The “Alaskan Buddies” Painting Series

I just completed two new oil paintings on canvas to add to my “Alaska Buddies” series. The Buddies are four Alaskan animals: moose, bear, eagle, and Husky dog, who are friends that go out and do Alaskan things like fat biking, skiing, and racing Mt. Marathon. A lot of artists have created something similar, but I feel these four animals really say, “this is Alaska.” My Alaskan art concepts date back to my days working as a production artist at Arctic Circle Enterprises, where I designed Alaskan products. Mitchell Godfred (my boss) would chant, “bear, moose, eagle, tree, mountain.” These were the acceptable themes that he deemed “sold well” on Alaskan merchandise. A.C.E products were not just for tourists. I remember people wearing A.C.E. gear to high school; it was pretty popular among Alaskans in college too. The product line from A.C.E. was cheap, good quality, and overall well designed. This is thanks to a great art team led by Mitchell Godfred, Lorraine Wyles, Jason Reynolds, Pam Clifton, and lastly myself. I didn’t get to illustrate much, being a 23-year-old production artist at the time, but I learned a lot, and my time at A.C.E. had a lasting effect on my art career. When I thought of painting anthropomorphic Alaskan animals, I remembered the art from that time and the other artists’ styles there.

Bike to Work Day

My animals are different from anything A.C.E. did. I started painting anthropomorphic Alaskan animals when I got to design a beer label for Midnight Sun Brewing Co. about 9 years ago. The beer was called “Feast,” and I got to brew it with the Chef and the brew team at the brewery. Chef Chris wanted to have a bunch of Alaskan animals sitting down at a Thanksgiving-esque feast. Later I made many other paintings featuring various animals drinking beers, riding bikes, and hitting the slopes. But I really wanted this series of paintings to scream Alaska, so I simplified the herd to the four animals in “The Buddies” clique. The newest paintings are “Fat-biking Buddies in McCarthy” and “Mt Marathon Racing Buddies.” I hope you find them enjoyable and slightly comical. I put the moose in the lead of the Mt. Marathon race because it seemed like it was the fastest of the four. Why doesn’t the eagle just fly? Well, because then he wouldn’t be a “buddy”. Stay tuned for more “Buddies” paintings in the future.

Feast

Mt Marathon Racing Buddies

Ski Buddies

I will be vending at an event tomorrow called the Alaska Summer Showcase at the Dena’ina Center. It is an Alaskan travel show put on by local celebrity travel writer, Scott McMurren. If you haven’t heard of him, look him up. He will help you find great deals on travel in and out of Alaska. There will be $25,000+ in travel prizes! Many Alaskan travel companies will be there to help you jump-start your summer by offering show-only specials. There will be food trucks out front and live music by Todd Grebe and Cold Country. They will even drive a brand new EV Chevy Silverado into the Dena’ina Center for your amusement. $10 admission gets you in and allows you to participate in all the giveaways. I will offer a chance to win a free art print at my booth. I hope to see you there!

On April’s First Friday, 4/5, from 5-7pm, I will return to Alaska Cycle Chic with the Fat Biking Buddies painting and another group of cycle-related wall art. The Jake Legs will provide live music while you sip and shop. If you haven’t been to an Alaska Cycle Chic FF, I highly recommend attending; it is always a fun event! It is in midtown, across from Dos Manos gallery, so you will be able to find parking nearby! I hope to see you there!

Fat Biking Buddies

Winter Cabin Time in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, Alaska

Last week Maria and I went out to McCarthy to enjoy a getaway at our cabin. We often refer to our little house in the woods as our Camp David. It’s a place for the Executive Branch of our household, Maria and I, to escape the daily routine. March is spring in some places, but it is definitely winter in Alaska. When we leave the cabin in the fall, we set it to “winter mode”, we don’t shut it down for the winter.

