Category Archives: Random

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It’s hot out there

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There it is again. You could make an argument that it sounds about like any other prop-driven aircraft, excepting the DC-6 has a low throbbing growl, perhaps owing to the weight 3,000 gallons of fire retardant it’s hauling. In some respects that sound should be reassuring. It means that someone is looking out for us, yet it’s thoroughly disturbing, because you only hear them when there’s a fire nearby.

Fire season comes every summer. Around here the worst of it usually seems to be in the springtime when folks are trying to clear away brush and the tinder-dry trees have yet to get a few good rain-showers. Further north, it tends to be worse later, in large part, because of increased lightening activity and much hotter, drier conditions.

As I listen to the fading hum of the aircraft engines, I start to wonder. Is this the year? I mean, it could be. Everything is green and we’re hardly in to May. In spite of repeteted threats, the daily appearance of ominous looking clouds have failed to do more than spit a few drops of rain for the last several months. Is this the year of the fire?

I’ve lived in Alaska for over 35 years, and I can’t recall ever having had spring this early. As a child I can remember hunting easter eggs in calf-deep snow. I may have been short and it was the granular dessicated snow of late winter that has a way of working it’s way into the top of your shoe and causing ankle freeze, but it was still snow. This year, my kids didn’t have an Easter egg hunt, but if they had, it would have been in above-freezing weather without snow under the swelling buds of the birches.

For years we’ve been hearing the phrase ‘early fire-season’. It’s been said routinely enough now I reckon it’s safe to just call it normal. Every one of those years I’ve heard it, I’ve wondered if wild fire will devastate the Anchorage hillside, reaching even into mid-town, displacing tens of thousands of residents. Perhaps, it will be Wasilla instead, burning through the sprawling suburban neighborhoods and even across Lake Lucille where flaming ash could alight on Sarah Palin’s house, causing even her to eat her words on climate change.

I don’t know, but what I do know is that every year, the feeling of danger is lurking just at the edge of my conscience. Sometimes it’s just general discomfort. This year, it’s a little worse. As I drove home listening to a report of the evacuation of Fort McMurray, Alberta, a northern city with a population of 80,000, I saw a jaw-clenching sight from the highway. A column of smoke, much too close to home, rising from the patch of land between the Knik arm and the Talkeetna mountians. It was not the smoke of a controlled burn. It was a wide band heralding the arrival of a potentially dangerous wild-fire.

As I thought of those people in Canada, with so little time to gather their most precious belongings and head for safe ground, I wonder, is this going to be my lot this year too? What will we do with the animals? If I have only 45 minutes to evacuate what to I take? Where will I go? How will many thousands of people evacuate on only three routes, two of which are only two-lane highways.

It also begs the question, how the hell did we get here? March used to be a bitterly cold bitch of a month. The past few years have been pretty damn mild, really. I understand that it’s an El Nino year, a year where warm ocean currents poke much further north than usual, but I’ve been through those before. They’ve been nothing like this. Is this what we can expect from climate change? Is this the shape of things to come? Will the fires continue to close in our our Alaskan urban centers until disaster? I expect the answer is yes. In spite of all caution and tireless heroics of our wildland fire crews, we could very well find ourselves watching as any one of the most populated areas of our state burns.

I know, perhaps this is all a doomsday scenario, after all the story is hardly a 3rd line note in the local news outlets, failing even to beat out an electronic-device sniffing dog, but as I sit and watch the thermometer outside my window with disbelief, listen to yet another DC-6 rumble overhead, and wait for the golden sky to turn hues of pink and orange, I wonder just how unrealistic it is. After-all, green trees before the end of April? Who ever heard of such a thing?

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Killing geese is not awesome

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You know what? I’m not a huge fan of Sundays. They’re the province of hangovers and the looming dread of an impending Monday. It’s the day I’m on my own with the kiddos. Not that I mind, but it does mean having to pretend to be Mr. Domestic for eight or so hours, which usually involves being asked why the hell didn’t you [sweep|mop|fold|cook|feed the kids|buy groceries|clean the counter|pick up that damn coffee cup] today? This Sunday isn’t going to be different, but it’s less awesome than usual.

