Life On Little Chena Prong

Golden Hour is around 10pm here now and there is still snow on the ground where the big piles were. We live in a very strange place.

Since the very kind architect bought my pictures at the Grange Gallery the other day I have found it much easier to take a half hour or so to just wander around the forest hunting for pictures. It also helps that it’s well above freezing and most of the snow is gone 🙂

So last night I was out at 10:30 chasing sunbeams on the north side of Little Chena Prong, because we live in a very strange place.

This one is my favorite for today:

This Tiny Forest is pretty good too:

I’m grateful for the north side of the hill ❤

About a year and a half after we moved here our bearded dragon Charlie passed away. It was the first pet death for our little family and it was devastating. Lizards are prey animals and have a habit of not letting you know when they are ill. We took him to the vet when he stopped eating but it was too late at that point.

It was early summer at the time so we went and got a baby burled oak and planted it over his grave. Then the baby oak also died. I maybe cried again, just a little.

So last spring we pulled up the desiccated remains of the burled oak and planted a sensible baby Siberian larch from the Fairbanks Soil and Water Conservation District.

It thrived over the summer but at some point over the winter disappeared entirely. This was, again, distressing. There was not much to do but wait. Eventually the snow melted enough to expose it, and it had just been laid over under the snow load, but not broken. I dug it out and gently stood it back up. Then we waited to see if it lived.

On May 17th I went to look at it and was super excited to see new needles budding out.

I went back at sunset and it was just gorgeous and hopeful. We’re really happy that it’s lived, that Charlie has a proper memorial ❤

I’ve taken my Canon over there at sunset a few times now, I love the little shapes the new needles make and the nice contrasty bokeh from the sun coming through the trees. I have a few ready now to print and frame.

I’m grateful that Charlie’s new tree survived ❤

Back in February my stepmom and I devised a plan to take more photographs more often by routinely sharing them with each other. I have loved photography since I was small and have thousands and thousands of pictures rusting away on various hard drives. But as a working business owner with a second grader and a house full of things to clean and feed and water it’s been relegated to the occasional family hike (mom! hurry up!) or road trip in recent years. But now I have a photography accountability partner and it’s been incredibly effective as a way to carve in just a little “me-time” back into my life 🙂

So it happened that when a colleague shared this “call for art” post specifically asking for spring-timey, sun-shiny things, I had exactly such a picture immediately come to mind.

So I ordered prints! I decided to “save money” by not ordering metal prints or standouts and then spent 4 or 5 late evenings figuring out how to make my own frames, in between watering things and following up on homework. I ended up wrapping/gluing birch paper to some 3/4″ trim and then gluing everything to some plywood that came with our house. I rasped and sanded edges. I recut all the trim when my limited understanding of geometry failed me. I cleaned up my mess when I was done. The ready to go standouts seem less “expensive” now but I actually like these a lot better!

I called this “Peeking Through.” These were taken on March 19, 2023. I really enjoy March in Fairbanks, especially since we moved to the woods. It warms up a little, we get to have a bit of Normal Place Winter. It’s still daylight when you get home from work. I caught the sun shining through this birch paper while walking the dogs and scurried back with my Canon to get pictures. It’s even got a lovely bokeh spruce on the right side, doing a photobomb.

I got the second one glued together a few hours before they were due to be dropped off at North Pole Grange Gallery and Studios.

I brought my family back the night of the show and it was so wonderful to see them on the wall in the gallery along with so many other beautiful pieces! Lovely water colors! Bright oil paintings! Jewelry!

We went downstairs to look at plants and when we headed back up my daughter yelled at me that they were gone!

I even got to meet the lovely woman who bought them! She is an architect. She could have got anything there but she wanted my photographs. I was in a bit of shock about it! Then she thanked me and said she really hoped I did a whole show sometime! Well I have a company and a kid and a homestead to manage but what a fun idea anyway. A gallery show just for me? Wild!

Last night I took 80 pictures of our baby larch tree in front of the sunset and got a handful of ones I will print. I thought about how they might look lined up in frames together. I saw larch needles when I closed my eyes.

I am so grateful for summer, and my family, and the gallery, and the woman who first bought my pictures ❤