Roadtrip Nirvana

During the spring of 2016, it became apparent that, despite being dearly beloved by anyone worth their salt, my ’94 Toyota Pickup and I would soon be parting ways. Her snazzy blue rims (an aftermarket Dad-mod) and deck-wood bumper still looked good, great actually, but Maine winters take a heavy toll. She’d rusted out so badly that when the starter quit in April, it presented no great obstacle. So much of her frame had oxidized that a push start was a mere one-woman ordeal. Together, we’d banked a wealth of fond memories—times of reckless abandon, of bountiful poor decisions and illicit cornfield cruising—but it was time for a new truck. I was on the cusp of my second Alaskan summer; the Alaska Highway has always beckoned. The nexus of need and desire inspired the idea to purchase the next Tacoma in Anchorage and drive her back to Maine.

One of my great blessings and curses is that when I set out to do something, I will execute it at whatever cost it takes. That summer, I was working in the Bering Sea. This reduced the truck quest to long-distance Craigslist prowling. There were a few requirements: my new conveyance must be manual transmission, with a working radio. She could not be a moose collision survivor, nor hail from the same town as Sarah Palin. Even I have some standards. After much fretting and heartbreak, I finally settled on a 2000 edition with low mileage, a cap, kayak racks, and a sleeping platform. She appeared the perfect adventure vehicle, so what better test of her character than a mere 4600-mile trek south and east?

A journey of this caliber is far too fine to be enjoyed alone (and, conversely, it is perhaps a bit foolhardy to buy a used vehicle sight unseen and immediately chart her virgin voyage through thousands of rugged, sparsely-inhabited miles.) There exists no finer partner than my sister, Bob. Bob is six years less and six tattoos more than me. She drives stick, is fazed by nothing, and was pretty keen on the idea of Canadian bars where she could legally drink, desolate roads, and the possibility of cross-continental skinny-dipping—she has this lofty goal of doing that in each of the fifty United States.

I arrived in Anchorage August 17. My four bags did not—they’d been held hostage on St. Paul, collateral from a showdown between my hotheadedness and the St. Paul agent who was, even by PenAir standards, bottom-barrel. This latter bit is quite a feat for an airline whose most reliable delivery is disappointment. That my bags did not accompany me to Anchorage was not coincidence. So I stood in the rain outside Ted Stevens, waiting for the shuttle bus to ferry me to Alaska Park, where I’d meet my truck. Once there, I surveyed the running vehicles awaiting redemption by their rightful owners. The standard vehicle issue in Anchorage is an early-model Tacoma, so it’s providential there was just one gold Taco in the lineup. I assumed that I was the rightful owner, hopped in and drove off. I was slightly overwhelmed by my reentry to the land of pavement, stoplights, and multiple radio station options; it had been a three-month separation from all of these.

The next day, as one typically does after purchasing a new vehicle, I found myself at the DMV. It had been an arduous process to reach the office—my phone was dead, and I was without a charger. Sure, I had one, but it was still stranded on St. Paul with other things that would have been nice; for example, a clean shirt and footwear that were not Xtra-Tuffs. After asking an embarrassing amount of gas stations for directions and then deciphering them with erratic success, I finally located the office.

I handed the clerk my chickenscratched paperwork for scrutiny. It didn’t take him long to find an error.

“You can’t use a P.O. box address. You need a physical one, even if you don’t get mail delivered there.”

This was an obstacle, for I didn’t have a physical address in Alaska. For that matter, no one in the Pribilofs does.

“Uh, but everyone in my community only has a P.O. box.”

“Oh.”

We shared a glance of mutual confusion until a more senior employee who’d been eavesdropping solved our problem.

“There’s an exception for rural Alaskan communities. If you don’t have an address, it’s fine to just describe your place of residence.”

I pondered the best way to do this, for there are many colorful ways to describe A-Dorm. For example, “constructed of asbestos, rust, and rosy-finch shit” or “ugliest building on the island, inhabited or not.” Though that all was tempting, I went with “two buildings past the cannery,” and that’s how my title reads.

I climbed back into the cab of my vehicle and made the mistake of checking my phone. A slew of texts awaited me, all from my father, and all some variation of “call me ASAP. This is urgent.” My parents were vacationing in Alaska, at the time fly-fishing down on the Kenai. Anything could have been wrong—my mother was terminally ill; Alaska can be a bit of a rough place for those uninitiated to wading fast water or staying alert for grumpy moose.  Acting the part of good daughter, I sacrificed my 2% battery to the cause and called him.

