Adapting to my new Arctic home

Its been a while since I could blog, most days my gmail and blog site time out due to the satellite internet up here.

Anyways my first two weeks have been amazing. I've been fine tuning the details of my new job, its been going quite well. I've really enjoyed the job so far, and most of my co workers have been pretty cool. Its been nice to be away from the city, so peaceful as I think it should be. I'd had a fascination with Wiseman before I came to Alaska, and now I'm fully in love with it. Its a town captured in the late 1800s in many respects, people living in log cabins doing the subsistence living thing- hunting and growing all their own food. Sourdoughs as they're called up here are the kinda people I want to hang out with. I have profound respect for them and a desire to learn their skills, if not else casually, but perhaps to use on my own one day. Who knows? (They did call me "mountain man Norris" at Washburn)

I've also gotten to go on a few little trips up to Atigun pass and Anituvik village inside Gates of the Arctic National Park. They were alot of fun, and for "touristy" things to do, alot of fun. Pictures will be up on facebook soon I hope.

I've done some hiking, seen a little game but not much. I took my shotgun along which was extra weight, but then again, had I needed it, it would have proved its worth. Naturally I will keep taking it along. The quiet satisfaction of climbing mountains around here has been profound, the area's scenery is simply epic. I cant express in words the natural beauty of this area, so free of the outside world and far removed from the hassles and business of the outside. Its great. I hadnt realized how much I enjoy, and missed camp life until I got here. Rustic Pathways in Fiji didnt count, it was so loud and packed with little retreat into the wild. Alaska is so refreshingly different, I'm in a sea of wilderness, just prime for the hiking, fishing, mountain climbing, and more importantly meditating on the deeper nature of all that there is in life. My heart is so alive in this place, just as it was meant to, simply living out the next epic story in this journey...