested. Sean made it for the first time on my 20th birthday, and I shamelessly hid it from all of my friends and devoured it in secret. It’s that kind of cake.

It’s smooshed up in that baggie because we decided to go backpacking to celebrate Sean’s birthday last week, and the vacuum sealer was (er… is) still on the counter from all of the bacon-processing. We took the cake, took Friday off, and took to the woods with our friend Morgan (we were later joined by friend Andrew) to have an adventure on the Sylamore Creek section of the Ozark Highlands Trail.

By the time we reached the trailhead on Friday, it was 2:30. We’d had to de-mildew our gear and take care of the critters and run a few errands before we could leave, and the drive took nearly three hours. We planned on camping out and meeting Andrew a mile or two from the next trailhead (he’d hike in from that direction a little later in the afternoon). That afforded us a six or seven mile hike for the afternoon. Satisfied with the plan, decked in blaze orange, and full of chicken-salad sandwiches, we set off.

The trail is mostly well-marked with white blazes, though it clearly sees little use. We did the crunchy-leaf shuffle for miles, the rustling so loud that we couldn’t carry on a conversation. The leaves on the ground sometimes obscured the path, and we once lost the trail completely and had to just aim ourselves north until we hit a jeep road that we recognized from our map. Getting lost in the woods spiced our afternoon with adventure, but it also cost us some time, and when it started getting dark we still had miles to go. The moon was huge that night, and it broke the horizon orange like an egg-yolk, but not until much later. For the last hour or so, we walked in full dark, navigating from bright blaze to blaze along the trail and then following the wide swath of a jeep road. At one point Morgan stopped, turned off her light, then turned it on again. “It’s spiders!” she said, “there’s hundreds of them! Their eyes are glowing.” She handed me her headlamp but I couldn’t see it, no matter how I tilted the light.

We reached a wide-open feed plot at around 6:45, but it felt like midnight. The stars were bright on the sky like I’ve heard the eyes of spiders are bright on the forest floor. We built a fire in the middle of the jeep road and set up camp. We roasted home-made venison sausages and baked sweet-potatoes in the coals. Andrew joined us later that night, ready to hang out by the fire, but by then we were all half-asleep, curled up in our nests around the coals.

I got up just before dawn, chilly beside the ashes of the fire, and lit my stove to make myself some tea. When I sleep out, seeing the sunrise is a priority for me. I feel like a sunflower, smiling at the sky, getting my bearings for the day. I loaded up a bottle with hot tea, stuffed it into my sweater, and grabbed my camera. I found a nice corner of the woods and let the world light up with me in it.

When I got back to camp, dragging some dry wood, everyone else was still asleep. I re-lit the fire and built it up a little, then crawled back into my sleeping bag with my hot-tea-bottle to warm my toes. I pulled out Harry and read a little by the breaking light of the sun and the flickering light of the fire.

Too soon, everyone else was up, hustling to get coffee ready and start breakfast. We had bacon and eggs (ain’t nobody does deluxury backpacking like us folks) cooked in paper-bags over the fire. You rub the bacon on the bag to grease it, then make a bacon-nest in the bottom. You crack an egg into the nest, fold the top of the bag over, then spear it on a stick and hold it over the coals. To tell you the truth, a foil-pack works better, but the paper-bag scheme has a cool-factor that foil packs don’t offer, plus you can burn your cooking implement when you’re done, instead of packing it out. At one point, my bag caught fire and burned down to the bacon, but we slid the charred remains of the bag into another bag and I cooked on with great success (and at great length, this took something like an hour)

As you can see, my egg is seasoned with paper bag ash

We spent Saturday on the trail and came across our first hunters only a short walk from our camp. Saturday was opening day for deer season in Arkansas, and we’d been concerned about hunters coming upon us early in the morning, especially sleeping as we were in the middle of a feed plot. I heard four-wheelers and some shots in the early morning, but there was another feed plot down the road a stretch, and our sleep had gone undisturbed. The hunters we met looked bemused to see us tromping through the woods, all decked out in orange and with heavy packs and no guns, but they were friendly and chit-chatted with us a while.

We filtered water twice in some cold pools in the bottoms. They weren’t flowing (trickling at best) but we pushed our concerns back and drank up. We’re still fine.

We looked a little smurfy in our bulletproof hats, but our ears were damn warm.

Sean quite liked these funky formations.

We were forced to abandon our filtration mission at this pool with the cool rock wall when Andrew went for a swim. Brrr!

We camped the next night on a north face, and I pointed my hammock east. I didn’t have to break my cocoon to watch the sun come up: I just basked under the pink sky and read about Harry’s adventures at Poudlard (that’s french for Hogwarts, it seems). After a time, we all got up and reluctantly stuffed our aching feet into our frosty shoes and boots and set off down the trail to the next road crossing where we dropped our packs, hitched up our pants and stuck out our thumbs. A young man, unsurprisingly in a pickup loaded up with hunting gear, stopped for us, and (surprisingly) he didn’t make us ride in back but allowed our stinky selves into the cab. We chatted about spray-foam insulation and pheasants as the red hills swooped by, and he left us at Andrew’s car, ready for a pizza.

We suck at taking a break

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Keely

Anything but rest! We’ve had a full house all week with Roma (a dog) and Mark (a human) staying here. They hit it off and went exploring together.

Actually, everybody got to go on that adventure. We hiked up behind the house and found the most miniscule frog in the pond at the top of the ridge. We also noticed the helicopters for the first time. They have been conspicuously present this week, flying low over the St. Francis river.

Yesterday we went with Ian for a hike along a section of the Trail of Tears in Village Creek State Park. The part that we were on was a portion of the Memphis to Little Rock road, which was built to facilitate forced Indian relocation. Until yesterday, I had not appreciated the premeditated nature of the ethnic cleansing that took place here. The loop hike was only a little over two miles and the terrain was moderate. Mark and I are both a little sick, so the short hike was exactly enough. The trail along the ridge, where the road had been, resembles the cut that our own gravel road is now in, suggesting that our road was indeed created by wagons, maybe as a route for settlers on their way west, as our landlady has described.

We’ve accomplished a great deal around the house this week. The porch swing is now the same, dark blue as the door, and we built and painted a corner shelf for the kitchen today. The gents planted root veggies this morning while I drew up plans for our construction project. When Mark and I were roommates, we built a shelf together for our dorm room. It was a first attempt, and it looks it, though Sean and I still use it for tools. Last spring, Sean and I built a fairly nice kitchen shelf for our spices and cookbooks, and now the three of us have teamed up into a shelf-building dream team. The result is easily the nicest shelf I’ve ever had a hand in making.

The new shelf is the one on the left! It’s super exciting because we don’t have to keep our potatoes on the floor anymore!

Mark shot a gun for the first time today, and he’s already a far better shot than I am, though not as good as Sean. Sean has made three ice cream flavors so far, in addition to the perpetual flow of delicious gourmet meals.

We went out to bring in the laundry at about 9:30 and heard a rustling in the brush. Sean shined the super-powered flashlight into the woods and spotted an armadillo! We chased it through the woods to the mouth of its burrow, where it stood, twitching its cute little ears, long enough for us to get a good look. Tomorrow, we intend to get set up for some new additions to the menagerie. With a little luck, we’ll be bringing home three little pigs sometime before the end of this week.