A Blog of Personal Thoughts

A Piece of Peace

November 2023

I could write about what’s in the news these days, but I choose not to. Those thoughts I’d rather avoid but cannot. Anyway, I write about such things for my Flashback blogs, posted on the 15th of the month. This is a Personal Thoughts blog. I live in a piece of peace. What are my personal thoughts when I live in this quiet place in the Far North? Here at night it is dark, black dark because we have no streetlights. I can walk in the night with a dog who guides me home or I can walk alone in moonlight.

We have no traffic jams here. When I see six or eight cars moving down the street, I check my watch. Yes, it’s about the time they left work at the national park and arrived in town. That’s our version of a traffic jam, except that they’re all moving. We’re more apt to have a boat jam. That’s when two boats are in and another one is waiting at the ramp, or when three at the top of the ramp waiting to go out.

We’re a patient community here. Options are to help an incoming boat if needed or stop and talk to someone else waiting. A third option is to look at the scenery—the island and its mountains across Icy Strait, the Fairweather Mountain Range, the trees on the other side of the river. It’s quiet and peaceful down by the water.

My husband and I find peace on our small piece of land. We walk out the front door to the garden with its thirteen garden boxes. In summer, I sometimes walk on the grass and look at the three-foot high deck. I inspect my plants all lined up at the edge instead of a railing. Do they have too much water or not enough? Are flowers coming? Do I see a dead leaf to pluck off?

Then I wander to the various boxes—parsley, lettuce, and celery. Pansies. Kale. On to the perennials—bergenia cordifolia, spreading wood ferns, rhubarb, astilbe, more spreading wood ferns, St. John’s wort, rhododendron, more spreading wood ferns, Sitka roses, hasta, bleeding hearts, sedum, and much more.

Our fertilizer is kelp. Robert loves going out in his boat to fetch seaweed from nearby shores. Sometimes he takes another person along. He also loves the solitude and peace of going out alone.

A 10-pound red cabbage from our garden fertilized with kelp.

Cauliflower from the garden.

The community garden plot in September with cabbage, poppies, snapdragons, pansies, and cosmos in the foreground. Ah, and the garden-loving husband too.

We also go for walks into Glacier Bay National Park where we have a vista of trees, always we can see the trees. We walk in sunshine, rain, snow, or under cloudy skies. Yesterday there were no leaves on the trees and not one car. No porcupines or bird songs. It was cloudy, so low we could see no mountains or hills. Not one car.

A month ago as we walked towards home.

We live in a peaceful place where silence exists on our walks and outside our cabin. Yesterday on our walk in the park, we heard our footsteps and our occasional quiet conversations but nothing else.

We both enjoy the peace of rural living.