What Rhymes With "Bucket?"

Nothing is clear when you take a blow to the head big enough to knock out all your syntax, but after my thoughts started tracking again, I realized it could have been worse. Lying flat on your back on a frozen lake is actually more comfortable than you'd think. And what if the damage had been permanent?

Lying flat on your back on a frozen lake is actually more comfortable than you'd think. And what if the damage had been permanent?

As Scott recalls it, I was just on my way over to the sled to get the bucket when I flipped over. I was planning to go Bucket Sailing. The wind was strong and the friction was nonexistent and I thought I could get quite a ride if I could catch a bucketful of air. It might not have been the best plan for someone who tips over while putting on her socks. Dave's seen that. He asks me why I don't drop the sock when I feel myself tipping over, and the answer is it never occurs to me. I'm not defending this, but it's the truth. So I imagine if I'd caught enough wind in that bucket, I could have zipped over that lake like God's own puck doing twelve knots, getting farther and farther away from the boys and yelling help help help help and they would have been hollering drop...the...BUCKET! because they know it wouldn't have occurred to me. So. For some of us, brain damage is hardly noticeable.

Anyway, one thing about a visit with Scott and Kevin never changes with the scenery. Scott is a chef. He doesn't know how to not be a chef. Mid-week Dave patted his new paunch and answered the morning breakfast query with "you know, I'd be just fine with a piece of toast and peanut butter," making a little peanut-butter spreading gesture to demonstrate simplicity, and in a few minutes Scott had saddled the table with toasted home-made rolls and honey and preserves and sturgeon roe and reindeer sausage and cream cheese and a smoked salmon trio (king, sockeye, silver) and trout cheeks and moose nuggets and I think there was a little jar of peanut butter in there too, and all in less time than it takes the sun to climb over the mountainous horizon and scratch its butt.

Speaking of buckets, I didn't have much left on my Alaska bucket list. I was sort of interested in getting a really good bald eagle photo but the mooses kept getting in the way. We went for a walk in the woods near a frozen lake and came upon a nice set of mooses, and Scott took their measure and began to stalk them, just as though we weren't in the internet age and hadn't seen plenty of videos of people being stomped by mooses. But he correctly judged them to be of the benevolent and protective order, and more interested in chomping willow than in stomping us.

Meanwhile the wind had let up and the temperature had squeaked past freezing and that turned everyone in the state giddy. Scott and Kevin and their neighbors are in the habit of sitting around their fire pits and shooting the breeze nearly every summer evening, and the breath of spring was upon them all. Blazes lit up the taxiway all down the block. It was tube tops and whiskey and tall tales right down the line, while I pulled a chair up as close to the pit as I could get in my Nanook suit without bursting into flame. It was a jolly time. By the evening's end we had recruited an official Watch Neighbor with a northern window and a spot of insomnia, and prevailed upon her to bang on our window if the northern lights showed up. And sure enough, just past midnight, the window was banging and the dog was going off and the northern lights were going on, and we lurched into the night in our coats and pajamas and watched the mountains toss a green scarf across the sky.

Alaska is beautiful. Damn slippery in spots, but beautiful.

Two Dudes And An Icehole

So I don't get to have a fur hat, but I can still enjoy my Alaska vacation as long as I wear everything in my suitcase at once. It's not even that cold here, according to our friends Scott and Kevin, whose credibility on the matter is beginning to wane. This year, Alaskans have to travel to Atlanta to visit their winter. Whether you think ten degrees is warm or cold depends on which direction you're approaching it from. But it's cold enough for me. Scott and Kevin are the people we used to visit down the valley in Oregon who had emus and pigs and alpacas and trout and sturgeon and sheep and peacocks and ducks and goats and a slope of wine grapes AND the ability to put it all together in splendidly edible form, plus day jobs. All that. You never knew what they'd be up to at any given moment: rendering lard, or stripping milt from live trout, or making cheese, or knitting a tractor out of steel wool. They're right handy folk.

So we couldn't wait to see what they were doing in the new digs in Alaska. There is no garden. The house is relatively small. They've confined themselves to (1) dog and (1) cat. How were they planning to make our Alaska visit perfect?

Well, the first door past the bathroom opens to the hangar, and just past the ice cream freezer and the beer fridge there are a couple planes in it, and we got in one of them and taxied out to the runway and into the air to pop up a valley and peer at two turquoise glaciers and watch the snowy mountains pink up in the sunset, and got back in time for dinner and some of the wine they made when they still had grapes, taking care not to disturb the moose on the taxiway. There's some Alaska for you. What else?

I'd brought a bird book and binoculars. Things seemed strangely quiet in the bird department, so I consulted the internet. There are five birds wintering in the Anchorage area. They're all named Hank. Ha ha! Just kidding. They are named raven, raven, raven, bald eagle, and raven. I put my book back in the suitcase. What else?

We went up a beautiful snowy path through the mountains and watched Kevin attempt Ski-Joring, which is having your dog pull you on cross-country skis. It probably works better if your dog is not a German Shepherd bred to round up the group by dashing back and forth from one person to another, and who has not already been trained not to pull at a leash. I'm just guessing. Also, Kevin and I have an equally tepid grip on verticality. What else?

"We could go ice fishing."

Scott hadn't done that yet, himself. He's only been here a year. But he did have a virgin ice augur he wanted to try out, and a chisel, and a few sets of Carhartts that stand up by themselves in the garage and probably walk over to take a pee a couple times a night, and an easy walk to a lake. We pulled a sled of gear onto the ice. "Do you think it's really thick enough to stand on out there?" I queried, and Dave shrugged. "Either way, we'll have a good story," he said, with a gallant arm thrust forward. "Ladies first!"

It was thick enough to land a 747 on. Scott augured away in a stiff polar wind. I was in heaven. For someone with a sturdy Viking chromosome and a need for discomfort that is not of the spiritual variety (I like cold: I hate anxiety), this was the ticket. Snowy mountains reared above and the ice was cracked into partitions a foot deep. Snowball jellyfish lurked below. It was fascinating. I tip over on dry land for no reason at all. What could go wrong?

BAM.

Really, I have got to quit smashing my head. I'm afraid to go to Kaiser to get my glasses adjusted again for fear they'll enter an advisory about domestic violence into my medical record. This time, the glasses were in no danger. I was flat on my back with the birdies tweeting. My Viking chromosome was splayed out with me, all uff da, his little horned helmet rolling around with a micro-clatter. Scott, who has some medical training, was trying to peer into my eyes. That's easy to do. They're small and set close together and you can take in both of them in one glance. "How do you feel?" he asked.

"Flurdo piffling blurgit imminy," I said, but he wouldn't take my word for it, and checked my pupils again. I guess that's where the brain goo leaks out, if it's going to.

I don't know how many cubes a day you're allowed to keep when you're ice fishing, but Scott and Dave had reached their limit after a few hours, and we went home with a goose egg.

I should probably put ice on it, but I don't want to.