Logbook: Barrow to Nuiqsut, entry 2: we sneak out ahead of Alaska Airlines

I know, I should only post one picture from the tarmac but I am going to post two anyway. Here we are taxiing to the runway. The morning Alaska Airlines jet is boarding passengers they will fly south to Fairbanks and Anchorage. It is just about 11 AM. 

I am in Nuiqsut now, but I was so tired I closed my eyes on the plane and kept them closed. I remain so tired. I have two more logbook entries to make from this trip, but, given the circumstance, it seems appropriate to collapse for a spell and take a nap if I can.

I think I can. Then I will get up and drink some coffee, finish the Logbook and do whatever I do next.

Logbook: Barrow to Nuiqsut, entry 1: She sits in a cold plane on the Barrow tarmac

Still on the tarmac outside Era Aviation in Barrow. Temperature somewhere at what I would guess to be somewhere between -15 and -20 Fahrenheit, wind blowing. Hard. Even in the plane it is cold – but that's usually how it is when you climb into planes up here this time of year. They are cold. But as the engines spin the props they generate heat that is funneled into the fuselage and it slowly gets a little warmer. It was dark in the plane, too, darker than it looks in this picture. It was darker outside as well.

It's kind of amazing how this iPhone 5s works in low light. 

Another day spent in two places at once

Wait! "Where is Jim?" You challenge. "Isn't he always there with you, assisting you in your work, sitting between your eyes and your computer screen or upon your shoulder?" He could be on my shoulder right now and you would not know… So how can you even ask such a question? The truth is, he is curled up on his own chair, about 3 feet from mine and is taking a much needed nap. He needs lots of naps and I never deny him although sometimes he denies me my sleep. But most often, he just makes me a little more warm and a little more comfortable and able to rest a little better than I would if he were not there. But not always… but Jim is not the point of this post.

The point is to let you know I have spent most of this day sitting here in my chair in my office in my house in Wasilla, but at the same time, I have spent the day up north. Mostly in Nuiqsut, but as you can see, here I am about to land in Barrow. This is how I live when I am picture editing – in two places at once. I am not as far along as I had hoped to be by now, but I am making progress. I will get to the end product, but I am totally confused about what very few pictures to keep for publication, and which thousands to set aside to await the day when some scholar now in diapers or maybe not even born can pore over them in the future and wonder about it all.

"The guy was nuts!" He will say. "But damn! He loved his work! He loved the north! He wasn't really tough enough for the north and he was totally disheveled and unorganized, but he loved it anyway, and somehow managed to do a fair number of things and produce a good number of works - although never as much as he wanted to do or thought he would do."