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.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
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.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Categories
Good:
Early summer evenings in Homer, Alaska buzzing with insect life, surrounded by eastern cottonwoods shimmering in the wind and swaying spruce. The sun sets reluctantly like a rambunctious child unable to deny its own fatigue. As it descends, the reflection from the (unseen) waters of the bay inch a bright line of salmon-colored frontier up the nearly fictional mountains. Unlike every other kind of light in summertime Alaska, this does not last long.
Joni Mitchell's Blue; Motorhead's Bastards; The New Pornographers ' Together.
Making connections with permaculturalists, bicycle commuters, and urban gardeners in Anchorage.
Difficult:
Explaining less-than-strict vegetarianism and pragmatic Christianity.
The constant, indecisive rain outside the office right now. Not really a storm. Not a drizzle. Just an obstacle.
Magic:
Sea-glass.
Advantageous:
Access to the gym in the basement of my office building.
Daunting:
Registering voters at the upcoming Business of Clean Energy Fair.
In progress:
The locating and purchasing of affordable hiking boots.
Depressing:
The feeling that, most places you go, the main activity is spending money.
Simple:
Red beans, rice, and pan-fried okra.
Ever-present:
The feeling that I don't know why I'm in Alaska yet.
Reassuring:
The feeling that I will eventually.
Helping out:
Annie Dillard, Hart Crane, and the overlooks in Earthquake Park.
Name of my next 20-something indie love story / John Krasinski vehicle:
Earthquake Park.
Early summer evenings in Homer, Alaska buzzing with insect life, surrounded by eastern cottonwoods shimmering in the wind and swaying spruce. The sun sets reluctantly like a rambunctious child unable to deny its own fatigue. As it descends, the reflection from the (unseen) waters of the bay inch a bright line of salmon-colored frontier up the nearly fictional mountains. Unlike every other kind of light in summertime Alaska, this does not last long.
Joni Mitchell's Blue; Motorhead's Bastards; The New Pornographers ' Together.
Making connections with permaculturalists, bicycle commuters, and urban gardeners in Anchorage.
Difficult:
Explaining less-than-strict vegetarianism and pragmatic Christianity.
The constant, indecisive rain outside the office right now. Not really a storm. Not a drizzle. Just an obstacle.
Magic:
Sea-glass.
Advantageous:
Access to the gym in the basement of my office building.
Daunting:
Registering voters at the upcoming Business of Clean Energy Fair.
In progress:
The locating and purchasing of affordable hiking boots.
Depressing:
The feeling that, most places you go, the main activity is spending money.
Simple:
Red beans, rice, and pan-fried okra.
Ever-present:
The feeling that I don't know why I'm in Alaska yet.
Reassuring:
The feeling that I will eventually.
Helping out:
Annie Dillard, Hart Crane, and the overlooks in Earthquake Park.
Name of my next 20-something indie love story / John Krasinski vehicle:
Earthquake Park.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Rode A Bike Today
First of all: fresh salmon and shrimp that my housemate Erik Jordt brought back from Craig, Alaska. Salmon grilled with a teriyaki-ish glaze, shrimp boiled plain and dipped in garlic butter. Hey now.
Second of all: I attended a vigil for World Oceans Day yesterday, at which I met a very decent-seeming man named Jason Weir who is involved in the permaculture community here. As it turns out, his wife is Carly Weir, who works at Alaska Center for the Environment, and who I had to call today to reschedule my booth-share time at the Spenard Farmer's Market. It is a small community here, and all the pretty girls date guys who work at REI. This isn't my point. My point is that, on the Mudflats blog today, the vigil was reported, and they recounted how we read quotes from stories of the Deepwater Horizon spill. I had read the story of an oyster boat captain. The organizer had noticed my small bit of Southern inflection and mentioned it, and I told her that my family lived in Louisiana, some in the shrimp and oyster business. In the Mudflats story, however, I was identified as a Louisiana native and former oysterman. Just another one of those tight-pants-and-cardigan-wearing former oystermen of Barataria. It was a nice event.
Third of all: Tomorrow, Sophie and I will join Julia Michaels and Beth Oates of the Sierra Club Coal Project and head down the Kenai Peninsula to Homer. Another intern has a cabin there. Every day, new things.
So.
