Well, the barge with the Co-op food is late so Colorado is pissed. No dog food. He whines and mopes around. We’re done out. He’s been eating the rinds off the old-fashioned bacon left over from the Burns Supper. Food coming this afternoon. We’ve been working putting on skirting on a mobile home, and he’s ticked as well he’s forced to share the front seat with lumber. Meanwhile he scratches at the rug by the fireplace and turns a few times before settling into his cedar dogbed.

You know it’s a bad sign when objects in your refrigerator freeze. Woke up this morning to find the thermostat in the boat read 32 degrees. Inside. Now that’s a record for us.

The game continues!

Currently without heat or water. The pipes froze. Spent Friday night threading new insulated hose beneath the dock so the snow plow wouldn’t run over it.

Oh geez. No writing for some time now. The boat has been difficult. Like an unbridled horse. She stomps and leaks and snorts cold air and is generally a handful. Work work work. For the briefest of moments you sit back and say wow it’s just about at the point where I can take a breath – and then the electric goes out or a dog fall in or the 15 amp fuse for the bilge pump falls into the blackwater. But those moments – those brief moments where things might actually be ok are precious.

I can tell direction of the wind by how the boat leaks. Which joists above the galley table drip – if it blows from the southeast, then move the white radish pot to the northern edge of the table to catch the drips. From the north, it must go to the southern end, on the opposite corner. That water tinged an breakfast tea brown for some reason.

This morning I watched the Pillar Bay, a longliner, pass out the topside window. Its orange buoys gathered like a bunch of circus balloons on the port side. And so we begin the slow descent into winter. Ludvig’s has closed. The days shorten. It’s as if everyone must be silent for at least a month before talking again. God hits the dimmer on the soul. The wind, rain, and cold menace. People cope with highly customized strategems that they are loathe to share – or unable to express in words, anything beyond “get cozy before the snow flies.”

Across from me sits a pot of heart and lungs brining in a salt-water mixture. One must continually change the water, adding a dose of salt, until the brine remains clear. The salt sucks out all the blood – until it doesn’t. Then you can eat.

I lost my good-luck travel necklace while loading the floatplane for a hunt. I took it down from a hook over my desk, with plans to fasten it around my neck as I walked the length of the dock to get to the truck and retrieve a box of 30-aught shells. When I got back to the boat, no necklace.

For a reason known only to my maker I can only write with my feet off the ground. A five-gallon bucket, foot stool, window sill – even a sleeping dog will do the trick.

I knew one guy in New York who would dress up in his best suit before killing off a character. He was a playwright. The last time I saw him he was red-faced and sweating in Penn Station. I gave him a bottle of water.

I truly felt like Colin Clive, sinking to the deck, shrieking in ecstasy, “It’s alive! It’s alive!!” as the monster took his first hesitant steps. Water churning behind the prop, gunmetal smoke pouring from the stack.

The sound of blanks from the airport, fired over the water at the airport to scatter the eagles – God forbid they get stuck in a plane turbine.

A morning of rest – thankfully. Spent yesterday pressure-washing the deck, we’ve finally got the bilge pumps working, and the engine room begins to get organized.

how’s it going? let’s find a time to chat

It all started when someone brushed the dog in front of the smoking trays. Thick white hair stuck to the soy-encrusted metal. Cleaning each tine individually before setting the salmon out to glaze.

So here we are sitting topside, just behind those windows on the port aft, 70 and a salve of rain coming out of the clouds, staring out over boat masts into the fog. Twenty-two days after stepping foot on the Adak. So strange – everything since that day of arrival has just been perfect! So smooth. I stepped on the boat – and it was just, like, everything just happened for me. I rode off into the Alaskan sunset.

The following morning we prepared for our last big push of the trip : eleven hours north to Portland. God knows I wanted to stop in Point Reyes and Bolinas and see once again that beautiful country, witness that enlightened lifestyle and calm state of being – but we had boats to get dirty on. I wanted to get this final drive under my belt – and also have ample time with my buddy Chris Bernard and his wife Kim.

I swear a shred of that same excitement at the harbor in Seattle as boats blew perfect smoke rings out their fiddles, warming the engine for the trip north, transporting hundreds of men and women with gold in their corneas north to make their fortune, manifests itself at the Bellingham ferry terminal, as the flagship of the Alaska Marine Highway system fills the water jackets of god knows how many cylinders in anticipation of departure from the lower 48.

Against my better judgement I drove Mathilda, now officially interdit on the road, her registration having expired, into town, following Jen, who had to work late. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, driving through a cloud, the temperature dropping a good fifteen degrees, deposited Nick, a professional pianist, off to practice, and headed into the Mission.

I should mention that I had called ahead to Esalen, hot baths in Big Sur dug into cliffs overlooking the Pacific, supposedly a spa for well-being. The baths are open from 1-3 in the morning to the public. A woman picked up, said they were all reserved, and hung up on me.

From T & A’s I cruised to Sony Studios, to meet my friend Felix, who I met in 2003 at Burning Man. I had been living here and there at the time – actually, I was officially homeless according to the state of California, and on food stamps, living on Venice Beach with Truth Eye – and managed to get a ride in a school bus up to Black Rock Desert by having a driver’s license – because the driver called Omar was epileptic and couldn’t legally drive the school bus, the idea being if we got pulled over I would say I was the driver – in any case the entire thing was a disaster the school bus broke down we got pulled over the police involved – but point being for the purposes of explaining background with Felix that I snuck into the festival in a wooden generator box in the Budget 24-footer we ended up renting.

Driving into Los Angeles, I thought of my own self-positioning as private emissary here on the west coast of what I wasn’t quite sure. Describe my mission in these parts. And, if I didn’t have one, what business did I have here anyway?