I'm sorry that this blog hasn't been up to date on things. Recently I've:
Worked a lot
Fixed up my bike
Turned 21
Went to Redoubt Bay to watch brown and black bears catching salmon
Hiked the Rainbow Trail with my mom
Played some music
Worked on some art
Worked in the garden a lot and ate a lot of tasty fresh vegetables
Ate grilled, pickled, smoked, and raw salmon all in one night
Met Sophie Plitt's parents (they are very nice)
Saw Everclear play live (What?)
Continued to try to figure out Alaska and what my interaction with it is going to mean for the future. Its future and my future.
I don't have a lot of nice words right now. I'm kind of out of 'em.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
So it's been a while
And there's a reason for that.
I've done some interesting things, this is true. Hiking the Powerline Trail (not Powerline Pass) was rewarding, seeing my mother in town for my birthday as nice, and every day brings new kinds of stuff to do and see - more gardening, more involvement at the bike co-op, more work on my own personal projects. But there is a reason that none of it needs to get blogged about.
That is because the more I live here the more I feel that, at least until now, this summer will be classified as a wash. That sounds negative. It isn't. It's neither negative or positive. It's a wash. The hikes and rides and sunsets have been beautiful - not life-changing. My work has taught me new skills and ways of thinking in the organizing world, but I haven't changed a thing and probably won't get a chance to due to the foot-dragging of the organization that funds our Get Out The Vote efforts. I've met good people, and we've had good times, but we've for the most part stayed ourselves. None of this is bad. And maybe I'm a fool to be like Spalding Gray in Thailand, searching for a "perfect moment" on magic mushrooms in the Gulf of Siam with my money on the beach.
But the fact is that Anchorage isn't really Alaska, and it isn't really a city. Homer and Seward seemed to me to be actually Alaska. I'm sure Tok and Bethel and Circle and Chicken are Alaska. But Anchorage is just another suburb of everywhere else and nothing feels real or permanent because that's how crap American suburbs are designed. Transient, meaningless, anti-interaction. There are good people here and a beautiful, as John McPhee would say, "out of town". But when a city's inhabitants measure their happiness by how often they are able to leave the city, the city probably shouldn't be there in the first place. Unless they're hiding something. Which they may be - Alaskans love their wilderness and their state's rights, but they'd be up shit creek without federal money. Maybe it's the same way with Anchorage - they say they hate it, but they need to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home, that's just how it is. Can't really blame them.
The point is that Anchorage - not Alaska, emphatically - is limbo. I live in limbo, I work in limbo, I eat, sleep, drink, and shit in limbo. There is no change, no love, no hate. Not that there needs to be. I'm just saying, at least in, oh hell of all hells to the people up here, New York, there'd be something to be ANGRY about.
I am grateful for the opportunity to live and work here. It has and continues to be a bit of an adventure and one that I'm sure I'll look back on as important in some way. Here's hoping.
I've done some interesting things, this is true. Hiking the Powerline Trail (not Powerline Pass) was rewarding, seeing my mother in town for my birthday as nice, and every day brings new kinds of stuff to do and see - more gardening, more involvement at the bike co-op, more work on my own personal projects. But there is a reason that none of it needs to get blogged about.
That is because the more I live here the more I feel that, at least until now, this summer will be classified as a wash. That sounds negative. It isn't. It's neither negative or positive. It's a wash. The hikes and rides and sunsets have been beautiful - not life-changing. My work has taught me new skills and ways of thinking in the organizing world, but I haven't changed a thing and probably won't get a chance to due to the foot-dragging of the organization that funds our Get Out The Vote efforts. I've met good people, and we've had good times, but we've for the most part stayed ourselves. None of this is bad. And maybe I'm a fool to be like Spalding Gray in Thailand, searching for a "perfect moment" on magic mushrooms in the Gulf of Siam with my money on the beach.
But the fact is that Anchorage isn't really Alaska, and it isn't really a city. Homer and Seward seemed to me to be actually Alaska. I'm sure Tok and Bethel and Circle and Chicken are Alaska. But Anchorage is just another suburb of everywhere else and nothing feels real or permanent because that's how crap American suburbs are designed. Transient, meaningless, anti-interaction. There are good people here and a beautiful, as John McPhee would say, "out of town". But when a city's inhabitants measure their happiness by how often they are able to leave the city, the city probably shouldn't be there in the first place. Unless they're hiding something. Which they may be - Alaskans love their wilderness and their state's rights, but they'd be up shit creek without federal money. Maybe it's the same way with Anchorage - they say they hate it, but they need to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home, that's just how it is. Can't really blame them.
The point is that Anchorage - not Alaska, emphatically - is limbo. I live in limbo, I work in limbo, I eat, sleep, drink, and shit in limbo. There is no change, no love, no hate. Not that there needs to be. I'm just saying, at least in, oh hell of all hells to the people up here, New York, there'd be something to be ANGRY about.
I am grateful for the opportunity to live and work here. It has and continues to be a bit of an adventure and one that I'm sure I'll look back on as important in some way. Here's hoping.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
In the meantime...
Two sentences. Two sides of the coin that is Alaska so far.