I rode my Raleigh down the coastal trail again today, to the same lookout above the same beach I mentioned before, with the crackling, flattened stones. I sat down in the crook of a birch to read a couple chapters of Annie Dillard. Halfway through "Intricacy", I noticed two things. One was that the mosquitoes are out in force as of today. The second was that there was a little bit of blood on my right pinkie finger. It was a strip going roughly 2/3 of the way around the end joint, about 1/3" in diameter. I was not bleeding from any visible location.
If I ignore the first realization, the blood was more than likely my own and had seeped out of some abrasion I wasn't seeing. It is always interesting when you find that you've been bleeding from something that didn't hurt enough for you to notice it. As if some remote portion of your body - imagine it personified as a plucky bank clerk - noticed the problem and hastily, furtively, but effectively dealt with it and felt that what HQ doesn't know doesn't hurt HQ. Wheels within wheels.
However, in view of the mosquitoes, and the monumental slowness which is their hallmark here in Anchorage, leaving them easy targets for the hands of the distracted, there is another possibility. What if I, lost in my book, had reached out and smashed a mosquito near the butt end of my fist, a mosquito engorged with blood from someone or something else, and that blood spattered across the end joint of my pinkie finger? That would mean that the mosquito had been elsewhere, eaten elsewhere, and transported the physicalized life-essence of another living thing onto my finger. I like to think that a few minutes earlier, a swimmer with a tolerance for cold water had been floating with their eyes on the clearing sky at Woronzof Point, just north of where I was, and had been momentarily bothered for a few milliliters of blood. And there it was, in my hand. If they had died, and the police had found me sitting there, I wouldn't be able to argue.
This is not a metaphor. I repeat. This is not a metaphor.
Which is not to say that the work I'm involved in doesn't give one a certain sense of red-handedness. We're all killers. It's not okay. But that's not the point.
The point is that one of two things happened, one of two miraculous things. Either my body managed to deal with an open, bleeding wound so effectively that my conscious mind didn't have to be bothered; OR a tiny, long-tongued insect took material out of one living thing and, in death, spewed that material all over another living thing like candy from a pinata. If the first scenario is true, it is a testament to the skill with which the disguise that makes the world's gears seem to move independently is woven. If the second is true, it is a testament to the fact that it is, indeed, a disguise.
Press to play. Press to pause.
Like that, the whole moment of discovery, of realizing these things that I'm only now sussing out into paragraphs, was over. I finished my favorite chapter, the first chapter I'd ever read of Annie Dillard's, called "Fecundity." I stood up and rambled down to the rocky beach. I skipped stones. I came back up as the sun managed to actually fade without perceptibly sinking in the sky. When I put on my headphones for the ride north, "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)" was exactly where I had left it, waiting patiently. As I rumbled up the trail, the buzzing vein of wilderness that clings to existence between the grey worlds of Cook Inlet and midtown Anchorage, a mature bald eagle flew overhead.
Second of all: I attended a vigil for World Oceans Day yesterday, at which I met a very decent-seeming man named Jason Weir who is involved in the permaculture community here. As it turns out, his wife is Carly Weir, who works at Alaska Center for the Environment, and who I had to call today to reschedule my booth-share time at the Spenard Farmer's Market. It is a small community here, and all the pretty girls date guys who work at REI. This isn't my point. My point is that, on the Mudflats blog today, the vigil was reported, and they recounted how we read quotes from stories of the Deepwater Horizon spill. I had read the story of an oyster boat captain. The organizer had noticed my small bit of Southern inflection and mentioned it, and I told her that my family lived in Louisiana, some in the shrimp and oyster business. In the Mudflats story, however, I was identified as a Louisiana native and former oysterman. Just another one of those tight-pants-and-cardigan-wearing former oystermen of Barataria. It was a nice event.
Third of all: Tomorrow, Sophie and I will join Julia Michaels and Beth Oates of the Sierra Club Coal Project and head down the Kenai Peninsula to Homer. Another intern has a cabin there. Every day, new things.
So.
I rode my Raleigh down the coastal trail again today, to the same lookout above the same beach I mentioned before, with the crackling, flattened stones. I sat down in the crook of a birch to read a couple chapters of Annie Dillard. Halfway through "Intricacy", I noticed two things. One was that the mosquitoes are out in force as of today. The second was that there was a little bit of blood on my right pinkie finger. It was a strip going roughly 2/3 of the way around the end joint, about 1/3" in diameter. I was not bleeding from any visible location.
