A chilly, wet morning. A restless sky. Swollen clouds gray brown and roiling in mountain valleys, shrouding peaks. A morning to cinch your comfys tight, stoke the wood stove, wrap your hands around a steaming cup o’ coffee and stay inside.
So we didn’t.
On our beach walk we spotted a sucker hole or two open suddenly, then just as quickly close up again. Just like the rain, which came hard in sheets for a minute or less and then stopped in an instant, like the chorus howl of kennel dogs, whipped into a frenzy one moment, and then as if the lead dog stood atop his house and swiped a paw across his neck, stone silence.
Someone thought it was a fine morning to perch and survey the digs:
Across Resurrection bay there, maybe 5-6 miles as the eagle flies, lies Spring Creek Correctional facility, a high security prison. Robert Hansen is there. If you haven’t seen The Frozen Ground I can recommend it. Possibly the only movie about something Alaskan where most of the movie was actually filmed in Alaska. Anchorage, in the case of this movie. Cage is pretty convincing as the state Trooper investigating the murders, and Cusack was well cast as Hansen.
Later, near Trail Lake, on the way back to Anchorage, the sky had become far less surly. Now we can clearly see what all the commotion was about high up in the clouds earlier in the day.
Just like the rain, which came hard in sheets for a minute or less and then stopped in an instant, like the chorus howl of kennel dogs, whipped into a frenzy one moment, and then as if the lead dog stood atop his house and swiped a paw across his neck, stone silence.
That’s descriptive enough to make me grab my rain gear this morning.