There's the unfinished floor, the food that needs to be cooked, the story to be written, laundry escaping the confines of it's hamper, and a garden in need of harvesting. Sometimes this list is energizing, others, it's... just... endless. There's a wrench in my gut that feels like a fist wringing out a washcloth, I'm working on shaking it out, and hanging it up to dry. Right now, however, I think I'll tackle the garden.

Wow, what a week. What a couple of weeks, and what a couple of weeks ahead... Anyway - I was part of the circus on Tuesday. Media. Circus. Not my favorite, but I don't know if it's anyone's favorite. So here's the picture that ran on the front page of the Daily Interlake, the paper out here.

The Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar came out to the Flathead with Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus of Montana to see the Flathead River - there are several proposed mines at the headwaters of the river, in Canada, and Sec. Salazar is in the position to talk with Canada to... well basically keep the mines from going in at the headwaters of this watershed, next to this International Peace Park (Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park)

Sunny Days

Sometimes my job is particularly awesome. Last Thursday, 5/21, for example: there was a media trip beyond the closed gate up the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park. Got to walk on avalanche debris - and we're talking debris: trees with their limbs wrenched off, dirt, brush, pine needles... The edge of the road was broken away, and the old rock guard walls had been wiped out along a 500 foot section. Then, we were driven up as far as possible, and walked up to where they were still plowing the road. It was a beautiful sunny day following a slew of cold rainy ones.

April 2nd, for real

It's the second of April, and it's been snowing on and off for the past couple days. I had intended to ski today, but decided if I wait till tomorrow. This way I can get all my work done, FAR ahead of deadline, and then head up to the hill with Jake tomorrow - it's nicer to ski with him than just rub it in that I got to go skiing while he got to work.
It's finally stopped snowing here in town, and the sun is threatening to poke through. My brave little crocuses outlasted this mornings snow, and there's a smattering of green grass on one strip of land on the south side of the house.
I love skiing, but am really getting eager for spring time; cutthroat fishing, hiking, boating, leaving my jacket at home...

karma

I broke my streak: I hit a deer. It's karma (no pun intended-pun inevitable). Just the week before I had been smugly grinning on the inside as a roomful of people - of which I was one - was posed a question: how many of you have ever hit a deer? Nearly everyone in the room raised a hand. But not mee, I couldn't help but hold my head a little higher, thinking "I haven't."

3 Days later - WHAM BAM-whatthehellwasthat!!??!? Young deer, solid, ran head first - actually - I think he hopped - over the guard rail, into the front of my car, killing him instantly, and taking out my right turn signal totally.

Now my car is fixed, Jake hammered it out with a sledgehammer and replaced the turn signal. But, the fender is chipped and it, along with the front hood, have that softly crumpled look. Like slightly over-ripe fruit with the skin starting to wrinkle.

The night before, my left front headlight burnt out. So I was a right-eyed car that could only indicate turning left. I avoided driving at night. But - then I had to work, covering a politician's panel on the economy, open to the public, at 7 PM.

I saw the highway patrolman's car, the reflector strips lining the length of his sedan illumiunated by my one headlight, and yep, he pulled me over. My insurance had just run it's annual course, and I hadn't put my new card in the glove compartment yet.

"It's been one of those weeks," I told him. We laughed, I got a verbal warning, and Jake fixed the lights over the next two days. Everything until this last paragraph is the start to a catastrophic series of events in a work of fiction that ends in jail or Jamacia; depending on whether it's tragic, comic, or tragically comic.

Identity

As I'm planning my wedding, there are a lot of Celtic themes and traditions I want to incorporate. As I'm doing this, I'm realizing that's the heritage I most identify with. It's weird, it's really not something I'd thought about much before. I'm just as Slovak, Eastern European, as I am a Celt, if not more so because that side of the family got here in the 19-teens, whereas the Celts got here.... maybe before the American Revolutionary war.
It's the culture; it's the history, music, traditions, tales, religion - as a bridge between Christianity and Paganism, it's that my Mamgu (grandmother) reads Gaelic poetry and prayers at family functions.
Anyway, it's an interesting moment, at 28, to suddenly think about your identity. As a white-bread american, I kind of blend in. The first taste I got of recognizing my identity was while I was in New Zealand. There, it was the first time I really saw myself as an American (I know that sounds weird,) but as Americans, we identify ourselves as our heritage: Polish, German, English, Irish, Chinese, African etc. Outside the "walls" of this country, everyone else just sees us as Americans.
We are the children of the world.
In New Zealand, riding on the bus, I could be a fellow countrywoman; until I opened my mouth to say "thank you" to the bus driver with my American accent, instead of "cheers" in a Kiwi accent.

This is quite belated, but I am VERY busy and important after all... A couple weeks ago the whole Flathead Valley was mired in a soup of fog.
It was thick, gray, and dark on the valley floor, but just a thousand or so feet up, it was blue skies and sunny. So, even though the skiing was less than fabulous, it was sunny and hot, so up to the Big Mountain we went.
From there we went for a skin tour in the back country and got to spend the whole day up in the sunshine, climbing up through the slowly melting snow-ghosted forest and then skiing down in a fraction of the time it took to hike up, of course.
The lines we got to ski were actually pretty good. We did this two days in a row, one short hike, one longer - it was a Monday :)

This is a picture fromt the summit house at Big Mountain; the snow ghosts are the snow-crusted trees, they're melting and huge chunks of snow would just slough off.
In the distance, at the bottom of the picture is the soupy fog.

Here's another picture of the fog-filled valley from the sunny mountain top.