A few thoughts

1. I have been bathing in ground water since I have been here and think that anything but a warm ground water shower is sub par
2. I will never get over my disgust of sun stars. Especially when we have to harvest them tomorrow to kill and compost in the garden. GROSS!
3. Sometimes I forget that the mountains are only five miles away when it's foggy for days on end. Then the sun shines and I say, "oh yeah. we have mountains here."
4. I now officially have the gardening bug. I will have a garden from now on no matter where I live.

That's all.

PHOTOS!

RASPBERRIES!!!
Ricky and Janet chipping after limbing a tree. Apparently I was taking a break, hiding in the bushes.
View of the house from the boat. We eat and hang out in the main house, but don't live there.

View of the water and mountains from the fire pit next to the driveway.

Rainy day

After a long day of beer making, we settled down to play some poker with the Alaskan bottle caps stored up. I got homesick and stacked my chips thusly.

campfires and saint ignatius

Last night we had dinner with the people from the farm in the meadow. We cooked fresh picked strawberry and blueberry cobbler in a Dutch oven over the fire, split pea soup and cabbage noodles. After dinner the two Ricks, the owner of our farm and the owner of the meadow farm, played the guitar for us. I got to sing along to Hallelujah, You Can't Always Get What You Want, and Sunshine Go Away Today.

While we were sitting around the fire, after days and days of rain and cloudy weather, the clouds split open and the sun shone over the mountains. It made me think about what I have been reading about the Ignatian exercises. The first step in the book that I am reading is to be open to God. That means to try and see God in all my work, all the people I see and have an open dialogue with God all day long. It is safe to say that I am struggling with it, but in that moment last night, I was completely open and able to see God in all things.

Day off!

We got the day of yesterday, our first day off since we've been here. Rick had to take census workers out on the island so we got to go to town.

I actually forgot what it was like to be around people. For over a month it has just been around five people working around the property. When we went to Juneau to see the glacier and waterfall, it was crammed with people coming off cruise ships. It was strange.

Oddities about being in town:
1. You have to use bathrooms instead of going anywhere you want
2. People don't bathe outside. There was a beautiful waterfall and my first thought was what a great shower it was.
3. You have to watch your language. I have become all too comfortable screaming whatever I please at the top of my lungs since I know no one will hear me.

Some pics

I have been trying to get photos with my computer of my life here. I wanted to post yesterday, but I was knee-deep in shit... literally. I cleaned a 1,000 gallon septic tank and can't seem to get the smell off me. Fortunately, everyone else smells the same.


view of the driveway and the ocean from the house


cedar baskets I weaved

clean socks!

What I am learning

1. Living in a community is work.
2. It may in fact be worth the work as long as the people are great (which they are)
3. I can get along with anyone who likes Pete Seeger
4. Electricity is overrated
5. Some people can weave baskets and some people can't

The sun came out yesterday. We sat in the swamp water hot tub and wood burning sauna. It was the perfect end to a stressful day.

It seems like the sunny days we spend less time working and more time soaking up rays (it's sunny less than 60 days a year). That would be all good, but that means we save all the hard work for the rainy days when I slip on stumps and get damp and grouchy. We have been lading huge stumps and chipping and splitting them. Tough work. It makes me feel good.

Alaska so far

Sooooo. I took pics with my phone but it isn't sending them. So you get to see my drawings instead!

The top one I copied from a past card and the bottom is the house. I don't live here but I eat my meals and hang out here. I live in the WWOOFer house up the hill. No electricity or running water in my house, but it is drastically close to a tiny house, so I want to see how I like it. You can;t read it in the glitter, but it says Whale's Eye Lodge, the name of the place I live. In the corner is the solar panel and the other corner is the chicken coop.

Don't quit reading my blog!

Pictures will be up soon, I promise. Internet is spotty around here. We only get it when the generator is on or the sun is shining, and it's been rainy for a few days.

Ricky and I got here a week ago, greeted by two other WWOOFers and Rick and Karen, the owners of the property.

So far we have been having a GREAT time. I have learned that I am terrible at the following things: hammering a nail, cutting a straight line, insulating a ceiling, removing thorny bushes, making a path through the forest, moving stones and lifting heavy objects. Ummmm, I also forgot how to play Big Rock Candy Mountain on the ukulele and told everyone I knew how to play it. That's my homework tonight.

What I am good at so far: eating everything on the table, talking all night about Abbie Hoffman and Pete Seeger, hanging out, soaking in the hot tub by the shore, and going to sleep early.

I am learning a lot about solar and wind energy, building, rain water catchment and gardening.

More later. With pictures.