Rural Life

Hellfire da view from my front door they are still filling in

Solid granite after the Yakutat Glacier recently retreated and exposed this rock... About 20 years earlier... In the first photo, you can see the horizontal scrape marks from the ice grinding away at the rocky hillside. But life does take hold - eventually. Moss and lichen appear on the rocks. Then seeds blow in and take hold on the lichen. One of the first plants to grow are the Dwarf Fireweed.

Large chunks of ice will remain buried in the mud and clay - insulated for decades, but eventually melt away leaving sinkholes. The Yakutat Glacier has retreated about 2 miles at the time of this trip from where we camped. This glacier is dying because the high area is only about 3,000 feet above sea-level. It would take a cataclysmic ice age to make the Yakutat Glacier grow, whereas other glaciers in the area are rapidly advancing/growing. You can't exactly blame SUV's for a glacier that has been in retreat for nearly 1,000 years... But they still try...

Vigilantism and its most lethal weapon—lynching—rose in response to the unrestrained violence. A people’s court was created, and supplemented by “private enforcers.” One dandy gambler, himself of questionable character, tracked and personally lynched a horse thief.

He forgot how to read a map, plant food, keep fit, build a shelter, stay out of debt, & steer clear of sellout doctors who are trying to kill him stone-dead & drain his wallet while they're doing it. I pity the fool modern Man's become. Which is why I left what HE calls civilization...

The silence is better. The food is better. The sunrises & sunsets are better. And of course: The cost of living is IMMEASURABLY better. I've been out the big-city, slave-grid construct for a while now...

I should've left even sooner.

Went into the shop this morning and found this invader was taking a nap in one of my Free peanut butter dispensers!!! One more permanently deported!

Happy Friday night and here's to what will hopefully be a beautiful weekend.

Wednesday I made the trip to Anchorage to once again reclaim the husband for a couple of weeks. We spent yesterday relaxing, catching up, and figuring out what needs to be done while he is home.

It's been more cloudy than sunny today, but we could see the Alaska Range pretty good today so we drove to the picture-taking ridge and snapped a few. Mt. Foraker (17,400'), Mt. Hunter (14,573'), and Mt. McKinley (20,310').

Between 1854 and 1929, about 200,000 children were shipped off from East Coast cities to rural families via "orphan trains." A precursor to the modern American foster care system, the Orphan Train Movement was designed to remove orphaned, homeless, and impoverished children from city slums and streets and place them in nurturing homes out west, where the children in turn would be able to help rural families run their farms. But this system didn't always work out as planned, as the foster families were often poorly vetted. In order to get a child from an orphan train, potential adopters only needed a letter of recommendation from their pastor and a justice of the peace — and it's unlikely that even this small requirement was enforced.
What's more, many children shipped out west via "orphan trains" weren't orphans at all — in fact, about 25 percent of them still had two living parents. As one former orphan train rider recalled, "I'd just finished eating and this matron came by and tapped us along the head. 'You're going to Texas. You're going to Texas.' Well, some of the kids, you know, clapped and laughed. When she came to me, I looked up. I said, 'I can't go. I'm not an orphan. My mother's still living. She's in a hospital right here in New York.' 'You're going to Texas.' No use arguing."

Unlike rabbit pelts, squirrels are tough and difficult to work with (at least for me) but I don't like to waste anything that I hunt. So I cut some grapevine and with a bit of rawhide cord, made this. My neighbor who has a flea market booth gave me $25 for it to put in her booth. I was informed it sold quickly earning her a profit.

This is what I learned from ground hog hunting. Do you chase the elusive whistle pigs too? https://ericnestor.com/my-lessons-learned-in-groundhog-hunting/

Country school around 1910.

Thank God for the bees that pollinate the fruit trees!

because the middle of nowhere needs a lil wholesome entertainment.. wife started a food challenge at the state park where she works.. gotta do sumthin to break up the monotony of tourist season.. and any publicity is good publicity.. er sumthin like that..
who's in?