The Great Mother’s Day Surprise of 2008

Here is a quick story about two surprises—one bad, one good.

Despite the fact that Mother’s Day 2007 my mom had flown in from Tucson and we spent the weekend together, overall the day was pretty grim. In the middle of the night we received a call saying that my dad had unexpectedly passed away. This was a very bad surprise, indeed.

So one year later, we decided to stay put in our respective towns, each doing our best to pass through the memory of that unfortunate day. This year anniversary dates, such as Dad’s February 14th birthday, have been rough. Memories are all around. Sadness emerges. Grief runs its course sometimes like an earthquake and other times it just lingers in the background like afternoon storm clouds. It’s a strange sensation to experience for the first time an entire year without him.

This Mother’s Day my mom planned to go to brunch with a friend. Little did she know that I planned to come, too. After a quick work trip to Kodiak, on Saturday night I secretly flew down on the red-eye to Tucson, and there began the Great Mother’s Day Surprise of 2008.

It went something like this:

Her best friend Londa picked me up at the airport and while she parked and walked into Mom’s house, ready to pick her up for brunch, I was standing on the sidewalk around the corner, calling Mom from my cell.

“Hi Mom. Happy Mother’s Day!”
“Hi sweetie.”
“Sorry I didn’t call you sooner today. I was out on a long run.”
“Oh, I should have known.”

As we talked, I started walking towards her house and up her walkway. I could see her standing in her living room, talking to me on the phone. She had absolutely no idea that I was standing outside. She thought that I was in Fairbanks.

“Did my package make it in time?”
“No, it didn’t make it.” I could hear the disappointment in her voice that the Mother’s Day package I had told her about earlier in the week, had not arrived.
“It didn’t make it? Really? Hmmmm. Well—I DID!!”

And then I pranced right into her living room and with a giggle said, “SURPRISE!!!!”

She immediately burst into tears, shaking her head in complete disbelief that I could possibly be standing in front of her. After all, a few seconds earlier I had been in Fairbanks, talking with her on the phone. We gave each other a very long hug, both awash with feelings of such deep gratitude that we could share the day together. This was definitely one of those unforgettable moments, a new memory that will always be part of our mother daughter story.

If you’re contemplating some sort of crazy caper like this in the future, I would highly recommend it. Ideally, life gives us more good surprises than bad, and it’s the good ones that fuel us through the rest.

How to scare 80 pigeons

Have you ever tried to scare a herd of wild pigeons? Technically, I realize that a group of pigeons is not a herd, but the word herd associated with this bird, helps me to toss to the wind the stereotype of pigeon as dumb, boring and just plain odd. Saying, “a herd of wild pigeons” carries a toughness that they probably don’t deserve, since the herd I recently tried this with are fed by a human everyday. Though while I was in the middle of the interview, a goshawk did swoop down in the middle of the street and fly away with one of the poor birds, so they do face their fair share of wild predators.

If you’ve never tried to make a pigeon fly, be forewarned that when these birds are nervous they tend to relieve themselves from their hind ends. And if you are standing below them, doing your best Freddy Kruger imitation, this tends to make them nervous, so be prepared to dodge a few stray pigeon bullets.

Last week I interviewed a man named Dick about a place in Fairbanks where a flock of nearly 80 pigeons spend their days. The birds sit atop several electric wires, everyday, waiting, waiting, waiting, for food, courtesy of Dick. To complete the story, I wanted to include a few sound bites of flying and cooing. So I asked my friend Brad, a former college roommate turned professional improvisation specialist (see the On Your Feet website) who was in town leading a workshop, to help me make these pigeons fly on command. While he was doing his best to motivate them to move on up, the plan was that I would record the sound of them flying away, while also photographing the spectacle. Above is what they looked like after the take-off and here is what the whole thing sounded like: default.aspx?fldr=2008052509&fl=ScaringPigeons.mp3&vfl=ScaringPigeons.mp3&disposition=inline Stay tuned for the Soundslides interview with Dick, the pigeon feeder. It should post in the next few days.

Commodore Orpington (a.k.a. Sir Elton Hercules John) coming to Squarebanks

Yes, it’s May, so don’t let the sun go down on me. That yellow brick road has faded away like a candle in the wind. So much for the crocodile rock that I used to visit with Bennie and the Jets. Yes, Rocket Man is on the way.

Why fly all the way to Atlantic City to see Elton John in concert, when it’s so very hot there in July. All you need to do is mosey over to the Carlson Center on May 29th. Yes, it really is true. He’s making three stops in the U.S. this summer and one just happens to be in fabulous Fairbanks, “Destination Superstar,” Alaska.

Of course, anyone who’s experienced the Pump House for Wednesday night karaoke knows that Fairbanks does have a certain mega-star appeal, so it makes complete sense that Elton would count our lovely town as a must-stop.

So, don’t go breaking my heart. Buy a ticket tomorrow. They go on sale at 10 a.m. via ticketmaster.com.

Elton, see you soon!

Look up and see the wild world

There is something profound about witnessing hundreds of birds flying together in migration, each carrying on their wings the intention of coming home. Such a site fills my heart deep down with an odd combination of joy, longing and sadness. It makes me forget about any trivial to-dos or lingering regrets. A flock like that brings me right into the present.

At dusk tonight I pulled into my driveway, freshly defeated after a soccer loss and for various reasons, missing my dad. He’s been gone now for almost a year. I was wishing I could just have a conversation with him, like we typically did on weekends. I stopped daydreaming and stepped out of my truck, startled by the sounds of geese above my head. I looked up to see droves and droves of Canadians, on the final approach of another spring migration. They were making a bee-line for their summer stop at Creamer’s Field.

