We got to pal around for a few days, just you and I in the closest downtown we have, talking about how much we love being in the middle of things just to come home to our quiet small town at the base of mountain ranges that range and range.

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Each trip we learn how to travel a bit better. We find a place we can get coffee over which I can sketch while you take your time getting up. We find a restaurant we can go back to again and again. We loved Matt's in the Market so much we found ourselves there a few times. 

We got a ride to our destination and watched the locks fill as busy boats waited. 

We ended the weekend by stopping in at Laura's and Shane's, hanging out with some of our favorite people, and jumping on a much later flight than we planned. As we lifted off, we started scheduling our next trip to Seattle. 

I do not believe that I have been on a more beautiful hike.

This is a hike I promise to take every summer from now on. It has been five years since I walked this trail on the way to Eagle River Nature Center. At that time I remember thinking that the first five miles would make the most spectacular hike, then we went on 18 more. That probably won't happen again, but this definitely will...

Happiness.

I've recently returned from Homer with 19 students, two co-teachers (Dick and Joe), some committed parent volunteers, and two poems.

Wabi Sabi Tanka

Living relic scraped
Its oft told myths on bark scrolls. 
Pointed, unpleasant
places exposed, ugly and
Whole disfigurement. Superb.

Sand Shapes

Less definite, less rigid, less certain, lest
We forget what love is and how to begin again.
At each tide, the sand concaves and convexes
into feathers too heavy for flight. 

Sand shapes itself into mountain ranges,
River basins, and pools that vein new life into the sun. 
I am beholden to the promise of a new day, a new wave. 
I have stamped these sand shapes, here. 

Loneliness is improbable as grains reverberate
You back to me, back to you, back to me. 
The sand shapes then swirl into the belly of a wave. 
I whisper, "You're sublime, everything is sublime."

Meekly reverential, I swell and the ocean takes residence
​In my marrow, and I am sand shapes and weightless. 

The iO theater and Second City are the home of the art of improv and comedy. The Improvised Shakespeare Company was our favorite. These players on the stage weaved iambic pentameter quips into several improvisational acts over the course of an hour. Second City was high energy and high production. And, we now know - in our bones - that there are few things more life-affirming than a belly laugh and a beer.

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Forget me not

Smaller than I think,
Always it surprises.
Pearls of blue and yellow
in bouquets
that rejoice and exult.

They are a paradox.
A tiny flower for our
gargantuan state.
​
I put a small tuft
behind my ear
and feel pretty,
oh so lovely. 
​

For a very long time, I have wanted to climb Bear Mountain. I think part of what kept me away from this one was that I found it so intimidating from the car window on the Glenn Highway. The face of this peak casts its shadow from the morning sun on Peters Creek and loomed in my imagination for far too long.

The reality is that you end up driving most the way up. For the Bear Point hike, we walked about 5 miles out-and-back and gained 1,600 feet in elevation. It was steep at the saddle, but overall a great hike. Later this summer, I would like to do the Eklutna Peak and maybe the loop to compare the two hikes. The Bear Mountain trail is unmarked but is an obvious up-and-off-to-the-left turn about 1/4 mile from the Peters Creek Valley trailhead. 

I had a brand new pair of hiking shoes for this trip. They turned out to be great, and I loved taking off my shoes at the top to give my feet a rest - so refreshing. Sunshine speckled through the clouds, there were no bugs, and a pleasant breeze had us layering-up at the top. 

I love to look down at my home. We saw the mouth of the Eagle River as it gives way to the Knick Arm. The Arm also receives waters from Ship, Fish, and Peter's creeks. The largest tributary is the Susitna River, and the Knik Arm also stretches into the Matanuska and Knik rivers, most of which can be seen from the flat, rocky perch of Bear Mountain. 

In a flash, the clouds blushed and Kathy snapped this picture with her iPad at sunset. I was already in bed, but glad to be by the ocean, next to nature, with family and friends. 