"You've got to finish your beer before the tide takes your kayak!" Sunset at Woronzof Point. Pallett bonfire burning. Bruised feet.
"Well then I was down in Soldotna, because my other daughter's damn husband shot her." The amount of apathy and non-commitment that accompanies the word "shot" is impossible to convey in writing. The emphasis was placed on "other" and "husband". Toothless 70-something in the coffee shop. 8:00 AM. Speaking to a tweaking Native man in his 50's.
And here we are, wandering into the future.
"You've got to finish your beer before the tide takes your kayak!" Sunset at Woronzof Point. Pallett bonfire burning. Bruised feet.
"Well then I was down in Soldotna, because my other daughter's damn husband shot her." The amount of apathy and non-commitment that accompanies the word "shot" is impossible to convey in writing. The emphasis was placed on "other" and "husband". Toothless 70-something in the coffee shop. 8:00 AM. Speaking to a tweaking Native man in his 50's.
And here we are, wandering into the future.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Been Places
I'm back in Anchorage. I've been places.
On a Friday afternoon, July 2nd, 2010, I ducked out of my empty office early and headed home for a nap. My work is gratifying but the amount of screen-staring it requires can be exhausting. When I woke up, Dan Simmons was in my room. We had work to do.
We were leaving that night, with Sophie, for Seward, Alaska - a small port and fishing town that more than quadruples its population in the weekend leading up to Independence Day. We had to get groceries - bread, cheese, roast beef, granola, peaches, apples, and beer. We had to gather up our not-ready-for-prime time camping gear. Somewhere in there, though we didn't HAVE to, we had beers, halibut tacos, and John Prine singalongs with our neighbors and a North Slope civil engineer out of Vicksburg, Louisiana named Freeman. We had to gas up Dan's half-wrecked Tacoma and pick up Sophie at her apartment in the drizzle. And then, as if nothing was more natural than to be heading down Turnagain Arm at 1:00 AM in the driving rain with a robin's-egg blue sky shivering above, we were on the road.
On the drive, we were pulled over twice for our wrecked and non-functional driver's side headlight. Both times we were let go. The second incident happened near Seward, and it turned out that Dan had wrestled kids in high school whom the trooper had coached in Fairbanks. This state is huge, people are spread like flooded-out ants, and somehow most of the population has wrestled Dan Simmons.
We rode into Seward at roughly 2:30 AM. After some driving, circling, and deliberating, we loaded ourselves down with gear, shoved the guitars and snowboards into the cab of the truck, and traipsed off into the forest at the foot of Caine's Head. The weather might have been described as "cartoonish serial killer weather". Convinced we would find a soft, flat, sheltered spot, we trudged on. After a time we passed an eerie redneck junkyard full of siding and drums of...something...punctuated with a derelict brick-red GMC pickup with a windshield boarded in drywall. Up a rocky path and suddenly Dan froze. The outline of something low and black was moving around up in the hollow about 100 yards ahead. If you haven't been spooked by a wild animal before, it's difficult to describe how it feels to combine the mental experience of running for your life with the physical action of taking measured, calm steps and trying not to look over your shoulder. We got out of the woods.
More driving. Eventually we set up camp on a low-lying stretch of turf around the bend from some other tents. We used devil's club's broad leaves to waterproof our tent's roof and tucked into apple-cinnamon granola, bagels, and Corona. The mountains of Seward reached high into the air - in Denali the peaks hem you in and stare down in consideration, while in Seward they seem to stretch back and away like solid-state fireworks in a palette of gray and blue. The rain came down light but steady and the ocean sounds made their way up the hill to our tent. I may have forgotten to mention that we had set up camp on the well-manicured lawn of Seward High School.
Saturday morning we woke up early and packed the truck, heading into town in search of coffee. We saw a few people roaming the main drag with Kaladi Brothers cups and began to hunt for their source. The city seemed much less than buzzing with festivity - it seemed a little deserted, but that would change eventually. The beginning of the coffee trail was Nature's Nectars, where you can buy coffee and juice from Cedar Bourgeoise. As of yesterday, Cedar has won the women's Mount Marathon Race seven years in a row - she's a wiry-strong, middle-aged woman and local celebrity. She makes a good cup of coffee. I'll get to the race in a bit.
After waking up a bit, we found the owners of the campsite we were headed to - and the man we had come to see, Logan DeMarcus. Logan is as solid a man as I've met in this life - a thoughtful, kind guy originally from Barrow, Alaska who went to Chugiak High School with my housemates Erik and Stephen. Logan is a Marine, an expert on explosives who ships out to Afghanistan next week. He's been at Mojave and Camp Lejeune and is back in Eagle River to see family and friends before leaving town. At that particular moment, however, Logan needed a haircut. On 4th of July weekend in Seward, Alaska, even a Marine has a hard time finding a haircut - we visited four separate places before finding a barber who had an opening. Apparently July 3rd is a big day for haircuts. A couple hours later found me sitting on a cooler looking up at the mountains while Sophie slept in the tent and Dan and Logan walked on the beach up the road. In the interim, we had visited friends collecting signatures to outlaw coal mining in salmon streams and set up shop busking next to their stand. We made 9 dollars before being evicted by a representative of the Chamber of Commerce, though our effect on the future of coal mining in Alaska is unmeasurable.
