Peggy's Place
My latest Alaska Adventure
 Well, here I am in Homer, Alaska again, which is still just as wonderful, but not as big a surprise because I was here before, and I have been staring at the Homer Spit on my screensaver for the last 9 months….it really doesn’t get dark here, so I had no problem walking back to my cabin in the half-night ( this being my first night off in 2 weeks !) after falling asleep to Nacho Libre with Pauli’s kids, walked down the boardwalk no problem, encountered a VERY large black bear on the steps, rummaging through the garbage ( him not me)…he ran away and so did I, and since this is my second sighting of this bear today, I was not totally surprised, but still! Not wanting to wake anyone up (they’ll find the mess in the morning, soon enough, I’m certainly not about to clean it up), I have barricaded myself in my room, and am contemplating the spiritual side of seeing a bear.
The first time I saw a bear up close and personal was in Boiceville, NY, when a less large bear rummaged through the birdseed on our porch…my heart pounded and it was truly a deep experience…the second time a little less so, as I banged on the window to have him leave the birdfeeder alone. Now, my heart is truly not pounding, it’s just another pesky bear trying to get into some fast food, and either I have too much time on my hands to think, or it is truly a shame: the spiritual aspect of encountering a bear has given way to it being a pain in the neck, an infringement on my privacy, an onus put on my vacation time, something else to watch out for, more terrorism, etc. It makes me feel jaded, like ho hum, or oh well, another day, another bear.
The jazz festival here was wonderful: their first one, and we will see what the future holds: a wonderful concert: well-organized, fun, a neat gig/after-party on this very dock where I saw the bear tonight (now that is interesting!)—the music was well-received, it was a pretty vocal audience (ok, there was a baby screeching through our set), good attendance at the workshops. For me it was a big win to bring my trio out all this way, and have them enjoy it so much, and folks enjoy them, and we to enjoy each other. It makes me feel like a good choice was made in personnel, and I will pursue touring with them again. Lew Scott and Peter O’Brien…Estrella lives!
As for Homer, Alaska, the guys agreed with me that it does seem a bit like Woodstock, except for the mountains and the water; it is a quirky place with personalities in abundance, dancers, and artists, craftspeople, hangers-on, and fishermen. That these folks tough out the hard winters sets their lives apart from the rest of us, I guess. Why they do seems to be a very individual thing, maybe secrets of the heart. I didn’t get to see too much wildlife - except for the bear, the goats that got loose and ran all around saying chase me!, a couple of sea otters and a puffin – actually, that’s quite a bit of wildlife; the glacier that I remember is still basically where it was last year, and the fact that it’s shrinking isn’t really visible to my short time span. We all have eaten the most amazing salmon, oyster, and king crab, with all the trimmings. Our hosts at The Quiet Place Lodge are amazing, Pauli and Harmon Hall. I’ve spent enough time on the boat to feel bandy-legged and floaty, and enough time in this environment to feel totally relaxed.
Oh the plane ride coming in: from Anchorage we had to take this 7-seater. Size of a taxicab. The only person was the pilot, and after saying, great day to fly, beautiful view (which was true), he said a few bumps. Those few bumps were truly a white-knuckler, and he, god bless him, spent the whole ride turned around 180 degrees to talk to me – that left nobody flying the plane – matter of fact, had he choked on his soda (he was very young), that would have left me and my band and a couple of other folks to fly the thing, no co-pilot, first engineer, stewardess, no peanuts. Yikes. He turns around to tell me he has a surprise – he’s going to fly us right through a canyon! Well, since I am the bandleader I wanted to show my men I wasn’t scared a bit, so I took out my tiny video camera and filmed the whole thing – all you can hear is the roar of the propeller engine, and me saying things like oh shit, jesus christ, careful there. It really was a lot of fun. Peter got sick. And the video itself, a bunch of trees waayy too close to the wings and a bald tire kind of hanging down in mid-air – landing gear. When we finally got to the runway, which looked suspiciously like a video game, white line and all, we hovered over it for way too long – all of us were afraid we were going to run out of runway, and have to take off again – we concentrated our collective weight and energy, to get this fucking thing on the ground, please!
A couple of days later, update to the bear story: it had been decided that I would sleep in the main house, not in the cabin where the bear was trying to hang out. I have to admit I had been on watch all night before, so I was acquiescent to sleeping on the couch, just had to go down to my cabin to get a few things. Again, it was totally daytime light at 10:30 PM, so as I headed down the ramp, I said a few “Hey Bear!”s just to warn him I was coming; much to my surprise, there he was at the bottom of the ramp waiting for me! Again we split in opposite directions, this time he peed all over the porch, I must’ve scared him so bad! The next day I decided he must be the incarnation of someone we know, and I began to advocate for his safe release into the wild, so it turns out my spiritual relationship to bears is alive and well, or maybe it’s just that he seemed to be my own private black shiny bear…
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