Crazy Traveling Souls on Top of the World

Life has been lived. We meet bards, musicians, pilots, seamstresses, wildlife, Iditarod mushers, flew around mountain fortresses, hiked enchanted forests, and the most important - looked into our inner selves. My hands are numb with emotion while I write this beautifully moving piece of life lived. There are so many enlightening and enthralling moments of discovery with such a taste of color and feeling, that it is making my heartache whilest I write a passage of life.
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Now playing: KT Tunstall - Suddenly I See
via FoxyTunes

These were going to be the last six days of Becci being in Alaska for at least three years and I needed time off and enjoy my graduation. We decided to roll together and embarked upon a truly exciting unique soul filling Alaskan Adventure. Thus I asked her what she wanted to see on the trip. She hadn't been to the Large Animal Research Animal Station or the Reindeer Research Program Fairbanks Farm http://reindeer.salrm.uaf.edu/ The calves were just being born and they are to adorable and tender and being able to capture the beautiful peaceful photos of their first days in this intriguing world was wonderful and full filling.

After visiting the fawns and muskox, we had to hit the famous Hot Licks. The beginning of all trips starts with ICECREAM!! I got the chocolate all over my face, what a hilarious mess. I am glad there were no photos, an alaskan women who can't handle her icecream go figure.








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Now playing: KT Tunstall - Through The Dark
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: Beth Gibbons - Mysteries
via FoxyTunes

Bonfire of Farewell

It was a bonfire of farewell of friends whom new Becci from the first day she arrived in Fairbanks during the UAF Forestry Contest. We meet her during a beautiful first snow fall of winter in Fairbanks and she leaving during the last cold spell of winter, with a heart felt fire of friendly souls.

We made the fairwell into an improvised birthday party with cake, candles to blow out, even had cute cone party hats.
We had a night full of laughter and fun with an electronic circular contraption game of charades with people from multiple nationalities. The darn thing had a timer that got faster and faster as the game progressed, and we were hard pressed to figure out how to depict what we wanted people to say.

That is one thing that is truly Alaskan is our love of life and spending it with our friends. There is nothing like listening and being with fellow human beings that are positive and full of life.
We also had a little bit of fireworks next to the bonfire. For a neuroscientist to say she only has a few fireworks, than you do not know your neurochemists. We or maybe just me in the beginning, started off with a few fireworks and didn't think it was too much of a problem of sending a few bottle rockets to the out house, while it was occupied. Well, little did I know, that the outhouse,until I used it later in the evening, had no darn front door and the bottle rockets could have ricocheted into the outhouse. Opps!, does this not reiterate the importance of communication.

Some of use just felt the good vibes flowing around and just had to post this great photo of "This is feeling good of being yourself and letting it flow".

The bonfire was full of warmth and a little bit of friendly wrestling going on. It took two people to pull one poor guy down.

Roomates got a little turned around and upside down, with everyone laughing and having a great time.

Being out by the bonfire we looked up and there was a beautiful aurora substorm beginning to build. We ran inside got the cameras and went to the road to watch the aurora have its own playful wrestling match. She danced and tumbled about in a beautiful rhythmic pattern of shapes and forms.

The colors of pale greens even had a bottom hint of light red flowing in congruent exotic shapes. One form that Becci caught for a brief moment in time was an angle.

Becci is off now on an adventure of a life time on the research vessel US Coast Guard Cutter Healy 430 ft ship in the dangerous and icy Bering Sea. Since it is on of the shallowest seas in the world, the swells can get up to 30 ft in only a few hours. She will be missed and we wish her good luck and a safe trip. If you want to see where the ship is in the Bering Sea you can go to the enclosed link for photos or page down to the google map I have embedded to update once a day, which is pretty cool. This is an experimental or
beta version of this function. Once you click on map and then click on Photos from Picasaweb you can see the photos, and click on weather to see temperature. If there are any problems please e-mail.

