Logbook: Wasilla to Barrow, entry 4: Deadhorse

Most of the passengers got off. I suppose a bunch will get back on, but I hope not as many as got off, so that I can get out of this middle seat and finish the ride by window. We'll see. No snow in Deadhorse. The snow I heard about yesterday must all have melted. Well, the new passengers are boarding, mostly oilfield workers going home to whereever after their shift. There seems to be quite a few coming on. I will probably still be stuck in the middle seat.

Logbook: Wasilla to Barrow, entry 3: preview of winter

It is a one-hour and four minute flight from Fairbanks to Deadhorse. I closed my eyes just before takeoff and resolved not to open them again until touchdown so that I could get as much rest as possible. Yet, just now I did open them and looked out the window. This is what I saw: a glimpse of winter, drawing near. This will melt, except maybe in the mountain tops, but it is coming. And just a couple of weeks ago, when I was in Nuiqsut, the temperature down there would have reached the upper 70's, maybe 80's. 

Logbook: Wasilla to Barrow, entry 3, name check in Fairbanks

"Can I get your last name, please?" this stewardess asks the big, burly gentleman sitting in the aisle seat to my right. She is asking this question to every passenger who did not get off here in Fairbanks. Very few passengers did get off. This plane is jam-packed. Mostly oil field workers. I suspect lots will get off in Deadhorse. I have also spotted a number of faces of people who are going to the funerals in Barrow.

Logbook: Wasilla to Barrow, entry 2: The Big Mountain and the sleeping man

We just passed Denali on the east - much farther from the mountain than in the picture I took coming home from Nuiqsut. I am in a middle seat again, jammed tight between two burly big guys, both of them asleep. Funny thing about that mountain: living near it gives one a very special feeling - almost like somehow the mountain makes you special. Yet, the mountain was here long before any of us or our nations and states. None of us has anything at all to do with its being there. It is completely indifferent to all of us. It will stand long after we have all become dust, recycled repeatedly through countless other lives; after our political institutions have collapsed and our cities vanished. Yet, it won't stand forever. And in the glimpse of meantime, it does make us feel special.

About to have breakfast on the plane

Here I am, on the plane to Barrow, via Fairbanks and Deadhorse. About to have a scrumptious breakfast.