livin' a dream

i'd been eyeing those three days of sun on the forecast for a week now, and the first of which finally arrived on tuesday. it wasn't my day off yet, but i got up early enough (aka 10am) to get a lovely hike in before going to work. on wednesday, i rented snowshoes and went out to the coast and did a 5.5-mile hike that took most of the afternoon before catchin' the sunset and the moonrise. today, i slept in, and snowshoed some more by a creek, and now getting ready for my first geomagnetic storm (aka aurora/northern lights), which a friend and i will watch by the glacier at midnight. oh i do LOVE my life (so what if i still have to do my taxes? still got 4 hours before the weekend ends).

Day 1: short hike up a mountain to a meadow:



where people have been cross country skiiing




Day 2, driving to the northern shoreline of Juneau to snowshoe in the woods



seagull or eagle? i'm leaning towards seagull because of its rather fat underside!




first time snowshoeing. snowshoes distribute your weight over a larger surface so you kind of "float" above the snow, or sink at most a couple inches before the surface, no matter how thick the snow is. it's also super easy to learn, since you walk exactly the same way with snowshoes on as you would normally. it just feel like you have very, very big flip flops on.




tall trees in the forest.



mystical winter scene (aka there was ice on the camera lens)




taking a short break (yes, i peed in the snow (not pictured); no, there was nobody around)




more hiking after lunch. by this point, i was getting kind of tired, considering i'd been out for almost 4 hours in 15-degree weather. but happy as a clam





on my way back into town, i stopped by the coast again. my awesome (but temporary) 2009 subaru patiently waiting for the sunset.














sunset, moonrise.




moonrise over the "valley"
the wolves could come anytime now :P




day 3, more snowshoeing along a creek



skier and dog on glacial lake



on another note, valentine's day flowers from work! (i got to work on monday and the dinner table was covered in pink tablecloth, with pink daisies, and pink napkins!)

fancy bread and candles a valentine dinner make

the days pass by in a topsy-turvy rainy mist: fridays become mondays and tuesdays become fridays. each week feels twice as long -- with two "mondays" -- and yet twice as fast, with two "fridays." so it wasn't exactly a surprise that up until a couple days ago, i had thought that tomorrow was already President's Day.

even after i remembered Valentine's Day, i vaguely wondered what, exactly, it had to do with me, since i'd be working till 10:30pm that day. it wasn't until later that i felt so adult about this response of pure indifference. in fact, i had always been pretty giddy and girlish when it came to v-day, and had celebrated the past 5 of them each with a unique plan and a different boy in an ascending level of romantic settings, starting with "i don't remember" in 12th grade, progressing to "dorm room" freshman year, followed by "dinner," "movie," and "ice skating."

this year, i am single on v-day for the first time and if i'd been concerned at some point about spending it alone, i must have forgotten about it. so with neither love nor hate towards this holiday, i didn't think to celebrate it at all. but when the snow kept falling and i was coming to the end of groceries and the loan of an all-wheel-drive 2009 subaru (AKA the "i-got-sold-a-lemon-and-the-dealership-is-now-trying-to-cover-their-ass-while-doing-repairs" car), i figured i should really get to the store in case the city shuts down from snow and i'm left stranded with no car and no food. when i had finished shopping and on my way to pay, i walked by the bakery section and my eyes fell upon some dark and mysterious loaves of bread, freshly baked and wrapped in stiff paper. "fancy bread," i thought, "just the kind my mom would trade anything for." and suddenly, i realized i DID want to celebrate v-day, but not with the customary 79% dark chocolate that i devour and collect, but with this darling of a loaf:



the "olive" caught my eye first, for i'm particularly partial to anything olive-related. then i noticed just how cute it was: at only 8 ounces, the loaf was surely petite, but subtly shined with such wholesomeness and health that i couldn't think of anything else i'd rather eat for dessert tonight.





and so i stepped out of the snow storm, sat by the fire at home, and enjoyed Zingerman-quality bread with the sun-bathed olive flavor of the Mediterranean, complete with this:





and this:


Happy Valentine' s Day <3

there's this coping technique called "riding the wave" that my clients use to...well, cope -- with anything from being frustrated that they can't have seconds at dinner to having flashbacks of past traumas. and every night, they sit in a big circle and tell each other the coping skills that they've used that day. there are self-explanatory ones like deep breathing, and idiosyncratic ones like "making lemonade (out of lemons)" and "turtling (rolling with it)." but i like "riding the wave" the best because it speaks of the inconstant and cyclical nature of almost everything. the only constant in life is change. everything that goes down must come up again, like a wave. everything that we pass through is just a phase, a season. it also reminds me of what liz gilbert said of meditaion and buddhist philosophy in Eat, Pray, Love:

"In our real lives, we are constantly hopping around to adjust
ourselves around discomfort -- physical, emotional and psychological -- in
order to evade the reality of grief and nuisance. Vipassana meditation
teaches that grief and nuisance are inevitable in this life, but if you plant
yourself in stillness long enough, you will, in time, experience the truth
that everything (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass. 'The
world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve,
knowing the terms of the world,' says an old Buddhist teaching."

and that is one of the reasons i chose to come here. to discover how to be still with myself for a little while, to stop running away from the "bad me," to just ride the wave through all the different colors and shades of me until they've all made peace with each other, or at least until they've all learned how to make peace. i just figured it would be a little bit easier to do so among these (deceivingly) still mountains and waters than a city that never sleeps, for example.

birthday, alaskan style!

my 23-year-old self sure has had a lot of cake in the past few days :)

in the evening before my birthday, my coworker H cooked all the girls in the house and i a delicious thai meal, and then brought out a surprise cake and all the clients sang happy birthday and then blew silly string all over my face! even better, we later took the girls out to watch the stars since the night was absolutely dark and the sky absolutely clear, and i learned that the constellation orion is NOT the bigger dipper after all, and that the little dipper is way littl-er than i could ever have imagined! it was already a great b-day even before the b-day.

the next day, after having worked since 8am, i got was ready to continue the celebration with my favorite people in town. B had a very minty surprise for me, along with another lovely dinner and chocolate cake, and the best present ever -- "90 Short Walks around Juneau," which pretty much has every hiking trail mapped and described, even "short walks" of up to 20 miles round-trip! then B, L, G and i all played several competitive rounds of darts, as well as other activities not appropriate for 4th graders :P

in conclusion: the alaskan birthday was filled with good food, great fun, and lovely friends -- so not SO different from lower-48 birthdays after all :P

BONUS: 3 days of pure sunshine in a row!



same glacier (as "a black and white glacier") under the sun




how a glacier recedes as "flakes" of ice plunges into the lake


you can sort of see the blue "flakes" in this photo




i followed a trail to a waterfall!! the left half of the waterfall is flowing water; the right half is frozen




the trail was solid ice, but surprisingly not slippery at all! and the views along the way were well worth the effort:




same guy in the red jacket as the one in the waterfall picture. poor dude probably thought i was stalking him. but it was really the pop of color provided by his jacket that i was stalking





obligatory macro shot




the rocks made it seem almost beachy





i love giant icebergs broken off of glaciers. oh and long walks on the beach




with sunglasses on, this could totally pass for a dessert scene!