mud

There was mud covering my jeans and shoes as I went through the TSA checkpoint tonight. I am three hours early for my one AM flight, but I don’t have anywhere else to go here as Jenny has to put Sawyer down for school tomorrow and most places in town close at 10pm. After I left Jenny’s – and left the truck parked on her extra lot – I went to Big Daddy’s and had a last supper of wings and three delicious margaritas. While waiting for a cab, a new resident of Fairbanks, newly employed in the kitchen at the one Greek restaurant in town (which is also fantastic, especially the mixed drinks and calamari, although the thing that is the most amazing there are their opulent bathrooms) and clearly nearly out of his mind. He regaled me for a good twenty minutes, while I waited for my cab to the airport, on the wonders of the Fairbanks support system. “You know you can get what you need here? There is a women’s shelter! And a food bank! And a place to get hot meals!” Yet, dear. And I’m flying to Minnesota in four hours. But he would not be deterred in his enthusiastic helpfulness, and making sure I knew where I could get whatever help I needed. Eventually, and wobbily, he half mounted his bicycle and skipped off down the sidewalk. The cab did not arrive in time to rescue me.

Previous to this little misadventure, I was at Jenny’s for a couple of hours. It was pouring rain, and we all huddled in the dog pen with the puppies who have miraculously quadrupled in size since I arrived (and they arrived) a week ago. Four of the five are just black with white markings, and those who have their eyes open are showing ice-blue. I was in the only clean clothes I have left, but they did not last long. The puppies coated them in sawdust and probably a little dribble of pee, and their mother, looking for affection and attention after caring for the little suckling beasts, started my jeans on the slippery slope by implanting her muddy paws all over my thighs as I held and cuddled her little three-pound squirming pups. Then, I followed Sawyer, with a precarious bucket of water, down to the dog yard, where Jenny insisted that I inspect Xtra Tuff’s sore foot and the weird cyst on Gypsy’s chin. Xtra Tuff’s feet were caked in post-rain mud, and so on my hands and arms were covered. Before I even got ahold of her feet, her constant pacing circle had my jeans and pants well splattered. Gypsy’s chin was more clean than Xtra’s feet, but she spared no time in imprinting her own muddy paws on my pants. It was a losing battle from the start.

We then made our way to the chicken yard, where Sawyer caught and cuddled the older hens and we discovered a new baby chick, hatched in secret by one of the mommas, stuck in the feed bin of the younger of the brood. We quickly created a new space for momma and chick, with feed and water and shelter in an old dog house, away from the other chickens and the potential predators outside the fence. But along with this task came more mud in the slick chicken yard, and I was soon regretting packing my boots instead of wearing them. Jenny and I chatted some over chickens, gardens and Sawyer’s attention-seeking antics and eventually we packed up and left the house so she could drop me at wings and Big Daddy’s.

That little barbeque joint is as familiar as a warm blanket to me. I have spent myriad evenings there, chowing down on their dollar wings (dollar fifty now, damned inflation) and fresh squeezed ritas. And there, surrounded by the familiar and the comforting, and inundated with more and more tequila, I being to wonder if my dreams are actually possible. I begin to imagine a dog team. A dog barn. A sled. Trails. Training. Races. Sponsorships. I wonder if Big Daddy’s would ever honor my obsessive loyalty to their smoked chicken with a sponsorship; even if it was just in-kind sustenance through the training season. The fantasies become more and more real to me as the drinks come. But soon the bar is closing, and I have nowhere to go but the airport. Until well after midnight, and with precious few places to charge my cell phone.

What I am trying to forget is that I have been fighting tears all day, but especially on the drive away from our home and back to Jenny’s after dropping off some camping gear and sundry stuff in the shed there. I miss that place, and every time I see it (full of stranger’s gear, and wood that we have not gathered) I fight the urge to quit my life and move back in. It is the place I want to be, the nascent place that I want to develop as my own. And walking away from it, again and again, is a kick in the gut. As is driving through the rainy, overcast night, in a town that I have claimed as my home, away to the airport, to fly far away again. For who knows how long. I am left leaving tonight, long after the midnight sun has set, with the muddy paw prints on my jeans and imbedded in my brand new running shoes. And I hope it won’t be too long before I cam come back, not for a visit, but for good.