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Alaskan Bytes

Nov26

Fighting sleep despite a full tummy and a fresh diaper, my one-month-old infant squirmed restlessly. I placed her against my shoulder and gently patted her back. I stood holding her this way, swaying, looking out at the night sky through the window in the back door of the mobile home we lived in. Above the northern horizon, I saw a ripple of pale green, blue, and white lights slowly dancing in the sky, reminding me of seaweed moved by an invisible ocean current. The little one burped and fell asleep. Her breaths were warm against my neck.

Some memories are like snapshots. Vivid, clear, but limited to just one frame. Like a memory I have of a very young me sitting on the steps at grandpa’s apartment, waiting for the grown-ups to finish rounding up cows that got loose. Other memories are like short, four or five frame videos, like the one I recounted of one night shortly after my daughter, Niki, was born.

Why do we carry around so many short memories that seem to have no point or connection to the main theme of our lives? I don’t know, but I do know that I love these short ‘clips’ and wouldn’t want to be without them!

I have several short memories from the Alaskan cruise my daughter and I took in September. I’m calling them Alaskan Bytes, because there are eight of them, just like the eight bits contained in a computer byte. Also, because Alaskan bytes rhymes with northern lights!

1) Tammie and I were in the World Stage auditorium. A handsome young man on the stage told us he belonged to the Tlingit Indian tribe, explaining, “When you say, ‘Tlingit’, if you don’t feel your breath under the tongue, you didn’t pronounce it correctly.” For many years Western laws made it unlawful for tribe members to hunt and gather as they did in the past.  While in high school, he was encouraged by a teacher to investigate the law forbidding his people to harvest sea gull eggs. His assignment led to a special permission for him to gather eggs. When he gave his mother a couple, he claimed she said, “This will be the first time in my life that I will eat sea gull eggs that weren’t poached twice!”

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Remembering Him

Nov19
I’m ready to do metal work!

One weekend, months before my daughter and I went on our Alaskan cruise, Tammie insisted we sit down and schedule our onshore activities. She urgently informed me, “We can’t put this off! Some of the activities have limited enrollment. I’ve checked and found some shore excursions with only a few openings left!”

Frowning, I exclaimed, “But the cruise is months away yet!”

Nodding, Tammie pointed out, “Some people plan their trips a year or more ahead,”

Ruefully, I admitted, “Your daddy’s habit of making last minute plans must have rubbed off on me! I thought we had plenty of time yet.” For the following hour my daughter and I went over all the shore excursions offered at each port and discussed the pros and cons of each one. One of the more unusual options described was in Sitka where each person could make a metal wall decoration under the supervision of a metal shop teacher.

Without hesitation, Tammie announced, “I want to do this! The decoration we could make would be a great souvenir! Also, going to a metal workshop makes me think of how I used to visit Daddy in his workshop.”

I approved, “Arnie would have loved visiting Alaska. Taking this workshop is a nice way for us to remember him in a special way.”

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Holy Cow!

Nov12

The dining room waiter pulled out my chair and then deftly slid it in as I sat down. I smiled at him as he opened my cloth napkin and laid it on my lap. Such respectful, formal treatment by everyone working in the main cruise ship dining room made me look forward to returning there for all my meals. Besides the sterling service, the food we ordered was, without exception, well prepared and attractively presented.

This morning, we shared our table with fellow travelers, Pat and Lorin. Our conversation centered on how many cruises we’d been on and about the park rangers who were giving talks on the Alaskan wildlife which was to take place in the Crow’s Nest Lounge. The main activity for the day was seeing a glacier close-up. Our cruise ship was to approach within half a mile of the face of the Johns Hopkins Glacier, in the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.

Upon parting from our dining room friends, Tammie and I hurried up to the Crow’s Nest Lounge on deck eleven. Good fortune allowed us to almost immediately find recently vacated deck loungers along the observation windows. The ship was moving slowly now, and tall, rocky land rose up on each side of us. In the distance, we could see snow-covered mountain tops.

The lounge was very large and curved, so I couldn’t see where the ranger was, but he had a microphone so everyone could hear. He explained that Harry Fielding Reid, who discovered this glacier in 1893, named it Johns Hopkins after the university in Baltimore, Maryland. The ranger continued, “The Johns Hopkins Glacier is one of the few advancing tidewater glaciers of the Fairweather Range. Starting on the eastern slopes of Lituya Mountain and Mount Salisbury, it is12 miles long. The face of this glacier is one and a half miles wide.”

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Where There’s Gold!

Nov5
I used sunlight and magnification to make my 8 gold flakes look like nuggets.

In the distance, I could see what looked like a small village on the shore. I stated rhetorically, “That can’t be Juneau. It looks too small to be Alaska’s state capital!”

