Welcome Back

We would like to welcome all of you back to our blog.  It has been a crazy past few months and we know that we have not been the best with keeping everybody updated, but we hope that we can bring you all back.  Since our last blog we have moved our family back down to Livingston, MT, we have lost one cat due to his aspirations on finding a life of his own, we have lost one dog to a good family who has adopted him, and we have a pair of friends and grandparents who have been willing to foster care our last cat son until we have the opportunity to either bring him back to the village with us, or we move back to the lower 48 states.  From our family of 6 we are now down to 3, and missing the others, but moving on for the good of the group.

 

This summer we got to spend some time in Livingston where Ben was able to work with Charles Gentry and Rachel was able to finish up her Modern China class.  We got to hang out at Mom and Dad’s with the family for the last few weeks, enjoying time in the kiddy pool, and hanging out with some old friends.  We then got to go to South Dakota to visit Ben’s family where we hung out for a few nights at a vacation home and got to go climbing in Spearfish Canyon with Ben’s brother.  It was a great time full of fun and lots of challenges.  Everybody came back alive from the climbing experience.  When we went back to Livingston for the last time before heading back to Alaska we got to hang out with Ben, Amanda, and Todd.  It was a lot of fun to hang out with the whole clan, from both sides, before setting out alone again.

 

No Longer Aspiring

As of this May, we were no longer aspiring sourdoughs.

After enjoying a beautiful late spring and summer (even if we barely had a chance to catch our breath), an incredible fall (which a little too often lacked electricity), an intense yet awesome winter (despite the fact that some old-timers that have been up here 50 years or more described it as the worst they had ever seen), and a late-coming early spring, we have officially lived in Alaska for a year!

Now that we are Alaska residents, we enjoy some GREAT perks.  One of the most notable of these is the fact that we can now go dip-netting.  For those unfamiliar, this means that instead of trying to snag the salmon by the mouth as it swims up stream, we get to hang a huge net into the water and just let them swim in!  Not exactly as easy as it sounds, but still pretty darn nice if you intend to eat much salmon!  Also, to get a hunting/trapping/fishing license (we won't go into everything that we can hunt/trap/fish with one of these...because it is just about everything), the cost drops from astronomical, to what could almost be described as "measly".

Despite this though, probably the best part about being a sourdough is know that we came out of one of the harshest winters that this planet can throw at us, laugh about it, and ask for more!

...Well, that and the sourdough starter that we got from two of the greatest friends, and indeed people, that we have ever met!

According to Mark, this sourdough starter is at least 80 years old (that's eight decades, four score years, four fifths of a century!) and originally came from Germany.

If you aren't familiar with the workings of a sourdough starter, it is essentially a Lactobacillus stew, and is started through the fermentation of "potato water".  As the mix of potatoes and water ferments, this bacteria grows which will act, on its own with no yeast present, to leaven flour and water when mixed in the right amounts.  When done properly, this creates the most delicious sourdough bread, waffles, pancakes, and any number of other delicious items.

Let's make some sourdough!

Start with some meager potato water, a fair amount of sourdough starter, a lot of flour, and a few other ingredients.  Coffee also helps if you are embarking on the traditional way of making the bread...because it will take a while, and it's good to start in the morning.

Making it takes a while, and there are faster ways to do it, but we wanted to do it the all-natural Alaskan way (plus old sourdoughs thought that adding yeast and/or baking powder makes men less virile, so...).


Mix half of the flour, and all of the other ingredients together, and sit back, maybe play some banjo, read a book, take a morning nap, or make breakfast while it rises.









It helps to put it in a nice warm place while it's rising.  Stoves work great, and heaters and other things like that...but if it's July in Montana and going to be ridiculously inordinately hot, you may as well put it outside on the chimenea.






Once it has risen, add flour until it stops doing this...









...and you can do this.  Practice your pizza crust spinning skills for a while if you want!  You can use sourdough for that too!





 Knead it up good, and let it rise again!



In true Mark Ifflander style, we'll just say, "Yeah baby!"

And knead it again!

Making this bread has convinced Ben that one does not need to hit buckets full of iron filings or sand in order to achieve the fabled Chinese Iron Palm.

Just make some bread everyday!

Stick it back in the bowl for one more round of rising!  Continuing doing whatever it is that makes you hungry, because you will want an appetite when this is done!









