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.

Breakfast was good. Mush, dried fruit, and “grit my teeth” powdered milk. I made a loaf of bread, but had no butter, so I toasted a slice and dunked it into oil and vinegar for lunch. I dressed it up with two pickles left behind in the refrigerator. For dinner I’ll have PB&H on fresh bread. The piece de resistance will be the whipped cream.

I have not been inside anywhere but my house for 14 days. My landlord came by to give me verification of renting, so I can get a PO Box tomorrow. He is a State Trooper and he banged on the door just like the cops do on TV. It was mighty exciting. I wanted to tell him that the mayor flicks his cigarette butts onto the ground. I feel desperate to stir something up in this sleepy town, but I didn’t want to appear petty.

In anticipation of the end of my incarceration, I perused an online list of goods that MIGHT be at the store. Every third item was a different brand of cigarettes. Who knew?

The sun seemed to be pushing up sooner this morning. Before 9:00, the mountains were pink already. At -25, I wrapped myself up leaving no skin exposed, and headed down to the staging area of the Iron Dog Race . They have a mandatory 14 hour layover, and all twenty, 2 person teams, had pulled into McGrath last night. I knew some of them would be ready to pull out by 9:30.

This was a different world from the Iditarod sled dog race, which we saw twenty years ago. When mushers pulled in, they were disheveled and ragtag. On arrival they needed to make a fire and cook for the dogs. Then they inspected all of the dogs as well as their leads, harnesses, booties, sled etc. They lay down straw for the dogs’ beds. Then they take care of their needs.

The Iron Dog drivers left the restaurant with coffee mugs heading to their neatly lined up machines. The pairs had their matching fitted suits with matching sleek helmets with little ear buds and microphones like FBI agents. You could make out their fine physiques. They had swagger.

This photo shoot would be splendid with the sun rising, smoke and fumes billowing, and the racers pulling the recoil starters with their whole body. When I removed my mitt, my finger froze. My goggles were steamed making me blind. The hazards of an arctic photographer.

Some pickup trucks were idling with spectators inside. Enterprising kids had a Loco Cocoa Wagon, a walled tent stand selling hot chocolate. A couple groups of dogs were tussling. A huge fire was stoked by some men. A couple of officials and a cameraman, all underdressed, we’re scurrying and looking busy.

From a distance bathed in the sepia of orange smoke and fogged goggles, it looked like a Bruegel painting. I could see someone throwing up in a corner, a fist fight, a procession of priests, a couple petting, and even Icarus.

Then the racers gunned their engines, made a sharp jump out of the staging area, and catapulted down to the River. It was a ballet of sorts.

At 4:00 am I noticed the good morning message from Siri. I asked him what the temperature was. In that charming Irish accent he replied 16 below. I searched my Aurora app to find that on a scale of 0-9 it was a four. I suit up and head out. My only enemy was the street light. Not great but after not seeing them in years, it was thrilling.

At 9:30 I headed to the dump with my sled and the garbage. It was minus 20.

The Iron Dog Snow-machine Race is a arriving tonight. I really wanted to see them speeding up the River at 100 MPH. But not enough to stand out in the cold and dark.

I stopped to talk to a man who was overlooking the River while smoking a cigarette. When I told him I was from CA, he said he had a son and a couple grandsons in Sacramento, along with three ex wives, and that’s why he’s living here. He’s the mayor. Name’s Ralph.