Monthly Archives: August 2015

I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I saw the ocean. Between rushing around Fairbanks trying to get the truck fixed, leaving too late in the afternoon to make much meaningful mileage, worrying about meeting an old friend (unseen for twenty years) in Anchorage, and all the suppressed anxiety about Seward herself, I was a mess of nerves. When I pulled over to camp for the night somewhere south of Denali, I lay in the back of my truck, comfortable and warm enough (except for the mosquitoes) fretting and planning and spinning my wheels, utterly unable to sleep. My heart was racing. Would the truck make it the rest of the way, and back again? When was it due for an oil change? How on earth are we going to move the week after I get back? Should I be in a nursing program at all? What if I don’t finish, what then? How many bridges do I have left to burn? The thoughts darkened with the sky and I lay awake for hours.

When I woke up the next morning, I was no better for the fitful sleep I’d had, although the cold mountain air had dispatched with the mosquitoes some time in the night. There was nothing left to do but continue driving south, but I was grumpy and moody and ready to turn around and go back to Fairbanks, where at least there was Toni’s cabin to hide in.

In 2010, I drove to Seward alone but for one dog, Augie, our giant rescued Ridgeback. When I arrived, I panicked and instead of visiting friends, kayaking and hiking, I pitched a tarp under the trees in the woods and hid out for several days, avoiding town, avoiding all the places I might run into a familiar face. All I could remember was the hand-over-fist rejection I’d experienced as a wanna-be guide her a decade ago. I hadn’t fit in then, and I was sure I would experience the same cold shoulder as I had as a wandering kid in 2004. Also, I was as depressed as I’d ever been to that point, and the feelings of general inadequacy and self-hatred were relentless. They still are. After three nights camping in the rain and feeling sorry for myself, I left, tail between my legs, slinking back to Fairbanks confused about the instinct to hide and worrying over it. I realized, as I got closer to Seward this time, that I was worried that impulse would rear its head again. That I would go make a fort in the woods not be able to enjoy the town for what it is, regardless of the baggage it holds for me.

Coming into town, I held my breath and drove straight to Rick’s kayak outfitting business, determined at least in the moment not to make that mistake of five years ago this time. Heart in my throat, I found him in the yard repairing a boat and approached. It’s been years since I’ve seen him, over a decade since I worked for him as a guide out on the bay. And he was as welcoming as if I was a long lost friend, offering to lend me a boat, take me out to wherever I wanted to go, offered me a bed or a place to park and camp, showed me his fantastic little outfitting business like a proud papa. He made me feel like a prodigal child come home after years away.

Something in me calmed with this welcome. The hurting, confused, lost outsider I was at twenty four, showing up in this town with a car full of camping gear and a dog, hoping to weasel my way into a kayak was mollified somewhat. The piece of me that feared outright rejection and indifference was squashed like a small bug. I am an adult now, I have made something (if not much) of the little thread of life I’m running with, and I don’t need the approval of a bunch of too-cool-for-school, hard-partying guides to be at peace with myself anymore. I may not be at peace with myself for other reasons, but those specters were finally chattering themselves into silence.

I went first to the docks and walked around looking at boats and communing with a huge sea otter crunching clams between vessles. The harbor water was turquoise and the snow-dusted mountains rose up everywhere I looked. Then down to the point at the end of town and I lay in the park grass watching the water and ships and the cliffs across the bay. And for the first time since coming up to Alaska this time, felt myself fully relax. Fairbanks is so loaded these days, with expectations and questions about the future. It should be home, is it really? Or should it be? And what if it isn’t? Where will I be left if I’ve built it into something it cannot be? Every place there, every corner and dirt road and structure holds a memory or a possibility or a disappointment. It feels good to come home there, or try to, but I have not been able to relax the way I need to, not with all the white noise. But here, on the ocean, I may finally be learning to let go of a weird, perfect, horrible summer on the bay and enjoy this place for what it is. A paradise of mountains plunging into ocean at the end of the road.

