This tree is growing out of a stump that has a hole in it where a dog stuck her nose.
Later, this dog found a dead animal carcass lying by the road at the pond (the spot I call “Rockpit City Park”). Of course she tried to eat the carcass. Subsequently, almost instantaneously, she vomited and had diarrhea, but soon she was feeling fine again.
It really makes me angry how people leave carcasses by the road. It’s irresponsible and disrespects neighbors.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3.5km]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. It’s on a hillside above downtown Duluth, Minnesota. I took this picture in early October, 2009.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree got taken to the river near dusk.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 6hr]
This tree stood aside as I commuted home as the sun set at 3:30.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]
This tree stood in the ongoing rain, which had mostly unsnowed the area, but still sheets of ice coat parts of the road.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree is down at the neighbors’ house. I took it a few days ago, when things were snowier.
Today, it rained a lot. The snow has washed into a kind of slush underlain with ice.
We went to the neighbors and had a Christmas dinner. Other neighbors came from farther down the road, too. It was a very low-key Christmas.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree is along the snowy road. But it started to rain and later that day the snow was turning to slush.
This is not necessarily good for the road’s iciness: we live in the shade (no direct sunlight because of the mountain), so the rain falls on the sheets of ice on stretches of road and instead of melting the ice, it just adds to it.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree is a cedar visited by fresh snow.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km; snowshoveling, 1.5hr]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. 10 years ago, next week, on December 28, 2012, I took this picture in my neighborhood in Goyang City, South Korea. It was snowing.
Art and I went to town today for our shopping day, and spent some time at the Veterans center, too – longer than usual. Art normally just drops in there if he chooses to go there at all (it’s open every Thursday), but today he seemed inclined to hang out for a while.
The road to town continues to be horrible. It’s like doing a bobsled course in the car, between about 6 mile and 8 mile – pure ice.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree seems to have an exhalation of frost emerging from a hole at its base.
Looking around the forest, many such holes have frost exhalations. I’m not sure what causes this – I speculate that the holes lead down to the non-frozen moisture underneath, maybe, and with the air as cold as it has been (5ºF at night), these holes exhale their moist air into the the atmosphere and it freezes. Then I wonder, maybe a small animal is living in each of these holes?
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr]
This tree was a passive witness to my slippery commute.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]
This tree saw a beach coated with ice.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
This tree was down at the ice-covered beach.
The air was so cold that the freshwater running down from the river was freezing on the surface of the salty sea. Then, as the tide withdraws, it leaves the sheets of ice lying on the beach.
I’ve been struggling lately, feeling discouraged by my various projects and obligations. Not just discouraged… bored, too, I guess.
I spent a few hours today trying to start our generator. I thought it would be easy. A brief power failure this morning reminded me that it was something I wanted to make sure worked. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. It’s brand-new – I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. And it’s too cold outside for me to want to spend more time troubleshooting it (I’d rather not start a gasoline engine indoors!).
There’s a quote attributed to Vincent Van Gogh: “I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.”
This is relatable, today.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree stands along the road a little bit west of our driveway.
The neighbors’ dog and I took a walk. Here she is resting a moment at the top of the west driveway.
The continuous rain-snow-rain-snow thing seems to have ended. Now cold air has arrived from northeast, and things will get very cold, but clear.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree is along the snowy road. I took it a few days ago. More recently, the snowy road is an icy road.
Art and I went to town today, to do our “Thursday shopping” one day late. We didn’t go yesterday because I thought the roads would be too icy to drive easily. I thought the same thing today, but we went anyway, because I saw forecasts of a snowstorm coming, and I thought: “Well, the roads aren’t going to get better, they’re going to get worse.”
Indeed, the road was very icy. I drove very slowly, only slid around a little bit a few times, and the scariest part – the 6-mile hill – was much better than the other parts. I think some good Samaritan must have spread some salt or sand or something on the steep parts of the hill. We survived. And shopped.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture on December 16, 2010, when I was living down in Yeonggwang, Jeolla, South Korea. It’s in front of a building where a coworker lived – we were carpooling to work and had stopped there to pick him up.