Link

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Eclipse in Life

Tonight, what more I could have planed that could go wrong I didn't care and flowed with it. I went to learn how and play handball to be with someone, but it was the wrong type of handball and they didn't show up again. My hand is so swollen and bruised, oh well the dumb things we do for love. I do not understand why they do not use a perfectly good racquet to hit the darn thing is a mystery to me, like dating. Why people do the things they do is a complete mystery and just going with the flow and communicate has been the best recourse. To much time and assumptions can be made if you just don't ask what is going on. So, that was complete bust and went to sledding on the hill. Man that would have been alot of fun, if some people I left my sled with hadn't busted it. They were sledding on cardboard and I let them borrow my sled, oh well hope they had fun. It will not stop me from being kind again, since kindness is just a moment in time.

So, I just went with the flow and refused to let this crazy set of events get me down and I went to the Museum. I was infront of the UAF museum waiting for a talk on "13 ways to look at a glacier" and the moon was in the middle of the eclipse. I had brought along my binoculars and the shadows of the craters on the moon were a cool orange. The moon was a beautiful redish orange with a white sliver on the bottom, real cool. It was a trifecta of having Saturn and Regulus together. Finally the weather was nice and warm to be able to enjoy it.
People were walking up to the museum and I asked them if they wanted to borrow my binoculars. No one said no and it was neat meeting new people. The dean of my school said I should charge money or beer for the use of the binoculars. We were all laughing and enjoying the moment. I remembered someone giving me advise of not trying to catagorize a memory and just let it be, so I didn't even get out my camera and just enjoyed myself.
After the show, I went to the Marlin to finally get up on stage with Danelle playing guitar and sang Come Away with Me by Norah Jones. I finally got over my stage fright of playing by myself, instead of with a whole Choir like at Carnegie Hall. This was just as tough and lets just say we were apologizing to the crowd after we were done. We should have practiced more, but Danelle had practiced the lyrics and not the guitar piece, opps communication again rearing its ugly head. She is an excellent singer and her boyfriend even offered to help out to get us to practice some more. I really would like to do well and sing again with a little more practice. The feeling of accomplishment is wonderful and resounding in me to have enough courage to do this and to jump the huge hurtle is fantastic. Wow, the sense of self is astounding, since I really have never known fear until recently and have been trying to conquer this damn pain in the petunia feeling. I have one more hurtle and the fear has become a lot less and I am feeling more confident each day.

Alaskan Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is unique up here in Alaska, since we have such ingenious people and the beautiful scintillating Aurora. Someone had this ingenious idea to paint blue hearts along the walk from the dorms to lower campus, with an intermittent I Love You in the middle. Then in the big square in the middle of the campus a huge Heart around ten feet wide was filled in with initials MF. What a cool Alaskan gesture of love.

That is such a cool neat gesture of love and caring, you just smile and feel warm inside. Just like some of the people up here in Alaska, who help you when you need it and give advise if you ask for it. A friend told me to stay strong and true to myself and someone will come along who believes the way you do. Don't change your big and caring heart and bend to the crowds expectations or lost desires. It has not been easy when you have excellent hearing and overhear people's ridiculus conversations of not having the facts and just speculation. You wish they could spend that time asking questions and finding out about that person. I should practice what I preach, because I get nervous and start talking about myself instead of asking questions. This I have been trying to change and the first step is feeling comfortable with myself and stop trying to prove my worth. True people will accept you as you are and not try and change or manipulate you to what they want in life.

After watching Across the Universe at the Pub and listening to the song Hey Jude with the lyrics telling Jude the need for being too cool is gone and to let someone into your heart, was really poignant in my life right now. I was riding my bike home and rode right by someone that I had meet back when I had become Belle of the Woods. Hey Jude was singing in my head and I stopped and said Hi. We talked for a while and the Aurora started its beautiful flowing dance across the sky. It was flowing undulating right above us and it was nice to let my guard down for a while, enjoying the moment.