The winterized cabin is a bit different from the summer version. In summer, we have a rainwater collection system, a hot shower, a French drain, pump-driven running water in the kitchen, and we can drive all the way to our front door. In winter, we have a nice snow trail. We used to ski in and carry all our gear, including all the food and water we would need while staying at the cabin. Now we bring our Ski-Doo and easily transport our stuff and water up the hill on the trail to our front door. We park the truck three miles away at the foot bridge, where road maintenance ends, and where we can find parking.

The water systems are all “winterized,” meaning they are filled with RV antifreeze. We still have running water though, but it’s a bucket-to-bucket system. Nice enough to wash our hands, but not quite like pumped water from our 300-gallon summer system. We have to dump the slop bucket that’s under the sink drain. It’s always a good idea to do that when it is only half full. The shower hoses are also filled with RV antifreeze, so that is out. Instead, we use a big Rubbermaid tub, and heat water with a teapot, for a quick pour-over bath, which we may do once or twice during our stay.

In the summer, I may burn wood in the stove once every few days during the shoulder seasons. In winter, we get in and fire the stove up right away, and for three days, we don’t let it go out. It was -26F outside when we woke up on the first morning; the ambient air temperature inside the cabin was about 55F. Until it hits 70F inside, I keep the fire cranking. On day three, the cabin logs were warmed, and I let the fire go out for up to four hours before it dropped below 60F inside. I have a lot of wood, since the 10 acres are densely wooded, but I figure the amount I have stockpiled is good for about two months. 

The solar panels work in winter, and I even turned on the refrigerator when the house warmed up. Electric lights are a major bonus during winter; a few years ago we used candles and flashlights. Evening time is now a joy, and we play games and even watch movies! I like winter; it is peaceful. Hearing a loud plane overhead is rare, and the quantity of people is maybe 10% of the summer crew. In summer, you can hear the buzz of McCarthy even though we live 2 miles from town. In winter, the birds and the fan from the woodstove are all we can hear.

In summer, the Kennicott Glacier is brown, and the Root Glacier, Gates Glacier, and Mt. Blackburn stand out, glowing white and blue. In winter, everything is coated white with snow. Porphyry Peak and Bonanza Ridge look phenomenal! But the snow diminishes the grandeur of the 5,000ft icefall. The area is gorgeous, but different.

I am always slightly worried the whole time I am in McCarthy in the winter. So many things could go wrong. Injury, fire, blizzards, and other unknowns that in the summer would be bad, but wouldn’t jeopardize life. I feel like I need to leave a change of clothes in the woodshed in case I have to leave the cabin in a hurry. I already leave the key to the snowmachine in the ignition, in case of an emergency.  

Blizzards can be disconcerting since the road only gets plowed when the airstrip is not usable, meaning there could be a week or two when the road is basically impassable. Or I worry about a meltdown. There is a thing on the McCarthy Road called road glaciers, which is when a culvert freezes up, and the excess water pours over the road and freezes, sometimes being feet deep of ice. If it warms up, it becomes slushy and unstable, which can cause difficulty in traversing. I have heard about people getting stuck for hours or sliding to the edge of the road and flipping their rig! I have tire chains for such situations, but I hate using tire chains because they’re hard on the tires and wheel wells! 

We didn’t have a blizzard or meltdown this time, thankfully! And we drove in and out basically easier than in the summer. The ice road can be amazing when you have good luck. And we had an amazing time! We went to Kennecott, XC skied all over the glacial lakes, drove the snowmachine on three different rivers, and basically had a blast! I can’t recommend visiting McCarthy in the winter due to all the things I mentioned above, and I’ve pulled the plug on trips when I knew I would be driving in a blizzard. But it’s really fun if all the stars align and a winter trip happens. Did I mention how beautiful the stars are in the winter? I saw some faint Aurora, but the Milky Way and the constellations are spectacular without any light contamination.

I am glad to be back and working on new paintings in the Anchorage studio. Enjoy these longer days and get out before the snow all melts down! 

