I've been working my way through the complete collection of Ernest Hemingway and came across this bit in the preface of the first section. It's been on my mind off and on for the last few weeks and last night it really hit home with me. I suppose it helps explain what in the crazy-world I am doing up here.

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had someting to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet but unused.”

~Preface to “The First Forty-nine” Ernest Hemingway, 1938

So here's to this crazy experience of moving to Alaska and loving it.