McHugh Trail, second time, sunnier day, with Nic & Autumn

This is a post I have been longing to write, and more importantly, show pictures with! People, Alaska is ridiculous. I love it, and I'd love for you to love it too, if you don't already. We hiked McHugh trail the second time about a week after the first, and it was drop-dead gorgeous. I mean that. I felt like it would've been a-okay to drop dead right there, either by the overwhelming beauty or from some other cause (with the possible exception of being sucked dry by leaches).

The body of water you see is the Turnagain Arm. The ocean, man.

Every now and again, if you're lucky, you'll see a pod of beluga whales coming in with the tides.

This particularly bright Sunday afternoon, we drove to the trail past the road of my cousin, Autumn, and her husband, Nic, and we called them. Groggily they said, "[yawn]....Your call woke us up from a nap....[yawn].....but we want to come along!" Were we ever glad for that. Walking frees you from the weak and silly parts of life to talk about the good and whole and meaningful. Autumn is in training to become a midwife, for one thing, so there are always new birth stories to be enchanted by. But also, we'd recently seen with them the documentary "Food, Inc." about the way a handful of companies pretty much control the food industry of our country and aren't fans of small farms and people trying to provide for themselves.

RABBIT TRAIL: this is a whole 'nother post, or twelve, but we have GOT to get more interested in and serious about the very basic life issue of where our food comes from. Let's grow more of our own food, make more of our own things and entertainment, be our own people! We're all working on parts of the puzzle. Let's keep learning, and keep teaching each other! Let's regain the old skills, recapture the ingenuity and sense of responsibility for ourselves that made our country great. Let's slap ourselves out of drone-ville, taken by flickering lights and quick results, worshipping at the alter of convenience.

END OF RABBIT TRAIL, PRETTY MUCH: More recently, we've seen with Nic and Autumn the Michael Moore documentary, "Sicko." Also, we are working our way through the U.S. Constitution together, though we have to pause frequently to read a phrase again and feel like modern, literary dunces.

So you can see why, hiking with our friends this day, on a trail where a person starts at the sea and is free to climb as high as they wish, I longed to shout "REVOLUTION!"

break time and photo shootpottyin'feedin'Isn't this a neat one? taken by Jason (clearly)shoe-tyin'That little black dot on the horizon is a small airplane.

Do you see a special something in this last photograph?

Straight up from the setting sun, near the top of the photo, is the silhouette of a ptarmigan.