The spaceweather forcast for the night was pretty promising with the earth being in a coronal mass ejection and the interplanetary magnetic field pointing south, it looked like the aurora would be undulating in the sky for hours. So we loaded up the car with another friend and lovable dog, and off on a road trip up to Ester dome. That is part of why I love Alaska is the spontaneity of the people and nature herself. You never know what will happen next in the land of extremes. With my telescope out we got to see the shadows in the craters of the moon, while the aurora was undulating and shifting shape and form above. The dog named "buddy" keep running back and forth like a horse having a great time being able to get out and have some fun, like us humans.

The sky was not yet done revealing its beauty and there was this really neat shape forming. Taking a chance and leaving the shutter open for over 1 min 1/2, the shot was finally there, capturing a beautiful moment in time. The form is shaped like a women looking over her shoulder at you. I have seen forms of eagles, busts of a women's head, and even music note shapes, but never one like this being seductive and scintillating. Nature, she was revealing her own valentine gift.

Wondering thru Arctic Life

Wondering thru life in the arctic can be beautiful and harsh at the same time. The cold at -10F with wind chill at -50F is tough, but if you dress up enough to look like the pilsbury doe boy you can stay warm. The colds beauty is every where from the deep crystallized prism snow with rainbows glinting and twinkling at you enticingly, to hoary frost clinging to every exposed surface. The ability to get the shoot of the prism effect I have been trying for years and I finally was able to do it by changing my angle of incidence or simply lying down in the snow. The wonders of life's accidents are always wonderful if you open your mind to them.

Along the trail, I'm singing Come Away with Me by Nora Jones, since I have been practicing it to sing at open mic night, and a raven flew by to investigate what was going on. I am laying there in the snow just finish shooting and the raven lands on a branch only a few feet away. She starts cawing at me and twisting here head back and forth keeping an eye always on me. Well, from the time I spent with a Shaman from Wisemen and learned how to repeat their sounds, I called back to her and she repeated the sound. The moment was really cool and intriguing, she really liked my singing. It was so beautiful and lovingly tender, something I need very much right now.

She followed me along the trail even to the road and it was cool having us talking and singing to each other. I haven't been able to do that for a long time since last spring an it felt wonderful in the arctic cold. Since, ravens are one of the most intelligent song birds and even repeat car alarm sounds, if you all hear "Come away with Me" some where out of the blue you will know why, a crazy strawberry blond taught her. I had a feeling the days mysteries were not done yet and something else was going to happen. Once I reached back to the road and was on Farmers Loop I started shooting again the frozen and snow covered Ballaine Lake. The smooth snow with small prisms of beautiful rainbow crystalized light was mesmerizing. Then a thought surfaced of why not become part of the beauty by using my own body as an art tool. I went out and wrote my saying in life "LIFE LIVE IT" and let other people see it and help out their day in life. The letters are huge and you can see them from the road or air. Through all of the things happening within this last year I have become more relaxed and patient with life, and participating in its beauty.

Yukon Quest at -30F Slightly Cold

Alaskan Women Exposed & Empowered

Nack of things just happening in life that come out of the blue, literally are just a part of my life. I was getting a cab home from having fun on FAT TUESDAY Mardi Gras and saw the temperature sign where Fahrenheit and celsius are the same temperature at -40. I asked the cab driver to drive me home to get my camera and come back and take a picture. When we got back there was a great surprise awaiting. Six crazy Alaskan Women were standing there in bathing suits and underwear getting their photo taken. They saw me and asked me to get in the middle, who am I to say no to being an Alaskan Women. I jumped right on in and it felt awesome, wild, and crazy. They then started chanting to Strip, Strip, Strip. Oh heck why not, we only live once and off the clothes came. The feeling of being Alaskan Strong Women and empowerment was exhilarating. Life is to short and living it is wonderful. I am so glad I listen to my mom about wearing good underwear, you will never know when you are exposed. We were getting pretty cold and jumped back into our vehicles. Warmed up a bit and drove off into the cold arctic night. I wonder if it will get down to -50 below tonight, might have another Exposed Party with some other friends, will just have to get dressed faster. Life Live It is a moto I write on many things and it is a wonderful feeling.