Feet & Meat... Non- Veg Post

Ah, summertime in Alaska.

I was lucky to have heard about a gathering out in the woods near my old stomping grounds from back in the day when I first arrived in Alaska.

I squatted at an old shack when I turned 20 that had once been a homestead. With no car and no rent to pay and a job cooking in a day care every other week I was pretty sure I had it made.

For a somewhat domesticated New England girl it was true pioneering... or just cheap.

Definitely was a character building experience.

I always get a wee bit nostalgic when I walk this muddy trail.

Of course none of us cabin dwellers had four wheelers then.

This cabin wasn't there. My friend Sepp is building it.

He's more of a mountain man type that actually has lived out in the bush trapping and hunting to feed himself,  a totally subsistence lifestyle. In the summers now he supports himself selling blueberries and morel mushrooms at the farmers market although he has given some slide tours of his lifestyle back in Germany where  he's from.

This is his friend getting ready to put a caribou leg on the fire.

Sepp's wild game cooking skills are legendary.

Plenty of garlic goes into the butter basting along with herbs

Sepp mixing it up

Campfire feet.

There's a gnarly story about that missing toe  but I don't want to gross you out too much. Besides it's his story.... only rivaled by his near mauling by a grizzly bear story and how the lead dog of his dog team saved his life

Good organic free-range lean meat

I told you there were feet in this post

Muddy ones.

This is the ubiquitous footwear of spring and early summer in interior Alaska.

"Extratufs"

Or this if you're extra tough yourself

Keep that fire burning

Then he shaves off the outside meat and throws it into the butter, garlic and herbs and  then it's passed around the campfire

We were under this tepee structure

Annalee found some of last years cranberries and a wolverine skull.

Some cranberries from the freezer were tossed in for flavor.

Annalee got to keep hers.

The skull went back to Sepp's rock garden

It was a hungry crowd. The caribou was melt in your mouth delicious.

See, they had to put a second leg on.

I went for a little walk and found my old shack. Some dipstick decided to blow it up with dynamite a few years ago. It had been going back to the earth just fine on its own.

Kind of made me mad that someone would do that.

My old outhouse.... sigh

And since it's light out all night I made the 2 hour drive back to Delta stopping at my son's archaeology field camp site at midnight since it was on the way.

This is the town of North Pole and Santa Claus House.

It's about 11:00 PM in this photo.

I've been using ups some scraps of copper that are left from punching discs.

I got a nice load of this textured copper from a roofing outfit...

most of it for free too.

Some enamel torch firing

I can see some wire wrapping round the stem

Fun with my new dimple pliers

torch enamel "matchsticks" on copper

The sun finally came out today after way too many cloudy or rainy days. It makes the solitude infinitely more easy to bear as Mr. Coryosity is leaving me here to my own devices for most of the summer.

So if I sound really "ronery"  here you'll know why.