70 and Sunny on Christmas Day

Photo: Kenai Mystery courtesy of Infinitegtr
Photo is copyright protected and all Rights are expressly reserved.


On Christmas Day, my daughter complained that it was the" dead of winter", and she was upset, because, at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, just not quite warm enough to wear shorts.

I used to hate cold weather, but two events changed that. The first was contracting multiple sclerosis (and if I can ever prove that MS is an STD, I am going after my ex-wife). The second event was actually a combination of two trips that I got to take to Anchorage this time last year.

For the first time in my life, I have found a place that has a beauty, a majesty, and a spiritual energy so overwhelming that I could really connect with the concept of home. I have seen no more of Alaska than a 60-70 mile strip running from just north of Anchorage down to the Kenai peninsula, but just that tiny strip of paradise made me feel the movement of a Supreme Being... hell, if I saw more of the state, I might even stop being an asshole for a while...

The photo above, "Kenai Mystery" was taken on the second trip, in January of 2005. I was sent to Anchorage, with a paralegal in tow, to begin a fairly sizeable document review. We started on a Thursday, just before MLK Day as I recall. The following Tuesday, I was planning on sending the paralegal home, and I was going to take the first of nearly 30 depositions. I was going to be on the road for 6 weeks straight, in a different town every night. At the end of that time, I would return home, and we were set to go to trial 4 days later. (It only now dawns on me that, I would have spent first anniversary in trial, having been gone the 6 weeks prior). I was in the early stages of pneumonia. The weather was dark and foul, and matched my mood perfectly.

On Saturday evening, opposing counsel informed me that we would not have access to her client's building, or the documents I sorely needed to review, on Sunday. Something about being the Sabbath, and staff wanted to worship their god, and Federal Rules did not require her to work on Sunday. My coughing fit gave her the perfect opportunity to assume my consent and hang up before I could engage the Expletive-O-Meter.

Sunday morning dawned... well, for that time of year, "dawn" starts to crawl over the mountain top about 10:00 Aleutian time. For the first time, the skies were clear, and we could actually see the "glacial glow" of Denali. If you have never seen the color of glacial glow on a Sunday morning, I truly am sorry. I think they named it glacial glow, because calling it a "hue of the very color of one's life force, shaded by the essence of the outer limits of human joy emanating from the deepest most profound regions of the human soul" is too long, a little unwieldy, and a bit too feminine to be used in the common vernacular of your everyday Alaskan mountain man.

But I digress... when the paralegal saw the first rays of sunshine, she forced me out of my Ni-Quil induced sleep, and demanded to see something other than the inside of the god-awful office I had imprisoned her in for 3 days.

Just south of Anchorage there is a lake that lies at the opening of the tunnel leading to Prince William Sound. In years past, glaciers were visible from the northwestern bank, where a visitors center was eventually built. Until the next Ice Age, the glaciers have receded quite a bit.

In November of 2004, I made my first pilgrimage to the lake. I saw my first bald eagle there. The waters of the lake, at least in November, looked like cold, molten lead. I tried to get some pictures, but even film could not capture the depth of the layers of leaden color in the water.

The paralegal desperately needed to be impressed with Alaska, so the lake was the first place I thought of. On the road in, we stopped in the hopes of seeing bald eagles. While I wrestled with my camera gear, I heard a disturbance in the air above me. Three, no five bald eagles swooped and soared out of the tree line, across the highway. Mentally groping my private parts in celebration of my good luck, I rapidly pulled my aging camera to my eye and pulled the trigger. Nothing, this thing was deader than Bob Dole without his little blue pills.

I have a daughter, my own flesh and blood, that wont speak to me. I was devastated by the untimely death of my camera, and secretly, for that one moment in time, I was not sure which of the two tragedies was greatest. My paralegal was used to seeing me act like an asshole, or an incompetent baby lawyer, but I don't think she was prepared for the full-scale mope that I was about to begin.

She took several photos of the bald eagles with her under-powered and over-priced digital camera, and I think she took a few extra just to piss me off. I am suddenly through admiring the taunting eagles, so we proceeded to the lake. The body of ethereal water that I had first seen in November was now, in January, a snow covered, solid, full-on winter ice-scape. The cold, gun-barrel grey and silty waters now encased the rocks of the shore in ice, and all had been dusted with snow. 300 hundred yards out, a group of people were ice-skating.

The paralegal stepped off the sidewalk. This was one of those slow motion moments, because I knew there were rocks here, and just 45 days ago this was water, and maybe it wasn't a good idea to just jump off into polar bear land. I was still pouting over my camera, my dagger tongue was dulled by cold medicine, and well, her camera worked, so to hell with her. I remained silent.

She may have actually taken two steps before falling face forward in the snow. Even now I am lauded for not laughing. No need to laugh, as cosmic justice had been meted out. We got back in the car, and I toyed with the idea of driving to the Kenai peninsula while she poured the water out of her now frozen and temporarily inoperable camera.

In 48 hours, I was to begin the Deposition Roadshow. Here was the only place in my life I had actually felt the presence of God. We were going to Kenai.

Once you traverse the southern edge of Turnagain Bay, there is a 10-15 mile pass that takes you to Kenai. If there is a portal to another plane of existence, it is this stretch of road. Sunshine turned to spectral fog, things seemed to be moving between the trees... hell the trees seemed to be moving through the trees.
Photo: Flight of Fantasy courtesy of Infinitegtr

Photo is copyright protected and all rights are expressly reserved.

As soon as we cleared the pass, we spotted a rest area and stopped. While paralegal danced and skipped through the parking lot, taking pictures as though she were throwing candy from a float at a parade, I decided to take one more shot at resurrecting my camera. A nudge here or an unstuck shutter there, and suddenly I possessed once again the magic necessary to preserve images on film.

I fairly well fell out of the car, careful not to drop my suddenly breathing camera in the snow. I could feel my shaking hands absorbing the adrenaline while I started lining up targets for my Minolta sniper rifle. I looked back towards the Twilight Zone from whence we had just emerged, and I was temporarily frozen in place. The sun was funneling through a jagged, gaping tear in the clouds while the fog seemed to be sneaking upwards trying to blot out all of the sun. I snapped Kenai Mystery before we rushed off to use every ounce of remaining light we had left.

As far as outdoor photography goes, this is probably pretty run of the mill stuff. For me personally, this photo has the same emotional impact on me now as it did when I first got the slide back from processing. On those late nights, when wife and children are tucked safely in bed, air conditioner running to prevent heat stroke, I often pull out this image and allow it to take me back to Alaska, if only for a few fleeting moments.

The rush is on! There's Formerly Living in them there hills...!