Woke up to temperatures of +19 and by 10:00 +30. I headed off to the store and was their first customer of the day. Terry will be here on Monday, and I feel I should quarantine with him. The store is small and people are close, so I must avoid the store. Time to stock up.

I met up with Elsie on the street. I wanted to know why I haven’t see any animals. She said she saw moose tracks, but they’d been gone since fall. She saw a fox on the other side of the River, but she didn’t really see it a friend did. The rabbits are gone. The one wolf had an injured foot. And the “chickens”, spruce grouse, are all skinny. She didn’t give me much hope of seeing animals, but at least she gave me assurance, I wouldn’t be attacked by a moose on my run. It was so hot today, I didn’t need my mask, goggles, down jacket. Freedom. But I swear those were moose tracks I saw. And two guys flew out the road on snow machines dressed in camouflage with rifles slung across their backs.

Back in town I met up with Maisie and David. He said he had two moose in his yard yesterday. But then he lives across town from Elsie a good quarter mile away.

Last night around 7:30, I was talking to Terry, on the phone, when I heard the Northern Air Cargo jet leaving. I wondered if they had left my Full Circle Farm box due the next day. I pulled up the message board to check. There was no message about it. I was happy. I didn’t need to drag my sled out in the dark. The next morning, I saw that they posted at 8:05 pm that the boxes were, in fact, in. I wanted to head out with my sled and pick the box up. But there was no way to find out if someone was there to allow access to the box. As every one says, it’s a loose system. It’s easy to accept if you have a vehicle. Which I don’t. So the kind daughter of my landlord delivered the box. Her hair is now purple at the ends, and it is long enough to fall over her turquoise jacket. It’s nice to see her smiling eyes and her color combination.

It snowed most of day. Perfect for writing and watching through the window as it falls.

I was surprised to see a snowplow buzzing around my driveway, but I was wondering how I’d get furnace oil without the drive being plowed. Someone heard me wonder.

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I alway support public radio. I listened to KSKO, the station here in McGrath, when I lived in Graying AK twenty years ago. Then I realized how important public radio was when you’re cut off from the wider world. So I called KSKO and became a supporter. Paul asked me if I could come right in and get my thank you gifts. Usually I forgo the gifts, but I didn’t have any tote bags here, and warm hoodies for both Terry and me were needed. It was 9:00 am, about four hours earlier than I usually leave the house. The reason for that is -9 degrees VS -29 degrees. I threw my outer clothes on cutting my dressing time from 25 minutes to 20 minutes. This was an epic outing to this real, live two-person radio station consisting of Paul the program/general manager, and Ralph the volunteer and mayor.

I also got my first two pieces of mail in my new PO Box 23. In case you want to add to that box at 99627.

One of a number of reasons I wanted to come here and isolate was to see what I could learn from it. #1 I gripe a lot. But having no one to gripe to, helps me let things go, or not even get things started.

I listened to an audiobook as I ran this afternoon. This is something I mostly do when I run by myself. As I went out the road, it felt colder than -9 had been feeling. It was cloudy and spitting snow. It looked cold. I met no cars or snow machines. I’ve etched this 6 mile route into my mind and body. I see, in my mind’s eye, all the curves in this white road-to -nowhere. Not my term but their’s. Because my goggles iced over, I ran with the goggles pushed up above my eyes. They iced over too. I closed my eyes and ran blind. When I heard my foot falls, I stopped and the world was quiet, so I quietly listened to Robin Wall Kemmerer read from her book Braiding Sweetgrass. It’s contemplative and beautifully read. Everything was peaceful.

Back into town, a new dog welcomed me.

Well that’s not true. It seems that one sound bleeds into the others: heater, refrigerator, water heater, wall heater. It’s a noisy little house in one of the most remote places on earth. If you were flying over right now. You’d experience this huge mass of dark and there’d be little pods of lights, spaced far apart and one of them would be McGrath.

Today I realized I’m not lonely, and I’m content. I miss people but that’s different. I’m happy not to be in traffics or lines at stores or on a beach or state park with throngs of people. “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.” May Sarton

I don’t watch TV. However, I watch the Great British Baking Show on the Netflix app on my phone. One episode per night while dining.

It was the coldest it’s been so far -35. The rest of the week is predicted to have much higher temps because it will be snowing. The full “snow” moon is on Saturday. I took a picture of the moon this afternoon in case it’s snowing and I miss it.

Today when I ran by the in-town house where my dog stopped yesterday at the end of our three mile run together, she was still sitting on the stoop. She knew she was hurting my feelings. She’s just stringing me along. Bitch.

My UPS package was not delivered last night. When I checked the board of disappointment today, they reported that everything they received had been delivered. I must remember if I think I should order something DON’T. I really don’t need anything.

For over twenty years, I’ve had leg and feet cramps usually related to marathon training. I woke last night with perhaps my most painful leg camp ever. My calf was still painful in the morning. I thought it felt warm compared to my other calf. So I spent part of my morning researching DVT (deep vein thrombosis) VS leg cramp. I elevated my leg and put a heating pad on it just in case it was DVT. By 2.30 I lost interest and went for a run. Alls well. I’ll see what tonight brings.

