Feeling inspired. Ate some coffee icecream, the sun is out endlessly. I’ve been going on these long hikes every day, just walking on the looping four-wheeler tracks that go through the wilderness, finding bleached moose bones and bits of eaten un-shy hares and impossibly lavender pasque flowers… the birch leaves have gone, in a matter of hours, from the size of squirrels’ ears to the size of birch leaves, large enough to clatter like pennies in the wind, newly minted and flawless. There are these clearings… god, I cannot describe them. Beds of moss without any trees or any sound, an impossible cornocopia of sun, ringed in cottonwoods, like a portal to a magic land…
Every day is 75 degrees and sunny, and will be, as far as I can tell, until September. My Experimental Interior Summer is, so far, going far better than I had ever imagined. I like to think of Alaska as five different states, because there are five distinct bioregions- Southeast (rainforest and giant trees, ala the PNW), South-Central (mountains/glaciers/oceans/jumping whales combo, ala an alaskan postcard, also where I grew up), The Arctic (windswept tundra and Inupiat people who eat lots of seal meat- caribou herds- no roads and I haven’t been there), Western Alaska (windswept tundra and Yupik people who eat lots of seal meat- no roads and I haven’t been there), The Aleutian Chain (islands, windswept grass and rock, nesting birds, native people with cancer- where the military dumps its nuclear waste- have not been there) and the Interior (hot dry summers with some of the coldest winters in the world- Denali is here, the rest is boggy forest flatlands with a few mighty rivers running through). I want to go to the arctic, someday, there is a dirt road that the oil trucks use, I want to ride my bicycle all the way up to the arctic ocean, see where the caribou go to escape the flies. Alaska has four oceans, did you know- pacific, bering sea, chukchi sea, beaufort sea, and more coastline than the rest of the country combined.
I slept for ten hours last night, and had a dream that I had inhereted a household of cats- I then forgot to give the cats any water, because I was having heterosexual sex. I have anxiety about animals not getting enough water… when I woke up I felt like I had gone on an impossibly long journey and had some difficulty making breakfast, going to work, and going about my day- reading books with the children, teaching them to count dimes… the cats, I kept thinking- the cats…
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CARROT QUINN 
that purple flower? i don’t even know what it is but they had the same ones where i lived in the mountains near new mex and i got a tattoo half-modeled after one. they were just growing all pretty in the middle of nothing on a big windy hill.
thanks for making my day/life yesterday.
sleeveless- It’s a pasque flower aka “prairie crocus”! I looked it up in my field guide. And no, thank YOU friend. I can’t wait for your show! CAN’T WAIT!
hey carrot, thanks for the encouragement! i am all f-ed up on allergy meds, and spending all day out in the 90 degree heat. it is great to think of you wandering around discovering the snow’s secrets revealed in the summer sun. if you have any interest in going to SE Alaska (juneau) this summer to that queer paradise where vegetables are eaten everyday, and ice cream is far away, let me know and I’ll pass on my buddy’s info. remember i was telling you about him and my amazing WOOFing experience there? on an island, where the whales live.
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try clicking on my name? maybe they are the same flowah.
Somehow mountainous alaska interior and mountainous new mexico have a bunch of the same flowers. Potentilla, cinquefoil, pasque, bluebells….
Sleeveless- they are the same flower! Hurrah!
Skilletz aka grackles- yer friend’s place sounds amazing. SE is, however, where the rain lives. And I want none of that! Not this summer! Where are you living in the wintertime? Do you know yet? Also, you should link to yer blog when you comment, so people can follow you back there. Or it’s “skillet”, in my blogroll, if they want to find you there! 😉
carrot quinn!
darling.
i adore yr stories.
adore adore adore.
you live life good.
and portland misses you.
and i have a blog: http://www.frantelope.wordpress.com
and i’m coming to alaska ever so briefly for a friend’s wedding in june (25-29) in seward.
don’t stop doing what you do.
and i won’t either.
xoxo
frannie boom bannie.
😀 cooowell
& amazing, what tara says! cos we are… the desert. and you are… alaska. that’s freakin neat.
Alaska’s a desert too! For real, the interior is!
i dont even believe you
just kiddin i do
& i’d love to see/traipse desert alasakan interior
…ahh