It’s a bit frosty this morning in Alaska. The temperature was supposed to dip down to 30°F overnight and I’ve started hearing snow warnings for the higher elevations. Everything looks more gold every day. It makes for dramatic pairings with the sunset light and stormy sky. We’re still getting some rain almost every day too. It’s altogether glorious, bright and damp.

Work is going well. I find that transporting passengers might be only 30% of my job. Almost every day there is a list of items to be picked up or purchased and I get to do a lot of it. I like the freedom of it and when I do have passengers in my van it’s fun to talk with them. I get to geek out on local history and topics such as wildlife, highway development in Alaska, gold mines in history and today, the Alaska Pipeline, local trees and how their location affects growth, and rural cabin life. At least for the cabin life I have my friends as a reference point. They just hired a second driver so I can have scheduled days off. He’s lived here all his life so he knows the area and the driving requirements, but it almost feels like everything I listed is so normal to him that he can’t understand why anyone would be fascinated by it. I told him that it’s all about the adventure. Maybe that retiree from Tennessee would hate the actual work of running a gold claim, but he’ll dream about the adventure.

Still no real progress on my cabin, but the sawmill might be sorted out. Mostly. The other day N spent the morning replacing the rollers that allow the head to move end to end. Several had rusted up and we’re wearing flat spots by sliding instead of rolling. A new bolt had to be purchased and fitted to attach the new chain that runs the length of the mill. It’s how the head moves itself using sprockets. It looks like a hefty bicycle chain. Later that day Lance went over what wiring needs to be redone and she’ll tackle that while he’s gone on a long-haul trip down to Washington. I’m hoping that when he gets back we can get busy cutting lumber.

Speaking of Washington… anyone watching the news at all knows that the entire west coast is having a bad fire season. I’ll be perfectly honest and say that I don’t know how bad it is most places. My focus has been on my property back home. I was first made aware of the situation last Tuesday when I got a text from my mom informing me that there was a fire down in the area between Eagle Creek and the Clackamas River. That’s just a mile or two as the crow flies. Just the day before there were power outages due to high winds. Then fire. The entirety of Clackamas County was on some level of evacuation notice. My property stayed at Level 1 for a couple of days before it went directly to Level 3.

The actual threat did not come from the fire down the hill, but from the Riverside fire that came within 1/2 mile of the town of Estacada. Eagle Creek is just 5 miles west of there. My boys, my nephew, and several of their friends put a couple of days worth of work into making sure that valuables and important things were secured and that the house itself was as safe as they could make it. Then we waited. I got the above pic on Thursday from just up the hill, showing how much smoke is in the air. But no flames were spotted. The fire is being fought back away from town and rain is predicted soon. I hear that already the wind was shifting and that people feel moisture in the air.

What a crazy year. I’m trying to wrap my head around the full scope of the craziness. Between pandemic and social unrest, natural disasters, and personal loss it can be hard to find the good. I don’t think we’ll understand the big picture for another few years. But there are good things in life. Just something as simple as knowing that my family is safe is good. Knowing that they had warning is good. Knowing that they were able to come together and do what needed to be done is good. I love seeing the reports of people taking care of each other and opening doors for strangers in need. I hope that these natural disasters can be something that erases some of the division that has grown up in our society. And I hope that the coming winter brings some relief from the craziness of the rest of the year.