October 11, 2004

    I’ve been exploring the woods around my cabin and it's been so great!  We're at the edge of total wilderness, yet it's only a 10-minute hike from the road and 10 minutes' drive from Fairbanks. You can hike out on moose trails and walk on the edges of the freezing ponds and listen for owls and all sorts of other creatures. I think I could happily spend every day just wandering around on the little trails, it's so beautiful. The spruce and birch trees are really small because of the harsh weather but there are all sorts of mosses and lichens and bog cranberries everywhere that make the ground really soft and magical.   

Miss you,  
love
asha

Home
October 4, 2004

    I’ve decided not to do the co-op thing, since I’m only going to be here a few months, and really just want to focus on nature and being present and fully appreciating the moment. We moved into the cabin and it's so great to be home! It's been a while since I had more than a tent to call home. It's off the grid and a hike from the road, with no running water and no electro-magnetic fields hovering invisibly around us, and it just feels so peaceful! It's really funky, like something out of a Harry Potter book; no square-shaped rooms and somehow it feels huge inside, even though it looks very small from the outside. I’m really happy to be just sitting still and watching the seasons change in the woods, listening to the dog chase squirrels  (she never catches any!) and the creek trickle by, almost frozen now. I figure I should really enjoy it all while I can, because in 3 months I will be back to the crazy adventurous traveling life somewhere in Argentina or Venezuela, and I'll probably miss the peace of my beautiful Arctic forest home!