The urgent matter was that my dad had met someone from Texas and had they’d gotten to talking. At some point, my imminent continental traverse became a topic of conversation. The unknown may unduly tempt me, but it often unduly trepidates my father. Where I get carried away by the romance of the unknown, he’ll mire in the details, the process. I’d been intentionally vague in our discussions around my adventure. This was actually easy, for planning my own trips has never been a strong suit and the finer points of the journey were yet to be worked out. But then, the Texan entered the picture. Like my father, he’d never ventured on the AlCan before, but he had some ideas about it all right. And, the Texan, as we imagine Texans to be, was both a firm believer in the 2^nd amendment and a chauvinist. If someone were to carjack my sister and me, I think they’d actually be the miserable hostage. But the Texan had no way of knowing this. In his eyes, for a father to permit his daughters to travel alone, unarmed, down the Alaska Highway, was sin. The Texan’s suggested atonement for this sin was, naturally, for us to pack some heat. This brought a new problem. Of course, Bob has guns. At least ten of them, actually. This was not the problem—or maybe, it was? The problem was that Canada has different opinions and stipulations on guns than America does. It would be an absolute joy to navigate five Canadian provinces and two international border crossings with a firearm. My hasty damage control, aimed towards appeasing all parties, was to pledge to acquire an axe before departing civilization. I had a good feeling about a self-defense axe. A self-defense axe is, after all, infinitely more versatile than a self-defense gun. The one I’ve got has proved itself a trusty winter squash opener, an adequate tool to clear my driveway when trees fall across it, a kindling maker, and even a matchmaker. Who needs Tinder?

Bob arrived at Ted Stevens Saturday afternoon. We had some business to attend to before leaving Anchorage: fill our gas cans where it was still cheaper than the bush; buy a jack; procure the self-defense axe. I’d looked up various makes and models, settling on a piece designed by Swedes for chopping moose carcasses into something more manageable. My logic was that if it could cut a moose it could cut a human. There was a store in a gritty part of Anchorage that sold them.

I parked on a side street around the block from the dealer. 

“Do you know anything about axes?” I asked Bob. 

“Nothing at all,” she replied.

“Yeah, me either. Let’s tell whoever helps us that we’re buying it for our uncle and that’s just what he wanted.” 

Somehow, that seemed a story that would raise fewer brows than me, the novice axe-buyer, making a purchase purely on the basis of meat-chopping capabilities. Of course, the storekeeper totally didn’t believe us at all. It didn’t matter. Walking out of the store brandishing my new axe, I felt prepared for anything.

I looked over at Bob.

“Hey, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. I like you right now. We’ve got a lot of road between us and home. I know I’m going to hit a point where I don’t like you. Probably where I can’t stand you, even. We’re going to fight. Let’s just accept that now and enjoy liking each other while it lasts. I assume we’ll like each other again someday.”

Bob concurred.

 Our first move was to drive in the opposite direction of our ultimate destination, for I wanted Bob to see beluga whales riding the bore tide up Turnagain Arm. After the wall of muddy glacial water surged up the narrows, we caught flashes of white—the belugas—surfing the wake. There were many miles to go before we slept, so we took one last drink of the cliffs, mountains, and reflections, then turned around, drove back through Anchorage, over Bob’s first glacier, into Glennallen.

Glennallen is a jumping-off town: the last gas or espresso shop in any direction for a long way. Everyone stops there, not for the magic of the town itself, but because stopping there is the thing to do. It’s a burg typical of rural Alaska—built of ramshackle dwellings, carved out of scrappy taiga. We grudgingly joined the parade of motorhomes waiting in line for gas and coffee, since in Glennallen, that’s what you do. Then, sated, we pulled out and turned south. For the first time of the trip, I was on an unknown road, uncharted territory. Already, we were adjusting to the rhythm of the road: drive while you can; stop when it feels right. Rules join the ranks of plans in that I have a lackadaisical adherence to them both so, presently, I broke the first of mine—to abstain from driving during high moose time. We drove through dusk into dark and kept awake by talking about hitting moose—a subject that would become a common muse for the duration of the trip.

Somewhere past Willow Creek, sometime well past the point I’d wearied of driving, we found a pull-off. There, we parked, performed what would become a nightly ritual of relocating the gas cans to the cab and the axe to the bed, spread out our mats, and fell asleep. It was dark, which in Alaska at this season means also that it was late.

