May 2005
Monthly Archive
alaska
Posted by squirrley on 24 May 2005 | Tagged as: home
I went to Alaska on the weekend and had a fantastic time; just being by the water, and the mountains, and all the foliage and fauna I knew so well –Douglas firs! lilacs! cottonwoods!–was instantly relaxing. So much felt familiar: sitting on the dock next to the inky sea, the quiet bobbling of boats beside me and the gentle swish of a broken tide on the stones below the pier; looking up at the facets of rock and snow (jeweled in the light), high on a granite mountain; the really green riparian zones with birches and grasses and shorebirds sticking their probosci in the mudflats.
I’m sold on Alaska. Scarlett and I visited some fisherman friends of hers; though sadly (especially as we broke camp and left our site at 7:30 AM on a holiday to make it out on time!) at the last minute the winds and weather changed and they could not take us out for a day on the commercial boat, fishing for halibut, we did sit on their lovely high porch having coffee. The house was built like some of the houses in Strathcona in Vancouver –taking advantage of huge differences in levels to create much more house above groundlevel. A ramp led from the street up to the front door, as the ground level fell away making the basement a ground floor in the direction of the light.
Mark (the fisherman) had built probably close to half a kilometer of boardwork leading back from the house, along the creek (it was lush, primal, a rainforest creek with cold, deep water, with both rapids and pools), past the treefort built for the kids, to a sauna you would only believe existed in some Bhutanese fairy tale legend. Mark had built the sauna house between a cold, deep pool surrounded by ferns and foliage, and a steep rush. Gradient wise, it was the kind of location you’d expect to find a waterwheel. But you couldn’t find a more perfect sauna — planks of fresh wood formed into a small house, surrounded by walkways and porches and steps, right next to the dipping pool.
Anyways –I’m exhausted, another 12+ hour workday today; I hope this stops soon. Taking a break made me realize I was really quite stressed out by my job, which is an extraordinary amount of pressure. So I’ll add a few photos–including one of horsetails, they are only shin high but from the picture one can imagine the lush horsetail forests in the days of the dinosaurs!!