As Sophie slept in the tent, I sat and talked to a man named Trevor - another genuinely good guy. Apparently, while I was away pissing, he defended my honor to an insufferable peroxide bitch who wondered why he was talking to someone wearing such tight pants. Good man. After machinations and figurings-out, Sophie, Dan, Logan and I joined Logan's family at Miller's Landing for what Alaskan's call a spaghetti "feed" - a group meal for a big gathering. It took a while to figure that word out - "spaghetti feed" - but it applies to the serving of any food in the manner of, say, a Girl Scout pancake breakfast. That's a pancake feed. This was a spaghetti feed. This family was amazing. Ms. Hofbauer, Logan's mother, is incredibly kind and warm-hearted, and the whole scene on that rocky beach was full of good energy and relatives who welcomed us into the fold, little kids and wet dogs running around our ankles. I made a new friend - his name is Deegan and he's 2 years old.
We rounded the nearest cabin to watch men gutting fish - small halibut, rockfish, and lingcod - and before I could fully register the series of events, Dan and I were shirtless and teamed up in a salmon-throwing contest. We lost in short order. This is just the kind of thing that happens on July 3rd in Seward, Alaska. Logan and a younger cousin ended up winning, mugging for photographs with slippery silver fish pressed to their lips.
We walked down the misty beach a ways, where ice fields and glaciers were visible between deep, asphalt-colored peaks. On the way back, a boy of about 10 years was beating a fish with a hammer-shaped log. He just kept slamming down the fat end of the branch as fish guts and pink flesh and bony bits and stones flew up around his feet. Dan asked if the fish was dead yet, to which the boy grinned "Sure enough!" I asked him if he had killed it himself. "Nope!" Lars von Trier is brought on as a guest director for Bassmasters, and the entire episode is a still camera, using natural light, holding a medium shot of a young boy on a bleak beach beating a fish over and over again. There is no music.
Return to the campsite. Beer and bonfires. A brief altercation with a drunk idiot named Mario Gomez (he made sure we knew that his was his name) that amounted to not much. Most of our fellow campers were mentally-stunted hockey players and their bleach-blonde girlfriends, but we muddled through. Eventually, after a fireworks display on the beach that seemed to happen with equal apathy on at least 5 sides, illuminating the maximum security prison that sits far in the water of Seward's shore, we slept.
I don't have enough juice in me and the ugly hippie sitting across from me in the coffee shop won't stop swaying from side to side long enough for me to properly narrate the next day. More on July 4th, the Mount Marathon Race, ska bands in the woods, and scramble eggs later. Be well.
On a Friday afternoon, July 2nd, 2010, I ducked out of my empty office early and headed home for a nap. My work is gratifying but the amount of screen-staring it requires can be exhausting. When I woke up, Dan Simmons was in my room. We had work to do.
We were leaving that night, with Sophie, for Seward, Alaska - a small port and fishing town that more than quadruples its population in the weekend leading up to Independence Day. We had to get groceries - bread, cheese, roast beef, granola, peaches, apples, and beer. We had to gather up our not-ready-for-prime time camping gear. Somewhere in there, though we didn't HAVE to, we had beers, halibut tacos, and John Prine singalongs with our neighbors and a North Slope civil engineer out of Vicksburg, Louisiana named Freeman. We had to gas up Dan's half-wrecked Tacoma and pick up Sophie at her apartment in the drizzle. And then, as if nothing was more natural than to be heading down Turnagain Arm at 1:00 AM in the driving rain with a robin's-egg blue sky shivering above, we were on the road.
On the drive, we were pulled over twice for our wrecked and non-functional driver's side headlight. Both times we were let go. The second incident happened near Seward, and it turned out that Dan had wrestled kids in high school whom the trooper had coached in Fairbanks. This state is huge, people are spread like flooded-out ants, and somehow most of the population has wrestled Dan Simmons.
We rode into Seward at roughly 2:30 AM. After some driving, circling, and deliberating, we loaded ourselves down with gear, shoved the guitars and snowboards into the cab of the truck, and traipsed off into the forest at the foot of Caine's Head. The weather might have been described as "cartoonish serial killer weather". Convinced we would find a soft, flat, sheltered spot, we trudged on. After a time we passed an eerie redneck junkyard full of siding and drums of...something...punctuated with a derelict brick-red GMC pickup with a windshield boarded in drywall. Up a rocky path and suddenly Dan froze. The outline of something low and black was moving around up in the hollow about 100 yards ahead. If you haven't been spooked by a wild animal before, it's difficult to describe how it feels to combine the mental experience of running for your life with the physical action of taking measured, calm steps and trying not to look over your shoulder. We got out of the woods.
More driving. Eventually we set up camp on a low-lying stretch of turf around the bend from some other tents. We used devil's club's broad leaves to waterproof our tent's roof and tucked into apple-cinnamon granola, bagels, and Corona. The mountains of Seward reached high into the air - in Denali the peaks hem you in and stare down in consideration, while in Seward they seem to stretch back and away like solid-state fireworks in a palette of gray and blue. The rain came down light but steady and the ocean sounds made their way up the hill to our tent. I may have forgotten to mention that we had set up camp on the well-manicured lawn of Seward High School.