If I ignore the first realization, the blood was more than likely my own and had seeped out of some abrasion I wasn't seeing. It is always interesting when you find that you've been bleeding from something that didn't hurt enough for you to notice it. As if some remote portion of your body - imagine it personified as a plucky bank clerk - noticed the problem and hastily, furtively, but effectively dealt with it and felt that what HQ doesn't know doesn't hurt HQ. Wheels within wheels.
However, in view of the mosquitoes, and the monumental slowness which is their hallmark here in Anchorage, leaving them easy targets for the hands of the distracted, there is another possibility. What if I, lost in my book, had reached out and smashed a mosquito near the butt end of my fist, a mosquito engorged with blood from someone or something else, and that blood spattered across the end joint of my pinkie finger? That would mean that the mosquito had been elsewhere, eaten elsewhere, and transported the physicalized life-essence of another living thing onto my finger. I like to think that a few minutes earlier, a swimmer with a tolerance for cold water had been floating with their eyes on the clearing sky at Woronzof Point, just north of where I was, and had been momentarily bothered for a few milliliters of blood. And there it was, in my hand. If they had died, and the police had found me sitting there, I wouldn't be able to argue.
This is not a metaphor. I repeat. This is not a metaphor.
Which is not to say that the work I'm involved in doesn't give one a certain sense of red-handedness. We're all killers. It's not okay. But that's not the point.
The point is that one of two things happened, one of two miraculous things. Either my body managed to deal with an open, bleeding wound so effectively that my conscious mind didn't have to be bothered; OR a tiny, long-tongued insect took material out of one living thing and, in death, spewed that material all over another living thing like candy from a pinata. If the first scenario is true, it is a testament to the skill with which the disguise that makes the world's gears seem to move independently is woven. If the second is true, it is a testament to the fact that it is, indeed, a disguise.
Press to play. Press to pause.
Like that, the whole moment of discovery, of realizing these things that I'm only now sussing out into paragraphs, was over. I finished my favorite chapter, the first chapter I'd ever read of Annie Dillard's, called "Fecundity." I stood up and rambled down to the rocky beach. I skipped stones. I came back up as the sun managed to actually fade without perceptibly sinking in the sky. When I put on my headphones for the ride north, "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)" was exactly where I had left it, waiting patiently. As I rumbled up the trail, the buzzing vein of wilderness that clings to existence between the grey worlds of Cook Inlet and midtown Anchorage, a mature bald eagle flew overhead.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Some Days
Saturday, June 5th -
8:30 AM. Rough sunlight and wind. Drove my roommate's truck down to Raspberry Road to pick up a 1976 Raleigh Sprite touring bicycle. Took the bike home, tuned it up, and rode the 12 miles to and from Kincaid Park along the Coastal Trail that runs down the western edge of Anchorage. Unstoppable, rustling greenness everywhere. The air smelled green. When light bent sharply around upcoming curves, it came out green and refracted. The overgrown pile of scrap wood by the airstrip was burst of green that rose up on my left, and the valley that followed it was a deep green depression scored by gunmetal-gray water and the shouts of the people who, as is the case in Anchorage, are always playing "disc golf", which they refuse to call "frisbee golf".
As I rounded a corner, three riders came in the other direction at top speeds. One of them mouthed a word to me, his eyes bright: "moose". Because the three had come down the slope so fast, I couldn't tell if the light in his eyes was excitement or fear. Were they escaping a moose? As it turned out, they were not. There was simply a wet, lanky moose about a foot off of the bike path, munching on branches. I dragged my bike up a short slope to watch it, until I realized I was in the middle of a high-stakes disc golf game. I rode past the thing at a distance of about three feet. They're like horses drawn by a drunk person.
