2021 Still Working on My Dreams in McCarthy, Alaska

Company going home.  I love the light at this time of day. By the time I made McCarthy at 9:00 pm on my arrival day, April 11,    I was elated to see that my neighbor had plowed out a parking place for me and created a ramp so I could snowshoe up onto four feet of snow with my loaded sled.    Alhumdullilah!!!    I tromped to the yurt and started up my wood stove. It was toasty inside quickly.    I love the light and the space and high dome with its skylight.    I’m still in the giddy stage of yurt love. This year my accommodations are a treat: My comfy yurt here in McCarthy with well water and wood heat plus my shared trailer in Glennallen with heat, electricity, running water and my own room.   Once again the Kennecott Visitor Center is closed (growl) and I’m back at Headquarters in Copper Center.   I wish I were in McCarthy but NPS friends, feeling useful and a paycheck are good reasons to survive another summer in CC. W...

She's a good little car: Martha Matrix. My usual disclaimer:   I hate to sit down to write, I dislike what I write but it’s easier than phoning everyone up to share my   ventures.   So please forgive my errors.   Or not. Last year I had a great deal of anxiety about whether or not Canadian immigration would allow me to go south on my yearly migration back to sunny Montana.   I presented my papers, my covid test, my itinerary and all was well.   This year, thanks to their spiking Covid rates, they weren’t so welcoming.   I cried my way across the border…..unintentionally, not to earn their sympathy. North of Fort Nelson I usually was the only car on the road. First,   I left Helena nearly a week after I intended to.   Illness and my usual packing nightmare slowed me down.   How to put a Suburban’s worth of gear and household equipment into a Matrix, aka The Clown Car?   Triage, unfortunately.   Then an unforeseen problem:  ...

McCarthy Road looked a lot like the rest of 2020. Since my last blog in October of 2019, I worked at a refugee camp in Greece, celebrated my 70th birthday in Turkey, visited the kids and friends over the holidays in Seattle, relaxed in Helena for the winter, snorkeled and danced in Cuba with Patsy and Vivian in February.  Travel companion Jim and I were supposed to bike and barge across Northern Italy the first week in April.  Hardy-har-har!  In mid-March I heard Canada was closing its borders.  At that point I still was expecting to work at my McCarthy NPS job so I jumped up, packed and was off in two days, just making it across the border.  I stopped in Whitehorse to visit Jim where I learned that I no longer had a job because the Kennecott Visitor Center wasn't opening in 2020.  Bummer!  But I had a very relaxing, lovely seven weeks in Whitehorse and pondered what to do.  Friend Diane with whom I lived in Kenny Lake Ever since I was ten I had w...