Saturday morning we woke up early and packed the truck, heading into town in search of coffee. We saw a few people roaming the main drag with Kaladi Brothers cups and began to hunt for their source. The city seemed much less than buzzing with festivity - it seemed a little deserted, but that would change eventually. The beginning of the coffee trail was Nature's Nectars, where you can buy coffee and juice from Cedar Bourgeoise. As of yesterday, Cedar has won the women's Mount Marathon Race seven years in a row - she's a wiry-strong, middle-aged woman and local celebrity. She makes a good cup of coffee. I'll get to the race in a bit.
After waking up a bit, we found the owners of the campsite we were headed to - and the man we had come to see, Logan DeMarcus. Logan is as solid a man as I've met in this life - a thoughtful, kind guy originally from Barrow, Alaska who went to Chugiak High School with my housemates Erik and Stephen. Logan is a Marine, an expert on explosives who ships out to Afghanistan next week. He's been at Mojave and Camp Lejeune and is back in Eagle River to see family and friends before leaving town. At that particular moment, however, Logan needed a haircut. On 4th of July weekend in Seward, Alaska, even a Marine has a hard time finding a haircut - we visited four separate places before finding a barber who had an opening. Apparently July 3rd is a big day for haircuts. A couple hours later found me sitting on a cooler looking up at the mountains while Sophie slept in the tent and Dan and Logan walked on the beach up the road. In the interim, we had visited friends collecting signatures to outlaw coal mining in salmon streams and set up shop busking next to their stand. We made 9 dollars before being evicted by a representative of the Chamber of Commerce, though our effect on the future of coal mining in Alaska is unmeasurable.
As Sophie slept in the tent, I sat and talked to a man named Trevor - another genuinely good guy. Apparently, while I was away pissing, he defended my honor to an insufferable peroxide bitch who wondered why he was talking to someone wearing such tight pants. Good man. After machinations and figurings-out, Sophie, Dan, Logan and I joined Logan's family at Miller's Landing for what Alaskan's call a spaghetti "feed" - a group meal for a big gathering. It took a while to figure that word out - "spaghetti feed" - but it applies to the serving of any food in the manner of, say, a Girl Scout pancake breakfast. That's a pancake feed. This was a spaghetti feed. This family was amazing. Ms. Hofbauer, Logan's mother, is incredibly kind and warm-hearted, and the whole scene on that rocky beach was full of good energy and relatives who welcomed us into the fold, little kids and wet dogs running around our ankles. I made a new friend - his name is Deegan and he's 2 years old.
We rounded the nearest cabin to watch men gutting fish - small halibut, rockfish, and lingcod - and before I could fully register the series of events, Dan and I were shirtless and teamed up in a salmon-throwing contest. We lost in short order. This is just the kind of thing that happens on July 3rd in Seward, Alaska. Logan and a younger cousin ended up winning, mugging for photographs with slippery silver fish pressed to their lips.
We walked down the misty beach a ways, where ice fields and glaciers were visible between deep, asphalt-colored peaks. On the way back, a boy of about 10 years was beating a fish with a hammer-shaped log. He just kept slamming down the fat end of the branch as fish guts and pink flesh and bony bits and stones flew up around his feet. Dan asked if the fish was dead yet, to which the boy grinned "Sure enough!" I asked him if he had killed it himself. "Nope!" Lars von Trier is brought on as a guest director for Bassmasters, and the entire episode is a still camera, using natural light, holding a medium shot of a young boy on a bleak beach beating a fish over and over again. There is no music.
Return to the campsite. Beer and bonfires. A brief altercation with a drunk idiot named Mario Gomez (he made sure we knew that his was his name) that amounted to not much. Most of our fellow campers were mentally-stunted hockey players and their bleach-blonde girlfriends, but we muddled through. Eventually, after a fireworks display on the beach that seemed to happen with equal apathy on at least 5 sides, illuminating the maximum security prison that sits far in the water of Seward's shore, we slept.
I don't have enough juice in me and the ugly hippie sitting across from me in the coffee shop won't stop swaying from side to side long enough for me to properly narrate the next day. More on July 4th, the Mount Marathon Race, ska bands in the woods, and scramble eggs later. Be well.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
A Buildup of Days
Tuesday Night, June 29th, 2010. A decent dinner in my belly, a cigarette and a glass of cheap bourbon on ice. "Ambulance Blues" playing in the living room. About time this space was brought up to date on some happenings.
Sunday, June 20th. We accidentally went to Whittier, Alaska.
I went to church. A bike ride was planned. Plans were scuttled in favor of hiking. Dan, Julia, Sophie, Amy and I headed south along Turnagain Arm and promptly missed the trailhead. The weather was nice, so we kept on driving. Eventually, 12 dollars down and a 10 minute drive through the center of a mountain behind us, we were in Whittier. Whittier is a tiny town presided over by a massive abandoned apartment complex. Driving up past the building, with its empty breezeways and overgrown cornices, you reach the trailhead leading to Shotgun Cove. Or you reach a shallow stream with a sign next to it that claims the stream is a trailhead. This is how it is during the early summer, when snows are melting.