On the way back up the coast, I chained my bicycle to a railing and walked down to the rocky, hard-packed beach just south of Woronzof Point. The uppermost line of rocks is made up of stones so flat and smoothed out by wave action that they sound like breaking glass when you walk on them, like a pit full of poker chips. Then there is a belt of gray-khaki sand, and another, broader line of rocks littered with stranded fish about 4" long. The tide was receding, exposing the black, clay-like mud that occasionally devours the feet of unsuspecting tourists on the mud flats and holds them there until they drown. This is a real hazard. To the right, a sign told me not to venture any farther north because high-power cables were there. I didn't see them. But I heard a slight buzzing. As I walked south down the beach, my eyes were on the band of rocks below my feet. At first they look like rocks. They are gray and tan and sometimes white. That does not last long. After a good bit of looking, the beach is red, green, orange, black, blue, purple, and deep, translucent pink. Black rocks have been cracked to show thick veins of what I think is beryl. Orange calcite washes up in wave-mended marbles. The whole sea is gray, the mountains beyond it are gray-to-white, the city is silver in the gray sky to the north. But Cook Inlet keeps spitting out this Crayola shoreline. Along with the glinting, staring dead fish. I rode home.
Keep in mind. It was only noon.
Sophie calls. Hikes. Julia has a car. Okay. I'm in. We have decided to see a glacier, which turns out to be trapped by a well-publicized wildfire at the top of a long but scenic drive overlooking a lake. We head back down the mountain and opt for the trail to Thunderbird Falls. The trail is disappointingly short but lush with plants and insects, and the falls are interesting if not devastating. I saw one interesting mushroom. It had a fleshy, nearly horizontal stalk with a cap of deep chestnut, laced with thick veiny protrusions. It was like someone had just pulled something out of a person and stuck it in the ground, and surrounded it with the tiny white flowers that grow everywhere here. For you to see. Don't touch it.
In need of more adventure, we got a little lost near Peter's Creek in Julia's tiny Civic and eventually landed at the head of the Ptarmigan Trail leading up Mt. Eklutna. (Interesting Note: Chicken, Alaska is a city. It is called that because its first settlers could not spell "ptarmigan".) Just beyond a line of alders, a large circular clearing of gravel lay at the foot of the trail, dotted with fireweed. The path itself was steep but rewarding, with every steep incline topped with a corner which opened onto ever-widening views of Knik Arm. At one point a clearing in the forest opened on the right, punctuated by a birch which had been chopped off at about 16' and stood like a column by the road in the wide display of unobstructed afternoon. It was covered in pure-white oyster mushrooms. It seemed important, as if to say "Still here, fuckers." We nearly reached the summit, but a continuously freshening trail of bear sign made us turn back just below the final ascent. As we turned around, like an omen, the clouds began gathering with time-lapse speed, roiling into themselves and each other and always away to a vanishing point moving closer. Luckily, the ominous display yielded sunshowers on the descent, although in that clearing of fireweed at the bottom, surrounded by the ring of vibrating birch and eastern cottonwood, those sprinting clouds did instill a sort of fear in me. I wish it had rained, I would have felt wild.
Drove home in traffic. Made spaghetti. Ate. Went home. Slept.
Sunday, June 6th-
8:30 AM. Breakfast on eggs and pickled peppers. Headed to Turnagain United Methodist Church. Everyone there is wonderful. A couple exchanges:
I am walking my bicycle up the front walkway. A very old man sees me at the bottom of the walk, turns, and loudly, genuinely says "Shucks!". I continue up the path. By the time I've finished locking my bike at the top, he has caught up. Again he turns to me with wide eyes. "Shucks!" he says. Nothing more. As has been suggested, the bike is now named Shucks. Shucks needs some repair - the bulbous point where the bars meet the stem is stripped and needs a cork-tape shim. It'll work out for old Shucksy.
The church was full of green, this being Pentecost. Everyone was over 40. That being said, everyone seemed to have a son or daughter in the conservation game. Church full of gray-haired greenies. We sang "Tu has venido a la orilla" and heard the pastor talk about those things which belong in the net of the Kingdom of Heaven. We took communion. Afterwards, I spoke with the pastor, who invited me to share my work with the congregation as my campaign moves forward.
I left on my bike. Walking it down the walkway, the old man turned to me. "Can you ride it?" I replied, "Sure, I can!", got on, and rode away. I swear that as I rolled into the street I heard him say "Shucks!".