A little more handiwork and it is ready for the oven!  As the original Alaska sourdoughs of the gold rush would say, "Eureka!!!"

And bake!  This takes about an hour, and the smell is intoxicating...

Finally!  Learn from your mistakes (should have used twice as many pans...WHOOPS!).

Let the bread cool and salivate whilst smelling it and staring at it...

Enjoy!

Rachel's Partially Reversed Déjà vu

For those of you who know what's going on with us these days, we apologize that this post is about a month late.  For those of you who don't really know what we're up to, you are none the wiser, and we don't really apologize to you...  :-P

Friday, June 1st, 3:30 PM - Ben leaves SeaView Community Services for the last time as their Prevention Coordinator and heads for home to help Rachel finish packing the trailer, hook the truck up, get the rental inspected (and hopefully get our full deposit back), and hit the road to the lower 48.

3:55 PM - Ben gets stuck at a road construction point and has to wait for a pilot car so that he can drive 100 yards to his driveway, the entrance of which he can see, but can't get to.  Rachel, meanwhile, has finished packing the trailer.

4:05 PM - Ben makes it to the apartment, and he and Rachel begin cleaning out the last of what's left in the house.  They load the animals, get the trailer hooked up, and Ben does a walk-through with the landlord; they get their whole deposit back!

4:45 PM - Ben and Rachel leave that place for the last time, heading North on the Seward Highway toward Anchorage!

What followed was 12 hours of driving followed by 1 hour of sleep followed by 16 hours of driving followed by 8 hours of sleep followed by 20 hours of driving followed by 2 hours of sleep followed by 19 hours of driving!  We arrived in Livingston MT around 1 AM, Monday, June 4th.  (For all of your smarty-pants types that want to add up those hours to say that the numbers don't quite match, we had to stop to relieve ourselves, get gas, food, and let the dogs out once in a while!)  I should point out that during the total of 11 hours of sleep that we got on the trip, the two of us were curled up in the bed of the truck with two dogs and two cats, and their food, toys and a few other things...it would have been a tight fit with just the animals...

Luckily there were some redeeming aspects to the trip...

Like a Leaf on the Waters of the Kenai River

The "Leaf on the Water" principle is how Mark likes to describe floating the Kenai in a drift boat.  It's really a great metaphor because if you ever watch a leaf float down a river, you will notice that it spins around randomly and a lot...which is what you do in a drift boat if it's windy on the river!

Regardless of the state of our stomachs at the end of it all, we had a blast!  We've certainly seen a lot of bald eagles since moving to Alaska, but I know for a fact that I couldn't count half of the ones that we saw on two hands...maybe on hands and feet...?  Maybe...

Sadly, no moose or bears, BUT I did spot a Lynx hiding in the grass and checking us out!  As Mark said, "that was worth the price of admission!"

The weather was pretty dreary for the ride, so we were dressed to the hilt, warm clothes, life jackets, gloves and all!  I would bet the water wasn't warmer than 40 degrees, which makes for a cold ride when the front of the boat dips into the rapids!

Anyway, we had a blast riding the water, hanging out with Mark and Yoly and their daughter Naomi, and were more than happy to follow up with dinner at the Kingfisher.  It was definitely a great way to spend one of our last Saturdays on the Kenai!

Wayward Trail to Crooked Creek

It is rare to see the plan behind your life, but sometimes it seems that so many coincidences have led you to a certain point.  Since coming to Alaska, we have tried to do many, many different things to make homes and careers here, and not one of them worked out.  Rachel has been unable to find an opening with the schools in Seward, Ben couldn't wait forever for a solid job with the Forest Service, Rachel's job with the Seward schools is not one that she could see herself doing for another school year, much less until a teaching job opens up here, Ben's job with SeaView, although decent, is without possibility for promotion and/or moving into a better position, we looked into jobs in Homer which either ended up being a bust or we were unable to get, we were unable to find a house in Seward that we could afford and we were unable to find a way to get to another city/area that we would like to live in...  In short, although we have survived and certainly enjoyed ourselves in many ways, we have felt like there is no future for us here, and a couple of months ago we started looking into other options...

Thursday, April 12th, 2012
We left after work and headed to the Alaska Teacher Placement Job Fair being held in Anchorage on April 13th and 14th.  We went with the intention of finding jobs for both of us teaching in a remote village in Alaska.  Little did we know how exhausted, and yet elated, we would be in another 36 hours...

