2017 in a Nutshell

So as we creep towards the end of 2017, I wanted to summarize a few of the things that happened this year. Which was a lot – partly because a lot of things came to fruition this year that had been in the works for a while.

So, in no particular order:

Court of Twilight was published this fall! This is definitely the final stretch of a years-long process in writing and editing it. The first draft was written in 2013, and the book came out almost exactly four years later. It’s felt very satisfying to be finished with the book and hearing from readers who’ve enjoyed it.

Changeling has a second draft! While it’s still unclear if or when this will actually make its way to readers, I finished the second draft right before Christmas. This was another long-term project; the first draft was written as a National Novel Writing Month project in 2014, and it’s gotten only sporadic attention since.

I worked in Mexico! I was in Baja California Sur in January and February working as a guide on the Sea of Cortez. I saw my first blue whales, and we were running into big pods of dolphins about every week. I saw grey whales on their calving grounds. I skiffed around with playful juvenile sea lions, and saw tropicbirds and blue-footed boobies. And a ton of beautiful sunsets.  And at the end of the month I met up with my friend and amazing co-guide Teresa and traveled around the southern cape hiking, beach camping, and wallowing in natural hot springs. If you get a chance to travel to Baja, I would highly recommend spending time there.

I worked an amazing Alaska season! This was my third Alaska season guiding aboard the Discoverer. The crew on board this year were lovely, and we had a bunch of great trips. Probably the highlight was the week a Japanese tour company chartered the whole boat. They brought five of their own guides and translators, and a bunch of really, really good food. We got to stop at a bear-viewing location that I had never been to before, and watched brown bears fishing for salmon.  And got to watch a group of bubble-net-feeding humpbacks get streaked by an orca pod that charged through right where the humpbacks were trying to get themselves organized…

I wrote a few small things that turned out well! One is an article being published next month. And I wrote the first short story I’ve written in maybe eight years, of which I am super proud, and might be unintentionally hilarious to anyone who’s ever worked at the Glacier Lodge.

I‘m making an ops guide to Southeast Alaska! I journal every day when I’m guiding. Over the past three years, I’ve accumulated a huge amount of notes on the places I’ve visited while tooling around Southeast on a tiny expedition ship. Last spring I started compiling the entries by location, and I’ve ended up with a huge Scrivener file listing over seventy different locations I’ve visited, with info on bushwhacking and paddling routes, landmarks, wildlife sightings, and notes on the history of the area. It’s going to be a great resource for refreshing my memory on these locations as I revisit the sites this summer on various trips. And since most of these sites are bays in the middle of nowhere, (not designated wilderness, but close), there’s very little existing publicly-available documentation on them. (Yes, this is why you should visit Southeast Alaska on the Discoverer, because we know where the cool stuff is…)

I’m done with the requirements for my captain’s license! This is another thing I’ve been working on for a while. I first started working on boats ten years ago, as a deckhand on the Aialik Voyager back in 2007, then spent five years hopping on and off water taxis while working at a lodge that was only accessible by boat. Three years ago I joined my current company, working as a guide on the Discoverer.  At the end of the summer, I finally earned enough sea time to apply for my license. I spent the fall studying, and passed the exams earlier this month.

I worked a few winter kayak trips! I was lucky enough to meet up with a Seward-based kayak company, who was looking for someone to run trips for them in the winter. It’s slow, as it’s winter, and we’ve had a few of the trips turn into winter hikes because the seas were snotty, but it’s been lovely to be able to get out on the water in the off-season. On our trip yesterday, we ate lunch at the base of a 75-foot frozen waterfall, and three juvenile sea lions were following our boats on the way home. Tell me that isn’t an amazing day job? (Of course, the day before, I beached us a half-mile into the paddle, because the wind came up and my novice-paddler clients were getting blown into a giant sandbar. Ran the rest of the trip as a hike. And got frost nip on two toes from walking around on snow in rain boots. This is why guiding is like a giant lottery, and I can never bring myself to stop playing.)

I spent time with my grandmother. This isn’t an entirely happy update; my grandmother passed away in August. But I was able to spent over a month with her in March and April. I came back to see her twice on my breaks from the Discoverer, including just before she passed. If there are two things I can say that will in any way sum up the sort of person she was, it’s this: by the time she died she had happily given away most of the paintings hanging in her house to people she thought would appreciate them, and the day before she passed, she asked me to come over and fix her ceiling fan (which I did, and it was the last time I saw her).

So that was 2017. I hope you're finding some good memories to look back on as we start a new year, and I hope you have many exciting things to look forward to in 2018.