It's so exciting that the Homer Spit Oyster Bar is in its second season. I was thrilled to belly up and have some great bites. The menu is yummy. I went back for grilled cheese that was more cheese than I thought possible to squeeze between two slices of bread.

The Tickled Pear offered some flavorful food-truck grub. We grabbed a bunch of small bites to share. 

Then, there was the gelato. Somehow the Affogato became a daily afternoon delight. The term means "drowned" in Italian which is what happens to the gelato once it is drenched in a shot of hot espresso. It still stirs a sense of gratitude and a smile as I write this sitting at home. 

After days of fires, family, and food - I decided to stay one more night. Matt recommended staying in one of the lodgings on the spit. It was an excellent choice. 

My last evening in Homer was a good one. I walked the beach and sketched and sat by one last fire with Jessie and Paul. 

For dinner, and my single favorite bite, I ordered a K-Bay Octopus Poke to go from Little Mermaid. Please do this: Sit on the beach to watch the waves and the sand and the people and savor the layers of flavor. 

On the way home, I ambled up the highway stopping in at the Kasilof Museum. It was neat to walk into century-old buildings. The historical perspective is singularly focused on the settlers' experience starting about 130 years ago. It is fascinating and inspiring to see the desperation, determination, and pioneer spirit required by the frontier men and women.

​The painful interplay between the first nation peoples, the Russian settlements, the countless natural-resource booms and busts, the American settlements, and the militarization of this huge state is as epic as the landscape. What does this have to do with Homer? I don't know except that I think everything is connected, even if I don't understand how. 

Homer is a happy place for my heart. I love what I get to see and do. Many a painting will be inspired by the five days I spent there. ​

I can see it in mine, and yours too - the corners
of eyes and mouth sag, weighted by our slushy urban slog.
Unurbane, we melt into the night like Dali's clocks, 
Counting, counting the minutes of loss. 

Soon I'll look into the sun that cleans
every corner and highlights the dust,
and diamonds the snow, and delivers
from darkness my laden soul. 

I bargain, beguile, beg for ten degrees
to turn disconsolate rain into sanguine snow.
So snow now,
                   now
                          snow,
               so we may play in the light of the darkest day. 

This course is nestled in desert canyons and the most unique round of golf we have played. The course zigzags across the highway, then climbs and winds up to tees that pull the ball through canyons and over cliffs. On the fourth hole, Adam ricocheted his strike, more pinball than golf. 

This setting was perfect, right on the lake. We had a delicious meal before our round. Into the sunset, we played on this one-time Arnold Palmer course. The place was empty, but we were happy to be there, and we'll be back again. 

There is pride stacked upon historical eras, stacked upon each other. New construction is humming as a new layer establishes a contemporary take on its place along the Mississippi river. The city doesn't have too many more people than Anchorage, and it feels that way. 

When I was walking the first of twelve miles, I began to write this post in my head. I thought that I would report the first mile as a hefty climb straight up, but in comparison to the peak that awaited us, it was but a moderate rise. 

Miles two and three are a lovely romp through rolling and wide-open alpine. We stopped for lunch at mile four. 

On Monday, my husband waits until I get home to say the words.
I go to unload the car and carry back tears.
Sitting, stirring, I begin to take out stitches on
a strayed shawl for the third time.

An artist and an adventurer, she sipped Dickle and ate meat
and raised chickens. She slept in a small house to live spaciously.
Erin was tall and never knowing of how she showed me to
express, explore, expand, to exist.

On a long ago Friday, with frayed Carhartt pants, we were
chatting about women, and their depictions in magazines,
Erin says,“Well, they’re not shaped like a real woman.”
For a lasting moment, I see from her wise and lovely eyes.

Erin is a stitch unlooped from our tight knit.
A drafty gratitude, a sudden shiver. She was here, with us, with the world.  
And now we are looping onto each other, tenaciously.
Even so, what are we to do with slipped stitches and this hole?

May we purl pain into artistry. All we have to do is add the t.  
So we will paint. And we will climb mountains.
We will tear and we will cry and live and bleed and die.
Until then, we have no other task than to knit ourselves together.

​