Out the road, there was my dog. She ran into town with me three mile just like before. When she got ahead she’d sit on the side of the road and wait. She’s trying to make up for her fickleness.

It’s 4:00 am. “Hey Siri, what’s the temperature?” “I’m on it. Just a sec. It’s -33 degrees outside. With a 10 percent chance of rain.” “Holy crap. That’s worse than Texas.” I reply. “That’s not nice.” He scolds.

As I do every morning I step out to look at the sky. The lights are out. I layer on clothes. The lights cover a large swatch of the sky dancing, bouncing and swirling.

It remains in the minus double digits until 2:30. At -9, off I go. When I “run” people stop and ask me if there’s something wrong. So I decided to make a sign to put on my back. It says:

Getting something delivered here is a challenge, But figuring out how to get it once it’s here is an even bigger problem. Last night when my landlord was at the terminal, he saw a package I was expecting to get last Monday. It was with the big shipment It’s a UPS deliver. Tomkat posted on the board of disappointment that UPS would deliver this afternoon. They do actually deliver to your house. Which means they take a snow machine around town with the deliveries in the sled. It’s 8:30 PM, and he hasn’t arrived. Should I put a candle in the window for Tomkat?

Good Morning! Surprise, I pop out the door. Brisk. Refreshing like a dive in the ocean, but ninety degrees colder. Waiting for the warm, but no.

The cold isn’t my real problem. I’m stuck with the image of my beautiful CSA box of organic, free range vegetables decomposing on a far flung tarmac. Full Circle Farms assured me that my veggies, due on Wednesday, were coming. When? Unknown.

You find out about deliveries to the McGrath Terminal on the online message board which you should check every time you hear a plane fly over. For me that’s all the time because I often think a snow machine is a plane.

Oh, I hear the 727 fly over. It’s 6:30 pm.The sun is down and it’s approaching darkness. I really don’t want to drag my sled a mile down the road in this dark frozen night, but I really want my veggies. I must check the board of disappointment again.

I text my landlord to see if he can pick them up. He sends a text that he is flying his plane and heard on his radio that the cargo plane had landed. He would check when he was on the ground. Unfortunately, he needed to go to the terminal three times. Unloading the pallets takes a long time. I can’t image how large a shipment can fit on a 727 cargo plane.

He arrived maskless. He stayed outside. Under the porch light, I was shocked how different he looked without a mask. He had a big mustache. I would have never picked him out of lineup.

I was thinking about pissholes in the snow. I told Terry a few weeks back, that Frank McCourt in, Angela’s Ashes, wrote that his inflamed eyes we’re like pissholes in the snow. BTW, my inflamed eyes are much improved owing to the good advice from my readers. In the snow, I’m reminded of the literal piss holes. After hearing the term again on an audiobook today, I looked it up. It refers to a hangover. I will not add a photo here.

We had a gorgeously perfect snow-covering this morning. I delayed the start of my run to continue reworking chapter one. By 10:00, I had completed the end of this three-day total reconstruction of the character, motives, and plot of this one chapter. A run was needed to ponder the effects of these changes on the next eighteen chapters,

Perhaps it wasn’t far enough to work out problems in my novel, but it was looking grim. Now I have grave doubts about the novel. I’ll work on some of my other work for awhile.

I was glad to see the sun return and bring features back to the sky.

My farm box didn’t arrive yesterday or today. The groceries I bought on Tuesday were to enhance my farm box order. I was hungry. I needed to pick through the fruits and vegetables at the store.

And the answer is? My groceries yesterday cost $144.00

I talked to Kellie the director and the one and only employee of the 3,000,000 acre Innoko Nation Wildlife Reserve. It’s headquartered here in McGrath. She identified a bird I wasn’t sure we would see here this time of year as a pine grosbeak. She also told me that as spring arrives earlier low bush berries flower before the pollinators arrive. Hence they don’t produce. 😢

These are the only two street signs I’ve seen here.

The sky has been featureless on these snowy days. It’s hard to run before they plow.

I needed another Covid test. I went to the clinic and waited outside to get a test kit and use it in front of the nurse. A man was also getting a test. He waited for me so we could walk together. He wanted to tell me his story. New people are always popular because they don’t know your story. He had just finished writing a book and wanted to find someplace to get away and write another one. We’re a dime a dozen.

Closer to my house, I saw my dog. She was playing with another dog and hanging with some guy as he walked. The man claimed he didn’t know my dog, but the other one was Gina’s dog. She’s on the Tribal counsel. Why does she let her dog run free when his is always on a leash?

And my dog? She pretended she didn’t know me. What a Bitch.

It took 2 hours to complete my errands today. I made it to the post office and the grocery store. Round trip it’s 2.7 miles. I went on foot pulling my sled with a tub to protect groceries from the cold.