Poser

Last night was the finale of the Ken Burns series on the national parks, another good episode.  I have to admit, though, that I was hoping to see a little more of Kobuk Valley National Park.  The whole series was centered around Yosemite and Yellowstone being the birthplaces of the national parks.  The Alaska parks, except for Denali, are much newer, but they have some pretty exciting stories around them.  Kobuk Valley was not even mentioned; there was just some brief footage lumping it with the other ANILCA parks.  I think lots of people here were hoping for a little more because we had our biggest turnout last night -- 15 people!  Over-all, though, it was a good series.  I'll miss hosting our little event.  I do need to watch the series again to catch all the pieces I missed while "babysitting" and performing host duties.

Today I've been very industrious on the domestic front.  I finally have my little dining table put together.  I started it last week some time but was stymied by the need for a Philips head screwdriver that wasn't all chewed up at its point.  I made it to the hardware store yesterday and got all the screws in at lunch.  I see, though, why my screwdrivers are all chewed up and that it must be a racket by the hardware companies.  They must be making the screwdrivers out of materials that are softer than the screws themselves.  Anyway, today I finished the rest of the table.  It works very well!

I guess I can use my old screwdrivers as ice awls.  Real ice awls (in case you don't know -- I didn't) are kind of like two ice picks with covers over the point and a long string connecting them.  You wear the string around your shoulders to avoid dropping them (under your coat and through your sleeves).  Then, if you fall through the ice you jam the awls into the ice, the cover slides back, and the picks grab the ice so you can crawl your way onto the ice.  However, old screwdrivers could work as well. 

There are many things along the lines of surviving and thriving in the winter that I'm learning here.  Sometimes I get this funny feeling and have to laugh at myself...I feel a little like a poser.  This is all so new to me -- clothing, transportation, tools, shopping, food, even winter entertainment -- that I'm just looking around and copying what other people do.  It doesn't feel real and makes me feel a bit fake.  I'm enjoying getting to know how to live up here, and I have to suppose that at some point once I've had enough of my own experiences up here and can assess and predict my own needs that I might feel I belong here a little more.