When we woke, it was light. We were in the shadow of snowy Mt. Wrangell; below us was a pristine lake with a floatplane docked on the far shore. The nice thing about sleeping in a truck is that breaking camp is a very minor ordeal; there’s no tent to break down, no laws of physics to defy and curse as you cram it into the bag it came from. We simply put things in the cab that belonged in the cab and things in the bed that belonged in the bed, and rubbed enough of the sleep from our eyes to conquer the road to Valdez.

This drive is beautiful by even Alaskan standards—narrow whitewater canyons, blue-ice glaciers, snowy mountain ranges. On the pass, the tundra was starting to turn to muted fall colors. We rolled into town and drove along the inlet. Valdez is a picturesque Alaskan fishing hub, shrouded with fog and the smell of dead fish; clouds of gulls lift from the flats adjacent the cannery. The sole purpose of our foray here was so Bob could encounter a sea otter. At the gate to the oil terminal, I pulled over and dug around for my spotting scope. Bob is a woman of many virtues, but patience is not one of them. She dashed down the shore to look for her otter; I was still fumbling with the scope when I looked up to catch her flying back across the gravel lot. She didn’t say anything. I doubt she was capable of words, and she didn’t need to be—her face and gesticulations said it all.

I followed her back to the water’s edge. The otter rolled over and over. It was the Silver run, and the otter was taking advantage of the glut of dead and dying salmon. It would take a bite of fish, roll over between bites, discard the fish it had and snag another one. I’ve always had a thing for otters, laughed out loud as I’ve tracked them across frozen lakes, for their locomotion is a mix of sliding and galloping to attain the best slides. An animal so devoted to play can’t be all wrong. In fact, it’s not a bad standard to live your life by. 

We began backtracking up the road to Glennallen, making a breakfast stop opposite the appropriately picturesque Bridalveil Falls. Our satiation was none other than the dirtbagger’s standard of Jif on a tortilla. This is an ideal combination: sweet, compliments of the Jif, but has a lower mess potential than a pb&j. On trips like these, minimal cleanup is always a worthy goal to aspire towards. Though the idea had merit, even the most brilliant ideas require a proper execution. The making of my sandwich went well, but before I could eat it, Bob sat in it. So much for no cleanup.

              

It merits mention that, here, at this pullout by Bridalveil Falls five and a half hours from Anchorage, I met Nikki, the previous owner of my truck. A VW Bus passed the pullout, braked, and began to reverse.

              

“This is weird,” she started, “but I think you just bought that truck from me in Anchorage.”

“I did, nice meeting you! I wasn’t expecting to,” I laughed. I promised to take the truck on frequent adventures, and she wished us well. Oh, Alaska—both a huge state and the smallest of towns.  

Bob and I made tracks towards the Alaska Highway. We had no clear plans, were bound to no schedule. This is truly the best type of travel, when you don’t hem yourself in with stiff ideas stressful to execute. We’d eat when we felt like eating, stretch our legs when they needed it, swim when we felt like swimming, adopt the rhythm of the road. 

Bob is an aficionado of skinny dipping; the opportunity to swim in the buff in each state and province was a strong selling point of the entire trip. Beyond Glennallen, we bounced over the jarring expanses of the Alaska Highway through desolate taiga barrens, ever alert for a lake to jump in. We began to worry a little. We weren’t running out of light—this really doesn’t present an issue during summertime at this latitude. However, we were running out of Alaska, and Bob was intent to add it to her list. Signposts advised that the Canadian border was looming closer and closer, and we still had yet to find a suitable body of water. Silty glacial rivers—a death sentence—and boggy, diarrhea-colored, snag-filled lakes that were in no way inviting were all that was there. Sometimes, we’d pass signs alerting us to trailheads that hinted towards lake destinations. We decided one of these would be our best bet. We slowed for the next sign we saw until we read the name—Deadman’s Lake—and gave that one a pass, too. With about 23 miles of Alaska left, we at last found a trailhead for Hidden Lake. This sounded much less foreboding, so we pulled over.

Actually reaching Hidden Lake involved a 2-mile hike through the darkening boreal forest. The day was dying, blueberries were peaking, and by my calculations, bear conditions should have been right about prime. Bob and I trekked back to the lake having loud conversation for the benefit of any bear that might overhear.

