Just about the strangest thing happened last Friday…

…I was at the Larkspur on a Friday evening having a beer with a couple of friends, half-listening to the stories of this guy getting arraigned for sexual misconduct, this girl who cold-cocked the dude who runs refrigeration out at the processor, feeling sorry for myself with my shoulder all slung up, trying to figure out how to justify all this time writing and away from carpentry, when my phone rings. A Palo Alto number. Maybe another snowbird renter for the Adak? I picked up. A woman introduced herself in a British accent, something like Ee-van. I got up from the stool and went out the door. And as it slid home, she offered a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University – two years fully funded, with the only obligation being to write, and attend one 3-hour faculty meeting with Tobias Wolf, Eavan Boland, or the like.

Um.

I really thought someone – Jen, Chris, Katey, some other writer friend ( although these folks would have known that’s like the lowest of the low when it comes to humor) – was fucking with me. And if it wasn’t for that British accent I would have made the accusation. Instead I walked to the water, and told her where I was, by the ocean in Alaska, and continued on to say she had made my night. She responded that I could call the university on Monday to accept the offer, if I so wished.

On Monday I called to say I so wished. Today I recieved an email saying that I could publicly announce the news. So here I am. It’s just about the strangest, most surreal experience. Of course I’ll continue to live in Sitka, and I will keep the Adak, but my next two years will be in sunny California. In Oakland, or San Francisco, or Menlo Park – not Palo Alto, as it sounds too damn expensive. And Mr. Colorado, who has been so patient on the cold boat, unable to make the trip topside to give good-morning wakeup licks, will live his ninth and tenth year on this green earth in California, playing with poodles and pugs and whatever other dogs are allowed within the bay area.

I spoke with Kent, my agent (that still sounds so … affected). “Everything will change from here-on out,” he said. I’m curious, intrigued by what he means. He wants to time the submission of the novel with the Stegner announcement. I mean, sure.

In the meantime, my friend Lisa came out to visit – this coincided with Chris Stock coming to work on the Sitka Spruce. We checked off all the Alaskan must-dos. Went out to the range to drink beers and shoots guns, Chris passed out at the Pioneer Bar (we’ve got great video of that if anyone’s interested), and Lisa caught a fish, thanks to Xander’s business Sitka Harbor Tours. All in a day’s work.

And the weather, as if on cue, broke after a month of rain and darkness. Blue-bird scrubbed sky. The smell of spring – devil’s club, violets, deerheart, drying kelp – almost obnoxious, obscene. Chris and Lisa came on my radio show and we talked about where to get the best cheesesteaks in Philly, and how Lorenzo’s on South burnt down and the firemen went through the crotch of the bikinied woman on the wall to break in, and how, knowing firemen, that surely wasn’t a mistake.

And that’s about that. The gods giveth, the gods taketh away. With some help, of course, of all the incredible folks in my life – friends, family. I feel very lucky these days.