TheBanyanTree: A Five Year Anniversary

[Deb Frost]

(((hugs))), Monique. Well said. I have your book on my Kindle. You and Stew
were a good team as writers. It's a good book. It's hard to believe it's
been five years since he passed. I'm so glad you got the  book published.
You both deserved to have it completed. Closure, perhaps? Moving on.

It's rainy and a tad gloomy here in Alaska today, but the rain is a blessing
as the fire danger was high after sunshine, warmth and dry grass for the
past week. Spring came late here this year ... in fact, I could argue that
we skipped it altogether and I doubt anyone here in AK would disagree. It
was snowing with temps overnight in the single digits two weeks ago and
three days later it was 70F and we were literally watching the snow melt
underfoot. But the freshly uncovered ground was covered with last fall's dry
grass and leaves. Trees were bare and brown with roots still frozen.
Everything *should* have been melting slowly over the past two months, but
no. This year everything happened all at once. Lake ice melted, driveways
and [some] roads turned into mud bogs, river ice broke up way too fast (the
Yukon River did a spectacular "break-up" ... still in progress, in fact),
villages were [and are] flooded ... and we went from that stage straight
into SUMMER. High temperatures (it hit 80 two days running - for
south-central Alaska that is HOT) and tinder dry, dead grass and undergrowth
is a bad combo - everyone was holding their collective breaths over Memorial
Day weekend.

Around our little farm, the trees finally budded and leafed out this past
week, although the willow trees are still trying to figure out what to do.
Poor things *thought* it was spring during a January 50-degree warm spell
and did the whole "pussy-willow" thing THEN, only to end up with their fuzzy
little buds freezing solid and falling off again when winter returned with a
vengeance two weeks later and we were back down below zero. They were the
last trees to leaf out this week and never did pop new pussy-willows. I
don't know how that might affect germination next year. 

Our sheep and goats are [finally] finding something green to graze on in
their pasture and I'm not having to pick ice balls OR wash mud off the legs
and feet of the dogs every time they come in the door. The driveway is dry
(well, except for today's rain) and it is just glorious outside. We went
quite dramatically from a long, late winter into summer almost overnight -
there is GREEN everywhere!! 

Have a beautiful June,

De Frost (snowgoose) in Alaska

-----Original Message-----
From: thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com
[mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Monique Colver
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 11:24 AM
To: Banyan Tree
Subject: TheBanyanTree: A Five Year Anniversary

Five years ago today I stood at the bedside of Stew Young and held his head
while he died.

That sounds overly dramatic and sad, when I say it like that. How about
this:

Five years ago today I had a very bad day. For Stew, it was the last very
bad day in a long line of them.

After years of living with mental illness, it was cancer that got him. I'm
never sure if I should be participating in cancer walks or mental illness
walks. Stew would find that amusing.

But Stew should not be remembered as the guy with a mental illness, or the
guy with cancer. Those were not his primary traits, those were things that
happened to him, and those things don't tell us anything about him. None of
us are defined by the things that happen to us, by the illnesses and
accidents and events that distract us as we go from here to there. We are
not those things.