No tiara or horse drawn coach. No cheer from a royalty-enthralled throng. Still, every bit a fairytale from start to present. Just look at ’em.
Spring has paid ransom to winter. Life unfolds, water unfreezes; everything that winter had done is undone. Soon brown will yield to green and all will have been paid in full. The snow is gone, the sun beams sixteen hours daily, the streams are swelling and somewhere in deep ocean water the salmon are stirring. Here at home, in the middle of our yard, a scar emerges as a reminder of winter’s dig to repair the septic break. Several of our trees were pruned courtesy of a famished, winter moose undaunted by our six foot fence. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Easter weekend the uprights tootled down to Soldotna, AK to spend a few days with friends at their house on the Kenai River. Yes, that Kenai River, where men are men and salmon are frightened. No salmon yet but they’ll show up. In the meantime, Mom stepped down to the River’s edge (in Master’s shoes) and dispersed several chunks of freezer-burned salmon onto the ice left stubbornly clinging to the shore. Scamper back up to the house and wait inside for the eagles to swoop down and take the salmon away. Across the river moose congregated and ate what they could find, then bedded down at night to rest so they could wake refreshed and start all over again the next day. A word of caution to you moose: when the salmon return so will the bears.
Yours truly with the wind in his hair. Cook Inlet looms in the distance. We never tire of this. Under ten minutes from our house.