Big Paintings

I really enjoy making BIG paintings, but I only get to make them every once in a while, because I have limited storage space.  So, when I sell one, I get to make a new one. I’m talking about paintings that are at least 3 feet by 4 feet in size. They can take up a lot of space if you have more than five or six of them around. The biggest canvas I have painted is 12 feet by 6 feet, and it is hanging at a hospital in Bethel, AK. We recently donated a 5ft x 4ft oil painting called Spring Skiing to the Anchorage Museum, and it will be featured in the live auction at the Gala. I recently finished a new large piece of the same size called Denali Sunrise, and I already built a canvas for another large piece. 

Delivering Spring Skiing to the Anchorage Museum. Prints are available at my Etsy shop.

The new large oil painting, Denali Sunrise, 4ft x 5ft, oil on canvas. The original oil painting, and prints are available at my Etsy shop.

Artist are sometimes overwhelmed by a large canvas, but I have always liked the challenge. You don’t have to cram as much detail into the composition, and when you do, it makes the painting all the more powerful. Big paintings need big walls, and big rooms, so the viewer can step back and appreciate the whole thing. I love walking up to a painting from across the room and noticing that it has a ton of detail. It makes you realize how long it took to make. I was at a gallery in the Hermitage Museum and I looked closely at a historical piece a few years ago and realized I wasn’t putting enough detail into my artwork. That painting was just incredible, you could count the hairs on the mouse in the corner of it. After I saw those pieces, I had a moment of growth as an artist. I haven’t achieved the same level of detail as some of those Dutch old master pieces in the Hermitage collection. However, I have stepped it up a notch, and my style has changed over the years.

If you don’t have the budget for a large painting, as they cost more than small ones, I recommend you get out and look at some in public spaces. The Anchorage Museum has a great collection, and the Wells Fargo branch on C Street and Northern Lights Blvd has some really amazing Sydney Lawrence pieces hanging in the lobby.

May the 4th Be With You!

People have been celebrating Star Wars on May 4th since Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of England on May 4th, 1979. The next day her political party placed an ad in the newspaper that included the phrase, “May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations.”  Today I woke up to see my friends posting Star Wars memes on my personal chats and social media.  I have loved Star Wars since I was 5 years old, which means people had been celebrating this informal holiday six years before I had even seen Star Wars: A New Hope. I remember watching it for the first time at Grandma’s house. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time! Later I watched episode 4, 5, and 6 over an over, until I could recite all the dialogue.  It was an obsession, I think not uncommon for many of us Star Wars nerds.  

I have painted many Star Wars parodies over the years, and just recently painted a few new ones for Arctic Comicon, which is this Saturday and Sunday at Dena’ina Center. The convention center will fill up with Mandalorians toting little Grogus, anime cosplayers, Marvel super heroes, and even the Black Power Ranger will be in attendance! If you stop by my booth, you can see my two new Star Wars parodies there, and purchase the originals, or prints. I also have several other cool parodies, including Mario riding a moose, and Tetris bricks loading into a truck bed. 

Cheers to us nerds who can’t get enough pop-culture! See you at Arctic Comicon!

Millennium Falcon Air Taxi, 16″x20″, oil on canvas

Plans to Explore Alaska on a New Snowmachine (Snowmobile)

I was at Anchorage Brewing Company vending artwork when Iron Dog racer, Mike Morgan, came up to talk to me about my paintings.  We had a long chat, and he told me all about racing to Nome on Polaris sleds.  The Iron Dog is a high speed trail race using two-stroke, air-cooled, high performance motors. I told him I just sold my old 1993 Polaris Indy Lite 340 and was in the market for a 2-up trail sled. 2-up doesn’t mean you have two extra lives in Super Mario Brothers, but that two people can safely ride the ATV.  We discussed snowmachines, or snowmobiles for those of you who live anywhere but Alaska. We also discussed the market for making paintings with snowmobile/snowmachine themes. I wanted a sled that we could use to get to our cabin in the winter and haul supplies and water, but also get out on the trails, and maybe even ride part of the Iditarod trail. 

