The outer limits

I really know I'm in Alaska tonight. Switched on Sitka's local 'Raven Radio' to find that wonderful program Prairie Home Companion playing, which kept me giggling the whole way through cooking dinner. The waves are breaking softly on the shore about 10 feet below the house and there's a light rain falling that's been going about..oh...36 hours now. My little house in the forest is very warm and cosy - you drive down through a lord of the rings setting with big old pine-type trees and moss and at the bottom just by the water is this three story house looking out across the bay to rising mountains covered with forest.

After four months of dreaming of huskies, bears and snow, I'm here. A month in Sitka, Alaska as a writer in residence with the Island Institute, a small organisation interested in the big ideas of human experience and the written word. You can find out a bit more about them at http://home.gci.net/~island/. The Institute is kindly hosting my time here, with the explicit provision I can do whatever I like. It would probably be better if my very kind hosts Carolyn and Dorik stipulated a daily word count, to be submitted by 8pm each night. The prospect of doing whatever you want is a disaster for a writer.

S0 - there's no snow here just yet (except for a tiny bit on the top of the highest mountains), there's not too many huskies either and I haven't yet encountered a bear. I've been hot more than I've been cold. Don't you love travel?

This blog is primarily a novel-writing avoidance mechanism, so forgive me for raving and feel free to tune out. My novel doesn't have anything to do with Alaska, by the way, except that it's set in 15th century Scotland which is also cold but doesn't have central heating or double glazing. I've wrestled with one of my main characters this morning. He knows he's got to go and assassinate the King, but he just doesn't feel like it, so he's just sitting there not saying anything. Hence I have spent the rest of the day going for a walk with Carolyn up a mountain and practising driving on the right to drop her back into town afterwards.

Oh yeah, and I'm now replacing my body moisture with Alaskan beer. I have 'moisture wicking' garments that draw the sweat away from my body - socks, shoes, pants, thermal t-shirt. They have wicked so much moisture out of me today that I feel like a dried apricot.

The salmon are spawning. On my first walk into town I crossed Indian River wondering what the smell was. Hundreds - no, thousands of salmon swimming upstream. Then I found I was standing in a salmon graveyard. Turns out they swim all that way, do their spawning thing and then die at the water's edge. Seems a tragic end. But Dorik and Carolyn gave me smoked salmon before dinner and it was out of this world. Real smoked salmon in big chunks, not that flimsy sliced stuff we have at home. I'm getting a smoker when I get back.

The second day as I walked into town, cutting through the national park to Indian River again, I came across two women holding hands. Nice. I didn't think there'd be a lot of dykes in Sitka. I gave them a big smile. Further on there was a crowd on the bridge, gosh a lot of them looked pretty dykey too. By the time I got out of the park my face was tired from smiling. Eventually I saw the big cruise ship in the bay and it dawned on me. An Olivia cruise. Three thousand lesbians shuttling into Sitka on little motor boats. The end of my fantasy that a lesbian posse has followed me to Alaska...

I've got a new camera and I will get it out soon, I will. But today I just enjoyed walking, looking, concentrating on not slipping over and watching out for bears. Witness this promise - I will never again try to wind up international visitors about sharks. It's cruel and unnecessary. My karma is coming back to get me.

My global roaming thingy on my mobile doesn't seem to work, so I really must be at the outer edge of the world. Also, the words 'tea' and 'coffee' refer to completely different beverages here. I feel a bit like Arthur Dent in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy pleading with the computer to make him a cup of tea and repeatedly getting a drink of something almost, but not completely, unlike tea. It's the same even when I make it myself....

That's enough novel avoidance for tonight. Back to the swashbuckling 16th century, time I gave those characters a poke with the pointy end of the sword to get them going again. They were being so cooperative a few weeks ago when I was at Varuna Writers Centre. I think the problem is that I started to read my first draft manuscript on the plane and was rendered immobile by the sheer amount of work required to turn it into something readable.

Over and out, good night, sweet Alaskan dreams.