May 1

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May 1

The picture you see here is NOT of the apartment we moved into yesterday. The apartment complex, found online and booked by phone, did not meet my expectations. It was obvious as soon as we began moving in. The idea had been to have a comfortable base prearranged for the month of May, and spend that month finding a place to live for June through September.

A thorough study of the Sunday paper classifieds yesterday, a couple of phone calls today and one visit later, we moved out. Less than 20 hours were needed to go from the prospect of a month in a place we didn’t want to be to moving into a cabin on a creek at the edge of Anchorage. We are beyond happy. The picture you see here IS of the cabin we moved into today.

Rabbit Creek runs right past our door. The king salmon (chinooks) will be swimming past in a just a few weeks. Watch for pictures. I haven’t found out yet whether any or all of the other four Pacific salmon varieties also spawn in this creek. The creek flows into a marsh just a few hundred yards downstream before emptying into the Cook Inlet only about a mile or so away. This neighboring marsh is a protected wildlife area with beavers, geese, swans, mallards, and . . . .

Moose wander by our door. And the cabin’s owners say a brown bear (grizzly bear) has taken up residence nearby the last couple of years and visits here every week or two. We will be developing a trash and garbage plan which doesn’t lend itself toward attracting or acclimating him to us, and thus frequenting this edge of his range because of us.

The cabin owners, Alexi and Inga, are from Russia. She runs a business selling imported items at the downtown bazaar during the warmer months, and he is a commercial pilot. His other, tenant Tom, is a commercial pilot. This is Alaska. The women running businesses and the men being pilots is the norm. Maria wants to learn to fly this summer. And maybe run a business, too.

This evening, roasting in the sauna Alexi built, he and I learned that we have approximately the same number of parachute jumps. What seems odd to me about it is that it has been my impression of most parachutists, both civilian and military, that they either have a few jumps, say 4 to 6, or they have hundreds. We both have in the range of 17 to 21. More than an introduction, but not indicative of an all-consuming passion.

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