No Target Shooting

Wellllll, irregardless, the weather here on the mountain is rainy. There is so much humidity in the air that it just has to rain. That's an opportunity to type about Alaska. Sue has allowed me to type about the signposts that we noticed along the way. Interesting that the "must have" travel item for Alaska and the Alaska Highway is "The Milepost." Really, it's better than AAA brochures that we have loved.

I'd love to be able understand the need for some Alaskans to punch bullet holes in the signage that the tax dollars provide. In the state that has the most interesting things to hunt, the sportsmen can't find enough to shoot at so they put holes in their signs. It seemed that the most interesting signs were those that had to do with no shooting zones. No shooting. Firearms prohibited. Hunting prohibited. Perforated with bullet holes! One such sign which interested me was one next to a "rent-a-can" (we call them portapotties here in Pennsylvania). The sign said, "No target shooting." It was, as you can see, placed right next to a "rent-a-can" that was on the Turnagain Arm highway on the way to the Kenai Peninsula. We shan't discuss exactly why this was a stop along the way :-) , suffice to say that we just couldn't pass it. I think that we were looking for the tidal bore--yeah, that's what we were doing, looking for the tidal bore.

I contemplated the exploration of this area by Captain Cook, how incredibly large this land is, the glacier that formed Cook Inlet, which must have been huge back before global warming was even an issue. (Heck, that was almost before we knew there was a globe.) Everybody headed for any milepost on the Kenai has to pass this spot. And the sign is perhaps a chance to warm up for things further south. Anyhoo, it is clear that Alaskans have taken to heart the words of wisdom from Clint in Unforgiven, "...should have armed himself."

Perhaps I must confess that I only noticed these bullet holes because I was unable to arm myself. That customs lady at the Canadian border north of Haines asked me three times if I had a firearm in the truck. Three times I had to answer, "No ma'am." It was like saying, "No ma'am. I'm a girly man." A real man probably would have hidden that pistol inside the console of his pickup cab. A real man probably would have had no compunction to smuggle that loaded pistol through the Canadian customs station so that he might have plugged the first "big game sign" that he came across. A real man would have armed himself.

And so I could just make an observation and not participate in the sport of Alaskan sign hunting. It's a season that has no starting or ending dates and that's so American. We can fire off those guns at any time. "Oops! Sorry officer! I was just trying to scare those mosquitoes away from that portapotty."

Denny

The Place Where You Go To Listen

"The place where you go to listen"
is a soundproof room in the University of Alaska's museum
where seismic tremors,
solar radiation,
and other silent geologic and cosmic measurables are transformed into sound.
We heard rumbles and varied high keening tones, always shifting, unpredictable.
Unthinking, it could be called "unearthly,"
yet it was both as earthly and as heavenly as anything we'd ever heard.
We were transfixed.
Imagine, to hear sunrise and moonrise,
storms and sunlight,
mountains being made new,
northern lights and starry nights and comets and earthquakes.
So much goes on that we are unaware of,
that we refuse to be (or can't be) aware of.

I tell you, if my disciples would keep silent, the stones would shout aloud. Luke 19:40 (NEB)

Sue

36 Days and 8,000+ Miles

, Life on the mountain is peaceful. The katydids have recently begun their back-to-school song katydid katydid katydidn't, the pink coneflowers are attracting loads of fritillaries and monarchs, the stone wall chipmunk is treating himself to a daily ripe tomato leaving only skin and seeds, and 27 turkeys frequent the lawn for the doves' corn. We are enjoying being back home, having driven a Chevy S-10 to Alaska and back for the first five weeks of the summer. Paul and Katrina came back from Tanzania in June due to greencard issues, housesat for us, and are now spending part of their last days stateside teaching me to blog. Thanks, guys.

Let's face it. One of the main reasons we headed off was to see MOOSE. We started looking in Montana, then Idaho, Washington, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Alaska.... Aside from a roadkill in BC, we'd seen zilch. I was beginning to be depressed when the thought "In His time" popped into my head. Other scriptures soon followed:

God will provide a lamb, er.... moose. Genesis 22:8

I go to prepare a place, ummm, moose, for you. John 14:2

From that moment on, it was an adventure, to see what God had for us that day. It may be the most peace I've ever felt. ...and the moose that had been prepared near Anchor Point, Alaska walked to within forty feet of the truck with her two babies.

Sue