Day in the Life

Sunshine streaming through the skylight wakes me up. Skylights are a great idea in a bathroom or closet, terrible idea in a bedroom. Especially in Alaska where in the summer Mr. Sunshine can be up at 4 am, after going to bed way after midnight. For cave sleepers like myself, it is a very painful proposition.

A coyote was in my driveway, which is only the second coyote I have ever seen here. A good sized animal with a beautiful coat, very glossy and thick. Possibly a small wolf. Decided it would not be a good day to let the turkeys enjoy the free range life. Buck and Miss Cuba have really enjoyed strutting around the yard all summer, and now that the berries are in season they are enjoying it just that much more. A berry-stuffed bronze turkey seems like to tasty a meal to pass up if I were a coyote - so decided to err on the side of caution and left them in the pen.

Black bears and moose in the yard are not uncommon, and an eagle's nest is located a couple hundred yards away so they are a regular fixture as well. This coyote is intriguing. I enjoyed them in Arizona, wonder if it will stick around in my woods. I have thirteen acres, a little triangle of Sitka spruce and hemlock that borders a marsh with a lone white swan. Pulled a small creek off an artesian spring last summer, which runs through a field that I am cultivating as a wildflower/fruit garden.

Spent the day going through a bucket of self-etching oil-based primer on the box car that I am using for a garage. The primer is a cobalt blue and makes the structure look like a child's toy. Better than the rusty silver that it started. I want to paint a mural on the long side - perhaps something that looks like a postcard from the Golden Age of Travel. I can paint only a gallon a day with all the distractions that come with the job and the time it takes to run up and down the ladder. Not that I mind the steady flow of neighbors that drop by to visit - enjoy them immensely, it is just that I wish I had more of Tom Sawyer's charm when it comes to painting.

Am three gallons into the project now, two more to go and I hope to have the boxcar covered. Then the fun part will start. My guesthouse is a 1940s troop car with 14x20 rooms built off the sides. I purposely chose not to have but one tiny window in the walls facing the street because I want to paint a scenic mural there as well, so it looks like the railcar is in situ instead of driving through someone's house. We are still on the tyvek layer on that project.

Visiting with the locals is a great experience. One 80 year old gent told me how he was a commercial fisherman in his prime, and sold a drift permit for $85,000 one fall. He had it made into $5k cashiers checks and stuck it in his bedroom drawer. Over the course of the winter he bought the first three stools at the local bar, and had more friends than he has ever had in his life. Come spring he had drank up $85k and had to take out a $10k draw at the local fisheries to outfit his boat. Hasn't even had a glass of wine since. I think his wife must really love him.

Rumor has it that another local boy has acquired a green card girlfriend that we are nicknaming "Swetlana". This is a greathearted guy, who has a difficulty with people skills at times, but always the best intentions. Local girls understand that the mail order bride thing is a business proposition for the Russians. They got cold hearted during the cold war, had to in order to survive.

Come to America, find someone who is hopefully tolerable and accommodating. Get your American degree, send enough money back home for the family to get by, learn English and find a job. When the two-years of indentured servitude is over, bring your little kids over - but not before in case your sponsoring husband is a perv. After you divorce the first husband, the one who was your mule, then you find the second and third boyfriends (hopefully at the same time) these are the guys who buy you a nest and feather it. Now, after the hell of making these social misfits happy, now you have time and resources to sit back and wait for love to arrive. It is not an easy way to live, and we don't begrudge them for trying to make a better life.

You have to wonder what is the guy thinking. Here is a beautiful, intelligent, articulate woman who is going to stay with you because you rescued her from poverty? You don't have the skills to make it with an Alaskan, so you are going to import - and she isn't going to notice that you are an insensitive bore? Guess you have to run the odds.

Not that our red-haired hero here is set up for failure, we are wishing him the best. We have another friend who picked up a honey from the Philippines, and they hit it off and are still together years later - you just never know.

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