“Hi, bear! Don’t ever drink coffee, bear! We’re not going to eat your blueberries, bear—not all of them, anyway!”

We did not see any bears, nor did we see any moose, and the lake proved the perfect choice for our purposes. We stripped off our clothes, jumped into the lake to escape the mosquito clouds, and dog-paddled around, rinsing ourselves from the grime of the road and of Jif sandwiches.  We finally forced ourselves to dress and started back for the truck. This was not a moment too soon, for shortly after we began the walk out, we met two men walking in. They were clearly suspect of our conversation with the invisible bears.

 Back at the truck, we hit the road for the border. This part of the continent is characterized by dark tannic lakes reflecting hillsides of emerald spruce with black trunks while distant mountains denuded by glaciers jut into the distant sky. It is all quite spectacular.

The border crossing, like most in remote Canadian outposts, was uneventful. We were in the Yukon, evocative of rough miners and their towns, of unbroken wilderness. It’s so desolate that the only roadside signs are there to inform you when you enter the range of a radio station. This is infrequent.

              

By the time we pulled into Destruction Bay, we were weary. I have a fondness for the name of this hamlet, a quaint little place whose existence continues on the same grounds as Glennallen—a stopping point. We found a turnout across the road and above Kluane Lake and clambered, Jif and tortillas in hand, to the roof of my truck. It was sunset, and sunsets on the road are best appreciated atop a vehicle. A Great Horned Owl began to hoot in the adjacent thicket, signaling the transition from day to night. 

It is the second day when habits begin to form and routines become manifest. We extricated ourselves from my truck, swapped sleeping mats and gas cans, ate more Jif and tortillas, and started down the road again. We stopped at Kluane, an immense and little-developed national park, for a proper leg-stretching. Our trail of choice was King’s Throne, and leg-stretching is a far milder term than does this sort of hike justice. Reaching King’s Throne is via a brutal trail that starts below treeline, but abruptly ascends straight up through the spruce thickets, past treeline, then across a windy, ever-shifting scree slope above a lake. My body protested to this rude treatment. St. Paul Island makes one soft—sitting at Trident Seafoods’ cafeteria with all-you-can-eat halibut steaks; sitting on cliffs with determined photographer clients, sitting in the boiler room drinking alcoholic hot chocolate to warm up. On St. Paul, sitting is a key part of life, and I’d gotten quite proficient at it. Bob was in better shape than I, but the altitude—and probably the Jif and tortillas—got to her. About halfway up the scree slope, she plopped down on the side of the trail and gave up. To be a Világ is to live under a grand illusion of invincibility, so when I say she gave up, I mean that she gave up pride only.

I offered to carry her bag; predictably, she refused and demanded I go on ahead. I did. Every few switchbacks I’d look down, and each time I did, she’d be kneeling on the side of the trail with her head between her knees, willing her stomach contents to stay inside. Though the ascent was not particularly graceful, it worked well enough and eventually, she joined me at the top.

Back at the bottom, we made a brief foray to the lake’s edge. It was too crowded to skinny-dip, so we proceeded to Whitehorse to provision ourselves with food that, surprisingly, was neither Jif nor tortillas. There, I realized that the interior of my truck had adopted a similar aesthetic to a dumpster, and it sort of bothered me. I knew that soon, the interior of my truck would be more of a dumpster, and that it would not bother me at all; this is a requisite element of the path to roadtrip nirvana.

We drove for hours past an overload of scenic vistas and a sprinkling of little fading towns, darting several times between the Yukon and British Columbia. From the map, we thought that one of these burgs, Swift River, was in a prime location for an overnight. When we reached city limits and had the pleasure of experiencing it in three dimensions, we reconsidered. What once was the welcome sign now said “Swift River—closed,” in the same manner that one announces a campground is shut down for the season. The sign told no lies. The whole town was certainly not open, and was full of dilapidated buildings, some with lights eerily flickering inside. As we drove out of Swift River, we passed a man wearing a long black coat and an odd black hood. He was stood next to a black van with his thumb out. We kept going.

We ended up stopping in some town on another of the British Columbia/Yukon borderlands, a settlement famed for the tourist curio Signpost Forest. This region proved a land hostile to the roadside camper—each turnout that would have been suitable bristled with signs declaring “no overnight parking” or “no camping.” Bob and I thought these would make a fantastic addition to Signpost Forest and pondered the prospects of relocating them. Instead, we poached a campsite at some empty municipal campground. Our rationale was that, since we didn’t want to camp there, we shouldn’t have to pay for it. 

