HAINES -- We were skiing on Halloween and ice skating on ponds at the golf course the first week in November, but a warm front changed all that. The windy rain was good news for the Friends of the Library, because it is easier to get volunteers to make decorations and hang lights indoors when a trip to the woodshed requires full rubber rain gear.
The sixth annual Lighting of the Library took place, as it always has, (always ever since the new library was built) the Friday night after Thanksgiving. In the past, the mayor's wife has lit the star at the top of the giant Sitka spruce tree that fills the two-story hall. But the new mayor, Jan Hill, is a woman, so she did it herself.
The event is the culmination of months of work, mainly cutting, gluing and tying bows in the crowded library conference room turned Craft Command Center by Frankie Jones, the lighting's Designer-in-Chief.
There is something so pleasant about making decorations while listening to Christmas music and the conversations of women friends that have known each other a long time, or are new enough to the community and are shy enough, that we can all say things without fear of judgment -- random, practical and heartrending things -- from A: "Has anyone ever made Cornish game hens with orange glaze?" to Z: "When do you stop supporting adult, wayward children?"
(Answers: A. No, but it can't be that hard -- orange juice, zest, and some cornstarch ought to work. Z. You always love your children, but at some point you have to let them face the consequences of their actions so they can choose to change on their own.)
Not all November's camaraderie was indoors. My husband spent 10 days deer hunting with friends out on the coast by Elfin Cove. They took the ferry to Hoonah, where they piled into a wooden troller for the trip down Icy Strait to the Cove. On the way back they made the Hoonah run under a full moon with a favorable tide, talking no doubt about men-things, like: If you kill a 9½-foot bear, should you make a rug out of it or get a full body mount?
(Answer: Full body mount, since you will never get one like that again.)
The same question will be answered by your wife with her own question: "Just where do you think we are going to put this bear? Where the dining table is?"
Don't ask me how I know this, but to all hunters I suggest you don't say "Yes," especially over the holidays when dining tables are critical to happy gatherings and stuffed bears are not. All it takes is one dead bear in the living room to make your gentler friends and family members very unhappy.
The chat during the Turkey Trot fun run (10-kilometer and 5-kilometer runs and a 5-kilometer walk) was not about decor or dead animals (except turkeys). It was about my daughter, J.J. I was thinking about doing the walk this year, since I was still groggy from a trip to Pittsburgh and back to see her run in the NCAA Division II National Cross Country Championships.
J.J.'s Adams State team won. (They are the Grizzlies; perhaps they'd like a bear?) The local paper put a color picture of her racing on the front page, with a headline "J.J. Lende, All-American." I was suddenly famous, especially among local runners, as the mother of a star.
I had to run now, so I decided to trot the 5-k. But the weather was so nice -- calm, warm and with the kind of soft, low, blue-gray clouds that look like a watercolor painting -- and the company of the other runners was so supportive that I went around again.
I enjoy running the little urban "Town Loop." There's so much to see. The old houses on Union Street, the big hill down to the inlet, the dirt road that is Front Street with the rocky tidelands on one side and trees on the other, the Harbor Bar and Presbyterian Church facing each other, the Small Boat Harbor, the cruise ship dock wading out into the bay, the hairpin turn at our family's lumberyard and back up the main road by the Quick Shop, Post Office, the Fire Hall, Mountain Market's busy corner with the library next door and, finally, the brand new school.
When you are running harder than usual, you don't talk like you do in the cabin of a fishing boat or while making decorations, but there's something just as friendly about striding along together. The race really isn't to the swiftest.
Near the end, the youngest mother in our group felt frisky, the other young moms rose to the challenge. The rest of us started to follow, but backed off.
I don't know about the others, but I could have trotted around for another loop. And I would have, except it was Thanksgiving and time to put the turkey in the oven so we could give thanks -- for all of it.
Heather Lende lives in Haines and is the author of "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name." She can be reached at heatherlende@adn.com.
HEATHER LENDE
AROUND ALASKA