Instead of crawling out of bed at 9:30, just in time to see my wife off to work and nod blearily at the list of the day’s chores that I will not get to, I was blasted out of bed to the tune of: “Dad get up, Alfie has a problem and mom needs your help.” When mom needs dad’s help with an animal it means major injury. For those not acquainted with the life of a farmer, major injury translates into the urgent need to butcher an animal. I’m not going to get into the details of what was wrong with the goose, except that there was blood and no remedy. In these cases, it becomes a matter of allowing the animal to slowly bleed to death and possibly be killed by his flock or making it quick and clean. The second option allows the possibility of salvaging meat – some ailments preclude consumption, but not this one.

So, at 8:27 on this Sunday morning, I was standing outside in a gentle breeze, the sort of gentle breeze only Alaska can deliver, an eye-watering breath of frigid air from the 9th circle of hell, looking at a doomed goose. I’m not a fan of this goose. He hisses at me and goads the flock into action like a hoard of angry vikings in my presence. To everyone else in the house, he was the favorite, and there were tears. When the decision to butcher him was made, you might imagine that I was pleased to be rid of the bastard, but no, not so much.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did not actually kill the goose. Those honors went to my wife. She picked him up, brought him to the killing cone and made the final cut. I just served as tactical and moral support. It was a subdued affair. The goose didn’t struggle, and he went quick. That said, I still feel bad. Not because I’ve still got to actually do the work of butchering, which I do, but because killing is a hard thing to do.

I wrote a blog post about this some months ago, perhaps even last year at this time, but it’s on my mind again, so here I am. Some folks, avid hunters, non-backyard farmers, and sociopaths, may shrug and say it’s not that hard. Perhaps there’s truth in that, but not for very many of us. The majority of those of us who are lucky enough to be able to roll into a grocery store and pick up food that no longer resembles the animal it came from, have never killed anything larger than a spider. So when we do, we feel it. It’s an adrenaline rush that leaves you feeling a little shaky and sick – add to that sadness if this is an animal you raised. It’s something to keep in mind when your newly minted fantasy hero makes his first kill. As he watches his victim fall to the ground where there will be blood and jerking and the sound of gurgling or screaming, your hero will be feeling it.

photo credit: crime-scene-murder-weapon.jpg via photopin (license)

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On a break

This week, I’m headed off for a break. It’s a writing break, a work break, and an at-home stuff break. My family and I are hopping on an airplane tonight (a few hours) to head off to LA (Yes, Disneyland). We’ve never all been on a vacation together, the closest we’ve gotten is a trip down to Seward or that one time we went to Fairbanks for a weekend. 

Normally, the airplane is a great place to write, it’s one of the few places where the distraction IS writing. Hotel rooms are also particularly productive, I mean, what else would I do? Last couple of work trips I spent my hotel and airplane time knocking out about half of Wine Bottles and Broomsticks. That’s even after dinner with co-workers and talking with the wife on the phone. This isn’t that sort of trip though. I’ve got the kids with me so there will be those distractions, plus I’m flying late-night flights there and back. I’m not going to have the energy to be creative or productive in any meaningful sense. 

At the moment, most of what I’m working on is line edits and various bits of polishing, not an awful lot of content creation going on anyhow. By taking a break like this, I’m hoping that when I come back, after I get a bit of sleep, I’ll be able to focus on not only editing book 1 of the Rick Basket stories, Wine Bottles and Broomsticks, but I’ll be able to start seriously thinking about plot details and outlines for the second book. I think a good break to absorb some of the real world will do wonders for my created world and make sure I stay excited about the project. 

In any case, I’m sure I’ll be all over Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook during my time off, so if you’re wondering what sort of trouble I’m getting in to, there will be a full-public accounting of that. Except for the moments where I’m getting told to ‘put that damn phone away.’