i love this photo!

aaron, corinna, and ryan at the top of deer mountain.

some of my film has been put online at snapfish, and this is one photo i was looking forward to seeing.  the four of us and billy hiked up deer mountain one day.  we picked a really good day to go, it was one of the few days we had off where it didn't rain, and it was just a beautiful climb.  ketchikan is a rainforest with over 14 feet (yes, feet) of rain a year, and so the beginning was sort of this weird pre-historic forest that somewhat reminded me of louisiana.  and even after you pass the tree line, it's still not like a typical mountain with the fragile tundra.  there were plenty of plants and mud puddles.

i keep wanting to talk about alaska, but i can't.  when i was in naknek (which, by the way, is where my banner photo was taken*), erin and i talked about this.  naknek is just this place that sort of gets in your blood.  you may not really mean to go back when you leave and are exhausted and sick of the food, but after about eight months you just get this sort of itch to return.  and the place and the people and the whole experience (that's the key word i think) is just something you can't really describe to someone who hasn't ever done it before.  so even though i love it and it's this big part of my life now, i find it difficult to talk about it because i just don't know what to say. 

i also love that it enables me to do things like, oh, GO TO NEW ZEALAND!  which i am a little excited about, but i mostly feel trepidation.  i know very little about new zealand if i'm honest, and i know nobody there.  it's kind of like jumping off of a cliff...but a lot scarier.  if anyone knows of any blogs or websites or books or whatever that might be a good resource, please point me in the right direction!

*bunkhouse 88 may not have more than three hot showers a day, but at least i can take really good photos out of upper 88's windows!  right?