In the morning, we paid homage to Signpost Forest and wandered around with paper bowls of instant oatmeal warmed by gas station water.  It didn’t take long for us to tire of both; soon, we were back on the road. Our next destination was Liard Hotsprings; we were overdue for a bath. Our conversation looped back to the topic of moose collisions, for now we were beginning to see Woodland Bison along the shoulders. Driving into a bison would probably be about like driving into a stone wall—an angry stone wall. Chickens may cross the road to get to the other side, but bison look like they cross the road to start fights. 

We took baths and lunch at Liard Hotsprings, soaking until our brains became a little unglued from the sulphur and steam. It was a great site indulge in a favorite pastime: the mocking of tourists. Lunch was meatsticks, cheese, and dubious mayonnaise packets on tortillas. It was delicious.

Back on the road, we paused adjacent a pristine river christened the Trout to initiate Bob’s new water filter while stone sheep watched from the hillsides above. 

Soon, we entered a mountain range of an entirely different demeanor than the one we’d just left. The rock was light gray and rubbly, the valleys dry, austere. The road was interesting and provided liberal encounters with curves and caribou. This was Northern Rocky Mountains Provincial Park—to our right was an immense glacial lake, Muncho. Its turquoise expanses beckoned and we couldn’t resist, so Bob pulled off the shoulder. 

We were exposed—there was nary a cove or even a tree offering cover. That wasn’t about to deter us from exposing ourselves, though, so we stripped down, donned sarongs, and sat on the warm cobbled beach until the highway, which we could see for miles in either direction, was completely empty. When it was, we tossed off our coverings, ran whooping into the water, and shrieked as we submerged into the intense chill. It was so cold that my heart stuttered and I went numb immediately. It was wonderful—so wonderful that we repeated it several times, sunning on the shore as we waited for the road to clear, then dashing in for another heart-stopping plunge. 

Soon, we would be running out of mountains, so as we neared the end of Northern Rocky Mountains, we pulled off for one final alpine hike. It was beautiful, through gently rolling, spongy tundra with a few flowers still hanging on.

We encountered no one there—it was serene and peaceful, but, alas, my guts were not. By the time we were back at the truck the threats had magnified. I scanned the gravel lot. No outhouse.

                

“I’m going to pump water,” Bob announced.

“I’m going to go find a toilet,” I said.

“You walking?”

“Nah, think I’d better drive.”

Providentially, there was a latrine about a half-mile up the road. When I emerged—out the door that I hadn’t even had time to latch behind during my grand entrance—I was a much different person than when I’d gone in. The outhouse, too, was quite different. Things were looking up for me, but not for the toilet. For some time, it would not be the sort of place where anyone would willingly go. And, this is unfortunate, for when I drove back to collect Bob, she climbed into the cab wearing the distinct look of someone wondering if they’ve shat themselves. Back to the outhouse we went.

These occurrences are a fundamental element of a proper roadtrip. Gas station binges and consumption of foods cooked via dodgy dashboard incubation provide ample opportunities to play roulette with the runs. It’s all part of the journey. 

After the Park, the road dropped down out of the mountains and into a fairly bland valley. Though it was hard to know for sure with all the bug splatters, I was fairly confident—and a little surprised—that I’d made it through the most rugged portion of the Alaska Highway without cracking my windshield. The road took on a different attitude, one that was busier, more bustling and less friendly. Grades intensified; truckers steamed by and left us in their dust. Oil fields were a prominent part of the horizon. Dusk fell, but the flares prevented the sky from ever becoming truly dark. We pulled over a little outside Fort Nelson in a noisy pullout shared with behemoth idling Peterbilts. The streetlights shone bright inside our bed, and we slept fitfully.

              

The next day was a definite fall from the Eden that had been the northern Rockies. We drove and drove and drove and lowered the bar on our entertainment standards. Instead of skinny-dipping in glacial lakes and alpine hikes, we passed the time by counting the miles of passing zone crafting a parody of Sexy and I Know It we deemed Stinky and I Know It.

              

Evening found us in Edmonton, conveniently. We deviated from the main route for poutine and beer—and I would challenge anyone who can name a finer reason for a detour. Our first foray was into an establishment that proved far too classy for people who were frantically applying deodorant in the parking lot and several days overdue for an underwear change. We walked in; there were swinging doors, a dark wood interior, a waiter in a black button-up. We turned around and walked right out and used their internet from their parking lot to find a less classy poutine joint.  