The rest of the day was a bit hazy. Naps and reading. Finally, at 5:30, Sophie came over for band practice. That night, we played the open mic at Humpy's Tavern in downtown Anchorage to a surprisingly appreciative crowd. They all knew the words. It was nice. We might have to become a fixture there.
Monday, June 7th -
Back at work, things are rolling along. Plans are being made for the Get Out The Vote campaign that I've been charged with. Fighting a battle that hasn't really started yet while loud, booming ones rage elsewhere, in places close to my heart - Palestine and Louisiana - it is hard to remember that the work you're doing from your laptop might help, too. Tomorrow is World Oceans Day, and the 50th day of the BP spill, and there is a demonstration at Lyn Ary Park. We'll see.
Orientation was good. Jonathon Teeters, speaking about organizing in Alaska, got to me the most. This will be a hard road for me, but I believe that community organizing, if not my final goal, may be the best thing for me to be doing right now. It's core values are listening, learning, moving slowly and precisely, and understanding the other, none of which I'm particularly good at. We'll see.
The wildfire is still raging in Eklutna. Maybe one day we'll get out to the glacier. We'll see.
Things are settling down in our lives. We're getting to work. Maybe we'll get something done. We'll see.
8:30 AM. Rough sunlight and wind. Drove my roommate's truck down to Raspberry Road to pick up a 1976 Raleigh Sprite touring bicycle. Took the bike home, tuned it up, and rode the 12 miles to and from Kincaid Park along the Coastal Trail that runs down the western edge of Anchorage. Unstoppable, rustling greenness everywhere. The air smelled green. When light bent sharply around upcoming curves, it came out green and refracted. The overgrown pile of scrap wood by the airstrip was burst of green that rose up on my left, and the valley that followed it was a deep green depression scored by gunmetal-gray water and the shouts of the people who, as is the case in Anchorage, are always playing "disc golf", which they refuse to call "frisbee golf".
As I rounded a corner, three riders came in the other direction at top speeds. One of them mouthed a word to me, his eyes bright: "moose". Because the three had come down the slope so fast, I couldn't tell if the light in his eyes was excitement or fear. Were they escaping a moose? As it turned out, they were not. There was simply a wet, lanky moose about a foot off of the bike path, munching on branches. I dragged my bike up a short slope to watch it, until I realized I was in the middle of a high-stakes disc golf game. I rode past the thing at a distance of about three feet. They're like horses drawn by a drunk person.
On the way back up the coast, I chained my bicycle to a railing and walked down to the rocky, hard-packed beach just south of Woronzof Point. The uppermost line of rocks is made up of stones so flat and smoothed out by wave action that they sound like breaking glass when you walk on them, like a pit full of poker chips. Then there is a belt of gray-khaki sand, and another, broader line of rocks littered with stranded fish about 4" long. The tide was receding, exposing the black, clay-like mud that occasionally devours the feet of unsuspecting tourists on the mud flats and holds them there until they drown. This is a real hazard. To the right, a sign told me not to venture any farther north because high-power cables were there. I didn't see them. But I heard a slight buzzing. As I walked south down the beach, my eyes were on the band of rocks below my feet. At first they look like rocks. They are gray and tan and sometimes white. That does not last long. After a good bit of looking, the beach is red, green, orange, black, blue, purple, and deep, translucent pink. Black rocks have been cracked to show thick veins of what I think is beryl. Orange calcite washes up in wave-mended marbles. The whole sea is gray, the mountains beyond it are gray-to-white, the city is silver in the gray sky to the north. But Cook Inlet keeps spitting out this Crayola shoreline. Along with the glinting, staring dead fish. I rode home.
Keep in mind. It was only noon.
Sophie calls. Hikes. Julia has a car. Okay. I'm in. We have decided to see a glacier, which turns out to be trapped by a well-publicized wildfire at the top of a long but scenic drive overlooking a lake. We head back down the mountain and opt for the trail to Thunderbird Falls. The trail is disappointingly short but lush with plants and insects, and the falls are interesting if not devastating. I saw one interesting mushroom. It had a fleshy, nearly horizontal stalk with a cap of deep chestnut, laced with thick veiny protrusions. It was like someone had just pulled something out of a person and stuck it in the ground, and surrounded it with the tiny white flowers that grow everywhere here. For you to see. Don't touch it.