I don’t mind driving in snow. But this ice-with-rain-on-top that we get here is terrifying. So Art and I didn’t go to town shopping today. We stayed home. We have plenty of food. It was so slippery on the road, I didn’t even walk the dog.
[daily log: walking, 1km;]
This tree has been hanging out near the beach for a very long time. That’s the blue-green sea, in the background there.
The road to town was so horrible yesterday (coated with ice) that I decided the smartest option would be to play hooky from work today. Fortunately I have an understanding boss.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
This tree was there beside a road utterly covered in slippery ice.
Driving to town and back was stressful. I had to drive very, very slowly, and even still, I spun out once. I had a dentist appointment. The dentist did some extra x-rays, in line with helping provide me some peace of mind with respect to any possible recurrence of cancer. I’ve been experiencing more pain lately – I always experience some pain in my mouth and jaw (cut nerves from cancer surgery) – but lately I’ve been feeling more. So I wanted to make sure, as I’ve been worrying about possible recurrence – call it a touch of justified hypochondria. The dentist assured me that nothing looks out of place or abnormal, and I don’t have any cavities either, which is good because of my bone-necrosis (that complicates dental work).
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 5hr; dentist-visiting, 1hr; ice-road-driving, 2hr]
This tree was beneath a waning moon.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree was near a mountain illuminated by the rising sun and the setting moon.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree has an eagle looking down at me.
I went in to work today, not a normally scheduled work day. But Santa was scheduled to appear. The store was quite busy, and children came through. We sold stuff at the gift shop.
Here is a picture of the gift shop “family” with the visiting Santa (known as Earnie).
Jan and I are wearing our uniform “elf hats”. The children are the owners’ kids – the owner Chad is kneeling at right.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km; retailing, 6hr]
This tree was witness to a very high-speed, excited dog was we walked along the snowy road. She was running quite fast, and I just got lucky with this picture as she ran past me.
I got some chores done today. I filled the cistern from the well – still a manual task, and with the input stream off the hillside frozen, we have to make sure we don’t run short of water. I wasted a lot of water playing with hoses and fixing the frozen pipe problem last Sunday. I also did some unplanned maintenance on one of the database for the map website I maintain. But I was pleased that I was able to troubleshoot and solve the problem, despite knowing next-to-nothing about the programming language involved.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree saw steady snowfall blanket bustling downtown Rockpit, Alaska.
I got to resume my dogwalking habit today, as neighbors Mike and Penny returned from their own travels with their dog Maya. Art and I restocked our larders with a more substantial shopping trip to town than usual, and came home for our traditional Thursday pizza dinner.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree is the same as one posted two days ago. I was trying to show that the culvert full of ice had partly melted due to rain – but the photo quality is poor.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8.5hr]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. It’s in front of my place of employment in Ilsan (Goyang), Korea (marked by the long vertical orange sign with blue lettering). I took this picture in March, 2015. I believe it’s one of the dawn redwoods (metasequoia) that are so ubiquitous in newly urbanized parts of South Korea.
I went back to my job at the gift shop, today. I was deeply anxious that I’d forgotten how to do my job, given I’ve been away for a month. But it came back easily enough, as these things do. Perhaps being around Arthur all the time, I’ve developed an anxiety around my own forgetfulness, seeing more danger and decline there than is warranted.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8.5hr]
This tree is adjacent to a culvert half-full of ice.
By the end of the day, temperatures were warming, however. There is mixed rain and snow forecast for tomorrow. And I’m off to work tomorrow – after almost four weeks… will I remember how to do my job?
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
This tree will be our Christmas tree – it’s a small sitka spruce I planted in a bucket.
I spent most of the day messing with our water system. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that we had a plug of ice (frozen pipe) somewhere in the outdoor section of buried pipe between the cistern shed and house. So turning on the water supply was far from trivial. The day was crisp and sunny, with temperatures in the mid-to-upper 20’s.
First, I set up a giant construction-site-style heater to blow heat onto the spot where the water pipe enters the house. Counter-intuitively, the water enters the house at the side of the boat-shed, which is on the north side and “bottom” of the house. But it makes sense, since that was the part of the house that was constructed first. Here is the heater, a-heating.