A moderate walk through rocks blanketed with shallow, clear running water. You come to a river with a submerged plank bridge. At this point, we turned right and bushwacked up a steep incline along the rim of a stream that led to a hidden waterfall. The prickly, fleshy plant called devil's club snapped at our heels. Trying for higher and wider views of the bay, we vaulted over downed trees swaddled in wet moss and tiny pink flower-like fungi on cream-colored stalks. A few spills and legs full of prickles and we returned to the inundated way. As Dan said, "Sometimes you just have to man it", and so we let our feet get drenched in stream rather than risk falling in part and parcel. Realizing a way down to the cove to the left, we stomped and careened through marshy, muddy fields, eventually emerging on the rocky shore of a small, protected inlet. The water was so cold and clear that the waving kelp played Technicolor.
On the shores of these coves, regularly subsumed by tides, all the rocks are flat and chipped, and they lie in tightly bunched whorls perpendicular to the surface of the earth. The tide moves them and rearranges their relations, so that at low tide the beach is a contour map of the water's path. Dan and I set about collecting dry-enough wood for a fire. The girls swam in the frigid water. They emerged to take over our meager efforts at fire and we swam - awake in the sun - and dove off sharp rocks into forests of seaweed. The water was so salty that your face felt cured when you came up for air. The fire eventually behaved. We made s'mores and laughed in the shadow of white-capped, somnolent peaks and the swishing reflection of the wide open bay. For souvenirs, I found a broken moose's rib and shoved it into my pack. Trudging back through wet shoes and rocks that seemed more jagged when mystery didn't lie at the trails end, sunshowers dappled our way. A car ride, a gas station, a bag of Bugles, and a shower - day's end.
Friday, June 25th, Afternoon. My dad and I, after some confusion, head up Bird Ridge. Various down-bound hikers warn us of the oncoming toil. Though the hike is steep, every turn develops in new colors of the alpine palette: deep purples, milk whites, butter yellows, Aegean blues and a spectrum of greens as wide as any outstretched arms. The hike, while arduous, is not much to speak about. But eventually, after inching out into a vegetated bowl near the summit, eating apples and cereal in the bright, wet sun, we had a strange opportunity - we watched the tide come into Turnagain Arm. At first it is hard to understand, because the water is nearly the same color as the muddy bottom and so you think the inlet is already full. But then a creeping wall of water begins to move in. In the span of five minutes, it has eaten its way across everything you can see. Where there was earth, there is now water. The salt water glides to meet glacial streams flowing out at Girdwood and McHugh Creek. Like the clouds at Mt. Eklutna, the water's travel evoked time-lapse footage. But it was in real time, and we were transfixed.
On the way down, we saw a grouse leap into a tree and be joined by one, two, three, four, five! young on the branches surrounding her. From a short distance she was nearly leopard-spotted. Her children fluttered spastically, drying their wings from the recent drizzle. She was imperious as ever.
Flash Cut to: Saturday, June 26th. I'm in a car eating salmon jerky as a small roadhouse that takes 20 minutes to sell a bottle of Jameson and reeks of home sweet home (in the abstract: wood and frying bacon and medium-attractive women and men in flannel halibut-stalker hats and the World Cup on TV) disappears into the distance called "Talkeetna". I'm on State Highway 3. My dad is driving.
On either side of us, the spruce and birch rose actively to meet the low-hanging rainclouds. The weather was such that the trees did not have to stretch much. The entire highway gave one the feeling of being very, very alone. Not because there was no one else driving, but because there was no visible landscape other than a black-and-yellow rode and a stern line of waltzing foliage. I couldn't get "Angel from Montgomery" out of my head. As we neared the park, some of the clouds parted to reveal the risings and peaks of the surrounding mountains, glinting the pure sunlight that hits high things before it gets diluted for human use. The drive was long, but beyond all odds we arrived at the Crow's Nest Lodge in the early afternoon. Gaggles of whitewater rafters were piling into the Nenana River to put themselves at the shallow canyon's mercy. My dad bought some boots, I learned how to use bear-spray, and we headed out for Mount Healy. We were in Denali National Park.
The bottom of the mountain is easy and steep. A fine trail has been cut by the National Park Service, and sun and light shower chaperoned us nearly to the summit. Then we came to a clearing. To our left was the vast expanse of the Alaska Range, and to our right was a jagged moraine of rocks leading up to the craggy peak. After a long stare-down with a golden-furred marmot, we headed up the rocks. Then the rain. We struggled like marooned mountaineers across the face to find the path again, and by the time we reached the ridge it was hailing. A speeding gout of icy rain broke the skin on my neck - though I didn't notice until later. The entire valley was invisible beneath the dense clouds. I have never been in a wilder place. The weather cleared as we descended. Dinner and a soak in the lodge's hot tub. Sleep.
The next day was not exciting enough to warrant a date heading. Plans of a helicopter ride to the glacier were stuffed by the low-hanging, smokey green fog, so we drove into the park. At one point, behind Savage Cabin, I sat 3 feet away from a feeding rabbit and neither of us dared to move. On the pinnacle of Savage Rock, which overlooks Savage River, a wide vista of scrubby tundra and ghostly mist was rewarding. We drove home. We never actually saw Denali for the haze of weather patterns, but driving south along the highway I could feel my right side pressed imperceptibly by the presence of something old and immense. The fact of the highest peak in North America is simply that great - it exerts its own gravity. Though all you see are dark trees and opaque gray machinations, the feeling portions of your body shiver with the specter of the huge rock.
