Monthly Archives: September 2014

We finally hit the black hills at dusk, after eight hours of driving, a long nap in the shade at a rest stop at the South Dakota border and myriad short stops to play fetch and burn some puppy energy out of the dog. The further west we drove, the fewer cars accompanied us on the road and weaving through the hills at night felt isolated despite miles of construction cones and abandoned equipment littering the verge. I stopped at an empty pull out around ten and shut everything down. The milky way stretched across the sky like a frayed ribbon and the big dipper hung on the horizon to the north, a beacon. I wanted to pitch a tent right there in the ditch and sleep under the stars all night. Instead, we opted for an overpriced ‘budget’ motel in Gillette but I’m pretty sure I would have slept better bundled in the grass in my own gear.

It was a long first day of driving, but tonight is a reunion with an old and dear friend in Missoula. The puppy is turning into a cozy truck dog and doesn’t seem too disturbed yet by her new, nomadic life. I am so happy to be in the west, but heartbroken that I don’t have time to explore this new topography. Some day, some year, we’ll get our footprints on this gateway to the west that has haunted Jess’ dreams since college. It was so hard to pass valleys and peaks, unseen in the dark, following the trail of stars last night.

So how much do things fall into place because they were meant to, and how much do our own efforts (or lack thereof) contribute to what doors open and slam closed? Should closed doors be walked away from, or should you look for a key? Or fetch a crowbar?  For all my latching on to the fortune in a cookie, is any one path really meant to be? There have been plenty of events in my own life that have seemed to just work out and I always sort of trusted that they were supposed to. But looking back now, I start to wonder if other factors, factors I was well and truly in control of, weren’t in play as well.

When everything pertaining to my trip north began to fall through, I went into an existential panic. Ever since it was proposed, I have not been entirely sure if the endeavor to spend two months back home is a good idea or a very bad one. But suddenly faced with not going, it was quickly clear to me that ill-advised or not, deep down at the truth I want, no, I need, to go. The thought of staying here for the duration of the fall became suddenly and irrevocably untenable. So, over the weekend that everything fell apart, I dove into action. I scanned Craigslist obsessively, trying to find some affordable, non-sketchy housing option. I called or e-mailed every friend I could think of in Fairbanks, scrambling for a lead on a house or a cabin or a shack. I even wrote long emails to complete strangers in town who I was familiar with only from their blogging or mushing circles, essentially cold-calling, a practice which for me has always been anathema. And for a week I got nowhere. Every lead turned cold, either through expense, sketchiness or outright rejection.

Then, on Thursday night, I got a call from some friends with whom I’d left a message nearly a week before. They have a place out in Salcha, and I can stay there for free on a couple of completely agreeable conditions. And then I got a follow-up e-mail about more work, and then another, all in quick succession. The trip was back on, just as suddenly as it seemed to be shut down the week before.

Now, four days from departure and giddy with it, I wonder about all this. It’s not to say that things don’t happen utterly outside of our control. Accidents, breakdowns, fortuitous meetings. Working in emergency services, the fact that tragedy strikes out of the blue is never far from my mind. But then there is what we do with these things, how we weave the threads that the fates spin and cut in and around us. Without my own mad scramble last week, I wouldn’t have gotten the lead I finally did, nor would I have been privy to the weft of rejections and dead-ends before it. I am left with the sense that I am making this trip happen, because I know that it needs to, and not that this trip is happening to me because it was supposed to. And being in control of that gives me some peace, too, that I will make of these next two months what needs to be made of them. For myself, and by my own doing. And this is what I needed from the uncertainty of the last weeks, and the certainty created in its wake.

It turns out the edges of things aren’t fitting together as they’d seemed to at first. My housing up north has fallen through, unexpectedly & irrevocably. A good chunk of the work I was hoping to do has fizzled to nothing. And I am starting to very seriously wonder if forcing this little pipe-dream of a trip is really the best thing after all. I’ve spent the last few days canvassing friends, acquaintances & craigslist for viable housing options, but so far nothing workable is on the table. One thing that this has helped make clear is that I am looking at this time up north not only as a time to reconnect and work and learn, but also to have some space to myself to reflect and write and dig into what about Alaska and Fairbanks is so compelling for me and why. To get a good deep drink of the cold water before heading back into the desert for a while.

So I am continuing to spin my wheels, hoping for some purchase. And in the mean time, I’m coming up with alternate plans of what this fall might look like if I stay in Iowa for the duration. Either way, there is graduate school in February, a solid marker in an otherwise murky future.

Last week, I got this fortune after a fantastic Thai meal in Des Moines.

Not one to take fortunes too seriously, I nevertheless found myself latching onto its message. Even if it just means a trip out west to see friends and the ocean and a loop back to the corn and soybeans, I think a change of location of some stripe or another is definitely in order.