Next, I wanted to apply “reverse pressure” to the buried pipe. So I used the same trick we’d used last summer when I had to repair the main house water filter: I stretched a garden hose down the hill from the cistern shed to a spigot on the house directly. This pressurizes the water in the house while bypassing the buried line. Unfortunately, I had been unwise when we departed – I hadn’t put the hoses away inside the house. Instead, they where lying around outside, full of frozen water. I had to bring them in and let them relax in the bathtub for a few hours, to help them thaw out.
Note to self: next time, put the hoses in the house before traveling!
Once we had pressure inside the house, and with the heater warming the inlet area (a lot! I got the plastic rim of the sunken spot with the intake valve almost too hot to touch), I guess that was what was needed to thaw the ice in the buried pipe.
It was all exhausting – especially since I’d imagined finally getting home and having a lazy day, after all my adventuring in the wild lands of the south. About 3 pm I took a long shower with our restored water pressure, and almost fell asleep before Arthur and I had dinner.
[daily log: walking, 4km; hose-wrangling, 2hr]
This tree is near the ferry’s parking spot in Ketchikan. It was preternaturally sunny but the temperature was about 25 F.
We flew from Seattle to Ketchikan, and then took the ferry across to Hollis, and a guy named Paul (who I know from his coming in the gift shop) helped jump start the car, because it wouldn’t start having been sitting in below freezing temperatures in the ferry parking lot while we traveled. So then we drove home. We are home.
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
This tree is lurking in a forest down below Juli’s house.
Today Art and I drove up from Portland to just south of Seattle. We are staying at my stepson Jeffrey’s house, with his family – his wife and my grandkids. That’s an awkward sentence.
I’ll try to post at least one picture – maybe with tomorrow’s tree. We fly back home to Alaska tomorrow.
[UPDATE:] Here is a nice picture of the whole family: Yvonne, Aurora, Parker, and me in back, Bella and Jeff in front.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
This tree is in Oregon.
I drove down to Eugene on a day trip, to have a very short visit with my Aunt Janet and uncle Bob. We talked a bunch and had lunch. It was important to fit this in to the itinerary, despite the longish drive. Here is a picture of me with Janet.
The drive was rather intense. In moments it was raining, other moments, snowing, even “almost blizzard” conditions. Other moments the sun was in my eyes and there were rainbows. “Highly changeable weather.”
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
This tree was there as Walter-the-dog practiced his “stump” trick.
I taught Walter this trick where he jumps up on a tree stump, during a past visit to Juli and Keith’s house – some years ago. He clearly remembers it.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km;]
This tree was lightly frosted by some morning snow.
Art and I drove to the VA hospital in downtown Portland, this morning, for an annual follow-up with the “poly trauma” team that has been monitoring his progress since the stroke/concussion/broken neck in 2018. The doctor was humorous and pleasant and had excellent communication skills, but I was disappointed with the degree to which the VA was rather unorganized with respect to Arthur’s current needs for some specialized follow-up appointments on various dimensions. Basically, they wanted to make follow-up appointments but were somehow not aware of, or not taking into account, the fact that we were only briefly here in Oregon and live in remote Southeast Alaska… as if we would travel down once a month for doctor visits. That’s not going to work out. So now we are just going to have to wait for a consolidated set of appointments, and travel again later.
The doctor said something funny, though, as we were small-talking about navigating the labyrinthine VA hospital campus: “Actually, this place is mainly just doors.”
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
This tree is in front of the house I grew up in, in Arcata. I took this picture a few days ago.
I went and had dinner at my cousin Jori’s house with her husband. My second cousin (her daughter) and daughter’s family were there visiting from Anchorage. We spent some time looking through some old photographs Jori had found. For example, this is a picture of my grandmother Alice, her mother-in-law (my great grandmother) Isabel, my uncle Allen, my father Phil, my Aunt Janet (in front), and my great grandfather John Way Sr. (sitting). They are in front of the San Marino house.
[daily log: walking, 4km;]
