FALL IN THE BUSH, A BLESSED TIME

It's hunting season here in southeast Alaska so I took my Winchester M71 for a walk this morning.  The temp was in the low 50's with a  breeze blowing causing the yellow-gold cottonwood leaves to sing their fall song and make a beautiful contrast with the blue-green spruce forest.  My 75 years melted away and I felt young and vigorous again.  My knees gave me a bit of trouble, but that didn't stop me feeling alive and full of life.

Thankfully I wasn't tempted to shoot anything.  Now days I enjoy just watching the moose and bear preparing for winter.  The moose fill up on willows and the bear gorge themselves on salmon that have come up river to spawn.  The squirrels are scampering around collecting spruce cones.  They store them in rubble mounds at the base of the trees where generations of squirrels have dropped the remains of cones they have shredded to get at the nut like seeds.

The sand hill cranes have left.  They're heading for places like the wheat farm in west Texas where we used to live.  Clouds of them would arrive there and glean the freshly harvested fields.  I love hearing them fly over.  We have a painting on our wall of a place near us here in Alaska called crane flats.  It is one of their favorite summering grounds.

Of course, as I mentioned, the salmon are making their run from the open ocean back to their birth rivers.  Right now there is a coho run in the river about a half mile from our house.  It is appropriately named the Salmon river.  Bears, eagles, ravens and gulls are feasting on the coho, storing up fat for the long winter.
   
We humans are preparing for winter also.  Like the wildlife, Carolyn and I have stocked up on salmon.  Unlike them we have the advantage of adding halibut to our diet.  Our garden also supplements our food supply.  We have a good crop of potatoes, carrots, peas and squash.  It provided us with salad greens all summer as well.  Hopefully we will get some moose meat and venison to round things out.  We have a tradition here.  When a moose is killed we help each other pack it out and butcher it, dividing the meat between us.
 
I love Alaskan life.  So different from the lower 48.  Life here seems more real to me.  Wood, water, dirt, animals, birds, fish, real things.  Not imitation.  No plastic pink flamingos in yards here.

Kim Warren

DEATH OF A SEAGULL

On a lonely stretch of beach I stand.  There before me lies a seagull in the sand.
I watched him as he tried to fly.  In vain he struggled, his eyes set upon the sky.
  I  wondered how his life had been.  What had brought him to this end?
Kneeling beside him on the beach, into his mind I tried to reach.
 Fixing me in his baleful stare; somehow he knew I really did care.
  I said “Watching you soar has been one of my pleasures, as you searched the sea for your life’s treasures.
 Now how can I help you my friend, for surely you know that this is the end.”
 Lifting him gently I brushed of the sand.  Then suddenly I began to understand.
No more will his wings lift him to a soaring height.
  No more over a fish will he squabble and fight.
  Never again will he take a mate; for death on this lonely beach is his fate.
Then thru his eyes I looked around, far below me was the ground!
  Winging higher and higher we flew out to sea.  The waves rolling and crashing reached up for me.  Swooping and circling we flew back to the land, alighting again upon the sand.
“Thank you my friend,” said he, “for one last flight out over the sea.”

Kim Warren

"THOSE WERE THE DAYS MY FRIEND, I THOUGHT THEY'D NEVER END"

That's a 1976 Harley Electra Glide with a genuine Harley sidecar.  It was Carolyn's ride.  I had a Harley Low Rider.  At this time of our life I was a First Officer on the Lockheed 1011 for Delta Air Lines and as the photo shows Carolyn was a beautiful motorcycle Mamma.  Our children, Dev age 12, rode on the back with me.  Kelly, age 10 and Christy, age 4 rode in the sidecar with Carolyn.  And yeah, we were cool.  

Kim Warren