I went into Alaska Mining and Diving, the Ski-Doo dealer here in Anchorage, and asked about ordering a 2023 Ski-Doo Expedition Sport.  They pretty much laughed at me and said that it takes a year to get a new machine, and to stop back in February when they signed people up for next year’s models. Well, a few weeks ago I figured I should stop back in and see if they had changed the dates, and if the sales plan was the same. It was my lucky day, because an Expedition Sport had just arrived, and the man who ordered it last year was unable to obtain financing.  I thought about it, and came back and purchased the snowmobile.

I will call them snowmobiles from now on. Alaskans call them snowmachines, or sleds, but not snowmobiles. But, if you search the Internet for snowmachine, you don’t get many posts, except for Alaskan ones. The whole world calls these ATVs snowmobiles. My new owner’s manual refers to it as a snowmobile on almost every page. So, to be most accurate I will refer to it as a snowmobile. As I type right now, snowmobile is a recognizable word on my computer, while snowmachine is highlighted as a misspelled word.  If you refer to a snowmobile as a snowmachine anywhere else in the world, people think you’re talking about a snowmaking device for ski areas, or a snowblower.  If you say snowmobile in Alaska, people ask you where you’re from.

I have a brand new Ski-Doo with less than nine miles on it, and I want to take it out and get some pictures of Alaska. Maria left town last week and I took the snowmobile out for its very first ride. I went four miles before I tipped it over, and it was really hard to flip back over by myself. So after righting the sled, I turned back around and snowmobiled to my truck.  When Maria gets back, we are going to ride at Big Lake to practice some more. I also want to go to Willow and drive the Iditarod trail, and explore around Wrangell-St. Elias NP. We also have plans to ride to Knik and Spencer Glaciers to take pictures of snowmobiles at glaciers.  What I don’t want to do is go to the top of steep mountains and risk getting buried in an avalanche.  I have a trail sled with 60 horsepower that probably won’t go up a mountain anyway, but it does have a hitch for towing, and I want to go expeditioning! I plan to make some paintings along the way.  I can totally carry painting supplies to our cabin, as well as food and water now. Let’s get out in the winter and have a good time! 

The old snowmobile

The new snowmobile

Lazy Morning at the Cabin

Maria and I are at the cabin in McCarthy today.  It has been ten years since we started building this little log house.  We woke up to rain and a bit of wind.  I started a fire in the wood stove, since rain promises a colder day. It is 45F outside, but a nice toasty 67F inside the cabin.  Should I put another log on the fire? I think not. 67F, is great but 75F is too warm.  I’m supposed to be outside harvesting dry spruce branches to fuel the Burning Dude, which will burn tomorrow at 9pm on the bank of the mighty Kennicott River. I made a lazy breakfast burrito with all the fixings and then volunteered to do the dishes.  The dishes are done, and it is still raining. I think I’ll have a pot of hot herbal tea, since the coffee is all gone and I don’t want anything with more caffeine at this point. I already did my yoga and there are no good reasons left not to go outside and get to work, but I am enjoying taking it slow today. I will go outside and harvest that brush when I am done writing this blog.  Until then, I’m going to enjoy watching the birds splash in the puddles outside, and the trees wiggle in the wind. The hot tea is great, and I can see fall happening all around me with yellow leaves falling from Aspen tops, and fireweed going to seed.  Yesterday we woke up to frost on the ground, then it started raining in the afternoon. I love how fall is a slower time of year — getting us all ready for the stillness of winter. I’m excited about tomorrow’s Burning Dude event, and I’ll talk about that in my next blog post. I wonder if anyone will come if it’s raining hard and windy.  At least fire danger will be low, since it has rained a bunch in the last 24 hours. Okay I’m ready to go out now. I better put on my waterproof gear, since I can hear the rain humming on the metal roof.