Friday, April 13th, 2012
We head into the job fair, suffering from severe lack of sleep after looking for hours for clothing for Rachel to feel comfortable in during interviews, and getting the dogs to settle down to sleep in the hotel, rather than barking at every single noise that they heard.  We went into the fair, into the pandemonium, the battleground of aspiring professionals, and began fighting for our place in the grand scheme.  Luckily, we had an advantage; just as in real battle, those who fight together have advantages, and as a teaching couple, within two hours we had six interviews for jobs with six different school districts.  The next 7 hours would continue to try us as we talked to person after person, "schmoozing" and talking ourselves up to every human resources person and superintendent that had a job that we were remotely interested in.  We left the fair a little after 5:00 PM, feeling tired, worn out, and a little discouraged when Dr. Marvel (yes, that is his name) asked us if we'd been offered any jobs.  But we were still determined to leave Anchorage with jobs...

Saturday, April 14th, 2012
Since we had already talked to all of the school districts with jobs that were somewhat interesting to us (and a couple that weren't), we decided to get a little extra sleep and head to the closing hours of the fair just a little before our first interview of the day; we had two more scheduled, and truth be told, we weren't interested in either of them, but would take them if offered.  Just as we were getting ready to leave, the phone rang.  On the other end was the principal of a district that we talked to only because we saw that they had a couple of Middle/High School Generalist positions available, that we had no intention of talking to initially, and that we never thought at the end of the first day would have been our first pick for a village to teach in.  She was calling to talk to us about signing "Letters of Intent"...we had no idea what that really meant, but we said that we would love to talk to them some more, and headed for the job fair a little early to do so.  When we got there, Rachel headed to their table to talk to them, and I headed to talk to Dr. Marvel to figure out what a Letter of Intent is.  "So you got jobs?" Dr. Marvel asked.  "We did?" I replied.  "Yeah, that's basically what that means!"  I headed over to join Rachel and sure enough, we went with the superintendent, signed letters of intent, and as long as nothing catastrophic happens, we will be the Middle/High School teachers (the only two!) for Crooked Creek, Alaska, for the foreseeable future...

We'll leave you with this, and more information and updates to follow...

 If you want to see where Crooked Creek is in general, just plug it into Google Maps.

Here's a little tour of the village, conducted by a couple of our future students, and filmed by one of the teachers that we will be replacing:

 

"I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, ... looking on snow with new eyes." - Edward M. Purcell

It's all too easy to be of two minds about the winter in Alaska.

On one hand, we can't wait to see the green mountains, the lush forests, and all of the beautiful waters and wild life.

On the other hand, we will be sad to see the ice and the snow go.  Those who only come to Alaska in the summer truly miss out on the majesty of the mountains and the austere beauty of the frozen lakes and tundra.  However, there are a number of things that I'm sure most people would be glad to miss out on, such as the two inches of solid ice that forms on the roads, forcing you to actually become used to sliding around on the road while driving 50 MPH.  And of course, then when it begins to warm up and it rains on the road, you get pot-holes IN THE ICE.  Awesome!  Now that is definitely fun!  The long nights weren't too bad, but we're definitely glad to have some sunshine back (and really pumped about 24 hours of daylight in a couple of months)!

We've done really well finding the silver lining this winter, and have been out snowshoeing, nordic ice skating, and cross-country skiing as much as possible.  Hardly a weekend has gone by that we haven't been outside having fun!  That being said, we'll just say that we were out on Kenai Lake, it was beautiful, the sun was shining, the dogs exhausted themselves, we covered at least 5 miles, and we had the whole lake to ourselves!

Animalistic Tendencies

I wake up in the middle of the night.  It's definitely dark but I can see pretty well, so I head out into the kitchen and grab a little bit of food, take a couple of nibbles and drink a little water.  Then go lay back down and curl up, and fall asleep again, comfy and warm.  About an hour later I wake up again.  Hmmmmmmm, I could use another snack.  It's still dark, but it stays dark a long time here.  I'm not used to it, but it's alright, I like to sleep a lot anyway.  I don't really feel like lying back down again though, so I head over to the couch instead.  I sit down on the couch and look around.  Not too much going on this time of night.  The dogs are both asleep on the bed, the white and black one is under the covers, and the big black crazy one is laying near the foot of the mattress.  They are so annoying, especially the white one.  I can't stand it when she growls and bites my neck!  Hmmmmmm, the big tank is making an enticing sort of drip-dropping sound.  I can't help myself.  I jump from the back of the couch onto the tank!  Uh-oh!  The big man that has been living with mom and I is awake and he's coming for me!  Dang it!  How does he hear me?  I better get the heck off of here and run!  Hiding, hiding, hiding...  Coast seems clear, I'd better not chance jumping onto the tank again.  I'll just sit at the bottom of the tank and meow at it instead.  They'll like that I'm sure...  Maybe after I do that for 15 minutes or so I'll go lay down and clean the other white kitty a little bit.  I really like him...most of the time.