The graceful flapping of their wings coupled with their gawky voices made me stop for several minutes in awe. And they were so animated in their calls that I wondered what it was they were saying to each other. Or maybe they were simply calling out in pure unabashed glee, the way that any being would who’d just completed a nearly three thousand mile journey with just their body as the vehicle.

Dad once wrote in a bird book that he gave me for my birthday, “There is so much good in the wild world, I hope that you find it all.” I think of those words tonight and am reminded why it is such a gift to live in Alaska. The wild world’s goodness is easy to find. Sometimes it’s as simple as just standing in one place and looking up.

Up a river with a paddle and some swans

For your information, interior Alaska’s Clearwater Lake is ready for paddlers. I know this because Saturday I was part of a friendly flotilla—four boats, eight humans and one dog—that put in at the Clearwater River just below the campground, then paddled approximately five hours down the meandering river and onto a small section of the Tanana, where we took a sharp turn at a sign with an arrow pointing left and the word “Lake.”

At this point we were forced to paddle like escapees from Alcatraz, working our way up through a rapid current, that eventually led us to Clearwater Lake. Here we used the bows of our canoes to crunch a jangled path through approximately 100 feet of relatively thin ice that sat between the middle of the lake and the far shoreline, where we would soon disembark.

And when we chanced upon the lake for the first time, we were greeted by two enormous swans, trumpeter or tundra varieties and certainly mates for life, who I swear cackled over and over again, “It’s spring! It’s spring! It’s spring!” And they were absolutely right.

About forty of their swan friends and double the number of Canadian goose socialites lingered atop the remaining ice shelf that lined the shore of the lake. A harlequin couple, overdressed as usual, were the wallflowers of the bunch, loitering along the edge of the affair. Regardless, it seemed we had caught them all in the middle of a somewhat segregated cocktail party, with swans on the left and Canadians on the right. All were reconnoitering, reflecting on this year’s long journey north. And behind this gaggle, two lackadaisical moose stood on the shore, silently munching on willows, and paying no attention to this energetic flock. Surely they’d seen this all before, spring after spring after spring.

If you’ve never heard a couple of swans on take-off, they’re the bird world’s version of a 747, and if they’re ascending from a lake, their gigantic wings beat against the water, the tips especially slapping against the surface, until just airborne enough to be free. Amidst the grace of their flight, a subtle downward motion juts down awkwardly from their lower neckline with each wing flap. This balances out the downward thrust of their giant wings, and makes it possible at the same time for their elegant heads to surge forward with each flap, as if they were each their own winged victory of Samothrace.

In addition to this live rendition of Winged Migration, one of the day’s highlights took place after we stopped along a bank on the Tanana and had lunch. Here we all fell asleep in the sun. It was a rare kind of warm, unbothered sleep where one immediately goes to a heavy, relaxing place of pure dreamy content. I could have happily stayed here for a few hours, but our crew’s squirrel hunter and canine alarm clock, woke us all up with a raucous in the woods, and as the squirrel chattered away for dear life and the bad dog was scolded, we all came to and knew that it was time to paddle along. This was okay though, because that cozy rest in the rays was just the glimpse I needed to know that summer’s incoming laze will surely usher in more of the same.

113 degrees later…

So it’s been two weeks now since I returned from Hawaii and I’m well into my embrace of winter. The crazy thing is that on the evening of January 12th I left Honolulu where it was 75 degrees and 8 hours later I arrived on the tarmac of Fairbanks International Airport where it was a frigid 38 below. This was a 113 degree temperature change! And the transition was brutal. This is where serious brain tricking comes into play.

You might want to consider one of the following if you are in the middle of any sort of temperature transition. First, immediately trick yourself into thinking you’re going back to the tropical locale and order a new bikini (or trunks if they’re your thing) from Boden. Then trick yourself into thinking that you’ve actually flown from Honolulu to Thailand instead of Fairbanks, and so go out to lunch for Thai food at Lemon Grass three times in the same week. And finally, trick yourself into thinking that you are living near the ocean, by taking a trip to the Hamme Pool where, if you’re lucky, you can learn how to do a “wet exit.” What is a “wet exit” you ask? Well, tune in later for all the details…

“How do you breathe?”

Let me share a quick story about the idea of breathing. There was a time I traveled in Africa and was sitting at a train station outside of Johannesburg. There was a South African man sitting next to me, sitting in a suit with a briefcase and study books. We began a friendly conversation. He soon discovered that I was from Alaska. “Alaska!” he proclaimed, stating and asking at the same time, “It is very cold in Alaska, yes?” Then in complete seriousness continued his inquiry with the very wise question, “How do you breathe?” It was beyond his sub-Saharan speculation how it could be possible to actually breathe in such a cold place. A very reasonable question for a man whose world view included walls made from grass, open air windows and 110 degrees in the shade.

Since then there have been several times when I ask myself his same question, with slight modifications. Usually this question pops on my radar when it’s forty below outside and I am standing in my driveway, plugging in my truck, wondering, “How in the hell do I breathe right now?” With that in mind, this blog is dedicated to the notion of breathing, surviving and actually thriving when it’s wintertime in Fairbanks.

Thriving through a Fairbanks winter involves the art of brain tricking (sometimes known as denial), until the next thing you know, it’s May again. And one of these tricks for me involves going often to the Bahamas—at least in my mind. This is a trick that Steve Martin teaches about 4 minutes into The Absent Minded Waiter . “Going to the Bahamas” means not taking life too seriously, remembering to laugh, and always trying new things.