We built Burning Dude yesterday. The Dude is getting very wet in this rain storm. He will burn on 9.09 at 9:09pm on the bank of the Kennicott River.

Tok Thai Food

Tok Thai Food by Scott Clendaniel, 20″x16″, oil on canvas

My Aunt Barbara took a photo of a raven sitting on top of the Tok Thai Food establishment on her drive back from a visit to McCarthy, and I got her permission to make a painting based on her photo. According to a review on Yelp, Tok Thai Food has the best Panang Curry in Alaska.  I’m going to get some on my way back from McCarthy next time.  This roadside restaurant is an enigma, and I don’t know much about it. All I could find online were the menu and a bunch of positive reviews. The official website’s title page calls it Tok Tdai Food.  I have always had a good meal there, but is it really “t’die” for?  So, why is Tok Thai Food in Glennallen, and not in Tok?  The questions keep on rolling. Why is the best food in Glennallen, Thai food? Why is the best Thai food in Alaska located in Glennallen? Who owns this place? Who is making this delicious food?

What I do know is that I love stopping at this crossroad on my way back from McCarthy, and taking a minute, or 20 to get out of the truck, get some gas, and have fresh food. Making a stir fry from old cabbage, a spotty squash, and some canned chicken at the cabin in McCarthy may fill my belly, but it is far from what you get at Tok Thai Food. I think it’s the location that makes it so special. Strategically located at the T, where the Glenn Highway meets the Richardson.  If you are going to Chitina to dipnet, or want to go to Valdez, you drive right past it.  If you want to go to Tok, Whitehorse, Haines or Seattle, you will also drive right past it.  It is four hours from Anchorage, and four hours from the Canadian border, perfectly located for lunch.  

I painted this iconic sign because it represents returning to civilization. After a month in the Wrangell Mountains, a hot meal is welcome.  The Radio Shack sign in Glennallen advertising hot pizza is alluring, but they don’t actually have hot pizza, or at least not when I have been there.  The Freeze has long since closed its doors. The IGA may have some sandwiches and deli snacks, but it is far from excellent.  The raven in this painting symbolizes wilderness to me, and the bright yellow manufactured plastic sign, humanity.  After washing hands in the gas station, and getting a crispy fried egg-roll, it feels good to know, that yes, they do sell auto parts within the Glennallen city limits. This painting is about the balance of going to the wilderness to reduce stress by leaving the trappings of the city behind, while in the wilderness there is a different kind of stress of knowing you only have what you brought with you. It is good to change it up, find the ataraxia (Greek for balance), remind yourself what is important in your life, and you will find your inner peace.        

The original oil painting on canvas will be on display, and available for sale at my art show at Dos Manos Gallery in June and July. The art opening reception will take place on First Friday, June 3, 5-8pm. I will also have some prints available.

Trying out My New “Alaska” Skis in a Santa Suit

Every year Arctic Valley Ski Area has a fundraiser auction, and this year I bid on a pair of custom skis from Go Custom Skis in Seattle, Washington. I couldn’t believe I was the winner at $75 below retail value!  Tristan runs GC Skis, and we started communicating about my new set of boards right away!  I wanted a pair of skis that looked like the ones I painted in an image called Ski AK that I have been selling since 2013.  The graphic is a nod to the Alaskan flag and says “Alaska”. When I was designing my new skis I put the same graphics on the front, and created a new one for the back of the skis, which was not visible in the painting. I put my Arctic Valley trail map painting inside the text spelling out “Alaska”.  The skis got made and hand-delivered by Tristan, who is also a jet pilot for Costco.  He happened to fly a group of execs to Alaska and brought the skis, which saved me having to pay for shipping.  I bought some nice Marker bindings, and had them mounted at SkiAK.

Yesterday was Santa Skis Free day at Alyeska Resort, and my first chance to try out my new “Alaska” skis.  Santa Skis Free day is a blast!  Nothing is funnier than seeing 750 Santas riding the lifts, rocking some turns, crashing, drinking beers, and occasionally gathering up scattered gear from an all-out Santa yard-sale.  Everyone who dressed up like Santa head-to-toe, or Ms. Claus, an elf, or a reindeer got a free lift ticket!