Bob and I cheersed with her first legal beer to many things: to making it through the AlCan with nary a windshield chip, to being sisters, to skinny dipping. We soon entered Saskatchewan. I’d never been to the province before, but I had some preexisting theories that were not disproven by the radioman’s promotion of a “Smarter than a Saskatchewanite” contest and the unending kilometers of flat, straight road through blips of towns where you could easily find a grain elevator but not a bar. The sky was beautiful—stars everywhere and a ragged giant orange half-moon creeping over the horizon. Before Regina, I pulled over to pee and heard a sparrow calling as it flew south; like us, moving with the seasons. I wasn’t tired—just restless, hungry for the road.

              

We entered Regina and ducked into a hotel parking lot—a staple crash pad for urban camping, as it’s one of the few secure sites where it’s inconspicuous to park a car overnight. Those bold enough can take things a step further and help themselves to continental breakfast the next morning. We woke—our last morning in Canada. Rather than fill up with expensive Canadian gas, I decided to pull over alongside a wheat field and use the Alaskan gas still in the jerry cans. I misjudged the shoulder and almost had an opportunity to test the 4WD. Already, she was following in the ruts of my last truck. Soon, we reached the border crossing in Portal, North Dakota. My feet were still so coated in the viscous mud that I wondered if I needed to declare them as soil.

Customs deemed my sister and me a duo motley enough to merit a search. It took me quite a long time to dig through my cab to find shoes, which I hadn’t needed since Edmonton. I’d entered the bliss of roadtrip nirvana long ago, but the agent was not impressed. In the office, we were immediately greeted by a TV blaring a Trump campaign rally—welcome to America. They searched Bob, and then they searched me. They didn’t find anything, so they decided to search my truck, advising me that this process might take as much as a half-hour. I smirked as the officers walked away.

Sure enough—only about five minutes had passed before they returned and, disgusted, gave us the all clear. Bob and I exchanged gleeful smiles—the truck interior looked like a trash pit and didn’t smell much better—a fusion of unwashed bodies with a hint of gas which we’d managed to spill on the front seat earlier that morning during the daily transfer of sleeping mats and jerry cans. Because of this, we’d been driving with the windows down, and accumulated a quite stellar assortment of bug parts on the dash. The truck was well broken in for a life with me.

              

Back in America, anti-abortion billboards became a dominant scenery, water towers were painted in the stars and stripes, and polka seemed the common radio station option. Bob and I decided the best way to soften our re-entry was to stop at a diner that exalted its jolly rancher shakes and soups you could order by the bucket. We struggled through Midwest-sized portions while every fly in the joint swarmed our shoulders. We were utterly disgusting, as you should be after living out of your vehicle for a continental traverse.

              

Somewhere near Minnesota, we wound up swimming in some roadside reservoir. Bob, driving, had designated our need for a bath a code red emergency worth peeling across four lanes of traffic for. It was dusk; the air was warm; the water, which we were sharing with pelicans, tepid. It was no glacial lake, but it was what we had, and it didn’t feel bad. We dog-paddled around, naked, gearing up to tackle the last haul to Michigan. I looked at Bob, making a sudden realization.

              

“You know what’s crazy? We didn’t get in a fight the whole trip.”

The (Re)Creation Story

Idyllic chickee sunset on the Hell's Bay Canoe Trail. Everglades National Park. 

In the beginning (of spring), winter lingered on in Chicago. April was drawing near, but still, frozen dog shit adorned the sidewalks, the train wafted aromas that, under the best of circumstances, could be likened to moldy socks, and a bitter wind waited around every corner in ambush. The decline of, well, everything since the Fall of Man was undeniable--blatant, even. I enjoy the city, but I am not of the city. No one would ever accuse me of being a martyr, either, so I did the logical thing to do under such unpleasant circumstances--I left. Florida sounded nice, a place where I wouldn’t have to incarcerate my thighs with pants or my feet with shoes.

To shorten a long story, I cocktailed St. Patrick’s Day, returned home and threw away my shoes, which were coated in some horrible seafoam green substance contrived from the union of Irish car bombs and green beer. The next morning, I decided to quit and shortly thereafter, we skipped town. It was a prime time to leave.