I adore my old truck. I got him for four thousand dollars off of craigslist in 2011, and he’s carried me all across this state, moved us several times, hauled my dog team through all kinds of weather, taken us down to Iowa and me back up to Fairbanks last fall. He had plenty of miles when we got him, but we’ve put on a hell of a lot since then.

When I knew we were going to drive him down to Iowa, I wanted to get a topper shell so we could sleep dry in the back of the truck on the way down without having to set up camp or deal with wet tents. I couldn’t find anything used that would fit the bill, and it made no sense to pay for a new topper that cost more than the truck had. Finally, discussing this issue with Jenny about two months before our move, she mentioned that she had an old topper she was using as a chicken coop that she’d gotten for free at the dump a few years before. We measured it; a perfect fit! I spent about a week cleaning it up and learning to work with plexiglass to cover the broken out windows and in the end we ended up with an old-school topper that fit the truck perfectly.

Last winter, the truck took me and Ersta safely across the country to Seattle and then back up to Alaska and then back and forth through the mountains to Jodi’s house three times a week until I had to return to Iowa in December. He’s been parked at Jenny’s since then, until I got back and started him (remarkably) up on the first try.

But he’s starting to show his age. There are strange noises under the hood when he clocks in above fifty miles and hour, and something feels like it’s about to tear apart whenever we make a sharp turn in either direction. I want to trust him, after all the miles he’s taken me. But as much as I am prone to anthropomorphise the machines I love, he is only a machine and will leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere without a second thought. Or a first one. I was planning on driving down to Seward today, but I’m taking him into a truck repair shop to have him looked at first instead. In the mean time, I’m packed back up for the trip and he’s been outfitted with an air mattress and heavy duty sleeping bag, ready for the next adventure. I just hope he’s up for it. And I hope I am, too.

The Angel Rocks trail should be a metaphor for something, but I am sick of metaphors even though I write them into nearly everything I post. The hike up starts along a deceptively wide, flat trail, devoid of roots and rocks. Half a mile in, and it becomes a narrow snaking path through the trees, more rock and root than dirt. After a short jaunt up an increasingly steep boardwalk traversing marsh, the first of the tors becomes visible on the ridge far above. Impossibly far above. But you begin the climb anyway, because the tors (and the view they provide) is why you have come.

After a brutal steep climb over roots and rocks with no view through the trees of what is ahead, you come to that first tor and the view is spectacular. You are above much of the forest now, and the valleys stretch away in several directions. You breathe a sigh of relief, but then look up and find another, bigger, grander tor is looming ahead and higher. You catch your breath and start making the climb. And the pattern continues. Each tor reached juts into a more breathtaking view that before, and after each is reached, another, higher, steeper tor presents itself further upslope, tantalizing. The trail becomes a tilting scramble, more breaks must be taken. The day is hot for the northcountry, and muggy ahead of promised rain that night. There is not much breeze. You wonder at sweating so much in a place so close to the Arctic Circle. You lean on trees to catch your breath, embracing paper birch and wondering at the map patterns left on their leaves by passing bugs. You collapse onto small rock outcroppings, giving your burning legs a break, guzzling more water, cursing the next tor that has made itself visible, obscuring the sky, beckoning you upward.

As you scramble and huff to reach each new outcropping of granite, each new and higher view, the scattered people around you drop off the hunt and head back down. It’s not a long hike, but the steep trail and discouraging appearance of more of it after every turn proves discouraging to many, even the intrepid couple decked out head-to-toe in brand-new REI gear complete with clanging bear bells that you are sure would attract a curious grizzly rather than alert it to move on.

At the top, you find yourself alone in the silence. There is still no wind, and the sweat is heavy on your t-shirt. A bee passing over the rock seems deafening. You scramble up the last of the tors, at the top of the world, finally, and the landscape is laid out before you a green canvas, the blue sky mostly obscured by low continuous clouds, grey rivers snaking away and out of sight. A single cabin stands out far below, a speck of blue in the endless green forest. Your legs are shaking from the climb, and you aren’t exactly sure they are steady enough to make it back down the rock to the trail. But you are at the top, scraped knees and dirty hands and sweaty back, and slowly your heart rate slows and your breath comes evenly and your legs stop screaming at you for what you have put them through.

