The first dusting of winter snow on the top of the tallest mountains a few days ago...

Another weekend, another staggeringly good dinner. Friends of Carolyn and Dorik's fed me until I could barely walk last night. Home-smoked salmon and cheese, wine, some extraordinary black cod that tasted like manna from heaven, salad, steamed vegetables, more wine, fresh rhubarb and strawberry pie.

Tonight I'm holding my first Alaskan dinner party, but the standard is frighteningly high.

Where has the week gone? We had a very rainy stretch just after I last wrote, during which I holed up here with chocolate and decaf coffee (if you make it really really strong it almost tastes like coffee) and did some serious writing.

I'm well over the halfway mark in my time here now and suddenly it's a matter of counting the days and hoping that I will indeed finish my first draft. My characters are fleeing Edinburgh and roaming around the countryside to escape the coup (rapidly building to a civil war), but I have a bit of time for them to fill in before the actual events that form the climax of the story.

It's a fascinating process and I do love this bit of it. I start a scene without much idea of what's going to happen in it - often thinking 'what the hell are they doing going there?' And then it emerges they are doing something which I didn't even suspect. This morning a mysterious casket has come to light which contain letters that could change the course of the story... I wonder what's in them?

Nels took me for a great walk up the Indian River on Friday. We found fresh bear scat, which is about the closest I've come to wild bear so far. The river was rushing along, the water amazingly clear and blue/green, a few late salmon still swimming upstream. The kind of walk you could keep doing forever, just winding through the forest (trying to balance on the wet and slippery boardwalks). Near the end we ran into a couple of hunters and stopped for a chat. One of them looked at me and said "I know you - I saw you on TV". My appearance at the Rotary lunch has been televised. Great thing, local telly.

On Friday night I gave a talk for the Sitka Conservation Society about landcare in Australia and how it might apply to the US. There is an embryonic landcare movement in the states and perhaps folk in Sitka will consider getting in touch with US Landcare - there may be some ways to work together.

It's lovely getting to know a few people - it's a very friendly place. I was just strolling along the road the other day and a young woman came out of her front door on the other side of the road and catching sight of me she waved and called 'Hello'.

Great news this week that my writing group buddy Hayley has won her first short story competition plus been shortlisted for the ABC short story competition - good on you Hayley, I'm very proud of you. And my auntie Cas graduated with her PhD - something I am very sad to have missed.

Away I go to mash up some avocados....

Jesse xxxxxx

PS and here I am on a little bridge over the Indian River - and here's sunset one day last week.

PPS just went to put out the compost...bin has been pulled apart by something....

PPPS - due to computer hitches I'm putting this up after dinner....word is there's a bear in the area, someone saw it on the road yesterday nearby. I'll be keeping an ear out tonight.