Kodiak is an island several hundred miles southwest of Anchorage. It's a rather large island, the second largest in the country (I think the largest might be the Big Island in Hawaii but I'm not sure). From Anchorage it's a short flight of an hour, or a 4-6 hour drive to Homer and then a nine hour ferry ride to the island. Although it's large, there's only about 60 miles of road, or so I'm told. Most of the road runs more or less down the western coast. The main town is the town of Kodiak, located on the northwest side of the island. It has several thousand people, I was told 10,000 but I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than that. The main industry there is fishing and almost everyone has some kind of boat. There's salmon, of course, in the summer. King crab season is in the winter when the crabbers go out at night heading off to the cold, merciless Bering Sea. There's not a huge amount of tourism there, and the tourists who do come are typically the hunting and fishing types.

The climate is a temperate rainforest, just about as far from the desert southwest as you can get. But to give an idea of the scenery, the another temperate rainforest is Ireland. In the summer the mountains are a lush, rich green. There wasn't much growing in the winter, but that made it easier to hike and get around.

Besides the town of Kodiak, there are a handful of native villages on the island, most, if not all of which are only accessible by boat or float plane. The largest has a few hundred people and the smallest ones only a handful. I didn't get to visit any of these, but here's something about one of the smaller villages, Karluck.

In some ways, life is still harsh in Kodiak. Not so much so compared to how everyone lived a few generations ago, but by today's standards, it can be a bit grim. Tsunamis are a real danger there; so much so that they have tsunami alarms around town that are tested every week (every Wednesday at 2:00). Strong wilds are fairly common. In January there were a few days of hurricane force winds(90 m.p.h.). I wasn't there for that, but I'm told the windows in the buldings bowed in with the gusts, so much so that I think wooden boards were placed against them. Earthquakes are to be expected, although I didn't feel any while I was there. And there is always the danger of nearby volcanoes errupting and burying the island in ash. All of these natural disasters have, in fact occurred in the last 100 years.

The only place to buy clothes on the island besides thrift stores is Wal-Mart, and that has only been there for the last few years. There is a handful of fast food chains (yes, including McDonalds) and a few grocery stores. The food all has to be shipped in from mainland Alaska, at the closest, and so the cost of living is quite high.

The island is beautiful, but a very different beauty from my desert, landlocked home. It is a land of high, rocky cliffs, topped by towering, moss-laden Spruce trees, with a clear cold sea crashing below. Mountains soar straight from the ocean to a height of 3,000 ft. Vegetation grows anywhere it can -- on trees, rocks, even the roofs of houses! To some extent, events and schedules are still largely dictated by the weather. For example, no flights in or out of the island are ever guaranteed. Fog, wind or rain can all prevent planes from taking off and landing for several days. The main air strip on the island is not terribly long, and is bounded by water on both sides. Understandably, planes don't take off or land unless the pilot can see both ends of the airstrip.

It's a different world, to be sure. Even when compared to the rest of Alaska.

Well, the Alaskan adventure is over. A bit shorter than I expected, I admit, but quite often it seems what we expect is a very different thing from what actually happens. It's good to be in sunlit lands again, although it does feel a bit odd that it's light at 7:00 a.m. It feels as though it should be much later. It's also a real treat to see snow again, which might sound a bit funny coming from Alaska, but Kodiak, being an island has a very mild climate compared to mainland Alaska, and is more like the Pacific Northwest (so I'm told) than the frozen North. The island is known as the "Banana Belt" of Alaska. While I was there the temperature hovered consistently in the high 30's to low 40's, day and night, with occasional colder spells. It was rarely ever cold enough to snow, and any snow that did fall was usually washed away the next day by rain.

In contrast, it started snowing soon after I arrived in Santa Fe. Within a few hours the car was covered with several inches of lovely fluffy snow. The next day the sun came out as usual, bright and clear. The snow was dazzling, almost blinding in the sun, and very crisp and clean-looking, especially against the clear, deep blue sky. I've seen a good bit of snow since then, even waking up to find it coming down a few days. It's been a wetter winter here than many in recent years and I'm told that "the whole of Northern New Mexico is squishy." There's lots of mud, to be sure, with all the snow turning the yuppie dirt roads to ankle-deep ruts.

Yes, it's good to be back, not to mention the green chile, the sunsets, and the smell of pinion burning. But there are some great northern stories that need telling. Like the last day I was there. It was Theophany, which in the Eastern Church occurs 12 days after Christmas and remembers the baptism of Christ. But it's a much bigger feast than that, it's also the sanctification of water, and by extension, the natural world. It's a very rich feast, which deserves more of an explanation, but that must come another time. One of the things that is done on Theophany, however, is the blessing any natural body of water nearby. In New Mexico this is a bit tricky, but on a rainforest island in Alaska it's a different story. We blessed Shahafka Cove, less than 100 yards from our front door, right across the street.

It's a Slavic tradition for the priest to throw a cross into the water, and for the slightly insane members of the congregation (in our case, pretty much all of us) to dive in after it. In Russia they cut a cross-shaped hole in the ice to do this, and they use a metal cross, so our frolicking about in the Bering Sea in January after a wooden cross was child's play in comparison. It was cold enough, though. We made quite a spectacle, I'm sure, trooping across the street in procession, in an array of odd and unseasonable outfits, singing, led by a fully vested Orthodox priest. I'm told the first year they followed this tradition a neighbor called the police, believing the school was some kind of cult that had decided to commit mass suicide. In addition to merely getting in the water, the tradition is also to submerge oneself three times, in remembrance of baptism. I emerged with a bright red face, on the verge of hyperventilation, unable to feel my legs. It was great fun though. Everyone headed straight for the showers and then warmed up with hot chocolate in front of a fire. Like I said, child's play compared to Russia and Serbia but still, it makes for a good story.