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.