I didn’t stay at the top for long. I was hoping for more of a breeze, but one never kicked up. I lay for a while in the hazy sunlight, but found myself more worried about the scramble down the rocks than able to embrace the view from their peak. There were more bees than I was comfortable communing with. My backpack didn’t make an excellent pillow. Before too long, I found myself attempting to backtrack down the steep rock to where the trail began its endless switchbacks down the back side of the hill through ever thickening forest. In my scramble, my bearspray fell out of the pouch on the side of my back. I watched in horror as it bounced down rock after rock, twenty feet, fifty feet, a hundred, and in slow motion I saw the safety latch break. Suddenly a breeze kicked up, just as the handle engaged with a rock, I got a facefull of cayenne pepper, disseminated over a hundred feet of elevation loss and generously delivered straight to my face by the sudden gust of wind.

I dove back to the top of the tor to catch my breath and let the coughing fit subside, then shakily worked my way down through the mass of granite to where the bearspray lay, innocent next to its safety catch, banged up and dented but still intact, in a little hollow of grass beneath the highest of the coveted tors. My eyes were burning and my lungs were raw. The view was gone down in the trees, and I still had a two mile hike down the steep grade and along the river back to the trailhead.

Maybe this is why there is no metaphor for climbing higher and higher, only to find more worthy goals around each subsequent corner. Because at the top there are too many bees, not enough breeze and a faceful of pepper spray meant for an eight hundred pound grizzly. Buyer beware.

Last night, we flew over southeast Alaska on the way north and the clouds parted below us to lay out the intricate waterways of the inside passage. Glaciers snaked out of snowcapped mountains far below us and plunged into the slate gray sea. Later, we dove below glowering storm clouds into Fairbanks where a cold, spitting rain was competing with smoke from nearby wildfires to fill the evening air. The sunset glow was reddish brown and the smell of it was acrid and heavy underneath the damp. I escaped the plane, and an overly talkative seatmate, giddy with being home and apprehensive, as always, as to what this will mean this time, every time. There is so much riding on that little word. Fairbanks, as always, is less spectacular than the geography to the south, but is beautiful in her own right with her rolling hills and snaking rivers. A friend picked me up, and we made our way through the wet streets, out of town to pick up my truck from Jenny’s house.

There, in the dusk and through a sudden downpour, I met the three-day old puppies that will be the backbone of her sled dog team in two years time. Dan Kaduce, Jodi’s husband, had come to take off their dew claws earlier in the day, and was able to determine their lineage, these little squirming balls of life with tiny squished ears and unopened eyes, from their bodies, colors and facial structure. I still have so much to learn.

I made my way to Toni’s cabin, but didn’t arrive there until very late. The midnight sun is gone this late in the season, and I fumbled in the dark for the key and the lock and the lights. Exhausted from nearly twelve hours of travel after a frantic morning of preparation and last minute packing, I fell asleep seconds after my head hit the pillow in her cozy loft.

This morning I was awake with the early sun and the neighbor’s frantic dog shrieking away into the misty morning. The clouds were low and scattered but sunshine looked to be peaking through. I went on a run through our old neighborhood, struggling with the unaccustomed hills, relishing the gravel and mud and wet grass. I passed Georgina’s Pond and found that the memorial wreaths and candles are all gone now, eight years and many memories later. The black tannin water was occupied by a pair of wood ducks, paddling lazily under the encroaching marsh grasses.

At our old cabin, the little tripod I built to host the house number by the road had been torn down and the number was tacked up on a twisted black spruce tree far back from the road, almost invisible. The cabin had new lattice around the base and a large storage shed at the end of the driveway, but otherwise looked the same as it did during our five year occupancy: a generic little log structure in a typical tumbling spruce and birch forest outside of town. I plodded on down the road. At the sprint kennels, the dogs barked and yelped at my passing. A few minutes later, two elderly women pulled over in their rental car and flagged me down. They were looking for Mary Shields’ kennel for a tour, and had made a wrong turn. Their GPS wasn’t working correctly, could I tell them the way? I was thrilled to do so, thrilled to know where to direct them even though I’ve never met Mary nor been to her kennel. I realized later through my giddiness that what thrilled me was not only to be home, but to be taken for being home by strangers.

