Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994
On my mother’s recent visit, she asked me when the mail would arrive at the apartment. “We don’t have home delivery,” I said. “No home delivery?” she said, as if I had said Nome had no food or water. “You mean you have to go down and get it yourself?” Yes, I told her, in Nome we have to go down and get the mail ourselves. Actually, it was a shock to me, too, when we arrived last spring. Until then, I had always been able to sit in my house on any day, rain, sleet, snow or dead of summer heat and wait for some poor soul to drop it into my mailbox whatever someone in the world decided to send. Through the ice storms of Ohio, the gummy heat of Galveston Island, or a really cool American movie classic, all I ever had to do was wait. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Now if I want my mail, I have to go get it.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
I’d like to think that Captain James Cook was the kind of guy who gave some serious thought to the names he gave Alaskan geographical features on his voyage here in 1778. I’d like to picture him considering the ambience, the weather, and the personality of the place, and then carefully matching up those characteristics to his list of English aristocrats. But it probably wasn’t like that at all.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
You take a lot of things for granted in this life and I found out recently that Nome was one of them. When I first read about those annual “Nome Picnics” down south and how people in the Lower 48 subscribed to this little rag of a newspaper from way up here on the Seward Peninsula, I remember thinking, “My God, people, get a life!” I mean, how could folks who’d moved away from Nome be that interested in what was going on up here? Then I moved away from Nome.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
“Why don’t they just put the land bridge back?” This was my five-year-old talking. We’d been standing around the National Park Service office here in Nome and we were looking at the Bering Land Bridge Preserve maps. He was confused about this ancient “bridge” talk and I’ll admit there’s a lot to be confused about. Saying “the Bering land bridge” conjures up scenes of ramps, cable spans, pilings, and signs outside of Wales that say, “Bridge One Mile. Set Your Watches for Tomorrow and Have Correct Change Ready.” Saying “the flooded land” of Beringia seems a more accurate image of the tundra now submerged. “Bridge” is really what you don’t want to call it. Unless, of course, you’re really going to build one.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994
It is a special thing to live by the sea. I have often taken it for granted, and I am always drawn back. The changes in the color, the waves, the smell, and the animals all put us human beings in touch with the most basic of Mother Nature’s elements. The sea is where things started; the sea is where we belong.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
Three weeks of pampering wasn’t the real reason I went to Hawaii last December (although that was okay). I really went so I could swim in the bay where Captain James Cook was murdered 216 years ago.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
It was a cool summer evening in the valley of Serpentine Hot Springs Creek as the 402 Cessna dropped us onto the dirt strip near the National Park Service cabin and bathhouse. We’d planned this trip even before we arrived in Nome last spring. Looking at the map of the Seward Peninsula back in Texas, we’d noticed “Serpentine Hot Springs” in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and decided we’d go there on our first vacation opportunity. Four months later, this was it.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
There’s something about a Carhartts man that sets my heart aflutter;
Is it the cloth or is it that color of mustard and peanut butter?
Be he a carpenter, musher, or cook, or a man crushing rusty fuel drums;
If he’s cloaked in the hues of mustard and mud, you can just hear my pulse rate hum.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
I miss having toddlers in the house. Active, noisy, obstinate, and sometimes downright destructive, they’re also loving, enthusiastic and delightful. A toddler’s energy level also brings out the active, noisy, obstinate nature of a lot of adults, too. Just ask someone who has just returned from grocery shopping with one. Right now it’s a pretty good deal in Nome to be a kid born in 1991 or 1992. Kids two and three years old can usually get pretty excited about dinosaurs and other powerful forces. Especially powerful forces like large, noisy machines.
(Continued)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994
My father loved trains. Oh, he put pennies on the track in Ohio for the Nickel Plate to crush and he set up a Lionel train under the Christmas tree every year like a lot of other kids. But then he got serious.
(Continued)