I just heard my three favorite words in the world again, "Go, For, Outside."  I love those words.  They normally mean that my humans are going to wear my body out until I wont even be able to go up and down the stairs to go to the bathroom once we get home.  It is going to be AWESOME!  I wonder what we are going to do this time.  Maybe we will go back out to that wide open space where I can't get any traction.  If I could put a word to what that surface was I would call it ice.  It is really hard to stop on, but once I get going I can go really really fast.  Or maybe my humans will put on those extra-sized shoes and we will go up into the hills together.  I really love the hills with all of the smells and the moose to chase.  I really need to watch out for those cornice's though because they are really hard to climb back out of.  Perhaps we will just go for a drive and I will get to scare off all those other big machines coming at us from the other direction with my ferocious barking.  Whatever we decide to do together I know that it is going to be exciting and because of that my little body just can't stop bouncing all over the house.  Maybe if I cry a little bit we will go quicker...

  

 

What are they doing what are they doing what are they doing?  Are they going to feed me?  I hope they touch me soon and a lot I think I'll run over to them.  Ooh, dad is sitting on the couch I'm sure that he would like me to try and sit in his lap and stick my face in his face, or maybe I'll just stick my nose in his crotch, he might like that better.  No?  Okay, what if I put my paw on that black clickey light-up thing that he sits in front of and pokes with his paws.  He's awful interested sometimes by those pictures that are on it.  I should try to help.  Oh, he didn't like that.  GROAN!  I'll cry at him a little.  Oh he told me to "sit" but I don't want to sit but maybe if I do...  OOOOHHHHHHH YEAH!  I LOVE it when he scratches my ears...  Wait he's heading for the kitchen is he going to feed me is he going to feed me?  Oooh, there's that scarey water bowl I can't stand that bowl sometimes because it has the water in it and I start drinking and I just can't stop can't stop can't stop.  OOH!  Maybe he's getting that ball out of the sink! Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch? Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch?  Fetch? ...No?  Why not?!?!?  Fine, I want to go outside and bark at things...or maybe I'll just bark at nothing at all.  I don't know much, but I know that once I get started I just have a heck of a time stopping!

(Just ignore the fact that Ben sounds like he is going to die...)

 

 

The humans that pulled me out of that cold wasteland in South Dakota have now brought me to an even colder land.  I knew that letting them catch me could lead to even greater troubles.  It is a good thing that there is a heater just for me in this tiny place that we all try to call home.  As soon as it is turned on and warmed up you won't find me anywhere else.  The other good thing about these humans is that they feed me...A LOT!  I know that half of it is for the other cat, but after my rough start in life I just can't help myself.  Instead of a skinny half-starved kitten, I have grown into a cute roll of chub and fur.  It rocks!  Even with all of my spastic episodes throughout the day I don't seem to lose even half a pound.  I don't have to eat them anymore but I still catch mice for the fun of it.  I don't feel like they belong in here anyway.  Those humans are usually pretty excited, I just wish they would let me play with them longer before taking them away.  I have a new love in life though, it is called PAPER!  If those humans forget and leave a piece of paper lying anywhere unguarded around the house I like to make a jigsaw puzzle out of it...and maybe eat a little.  A fun holiday did just go by and I got to eat something called "garland".  It only made me a little sick.  I have started to enjoy sitting with the humans again.  After a year I am finally getting over being embarrassed about peeing on the big one.  How was I suppose to know I had a UTI?  Oh well, no harm no foul.  I think I might stick with them a little longer since they have that big black thing that lets me lay with him all the time.  Uh oh, they are coming back with the little black and white one, she is probably going to bite my neck a whole bunch...

Akiiki, Lilly, Attila, and Cleveland (respectively)