Arriving back at Toni’s, I determined that the weather is good enough for a journey out to Angel Rocks for a hike up to the huge granite tors that jut out from the topography there. It will be a nice little shake-out hike to see where I am after my attempts to get in better shape these last two months, and as always a good view from the top, even on an overcast day. I’ll run into town to get bearspray and bagels. I have been here less than twelve hours, and already I can feel my shoulders relaxing and my heart beat slowing down, my breath evening out. I am always afraid that coming back will be terrible, somehow I will find that I do not belong here, after all, in this place I have placed so much credence in, imbued with so much hope for the my future and place. But as always, coming back is as much of a homecoming as I need it to be. Somehow the indifferent forest embraces me, after all.

I’ve never been much of a music connoisseur, preferring NPR news programming to iTunes on the road or in the house. When I started running six weeks ago, I tried to play music but found the tempos incongruous with my epically slow pace. Either the beat was way too fast for my dinosaur plod or the slow music was slowing me down so much that I might as well be walking. I found a happy middle ground a couple of weeks ago. As my runs got longer, I started listening to the audiobook version of True Grit that I had gotten through audible and forgotten about. It was perfect for running, the plot was engaging enough to keep me distracted from the increasingly endless seeming intervals, Mattie’s incisive observations of the adults around her left a smile on my face every few minutes and in general I found my runs sped by faster with the book in my ears.

Two mornings ago, as I left on my run, the Audible app crashed and I was unable to get it to find my place in the book as I was walking out the door. I had a terrible run, trying to listen to Indigo Girls but feeling every step. It may have been that I was dehydrated and slightly sleep deprived, but by the end of the run I began to believe it was because I was no longer sufficiently distracted from the pain of my increasing time and mileage. This morning, I forgot to try and fix the problem until I was already out the door, but I was in no mood for any of the music I could think to accompany me. So I did something I am usually loathe to do; I ran in silence.

Long ago, when savvy music lovers were making the precarious transition from walkmans to discmans and I still considered myself a runner, I remember a particularly purist coach talking about the terrible habit of running with music. He claimed that the varying beats messed up one’s pace, and nobody listened to what their body was saying when they were listening to someone else singing through their (ear-sized, foam covered) earphones. Young and eager to please, I took him to heart. The fact that nobody could figure out how to run with a discman without it skipping helped me follow his purist mindset a little more easily, in those days.

Today, running in silence for the first time since I started this gambit, I began to wonder if there was something to his expositions on tuning into the mind and body instead of out. I found myself intensely focused on myself for the first part of that run, in particular, how I was unsure if my body was going to make it through said run in one piece without crashing. For about a third of the course, I was doubtful and negative, interpreting every little ache and pain as the beginnings of good reason to stop. And then beating myself up for the specter of failure rearing its grotesque head at the thought. Going under the railroad bridge brought my head around, and I realized what was happening. I began to wonder if what is need at this point isn’t necessarily an absence of distraction, but a focus and discipline of the mind. What I may need now is the strength to silence the negative voices and focus instead of the pleasures of the run; the sun on my cheeks and shoulders, a cool breeze kicked up suddenly, the emerald green fields of Como park stretching out below my feet, the slick of sweat on skin, Ersta’s eager nose in my hand at just the moment I’d forgotten she was there at my knee. Or focus on other things entirely, the bigger narratives, like the sermons of a devote of the road runner’s life ringing back clearly from decades ago, or a packing list for my largely unplanned trip commencing in the morning, or intentions for the rest of the day rolling out before me. Perhaps it is not the running itself I am squandering by listening to a book or a tune, but an opportunity to discipline not only the body, but the capricious mind as well.