White Pass and Yukon Railroad was built during the Klondike Gold Rush and is an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, a designation shared with the Panama Canal, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. One of the longest narrow gauge railroads in the world it climbs about 3,000 feet in just 20 miles. The steel bridge was the tallest in the world when constructed in 1901.
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All posts for the month May, 2016
Decoration Day
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry’s shot alarms!
Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon’s sudden roar,
Or the drum’s redoubling beat.
But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.
All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!
Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.
Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
Skagway means beautiful woman derived from the early inhabitants Tlingit language.
She was also once a gold digger and became a boom town during the late 1800’s gold rush.
Most of the buildings have been preserved and today it’s designated as a historic site while serving the tourist trade. The town of about 1,000 people doubles when a cruise ship arrives in the harbor.
The two buildings on each end are reported as being haunted. The Red Onion Saloon built in 1898 is now listed as a National Historic Building but was once Skagway’s most exclusive bordello.
My lodging was at the Historic Skagway Inn which was also a brothel during the gold rush days but is now a charming little Bed & Breakfast. I stayed in the lovely Hattie’s room. Pictured below.
“There’s time enough, but none to spare.” Charles W. Chesnutt
It was about a one hour flight over the mountains from Juneau to Skagway. One hopes that the pilot isn’t having a really bad day. Glaciers and mountains provided a spare but often scenic landscape.
Maverick’s residence while in Juneau, Alaska
Had a great view of downtown Juneau and cruise ships in the harbor.
I have returned from the great state of Alaska and had a wonderful time the six days I was there. Probably good that I wasn’t there any longer as I now have a ton of photos to go through which I’ll share as I get to them. Primarily they’re from the Juneau and Skagway area. There’s also lots of blog likes and messages in my absence to respond to which I’ll get to eventually, thank you.
Tomorrow morning we go to Skagway
🎧
Repost – Hiatus
Of Roses
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air,
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
Repost – Hiatus
Blake
Jorge Luis Borges
Where will the rose in your hand exist
that lavishes, without knowing, intimate gifts?
Not in colour, because the flower is blind,
nor in the sweet inexhaustible fragrance,
nor in the weight of the petal. Those things
are sparse and remote echoes.
The real rose is more elusive.
Perhaps a pillar or a battle
or a firmament of angels, or an infinite
world, secret and necessary,
or the joy of a god we will not see
or a silver planet in another sky
or a terrible archetype lacking
the form of the rose.
ೋღ❤ღೋ<
Repost – Hiatus
Ghost of a Rose
Blackmore’s Night
The valley green was so serene
In the middle ran a stream so blue…
A maiden fair, in despair, once had met her true love there and she told him…
She would say…
“Promise me, when you see, a white rose you’ll think of me
I love you so,
Never let go,
I will be your ghost of a rose…”
Her eyes believed in mysteries
She would lay amongst the leaves of amber
Her spirit wild, heart of a child, yet gentle still and quiet and mild and he loved her…
When she would say…
“Promise me, when you see, a white rose you’ll think of me
I love you so,
Never let go,
I will be your ghost of a rose…”
When all was done, she turned to run
Dancing to the setting sun as he watched her
And ever more he thought he saw
A glimpse of her upon the moors forever
He’d hear her say…
“Promise me , when you see, a white rose you’ll think of me
I love you so,
Never let go,
I will be your ghost of a rose…”
Repost – Hiatus
A Rose and Milton
From the generations of roses
That are lost in the depths of time
I want one saved from oblivion,
One spotless rose, of all things
That ever were. Fate permits me
The gift of choosing for once
That silent flower, the last rose
That Milton held before him,
Unseen. O vermilion, or yellow
Or white rose of a ruined garden,
Your past still magically remains
Forever shines in these verses,
Gold, blood, ivory or shadow
As if in his hands, invisible rose.
Jorge Luis Borges
Maverick Mist 