My daughter studied the buildings and the dock, which our ship, the Eurodam, was approaching. Before she could say anything, an overhead announcement began, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is your cruise director…” He told us the dock we were approaching was to our right. While to our left, was Douglas Island. Explaining that Juneau has no highways or railroad tracks connecting it with the rest of the country, the cruise director quipped, “The only way to visit Juneau is to travel there by ship, airplane, or birth canal.”

Although Douglas Island is separated from the mainland by the Gastineau Channel, it is a part of the city of Juneau. A bridge over the channel connects the two very different residential neighborhoods and business districts. Tammie, who was standing with me at one of the ships starboard windows, commented, “I think we are just seeing the original part of Juneau. The coastline curves, we just can’t see the rest of the city from here.”

Effectively making her point, an airplane flew over the ship we were on. We watched it bank to the right over the Gastineau Channel and disappear behind the mountain that rose up beyond the Juneau docks. With all the mountainous Alaskan land that I could see from the ship, I wondered where there was land flat enough for an airport landing strip.

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Lost At Sea

Oct29
There were so many places to look!

Expecting to see my daughter Tammie somewhere among the cruise ship passengers in the hallway, I stopped walking and slowly turned full circle. All the faces I saw belonged to strangers.

“What did Tammie say when we separated at the restroom door?” I wondered. Unfortunately, I now realized I hadn’t paid very close attention. When I entered the restroom, I’d seen her walking away down the hall.  

As I slowly walked in the direction I’d seen my daughter go, I glanced at groups of people sitting together enjoying drinks, some people sitting next to the large windows watching the ocean, and I even saw one woman busily working on a craft. By this time, I realized I was a long way from where we’d last seen each other so I retraced my steps.

Concerned, but not worried about becoming separated, I shrugged and pulled out my phone and dialed Tammie’s phone number. A message popped up on the screen, stating my phone was out of the network. Then I decided to text her. Surely, that would go through. It didn’t.

Suddenly feeling very alone, despite seeing many fellow passengers everywhere I went, I wondered how to find Tammie. Approaching one of the ship’s workers, I said, “My daughter and I got separated.”

She asked in a heavily accented voice, “Are you Miss Kathy?” I nodded, thinking. “Good, Tammie is looking for me. We should find each other soon.” The worker pointed down the hall and said, “She went towards the food court looking for you.” I turned in that direction and slowly walked the entire ship’s length but didn’t find my daughter.

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Suffering F.O.M.O.

Oct22
Our ship provided us with a 1,000 things to do. We wanted to do everything!

Getting up early on Sunday, the first full day of our cruise, wasn’t hard to do. I told my daughter, “Usually I hate hearing an alarm clock in the morning. Today I feel like getting up right away. Maybe that’s because I slept sound as a baby last night.”

Snuggling deeper under the blanket, Tammie said, “It’s vacation excitement. You slept like a fussy baby. Shortly after you dropped off to sleep last night, there was a sound and a flash of light in our window. You sat bolt upright and asked, “What was that, and why is there light in my bedroom?”

I protested, “I don’t remember doing that! Were you awake because you were having trouble going to sleep?”

Tammie sleepily replied, “No, I was just dozing off. When you sat up you pulled the blanket off me. After being startled and chilled, I had trouble going back to sleep. I doubt you were even awake when you sat up.”

Peering past the rescue boat machinery outside our cabin window, I apologized and commented, “There’re white caps on the sea this morning, but I don’t feel movement.”

My daughter comforted, “You shouldn’t get motion sick. The Scopolamine patch for that is in place.” Emerging from her cozy cocoon of blankets and pulling out her phone, Tammie continued, “Now, I have a list of all the ship activities available to us today. First, we will attend the church service, then go for the Sunday brunch held in the dining room.”

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Floating City

Oct15

As our taxi driver deftly maneuvered through Seattle traffic, I admired the iconic Seattle Space Needle standing tall among the city buildings. We were getting very close to our destination. I’d been told that cruise ships dock at pier 91, which is a bit north of Seattle’s downtown and the Space Needle. Finally, our taxi pulled to a stop near a large building that looked like an airport terminal. Handing over our luggage to a porter, we walked into the building where guests were ushered through customs.

Unlike at the airport, we moved through the check points quickly.  It didn’t take long before we walked out of the building onto the pier. I stared (gawked) like a farm girl from Wisconsin, which I must admit I am. Two cruise ships were docked on either side of the cruise terminal. They were so huge, they towered over us like tall buildings. The ship to our right, which we would be boarding, was the Eurodam of the Holland American Line. To our left, was The Royal Princess, a ship which appeared to be about the same size as ours.

Considered a smaller cruise ship, the Eurodam is 936 feet long and is equipped to carry 2,104 passengers and a crew of 800 to 900. Some large cruise ships, like the Icon of the Seas, carry 5,000 to 7,600 passengers and 2,300 to 2,400 passengers. I was glad that I had asked Tammie to book a smaller ship.

