Currently: August

Currently living/working: One day it was July & I wondered how I would survive the rest of the season. And now, the grind of the summer frenzy is about to come to a halt!!! My weekly schedule at Alaska Geographic went from 25-35 hrs/week to 10-20 hrs/week, while Justin is still meandering along with his 5-8 presentations and hikes per week for Premier. My brain feels a little soupy from our summer olympics of logistics, but no complaints because it was a very lucrative & fulfilling summer! 

Current mood: If you read my July Currently post, you know I was in a funk. The antidote to potential Angry August vibes in our seasonal world was to remind myself I live outside of Denali National Park & Preserve! It helped that the first half of August delivered incredible weather!!! The above average temps & below average rain (versus July’s erratic patterns of having to put on a fleece layer/turn on the heater, take off a fleece/turn on a fan) was a gift. Me thinks I spent more time outside this month than the whole summer!

Current guilty pleasure: In my quest to see all of Alaska’s 100,000 glaciers (not even possible, but a girl can dream), I realized I should take advantage of a discount offered to local employees & check off one more glacier. Temsco Helicopters does a glacier landing on Yanert Glacier, a 16-mile glacier spilling into a 14-mile river. I put myself (and Justin) on the list at the beginning of the season, and every time they called with 2 spots, one of us was unavailable. It finally worked out! I’ve looked on the map at this glacier so many times, and it’s always wild to see something come to life from the map in person. Yanert Valley, River & Glacier were super cool! 

Justin’s guilty pleasure was a press trip with Case Knives to Nashville! It was a whirlwind of a trip, but he learned about bull-riding team events and Case’s sponsored Stampede team. He’s so much of a fan of the team bull-riding competition that he wants to go to the finals in November!

Current confession: They call rentals “passive” income, but I’m disputing that misnomer. First of all, everything we’ve had to buy for our second yurt costs way more than it did 4 years ago when we outfitted the first yurt. Second of all, so much communication & endless laundry. Third of all, ugh, we’ve had 2 sets of sheets ruined with suspicious stains (one set was brand new), a broken TV, things left behind needing to be sent, water tank refills, guests stranded without a ride to their bus … the list goes on. Once we get past all these hiccups, we appreciate the “passive” income. 

Currently proud of: Earlier in the summer, I was panicked we wouldn’t get to any of our cabin projects because the new yurt rental was taking so much effort. We were working at work, then coming home & working at home. But then we finished the yurt mid-July, and refocused any free time to the structure we live in. And we accomplished a lot! I should say Justin accomplished a lot, because he did the bulk of the sanding, caulking & staining of one of our cabin walls. And he fixed up my mini garden bed! 

Currently amazed by: Can’t praise our “Mule” enough! We bought it in July with 160 hours on the engine, and have driven it about 17 hours (it doesn’t measure miles, but hours)! That is a lot of back & forth to the yurts & Justin has been using it all summer to go back & forth to his job (which is 1 mile down at the lake). 

Currently not excited for: Every time Justin goes to the dump, he brings something home. He is a man obsessed. Our second yurt has nothing on the outhouse path … yet. 

Currently excited for: Our second Disney cruise naturalist gig leaves in a week, and we can’t wait to spend time with Justin’s mom & oldest nephew on it! 

Currently thankful for: You’ve probably heard me complain about the quality of our roads and our massive potholes. But the AK Department of Transportation has been getting better & better about staying on top of the issues, and even beckons us to Report a Concern. So I did. I alerted them in May that the alders along the side of Hilltop are so overgrown, it’s becoming a major visibility danger as hundreds of seasonal workers use our road to walk to the lake. DOT cleared the brush this month!! Granted, it might have been 2 months too late, but it will help for future seasons. 

Currently not excited for: Our boreal forest is dominated by spindly spruce trees. Some background points about them are: they are prone to fire (they love it, they need it) and they are heavily impacted by heat stress. We had this beautiful full spruce right outside our front door, and I noticed some of the branches were dying these last 2 years. I consulted a forest health specialist and we ruled out beetle kill and other factors. What was killing it? Together we figured out that it was too close to our front door & every time we opened the door in the winter, the shock of the heat against the winter cold was doing damage. This was painstaking as we both hate cutting back healthy trees, although we know we need to fire-wising our property by removing more of these too close to the home. 

Currently regretting: When we moved into our cabin in 2019, one of the windows had a failed window seal that trapped condensation between the panes, giving it a cloudy look. We finally decided to spend the money & replace it! We should have done this 7 years ago! 

Currently worried about: We don’t have many neighbors—especially ones that live year-round—but the one closest to us has been a nuisance ever since moving in 2 years ago. I’ve already mentioned on this blog how he neglects his dog, who lives outside & whines at all hours. But the latest was having to call our trooper/fire department on him because he was having a bonfire when we were on a burn ban & the ground was super crispy dry. I don’t think our problem neighbors are going away anytime soon. 

Currently reading:

I’ve been wanting to read another Ann Patchett book because I’m wondering do I really like Ann Patchett books or love Ann Patchett books. I finished State of Wonder, but I still don’t know if I’m in the like or love stage. Probably need to read a few more of her works. Her narratives are so impressive, yet her plots sometimes seem so outlandish. I did like being transported to the jungle setting in Brazil. 

I only picked up Murder on the Iditarod Trail by Sue Henry because my book club decided our summer reading challenge would be to read some “under-the-radar” Alaskan books. It’s a fiction account of mushers dying in gruesome manners while competing in the Iditarod Trail Race. Skipable! 

Currently watching on Netflix/Peacock: We didn’t stream much this month! We tried to watch Stephen King’s Castle Rock, but really didn’t love it, so bailed halfway through the first season. Of course every Tuesday on Peacock, we still watch the latest episode of Below Deck that drops.