Monday, June 28th. Sophie, Sam Sterling, Masha, Nora and I saw a screening of "Welcome" at the Bear's Tooth. The film is devastating and simple, about a Kurdish boy determined to swim the Channel from Calais to Dover to be with his girlfriend. We left downcast and dour, and the only solution was beer and snacks and ride down the coast.
By the time we got to the secluded beach south of Woronzof Point, the sun was bright and falling in the Western sky. We drank our beers. We swatted mosquitoes. We ate pretzels and grapes. We skipped stones and spoke about the World Stone-Skipping Championships in Seward. By now we had dwindled to four: myself, Sophie, Nora, and Sam. The sun played brilliantly on the water and the tide edged subtly towards us. The buzzing of insects and plant growth hummed in the woods behind us. There wasn't another soul in sight. On the trail, we had seen a massive porcupine waddling aimlessly down the asphalt thru-way. He didn't care at all. Eventually, as if the water had been tugging at our dress-hems the entire time, we conceded and swam. The water was cold and black and penetrated to the sleeping centers of the body. Wide awake, sandy, on fire with the intersection of slate-gray Cook Inlet sunlight and moss-green forest shadow, we passed grazing moose and returned home. Today, I woke up rejuvenated and new.
I can still feel Denali's imminent presence, as if at any moment I will turn around and the city will be gone, and it will be me and the mountain, alone on a blasted plain, silent. It will hail, and I will climb. The world will get wilder still.
Sunday, June 20th. We accidentally went to Whittier, Alaska.
I went to church. A bike ride was planned. Plans were scuttled in favor of hiking. Dan, Julia, Sophie, Amy and I headed south along Turnagain Arm and promptly missed the trailhead. The weather was nice, so we kept on driving. Eventually, 12 dollars down and a 10 minute drive through the center of a mountain behind us, we were in Whittier. Whittier is a tiny town presided over by a massive abandoned apartment complex. Driving up past the building, with its empty breezeways and overgrown cornices, you reach the trailhead leading to Shotgun Cove. Or you reach a shallow stream with a sign next to it that claims the stream is a trailhead. This is how it is during the early summer, when snows are melting.
A moderate walk through rocks blanketed with shallow, clear running water. You come to a river with a submerged plank bridge. At this point, we turned right and bushwacked up a steep incline along the rim of a stream that led to a hidden waterfall. The prickly, fleshy plant called devil's club snapped at our heels. Trying for higher and wider views of the bay, we vaulted over downed trees swaddled in wet moss and tiny pink flower-like fungi on cream-colored stalks. A few spills and legs full of prickles and we returned to the inundated way. As Dan said, "Sometimes you just have to man it", and so we let our feet get drenched in stream rather than risk falling in part and parcel. Realizing a way down to the cove to the left, we stomped and careened through marshy, muddy fields, eventually emerging on the rocky shore of a small, protected inlet. The water was so cold and clear that the waving kelp played Technicolor.
On the shores of these coves, regularly subsumed by tides, all the rocks are flat and chipped, and they lie in tightly bunched whorls perpendicular to the surface of the earth. The tide moves them and rearranges their relations, so that at low tide the beach is a contour map of the water's path. Dan and I set about collecting dry-enough wood for a fire. The girls swam in the frigid water. They emerged to take over our meager efforts at fire and we swam - awake in the sun - and dove off sharp rocks into forests of seaweed. The water was so salty that your face felt cured when you came up for air. The fire eventually behaved. We made s'mores and laughed in the shadow of white-capped, somnolent peaks and the swishing reflection of the wide open bay. For souvenirs, I found a broken moose's rib and shoved it into my pack. Trudging back through wet shoes and rocks that seemed more jagged when mystery didn't lie at the trails end, sunshowers dappled our way. A car ride, a gas station, a bag of Bugles, and a shower - day's end.
Friday, June 25th, Afternoon. My dad and I, after some confusion, head up Bird Ridge. Various down-bound hikers warn us of the oncoming toil. Though the hike is steep, every turn develops in new colors of the alpine palette: deep purples, milk whites, butter yellows, Aegean blues and a spectrum of greens as wide as any outstretched arms. The hike, while arduous, is not much to speak about. But eventually, after inching out into a vegetated bowl near the summit, eating apples and cereal in the bright, wet sun, we had a strange opportunity - we watched the tide come into Turnagain Arm. At first it is hard to understand, because the water is nearly the same color as the muddy bottom and so you think the inlet is already full. But then a creeping wall of water begins to move in. In the span of five minutes, it has eaten its way across everything you can see. Where there was earth, there is now water. The salt water glides to meet glacial streams flowing out at Girdwood and McHugh Creek. Like the clouds at Mt. Eklutna, the water's travel evoked time-lapse footage. But it was in real time, and we were transfixed.
