chasing and laughing

It's a crappy phone video, but it gets the idea across. Now that chasing and tickling are part of our days, so is LAUGHING! I've been waiting for this her whole life.

shush up, universe (a haiku)

no sudden movements
inside voices, muted coughs
breathe quietly, please
*

punks, car stereos

are sweet, okay? but during

NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS

*

spin gracefully, earth

no collisions with comets
galaxies, black holes
*

can you wait, white shark,

just ten minutes more before

crunching bony prey?

*

take another path

than o'er our neighborhood, geese,
to fly, to honk south
*
for her suckling slows
sleep, skittish, non-committal,
approaches my babe

Ava and Zoralee

For those who know Jessica and Paul C., this is their little girl. She was very sweet to put up with Zoralee's explorations. Zoralee seemed to touch Ava's hair in the same way she feels her Touch-and-Feel books that have feathers and felt protruding from various animals. Like, woo boy, a life-sized Touch and Feel critter! It's quite fun watching Zoralee interact with younger ones, but it's odd coming to terms with the idea that there are already so many humans younger than her. Zoikes. Polishing up her big sister skills, I reckon.

people and their surprises

• We were in the parking lot at the McHugh Trail trailhead, waiting for Autumn and Nic to arrive, and out of the woods came several punk / goth young people, just coming back to their car after a walk. All black clothing, chains draped about, interesting hair dos, including one mohawk, and so on. Jason thought to himself, "Those kids are just the type to be sporting swords." Just then, the driver went around to the trunk and pulled out an actual sword and sheath. Like it was nothing. Like he was pulling out an extra blanket or jumper cables. He carried it around to the driver's side, got in, and they pulled away. As they drove past our car, we saw a flag waiving on their hood - a pirate flag. Now that's just plain fun. Oh, what we'd give to be a fly in their back window. And we started wondering what sub-culture(s) Zoralee is going to be part of throughout her life. What people groups will she connect with? I hope it's some ones we haven't thought of, because I like surprises an awful lot.

• Ahead of me in line at the grocery store the other day was a short, white or white/hispanic kid with baggy pants and a ginormous sweatshirt, lop-sided cap, and a beautiful, tall black girlfriend. He totally fit the look of a gansta or gansta wanna be. Or just a person who listens to a lot of rap music. Look, I don't know about these things, but I think you know the subculture I'm trying to describe. A general tendency toward toughness, having lived the hard life. So it surprised me when, as he paid, he was gracious and polite to the slow checke. And when he took his change out of the machine, he immediately dropped it into the charity bucket.

• I met a woman last week, a friend of a friend, who had just gotten out of an arm cast. She described how difficult it had been for those months to write, yes, to do common household tasks, yes, but particularly, to fix her hair. I was intrigued by this. She elaborated. For nearly 30 years, she'd lived in Texas, where hair is evidently a super big deal, so it bothered her to not be able to fluff it up and style it in a particular way daily. It stuck with me, that organizing the strands of dead keratin cells hanging off of one's head would be deemed so vital that to not be able to do it properly would cause a person great angst. I know it's not just Texans; they may take it farther than some of our countryfolk. But isn't the idea fascinating? We humans are so interesting.

Have you been surprised by people these days? Or heck, by yourself?

McHugh Trail, a few weeks ago

The woods south of Anchorage along the Turnagain Arm. Ahhh. I suppose we've spent more time here than any other woods. There's a whole trail system that links up and shoots off toward peaks and through valleys, where in the same scene you've got snow-covered mountains, the bright yellows of fall, and the gray tide rushing in, and half a day later, out. We've seen many bears, moose, mountain goats, even a wolverine as we've hiked and cross-country skied over the years. This area is where Jason and I went on our first Dall sheep hunt, again by foot. He was successful, and we carried on our backs over miles and miles the meat, hide, and horns of our harvested animal. I miss this country, and when we walk here, I sense home. We've moved and traveled a bit in the last several years, so familiarity like this smacks me hard. The smells, the color variations, memories. Up from the wet ground seep notions of dreams and conversations we've shared here with friends.

*

Man, our lives have been changed by hiking. Not the part of hiking that's a modern day sport, whereby you purchase a bunch of expensive, trendy gear, and make big plans for long trips, and log lots of miles, and climb to tall points. That's fine and dandy, but the profundity is in simply being there, walking in the woods, like humans for millennia have done, not necessarily tackling anything. Getting out of the city, remembering the shapes and hues that nature makes, feeling the passage of time as it's actually occurring, not as we force it to occur with our time-travel devices and time-saving machines. Know what I mean? And it's free, man!

As we neared the parking lot toward the end of our hike, it dawned on me - Zoralee can walk now; she totally needs to take her first official trail steps! They wound up being backwards steps, for some reason. But it was so cool.