Winter has arrived!

October 23rd, 2008

The true beginning of winter for the community of Girdwood, Alaska is the day the first snow falls that sticks around for the entire season. Today, if weather predictions can be at all trusted, marks the beginning of winter in Girdwood. I awoke this morning from a dream (about snowboarding goggles!) to our backyard in an epic battle against an onslaught of snowflakes, a black and white scenescape of the aftermath of the Gods having a pillow fight. Big, heavy snowflakes a-falling and dog tracks like ant trails all around what was once our lawn.

Because the cold has really only just begun to set in, the black bears of the valley are still out and about. For evidence, I needed look no further than two houses up Timberline Drive, where, during my walk back from the local bookstore, my attention was drawn to the calls of an adult male human defending his territory and belongings.

"Git! Git outta here! Git! GIT!"

The adult male human will also throw rocks, not at the offending mother bear and three cubs, but at his own property, in an attempt to make more loud noises. Unfortunately, the four bears wanted to use this man's pickup truck as much as he did. No longer picture man yelling and throwing things. Now picture man in his work van, backing out of the driveway, across the road in to the church parking lot, then flooring the van to charge his driveway, pickup truck, and bears, horn honking, like a lumbering cow.

Mrrrrooooooooooooooorrrrrrr!!!

Two wheel drive on the fresh snow is not impressive for barreling down on uninvited bear guests. This kind of confrontation happens frequently in Girdwood. Eventually, the bears retreated to a nearby tree and the adult male human occupied the big, red pickup truck and drove away.

Prologue

The First Blog.

The start of something new.

The First Blog, christened with a cup of port and brandy.

My blog site was born with the realization that a) I want to keep people updated with my progress in life and b) I'm not very good at doing that. I've denoted my blog site as an 'electronic travel journal' and I intend it to be that, but I don't want to be confined by travel as a means of posting blogs. This is a life blog with a general focus on my thoughts while in different locations. This is an electronic travel journal with a short attention span toward the focus of travel. I will blog when I am drawn to blog. With that disclaimer, my travel goals are:

-Alaska, USA (my current location, displaced from California)
-New York City, NY, USA (two weeks with sparse planning, starting November 6th, 2008)
-Central America (duration undetermined, starting September, 2009)

Why the focus on travel?

We, as human beings, watch life on this planet conduct it's business. We are children watching a scene, one eye pressed up to a tiny hole in a bed sheet, taking in what we can see. Without experiencing the perspectives of others, people who experience life in vastly different ways with vastly different means of living, I feel that my understanding of life is distorted by the limited vision I have developed from my limited experience. Travel is my way of tearing the hole in that bed sheet open a little further, to get a wider perspective on life.

You can see the port and brandy has taken hold of me now. Haha!

So, anticipate posts from Alaska. Anticipate posts from New York City. Anticipate posts from somewhere, wandering but not lost, in the as-of-yet self-uncharted lands of Central America. I don't know where this story will end, but it begins right here. I am working for John Byrne III in Girdwood, Alaska.