On the way down, we saw a grouse leap into a tree and be joined by one, two, three, four, five! young on the branches surrounding her. From a short distance she was nearly leopard-spotted. Her children fluttered spastically, drying their wings from the recent drizzle. She was imperious as ever.
Flash Cut to: Saturday, June 26th. I'm in a car eating salmon jerky as a small roadhouse that takes 20 minutes to sell a bottle of Jameson and reeks of home sweet home (in the abstract: wood and frying bacon and medium-attractive women and men in flannel halibut-stalker hats and the World Cup on TV) disappears into the distance called "Talkeetna". I'm on State Highway 3. My dad is driving.
On either side of us, the spruce and birch rose actively to meet the low-hanging rainclouds. The weather was such that the trees did not have to stretch much. The entire highway gave one the feeling of being very, very alone. Not because there was no one else driving, but because there was no visible landscape other than a black-and-yellow rode and a stern line of waltzing foliage. I couldn't get "Angel from Montgomery" out of my head. As we neared the park, some of the clouds parted to reveal the risings and peaks of the surrounding mountains, glinting the pure sunlight that hits high things before it gets diluted for human use. The drive was long, but beyond all odds we arrived at the Crow's Nest Lodge in the early afternoon. Gaggles of whitewater rafters were piling into the Nenana River to put themselves at the shallow canyon's mercy. My dad bought some boots, I learned how to use bear-spray, and we headed out for Mount Healy. We were in Denali National Park.
The bottom of the mountain is easy and steep. A fine trail has been cut by the National Park Service, and sun and light shower chaperoned us nearly to the summit. Then we came to a clearing. To our left was the vast expanse of the Alaska Range, and to our right was a jagged moraine of rocks leading up to the craggy peak. After a long stare-down with a golden-furred marmot, we headed up the rocks. Then the rain. We struggled like marooned mountaineers across the face to find the path again, and by the time we reached the ridge it was hailing. A speeding gout of icy rain broke the skin on my neck - though I didn't notice until later. The entire valley was invisible beneath the dense clouds. I have never been in a wilder place. The weather cleared as we descended. Dinner and a soak in the lodge's hot tub. Sleep.
The next day was not exciting enough to warrant a date heading. Plans of a helicopter ride to the glacier were stuffed by the low-hanging, smokey green fog, so we drove into the park. At one point, behind Savage Cabin, I sat 3 feet away from a feeding rabbit and neither of us dared to move. On the pinnacle of Savage Rock, which overlooks Savage River, a wide vista of scrubby tundra and ghostly mist was rewarding. We drove home. We never actually saw Denali for the haze of weather patterns, but driving south along the highway I could feel my right side pressed imperceptibly by the presence of something old and immense. The fact of the highest peak in North America is simply that great - it exerts its own gravity. Though all you see are dark trees and opaque gray machinations, the feeling portions of your body shiver with the specter of the huge rock.
Monday, June 28th. Sophie, Sam Sterling, Masha, Nora and I saw a screening of "Welcome" at the Bear's Tooth. The film is devastating and simple, about a Kurdish boy determined to swim the Channel from Calais to Dover to be with his girlfriend. We left downcast and dour, and the only solution was beer and snacks and ride down the coast.
By the time we got to the secluded beach south of Woronzof Point, the sun was bright and falling in the Western sky. We drank our beers. We swatted mosquitoes. We ate pretzels and grapes. We skipped stones and spoke about the World Stone-Skipping Championships in Seward. By now we had dwindled to four: myself, Sophie, Nora, and Sam. The sun played brilliantly on the water and the tide edged subtly towards us. The buzzing of insects and plant growth hummed in the woods behind us. There wasn't another soul in sight. On the trail, we had seen a massive porcupine waddling aimlessly down the asphalt thru-way. He didn't care at all. Eventually, as if the water had been tugging at our dress-hems the entire time, we conceded and swam. The water was cold and black and penetrated to the sleeping centers of the body. Wide awake, sandy, on fire with the intersection of slate-gray Cook Inlet sunlight and moss-green forest shadow, we passed grazing moose and returned home. Today, I woke up rejuvenated and new.
I can still feel Denali's imminent presence, as if at any moment I will turn around and the city will be gone, and it will be me and the mountain, alone on a blasted plain, silent. It will hail, and I will climb. The world will get wilder still.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
A Moment
Suddenly, the blinds had to be opened.
The sky, with dark green spruce-shaped shadows cut out of it, had a foam-tipped wave of peach-colored light washing down it like paint drying. All greens were gold. The moose rib that I found at Shotgun Cove, sitting on the window sill, was alive with pink and gray light tracing its gashes. Headlights shot with summer slowness up the back street. The edge of the world was on fire. The smoke smelled like lilacs and salt.