My skis had just been hot-waxed, and were way more slippery than my old skis. It was also a classic Alyeska ski day with overcast skies, some flurries of snow, fog, and overall terrible visibility. Since I broke my hand up there last year, I hadn’t been back to ski at Alyeska.  The new skis were handling way differently than I expected, and I nearly wiped out on Silvertip just after I got off the lift.  This happened mostly because I couldn’t see anything.  There is a significant drop-off where speed is needed to get up the other side. I didn’t biff it, but I didn’t look very smooth either. I pretty much splayed my legs out and avoided going down from the sheer strength of my groin (imagine me doing this in a Santa costume).  Snow sprayed up all over me and I looked like an abominable snowman for the rest of the day.  After the fifth run I was getting more comfortable with the short turn radius, and I could sit back and ride them a lot more proficiently.  Maria and I made it to the Santa group photo, and skied a few more laps, stopping in the woods for a quick sandwich.  We then made it down the mountain with no repercussions. I got many compliments in the lift line, and on the chairlift on my “Alaska” skis, and gave Tristan props each time.

After we took off our Santa suits we went over to Girdwood Brewing to nab a tasty brew!  I got the GBC 500: a Brewing Odyssey, and Maria had the IP-AK.  Last time I had a beer at GBC after a ski day at Alyeska I was icing a broken hand.  Much better to be sitting there without a broken bone.  We drove home with enough time to catch the end of my Russian lesson on Zoom, and then we helped a friend assemble a brand new dining room table he had built from a large slab of Elm and solid Walnut.  It turned out to be a great day!  Cheers to new skis, an amazing new table, and the genius who came up with Santa Skis Free Day at Alyeska Resort!      

Here’s my design that I sent to GC Skis

Here’s how they turned out

I painted this in 2013, and I’ve wanted a pair of skis like that ever since!

Lovin’ my “Alaska” skis on Santa Skis Free Day!

First Snow Day of the Year!

The first real snowfall of the year covers the grass and leaves, and provides winter light during the long, dark nights. Last night I was excited to see the tips of the stalks of grass obscured from view. The entire city illuminates from the reflective properties of the falling snow. This morning I was surprised to see eleven inches on our back porch. We went for a lovely 3-mile walk to the Helen L. McDowell Sanctuary, breaking trail the whole way! Upon our return, Maria and I spent a little over half an hour shoveling our driveway and walkways. There was about a foot of light and fluffy snow, so it wasn’t that hard. It’s still snowing as I write this, and all the clearing we did is now under another two inches.

I get really excited about the first day of snow, because I love winter! Skiing, fat-biking, ice skating and winter walks are all things I enjoy in winter.  Don’t get me wrong, I also love summer.  The hectic pace that ensues with all the daylight, the out-of-state visitors, and the insidious mosquitos that come along with the warmer weather make it a second best to me.  Third, comes late fall when it is cold, dark, and there is usually freezing rain.  Last, is early spring, when the meltdown makes everything ugly, and going outside is difficult due to half-frozen swampiness. 

Winter is my favorite.  There is a special quality to winter, especially in Alaska.  I mentioned the light from the snow. I can easily navigate at night without a headlamp, if a blanket of snow is reflecting any bit of moon or starlight.  My favorite thing about winter though, is semi-hibernating.  Nobody expects you to answer your phone after 9pm, and if you say you can’t make it because the roads seem too dangerous, people completely understand. In the summer people want you to go to work for 10 hours, then expect you to climb a mountain.  In the winter, if you spend 4 hours riding a chairlift, people might expect you to fall asleep while watching a movie afterwards. 

Snow is great! It makes winter real! Let it snow! I will shovel the driveway again this evening, right before I climb into bed at 9:15pm.