In need of more adventure, we got a little lost near Peter's Creek in Julia's tiny Civic and eventually landed at the head of the Ptarmigan Trail leading up Mt. Eklutna. (Interesting Note: Chicken, Alaska is a city. It is called that because its first settlers could not spell "ptarmigan".) Just beyond a line of alders, a large circular clearing of gravel lay at the foot of the trail, dotted with fireweed. The path itself was steep but rewarding, with every steep incline topped with a corner which opened onto ever-widening views of Knik Arm. At one point a clearing in the forest opened on the right, punctuated by a birch which had been chopped off at about 16' and stood like a column by the road in the wide display of unobstructed afternoon. It was covered in pure-white oyster mushrooms. It seemed important, as if to say "Still here, fuckers." We nearly reached the summit, but a continuously freshening trail of bear sign made us turn back just below the final ascent. As we turned around, like an omen, the clouds began gathering with time-lapse speed, roiling into themselves and each other and always away to a vanishing point moving closer. Luckily, the ominous display yielded sunshowers on the descent, although in that clearing of fireweed at the bottom, surrounded by the ring of vibrating birch and eastern cottonwood, those sprinting clouds did instill a sort of fear in me. I wish it had rained, I would have felt wild.
Drove home in traffic. Made spaghetti. Ate. Went home. Slept.
Sunday, June 6th-
8:30 AM. Breakfast on eggs and pickled peppers. Headed to Turnagain United Methodist Church. Everyone there is wonderful. A couple exchanges:
I am walking my bicycle up the front walkway. A very old man sees me at the bottom of the walk, turns, and loudly, genuinely says "Shucks!". I continue up the path. By the time I've finished locking my bike at the top, he has caught up. Again he turns to me with wide eyes. "Shucks!" he says. Nothing more. As has been suggested, the bike is now named Shucks. Shucks needs some repair - the bulbous point where the bars meet the stem is stripped and needs a cork-tape shim. It'll work out for old Shucksy.
The church was full of green, this being Pentecost. Everyone was over 40. That being said, everyone seemed to have a son or daughter in the conservation game. Church full of gray-haired greenies. We sang "Tu has venido a la orilla" and heard the pastor talk about those things which belong in the net of the Kingdom of Heaven. We took communion. Afterwards, I spoke with the pastor, who invited me to share my work with the congregation as my campaign moves forward.
I left on my bike. Walking it down the walkway, the old man turned to me. "Can you ride it?" I replied, "Sure, I can!", got on, and rode away. I swear that as I rolled into the street I heard him say "Shucks!".
The rest of the day was a bit hazy. Naps and reading. Finally, at 5:30, Sophie came over for band practice. That night, we played the open mic at Humpy's Tavern in downtown Anchorage to a surprisingly appreciative crowd. They all knew the words. It was nice. We might have to become a fixture there.
Monday, June 7th -
Back at work, things are rolling along. Plans are being made for the Get Out The Vote campaign that I've been charged with. Fighting a battle that hasn't really started yet while loud, booming ones rage elsewhere, in places close to my heart - Palestine and Louisiana - it is hard to remember that the work you're doing from your laptop might help, too. Tomorrow is World Oceans Day, and the 50th day of the BP spill, and there is a demonstration at Lyn Ary Park. We'll see.
Orientation was good. Jonathon Teeters, speaking about organizing in Alaska, got to me the most. This will be a hard road for me, but I believe that community organizing, if not my final goal, may be the best thing for me to be doing right now. It's core values are listening, learning, moving slowly and precisely, and understanding the other, none of which I'm particularly good at. We'll see.
The wildfire is still raging in Eklutna. Maybe one day we'll get out to the glacier. We'll see.
