Recently in general Category

Just when we thought the winter was finally well and truly over last week the skies opened and the snow began to tumble out with a vengeance. Not the pretty white flakes that settle for a moment and then instantly......more

I admit it was an impetuous and poorly-judged decision. I had just arrived in Anchorage for my annual teaching assignment at the University of Alaska and the temperature was twenty-plus degrees below freezing. I spent the first night at......more

The temperature hovered around minus twenty, and the roads were layered in ice. But even at two in the morning the car rental agent in the bowels of Ted Stevens international airport at Anchorage managed a pearly smile. Perhaps it......more

It came out of the blue and just as we were finally beginning to enjoy the drive. Without warning the rear wheels lost traction and shot violently to one side. Then our large, heavily-laden pick-up truck slewed onto the opposite......more

It's been a week of close calls and minor disasters here in our beautiful little corner of the universe. Just as we thought the learning curve was beginning to flatten out. Since moving to the ranch nearly two incident-strewn years......more

Whoever said that living in paradise was going to be easy? The year began with an onslaught of thick, white powder snow that crept up over our sundecks to the lower reaches of the windows and then up, up and......more

It was not an auspicious beginning. The day we were to leave our beautiful BC home and set out on a 2,000 mile winter odyssey across the frozen north we could barely open our front door. Three feet of snow......more

I really never thought it would come to this. It all began back in the distant snowbound days of March when one of our closest neighbours - wearing what look like a goat-skin - turned up on our doorstep. "Dick......more

It had been a truly awful week. As I was driving through northern Bosnia on a routine assignment several days before the voice of my brother came through on a crackly satellite phone. He told me how RUF rebels had......more

It was an intimidating sight. A wall of snow on both sides with one tiny path down the middle – part ice, part mud. We squeezed our new pick-up truck with it’s trailer and the little Golf diesel Kristin was......more