My companion was Tripp, my mate, my lover, my partner in crime. Tripp was formed not from the dust of the ground, but on the sand of some Florida beach. That’s close enough. He had to wait a little longer than Adam, though, for his mate to come into existence--16 years, in fact. But I like to think the wait was worth it--save our differences when selecting gas station junk food binges (in its own right, a significant test of any relationship), a more compatible duo there never was.

We loaded his temperamental Delica with camping gear and began a return to our Eden--which, ironically, was named Hell’s Bay. There, we would paddle the chickee trails that wind through the mangrove flats and brackish bays of extreme south Florida.

Sign at Hell's Bay put-in 

Our journey began by going north before heading south, so we could procure from my childhood stomping grounds boats, cuddles from our dog-child Wally, and some decadent cheesecake from my sister, Bob. We bade Wally a morose farewell and powered through our food coma until just north of Indianapolis, where we passed the night on the dark side of a Walmart parking lot--a requisite part of any annals of dirtbaggery.

We continued south the next morning. Adam may have been tasked with assigning names to the animals, but we took it on ourselves to christen RVs instead. This was not difficult, for RVs already have names emblazoned down their sides. We just took the liberty to attach the word “anal” to whatever that word was. Our favorite christenings involved the words “conquest”, “sandstorm”, and “fun finder.”

Chattanooga was where we spent our second night, sleeping in the van, parked in the driveway of Tripp’s supervisor. It would be in poor taste to consider our actions that night (nearly all of which were also in poor taste) appropriate for consumption by the general public, so I will refrain from recounting them here.

The next morning was Easter, April Fool’s. Our hangovers were no joke. At one point, I was standing barefoot in a rest area parking lot double-fisting fried egg sandwiches Tripp was cooking on the camp stove there--the best of times. The drive south through Georgia and Florida was fairly uneventful, just hundreds of miles through a dominant scenery of billboards catering to old people. “Eye floater removal!” “Exit now for RV supercenter!” “Heartbeats can be detected at 18 days!”

We stopped at a Publix for provisions. Classically, we forgot most items on the list and bought a host of things that hadn’t ever been there, all the while ogling the gallery of bad botox and shopping cart chaos. (turns out the average Florida retirement community resident drives a cart about as well as they drive a car.) Our most ludicrous purchase was a bottle of grapefruit juice, justified on the grounds that Tripp needed a pee bottle. It was 2 for $7, so, naturally, we walked out of the Publix with two bottles of grapefruit juice.

Ibis and egrets along the drive to Flamingo. 

The drive into Everglades National Park towards Flamingo was hot, quiet, put on pause when we pulled over to appreciate a host of egrets, herons, spoonbills, and storks unleashing a blitzkrieg on a drying pool. When we rolled into Flamingo Campground, the palms were silhouetted against the tail end of a sweet sunset. Soon, Orion was up overhead; the forlorn cry of a Black-bellied Plover pierced the heavy air. We went to sleep quickly; slept through till sunrise.

Later that morning, I excused myself from vanwife duties to go for a run, which conveniently transferred said duties to Tripp. An Eden story is incomplete without a serpent, and this account does not disappoint. I was on the return leg of an out-and-back, when I almost planted my foot on a fat, grouchy Eastern Diamondback. It hissed; I squealed. All in all, I can’t say this snake was much of a temptation.

We squared our wilderness permits away at the park office--free, because it was low season. We then went down to the marina to look at crocodiles and manatees, which we found quickly. In the heat of the day, we lounged for a bit in the van; Tripp borrowed my binoculars to enhance his viewing opportunity of some underdressed female walking across the parking lot on her hands. Florida wildlife…

Mangroves and brackish water at the put-in.  

The next day, we actually set out towards attaining our Adam and Eve chickee experience. The water at the launch was slightly salty. So were we. Through a sequence of terse interactions, we readied ourselves and our gear for launch. A journey doesn’t really begin until you remember the first thing that you forgot. In this case, it was the headlamp. This was compounded by the fact that we had already paddled several bends into the mangroves, and also by the part where I forgot to buy a headamp while we were still in civilization. I was in my canoe, Tripp in his kayak--we’ve both been with our fair share of people and come to the conclusion that it’s best to paddle your own boat.