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Burning Dude, McCarthy, AK, September 11, 2021, 9:11pm

Burning Dude 2021

I know that Burning Man is an established event that has been happening for decades,  but I have never been.  I basically don’t know anything about the event, except that it is a wickedly insane art festival where they burn a temple at the end, sometimes with a man at the top.  A week-long avant-garde art event with 70,000 people all showing up to party and experience being human together in the middle of a hot, dusty desert.  

Dave Hollis, my friend in McCarthy, is a retired computer programmer who I would consider to be the social guru for the Kennicott River Valley.  This guy knows what is happening, where it is happening, and also plans some amazing events of his own.  In McCarthy, around 2009 Dani Evans and B-Mac built a Burning Woman, and she asked Hollis to be a fire tender.  Four years ago in 2018, Hollis and Brady, and some other McCarthy locals, decided to make a small version of Burning Man, which they called Burning Dude.  It is a fragment of the Nevada festival, and can’t even be compared, but it is still a hoot, and a lot of fun.  I missed the Burning Woman, and I also missed the first Dude, who was 12 feet tall, and I heard was awesome.  In 2019 fire danger was high, so there was no Dude.  The second Burning Dude in 2020 was designed by Seth, a local fire dancer, and I helped erect the dude with 10 other people, while Brady quickly nailed supports to keep it upright.  It burned, but never fully caught on fire.  The sculpture was 34 feet tall.  The oversized head was dropped and ignited later, providing plenty of entertainment.  I told the team that I have sculpture training and would like to help build next year’s Dude.

Burning Dude 2020

This fall, both Seth and Brady were not available to build the Dude.  Hollis was bummed, but he asked me if I thought it could still happen without them.  I gathered a small team: my wife Maria, my cousin Cameron, and of course Hollis.  I designed the Dude on a sheet of paper, to be built from log mill slabs, which are fairly irregular, and have a lot of bark on them.  I took an afternoon the day before to gather twigs from the bottom of spruce trees from my ten-acre lot, and loaded them onto my trailer.  The next day, Maria and I drove down to McCarthy, picked up Cameron and we unloaded the brush on the bank of the Kennicott River.  Then we drove over to Hollis’ house where we picked up about 200 spruce slabs.  We chucked them down to the Kennicott river, and we started to build.  I had packed a ton of tools, including my cordless drill, driver, chainsaw, a million screws and nails, as well as wire.  First, I built a sturdy box, and then we built the feet and legs.  We attached the torso, and put on the arms.  Finally we built the head, and put a crown of sparklers on top of it.  Hollis and Maria juggled the head up to Cameron, who was standing on the box.  Cameron hoisted the head up to me, as I crouched inside the torso.  I quick-like attached the head and then had to remove my chainsaw helmet to extract myself from the torso.  Next, we stuffed the spruce branches all over the dude and filled the box, torso and head.  I bought a gallon of vegetable oil and we stapled oily paper towels all over the Dude.  We were building the Dude in a prominent location, right next to the foot bridge, where everyone saw us.  Hollis did a great job telling people to show up at 9pm for Burning Dude.

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We had three hours to spare before the scheduled ignition, so we went to Mark and Livvi’s new house for ice cream and hot dogs.  At 9pm, a fairly large crowd had gathered around the Dude.  All four of us ignited him at 9:11pm on 9/11!  I knew the spruce boughs would work, and vegetable oil is essentially as combustable as diesel fuel.  It ignited in three stages: first the box platform, then the torso, and finally the head.  The head had this amazing glowing crown above it from the sparklers, and then it kept burning even after the branches all burned up.  The paper towels were amazing.  The head fell in after 11 minutes, but the Dude lasted about 44 more before Malcolm decided to kick the box over.  I was so pleased with how well everything worked.  I thank Maria, Cameron and especially Hollis for making this possible!  Not as spectacular as Burning Man festival in Nevada, but Burn Dude was a success in 2021!   

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