Dear Ones,
Crazy wonderful days abound up here in the Northern State. A few weeks ago, through a strange series of events I went from being a photo girl to being a handler for a musher from Fairbanks named Olaf. A true bachelor recluse who grows his own food and loves his dogs. As such, he is rather stringent about their care and it is teaching me a lot. Our days start at 6 am when I roll lout of bed, throw on my boots and wander out to his lot of 30 dogs and scoop poo into 5 gallon buckets and put water into the little metal bowls which sit in holes in the roofs of each of the dogs' houses. Then we
wander back in to camp and have a bit of time to get everything together (sun-screen, water bottles, pocket-knives, hats, varying layers of clothing to adjust to rapidly changing weather) and then sit in the kitchen and drink hot chocolate until breakfast is ready at 7. Tours start at 8:30 and so I am back in the yard by 8 to talk with Olaf and get instructions on jobs to do and decide on which teams of dogs to run that day. Then I start putting the harnesses on the dogs and put them on the line to be ready to run by the time the tourists get there. I could go on and on about the dogs, but suffice it to say they are extremely motivated, most of them are well behaved, and 8 of them had their 1 year birthday last week so they got doggy treats instead of cake. I love them. As Olaf runs the tours I work in the yard, turning the dog houses so that they stay sturdy even as the snow continues to melt out from underneath them. I also tighten their chains so they don't get caught up in them and bury the poles that hold the chains so that the dogs don't pull them out of the ground. Once or twice a day I empty the 5 gallon buckets full of snow and poo and to these 55 gallon drums which, once a week, are hooked up to a rope hanging from a helicopter and flown into town to be dumped into the sewer plant or into the cars of anyone we don't like...not really.On busy days we will work until 7, running in to grab lunch between tours. Once our last tour leaves all the mushers load our buckets onto sleds pulled behind snowmobiles and go out and scoop the doodies left out on the trail. While the work itself does not seem all that endearing it is fun to have some time out there in the middle of the glacier, riding on a sled, holding a shovel and talking to people who I probably would never 
otherwise even meet. Sometimes we chat, sometimes we stand quietly and look at the clouds and lighting on the mountains. We get back to camp about 7:30 and then I wash my hands and go help Karen the Cook with final preparations for supper (she has promised to teach me to make homemade bread [which she does for us every night]). Then we carry all the food over to the lounge where someone has usually struck up the propane heater. The whole camp gathers together over the food and usually spend the time telling funny stories and, surprisingly, talk some more about poop. Sometimes some of the boys will break out their guitars and violins and jam out for the evening and I journal and listen. Other nights we turn on the generator and watch movies. A good life.The only other thing which permeates my life more than poop is water. I am becoming increasingly aware of it in all its variety of forms. I stand on snow, covering a huge chunk of ice, surrounded by clouds of fog, as rain and snow pelt down on me. I wonder what it would be like to be a droplet of water and where all has that raindrop running down the back of my neck been before? Frozen for thousands of years into a glacier? A recent arrival from someplace tropical? I am surrounded by stories, all the time.The other day our morning tours were cancelled because of fog and so some of the experienced mushers loaded a bunch of us into the sno-cat (a rather amazing all terrain machine which runs on tank type tracks and is amphibious and even used by the military) and we drove down to the tip of
the glacier where they taught us about how to safely walk on a glacier when the snow has melted down to the ice. We peered into eerie blue crevasses and jumped over and around them and threw snow
balls into them. Then Joel (the amazing hiker guy) took us down over the toe of the glacier and we climbed into an ice cave and looked up, through and into the bottom of the glacier. I could see grit and leaves and bubbles frozen and compressed into the ice. It was amazing. While the top of the ice had been textured and easy to walk on, from underneath it was completely smooth. It felt like I was on a Magic School Bus field trip.Beyond that I have been adventuring and playing and just loving life in general. Jumping cliffs into glacier lakes, night hiking, meeting carpenters, glass blowers, jewelry salespeople, hiking guides from all around the world and just loving every minute of it. And working on getting papers together for my visa and looking at plane tickets from hither to thither and back and around again.Thanks for reading. Love you.
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