Things are settling down in our lives. We're getting to work. Maybe we'll get something done. We'll see.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Two Hikes
Bird Creek Trail:
South of Potter's Marsh, off of Turnagain Arm. Myself and one of my housemates, Dan. Loamy soil, salmonberry, spruce, birch. Main trails mostly lead to not much, so we left them and beat paths up smaller, less cleared ones. Log-hopped down to the creek, which flows remarkably clear, avoiding unidentified plants that make you itch. As well as large, broad-leaved shoots covered in white thorns. Attempted to cross the stream and head up the other, steeper side of the ravine, but water was moving too fast. Continued to find small trails that lead up, up, and up to clearings where late sun eased off of large upper-story leaves and covered the cinnamon-colored ground with dapples. One had a large, low tree that I couldn't wrap my arms around and whose above-ground root structure went out a couple yards in wide, muscular sinews. Down into the ravine again, across the creek at a slower, lower spot, and up a touchy rock scramble. More light, always more light. Finally, a spot called "Boy Scout Rocks" and an outcropping overlooking the highway, Cook Inlet, and the towering opposite shore. Short, banzai-style spruce tree bent from years of wind. Tiny purple and white flowers interspersed in the saxifrage. The rock here is never smooth, always cut in places and ripply like a bag of potatoes in others. Moose droppings everywhere.
Flattop Mountain:
Orientation. Large group of kids from the different internship positions. At first, a steep, dusty slope with tiny rocks skittering off in every direction. Mosses and lichens clustered around short mountain grasses, as well as buttercups and hundreds of tiny purple, white, and red flowers. Little groves of midget spruce inclined on the leeward side that shelter patches of snow below the snowline. Eventually reached the rocks and scrambled through black crustose lichens as well as neon green and orange ones. Everyone meeting each other while they try not to fall off the incline that no one realized was that steep until they got to the top of it. At the top, a short snowball fight in June. Head down opposite side, covered in snow, melted streams, and mud. Far, clear views of Cook Inlet and Redoubt Volcano. Fire Island very visible off the coast of Anchorage. Found out that when the tide goes out there is about an hour during which one can run across the inlet to the island if one knows where to avoid mud sinks. We are determined to do this.
Short, declarative sentences make sense when talking about the Alaskan outdoors. It is grand, this is true. But it knows what it's about, it isn't sprawling. The little white flowers with yellow centers aren't birds of paradise - in argument to Annie Dillard's concept of nature's constant, abhorrent fecundity, they are just enough. They are getting by.
South of Potter's Marsh, off of Turnagain Arm. Myself and one of my housemates, Dan. Loamy soil, salmonberry, spruce, birch. Main trails mostly lead to not much, so we left them and beat paths up smaller, less cleared ones. Log-hopped down to the creek, which flows remarkably clear, avoiding unidentified plants that make you itch. As well as large, broad-leaved shoots covered in white thorns. Attempted to cross the stream and head up the other, steeper side of the ravine, but water was moving too fast. Continued to find small trails that lead up, up, and up to clearings where late sun eased off of large upper-story leaves and covered the cinnamon-colored ground with dapples. One had a large, low tree that I couldn't wrap my arms around and whose above-ground root structure went out a couple yards in wide, muscular sinews. Down into the ravine again, across the creek at a slower, lower spot, and up a touchy rock scramble. More light, always more light. Finally, a spot called "Boy Scout Rocks" and an outcropping overlooking the highway, Cook Inlet, and the towering opposite shore. Short, banzai-style spruce tree bent from years of wind. Tiny purple and white flowers interspersed in the saxifrage. The rock here is never smooth, always cut in places and ripply like a bag of potatoes in others. Moose droppings everywhere.
Flattop Mountain:
Orientation. Large group of kids from the different internship positions. At first, a steep, dusty slope with tiny rocks skittering off in every direction. Mosses and lichens clustered around short mountain grasses, as well as buttercups and hundreds of tiny purple, white, and red flowers. Little groves of midget spruce inclined on the leeward side that shelter patches of snow below the snowline. Eventually reached the rocks and scrambled through black crustose lichens as well as neon green and orange ones. Everyone meeting each other while they try not to fall off the incline that no one realized was that steep until they got to the top of it. At the top, a short snowball fight in June. Head down opposite side, covered in snow, melted streams, and mud. Far, clear views of Cook Inlet and Redoubt Volcano. Fire Island very visible off the coast of Anchorage. Found out that when the tide goes out there is about an hour during which one can run across the inlet to the island if one knows where to avoid mud sinks. We are determined to do this.
Short, declarative sentences make sense when talking about the Alaskan outdoors. It is grand, this is true. But it knows what it's about, it isn't sprawling. The little white flowers with yellow centers aren't birds of paradise - in argument to Annie Dillard's concept of nature's constant, abhorrent fecundity, they are just enough. They are getting by.
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