withstanding thee fire

The morning darkness.

3 degrees outside on the thermometer nailed into the pine tree. One of the colder ones lately in a winter that even by Alaskan standards has been a cold one. It got cold, and it stayed cold, temperatures constantly headed into single digits…. which is cold for Homer which gets a boost in temperature being so close to the ocean. Up North in the interior, where the cold really hits, it is forty below. Temperature not wind chill.

And it is dark also, the sun bursting forth above the mountain around ten thirty in the morning and setting around four. The generator went out some weeks ago and I haven’t bothered to get it fixed or buy a new one. We do have solar panels, and they work just fine when they sun is shining, but the batteries are old and sometimes by eight at night the light switches won’t work. even when the light switches are working, the cabin tends to have a dark, candlelit feel during the night. So it goes. We all have the light of our cellphones that we can cling too until they die too, and they we are reduced to playing chess by candlelight… like Rocky 4… when lou Gossett jr checkmates the kgb handler with a pawn.

The light of our cell phones. I could run with that line.

The Christmas holiday is over… today precisely is if you like nobody else… still remember the feast of the epiphany - which they always trad celebrated on the sixth of january, but officially recently made the switch to the sunday after new year’s - try to get a few more butts in the pew.

The girls flew in from Philly and Milagros came up from Panama and on Christmas Eve we walked into the vastness behind our house and chopped down a Christmas tree, with an ax.. we all roared when Jack finally hacked it down and in a moment of inspiration - for it must have been a ten foot tree… Bernie dove under it, hoisted the load upon his bag and began trudging back to the cabin. as the rest of the family cheered. Trimmed and decorated all on Christmas eve and had our trad chinese food meal… gave a couple techy presents ( yes I still love the christmas eve gifts sister), and sang a couple songs before they kids marched upstairs in the darkness holding their lanterns. Maybe it was because of the social media effect - everybody constantly trying to make it look good for others, but there was something very authentic about it, very joyful for these seven children to be together on Christmas Eve at the mountain house.

Christmas Eve is a tradition. So is decorating the Christmas tree. I’d say they bring joy. Going to church on sunday too is a family tradition. Many have dropped that one. Most have kept the tree.

I kept up the church for a long time, and I still enjoy it - although mainly for the community aspects - the meal afterwards and the fellowship. The spiritual significance of the mass… the words of the priest have completely, utterly, lost the ability to move the spiritual needle.

A complete spiritual flat-line.

what are the traditions we will keep. For many will get burned up in the technological fire. It’s heat will be intense, and will most likely incinerate everything but that which can withstand the fire, that which is spiritual gold.

There’s gold in dem hills as the old sourdough would say. Gold in the mass and gold by the woodstove and gold in the laundry doing and gold carrying water… and gold in the rowhouses of lawncrest and gold on the streets of rundown North Philadelphia … or up and coming gentrified north philly?

what will survive the heat. The ancient traditions… deeper than any people place or time.

Ohlson Mountain January 2026