The sky, with dark green spruce-shaped shadows cut out of it, had a foam-tipped wave of peach-colored light washing down it like paint drying. All greens were gold. The moose rib that I found at Shotgun Cove, sitting on the window sill, was alive with pink and gray light tracing its gashes. Headlights shot with summer slowness up the back street. The edge of the world was on fire. The smoke smelled like lilacs and salt.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Notes
First: A TV show that I've been watching in an attempt to fall asleep has called up an extremely persistent but vague memory. Somewhere, there is a small, circular plaza near a split-level, small shopping center. It is in a part of the world where early morning in the better parts of the year is clear and crisp, with a soft swirl of early-morning people carrying bread and children in black leather shoes circulating past. There is a bench, and behind it, out of focus, some tall, thin evergreens. At some point in my life I was up before everyone else I knew in wherever I was and I was slumped over on that bench, cold, probably thinking that I was being romantic and thrown. I most likely ate bread and read the newspaper. Possibilities include: the town in central California which houses the John Steinbeck Museum; Ovalle or San Pedro de Atacama, or the town where everything is named after Gabriela Mistral, in the north of Chile; an unidentified part of Rome; or Cambridge, England. I have misplaced this location. If anyone knows where it's gotten to, please let me know.
Second: Personally, the most frightening valence of anarchy is sexual. It is not that a lack of order leaves one starving, or homeless. It is that a lack of order leaves one naked, vulnerable, and in a world which gains nothing from listening to what you have to say. This is just something I've thought about.
Third: I can't sleep. Outside, it is hard to tell which is green and which is blue, the gaunt shadows of trees or the pallid marble sky. Maybe the first three weeks here were a lie - maybe I was just so exhausted from getting settled that his midnight sun business didn't get to me. Well it's getting to me now. I'm tired. But I keep looking outside and there are cars turning corners down wet streets in my neighborhood that everyone keeps insisting is dangerous. Two people walked single file up the road behind my house. Someone across the way turned on their bathroom light. The chinchilla that lives outside my door - its name is Fargo, it belongs to my housemate Stephen - has either been given too many things to throw around and too much space to throw them in or is simply too large to be confined to noise-making activities like balls and pellets and rattles and little plastic windows. Fargo is really very large. Someone should teach him to read.
Fourth: I don't know what any of you were expecting this blog to be about. As evidenced by my misplaced windy square, I don't take pictures and I don't see why I should, until that is somewhere pretty vacates my mind. I am having an interesting time at work but nothing has materialized that seems worth writing about, and everything I'm doing is so new that I have nothing cogent to say about it. I enjoy writing, but I hate personal writing, so I suppose what you have done by requesting a blog is created a diary. I would hate to write a diary because it would only be for me, but since I am dimly aware that someone is reading this, it feels slightly legitimate. Point is, all I can do in this space is give you my subjective view of what happens when you are 20 years old and someone phones you and says "Would you like to move to Alaska for the summer?" What happens is the sky turns green, the chinchilla won't be quiet, and foreign places keep disappearing. I wish something more concrete would materialize for me to hand back and say "Look. I've found it. Brass it like a baby's shoe and keep it for generations to come." Maybe someday down the line. This is the current dispensation.
Fifth: Something about coming back from Homer has thrown me off course. I don't know what it is yet. Once I isolate it, I will let you know. The closest I can get: it no longer feels like the sun is always out. It feels like it did that day on the coastal trail with Sophie, but all the time. It feels like the sun is about to go down all the time, and I've forgotten something.
Second: Personally, the most frightening valence of anarchy is sexual. It is not that a lack of order leaves one starving, or homeless. It is that a lack of order leaves one naked, vulnerable, and in a world which gains nothing from listening to what you have to say. This is just something I've thought about.
Third: I can't sleep. Outside, it is hard to tell which is green and which is blue, the gaunt shadows of trees or the pallid marble sky. Maybe the first three weeks here were a lie - maybe I was just so exhausted from getting settled that his midnight sun business didn't get to me. Well it's getting to me now. I'm tired. But I keep looking outside and there are cars turning corners down wet streets in my neighborhood that everyone keeps insisting is dangerous. Two people walked single file up the road behind my house. Someone across the way turned on their bathroom light. The chinchilla that lives outside my door - its name is Fargo, it belongs to my housemate Stephen - has either been given too many things to throw around and too much space to throw them in or is simply too large to be confined to noise-making activities like balls and pellets and rattles and little plastic windows. Fargo is really very large. Someone should teach him to read.
Fourth: I don't know what any of you were expecting this blog to be about. As evidenced by my misplaced windy square, I don't take pictures and I don't see why I should, until that is somewhere pretty vacates my mind. I am having an interesting time at work but nothing has materialized that seems worth writing about, and everything I'm doing is so new that I have nothing cogent to say about it. I enjoy writing, but I hate personal writing, so I suppose what you have done by requesting a blog is created a diary. I would hate to write a diary because it would only be for me, but since I am dimly aware that someone is reading this, it feels slightly legitimate. Point is, all I can do in this space is give you my subjective view of what happens when you are 20 years old and someone phones you and says "Would you like to move to Alaska for the summer?" What happens is the sky turns green, the chinchilla won't be quiet, and foreign places keep disappearing. I wish something more concrete would materialize for me to hand back and say "Look. I've found it. Brass it like a baby's shoe and keep it for generations to come." Maybe someday down the line. This is the current dispensation.
Fifth: Something about coming back from Homer has thrown me off course. I don't know what it is yet. Once I isolate it, I will let you know. The closest I can get: it no longer feels like the sun is always out. It feels like it did that day on the coastal trail with Sophie, but all the time. It feels like the sun is about to go down all the time, and I've forgotten something.
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