As we walked up the mid-ship ramp to begin our cruise, staff happily greeted us and used tablets to take our pictures for identification purposes.  Taking one of the six mid-ship elevators to the fourth deck where our cabin was located, Tammie and I wandered down three different hallways before finding our starboard side of the ship cabin, which was to be our home-away-from-home for the next seven days. We found a pair of room keycards and handouts in the small rack next to the door.

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My Two Vacations

Oct8
I eagerly jumped into doing vacation ‘work’

Niki pulled to a stop in front of her sister’s house. I took one look at the jungle growing on the front yard hillside along the sidewalk and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!” A list of things I wanted to accomplish for Tammie before leaving on our scheduled vacation marched through my mind.  

I had figured that my vacation started three hours earlier, when Niki picked me up to drive me to Tammie’s house in the Twin Cities. But technically, the vacation Tammie and I had planned wouldn’t really start until Friday afternoon when we went to the airport. Until then, my daughter had at least 16 more work hours to complete. I wanted to spend that time being useful.

 Within an hour of arriving at her house, I’d changed into work clothes and found a shrub lopper behind a chair on Tammie’s porch. Earlier this summer, she had told me that wild grapevine, invasive saplings and weeds had overtaken the steep, rocky, and hard to manage incline in her front yard. She hadn’t exaggerated.   

I cut down sumac, oak and maple saplings, and tall weeds. Grapevines had reached up into the lower branches of a mature maple tree next to the house and were strangling everything growing nearby.  Niki pitched in and dragged away the unwanted brush.

Thanks to all the chores I did for Tammie, time passed quickly. Friday afternoon finally arrived. My daughter signed out of work, finished packing, and called for a cab. We moved our luggage in stages to the porch, to the front steps and finally to the sidewalk just in time for the punctual arrival of our ride to the airport.

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Silo Playhouse

Oct1
My silo was real, but my playhouse was pure imagination!

Every tree I saw along the way on my way home from school was a blazing red, orange or yellow. The air felt cool and breezy, a complete reversal from the hot and sticky weather we had when school started a month ago. Warm sunshine sparkled as it hit the car windows and warmed my relaxed shoulders. My school day routine felt comfortable now. First day of school jitters were now just a memory. I knew which classroom to go to, who my friends were, and felt resigned to who my teacher was.

Once I reached our farmyard, I sprinted into the farmhouse. Mom greeted me from the kitchen. I sniffed and asked, “Did you make cookies today?” Mom nodded and pointed to the cupboard next to the refrigerator where a decorative tin cookie box sat.

Prying the lid off, I found chocolate peanut cookies with chocolate frosting. Eating one in almost a single bite, I took a second for eating-on-the-go. With my mouth full of soft, sweet cookie crumbs, I explained as I headed for my bedroom, “I’m going to change out of my school clothes and go outside.”

Like a typical ten-year-old, I flung my discarded clothing onto the bedroom floor and hastily pulled on what Mom called ‘everyday’ clothing. The second cookie I’d taken was long gone by the time I ran out the back door of the house. When the screen door shut with a slam behind me, I stopped to consider my options. A plan instantly popped into my mind: get apples from the orchard and watch Daddy chop corn for silage in the field behind the barn.

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Mystery Furnace

Sep24

Snow underfoot squeaked with each step I took. It was a sound I learned the meaning of as a kid. It was too cold to play outdoors. Brutally cold breezes moved mist-fine snow particles from place to place in my backyard. Turning toward the woodshed where my husband’s outdoor furnace stood, my breath sent a column of mist into the air. The stovepipe above the furnace sent smoke into the wind as if mimicking the mist.

I didn’t like this furnace. When my husband built it, he promised to take care of its feeding and cleaning. And he did, except when he had to be away like today. Unlike the wood furnace we once had in the basement of our house, this one was large and took huge chunks of wood. I dragged three logs closer to the furnace door and struggled to lift them into the red ember-lined firebox. Having fed an entire tree to the monster, I returned to the house.

Arnie must have not liked the outdoor furnace either. We only used it for two winters. One day, I found him in the basement installing a new furnace. I hadn’t even known he was shopping for a new one! He never told me who he bought it from and unfortunately, I never asked. The brand new, shiny machine was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Arnie admitted, “With the outdoor furnace, we lost too many BTU between the fire and the heat converter in the house.”

This furnace, wherever it came from, burned wood pellets that came in forty-pound bags. A large hopper on the side of it could hold three and a half bags. That usually took care of heating the entire house for a day and a half, but when it was very cold, it needed to be refueled every 12 hours. Arnie took care of most of the refueling of the furnace, but he did all its cleaning and maintenance.

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