Tripp and I making our way through the mangrove channels

It was hot and sunny and the water was brown, mangroves scrubby. I hadn’t anticipated how featureless it would be, the sort of place where it’s easier to get lost than attempt to figure out where you are. To my unconditioned eyes, there was an utter lack of reference points. We paddled eight miles through narrow channels and choppy bays. When we reached our chickee, we hauled our boats up on the warm floor and promptly took off our clothes--all of them. It would be more than 24 hours before we put them back on.

I’m not exactly certain what actually unfolded that afternoon, a sure sign of it being a good one. It was hot. We were naked. Tripp talked about swimming, then abandoned the plan when, after dumping some sardine oil through the cracks of the chickee floor, a shark swam in that would be inaccurate to describe as “small.”  We weren’t really hungry--whatever it was we ate was almost definitely not more elaborate than refried beans straight out of the can, which might as well be the tree of life for a dirtbag Adam and Eve.

Sunset from the chickee our first night out.

When evening came, we realized that though in the creation story, the sun rules the day and the moon the night, at Hell’s Bay, mosquitoes rule the night. As the sun began to dip below the mangrove tops, this horrendous drone began to emanate from their depths, swelling into some underworld chorus as the demons of Hell’s Bay asserted their dominion. Fortunately, we were prepared. Tripp rolled into his tent and I tied the last knot in my mosquito net. Laying there separated from the whining of at least several hundred mosquitoes clustered on the net was surreal. I trusted they would not find a way to me, and most of them did not.

Morning came, the mosquitoes went--the changing of the guard. Tripp and I began our Everglades morning routine, which was somewhat modified from our typical of boozy coffee, waking up in each other’s arms, and a heart-attack inducing breakfast. It was too hot to sleep together, too hot to be hungry, and too hot for it to be wise to bring booze into the bush. Still, the morning was splendid. We did not wear clothes. We ate refried beans out of a can. The mosquitoes did not bite. Tripp fished, wearing sunglasses, a straw hat, and nothing else. Save a sunburn on his ass, he caught nothing.  

Too soon, leaving for the next chickee could not be pushed any longer. When we did, delightful, menacing thunderheads pushed towards us on a stiff wind. Rather than muscle across the roiling bay, we opted for the back route through narrow mangrove channels. Overhead, two Swallow-tailed Kites rose against the front line; one dove, once, for Tripp’s jig as he cast, swooping back up into a soar before it could come close. The afternoon felt like how one in south Florida should.

We edged into a nook in the mangroves to wait out the first wave of rain, then continued to the chickee. As we rounded the corner, it was undeniable that we were no longer in the Garden of Eden. We had neighbors; no longer were we the only people in our world. This placed our naked times on hiatus.

Our chickee-mates, however, were the best sort of neighbors (well, Tripp was hoping for girls in bikinis, but…) They were Andrew, a well-spoken professor type and his two younger sons Lars and Nikola. They were staying out just one night, and likeable folks. We ate (refried beans from a can), we conversed across the boardwalk that separated the two chickee platforms, we appreciated the eerily still evening, choosing to ignore the advancing front line that was immense and white.

The literal calm before the Great Flood. 

A rainbow arced off to the north. In the Bible, after the Great Flood, which comes shortly after creation, God sends a rainbow as some sign of reconciliation. This night though, the rainbow came before the flood. There had been a decision made before the flood, too--a decision to not bring the rain fly at all. This decision had inspired Andrew and co. to leave theirs off as well. The front line blasted towards us; Andrew and co. retrieved and enlisted the fly. If ours had not been somewhere in the Midwest, we would have done the same.

The storm hit, an enduring deluge. The chickee shook under the wind; Tripp announced that it was raining inside his tent. He spent the next hour bailing it out. If we’d been better prepared the storm would have been one worthy of appreciation. However, we were better equipped for getting hypothermia than we were for staying dry, so we didn’t exactly expend any energy on digging its beauty. I spent most of the night waking, trying to turn the dark sky into predawn, waiting for the sun to rule the day and warm the earth--yearning for this, actually. My clothes and hammock remained wet until the sky began to lighten.

We were not heartbroken when Andrew & Co. left the next morning, rejoicing in our return to Eden with the discarding of our clothes. A dolphin swam around the chickee, breaking the immediate silence with its breaths. It gave us quite a show--rolling, splashing, cruising for a good spell. The sky was big, tropical, dotted with a montage of fluffy clouds reflected in the brown, flat water.

We took a brief departure from refried beans with these splendid sandwiches constructed of desiccated Ezekiel Bread, sardines and curry, and coconut peanut butter. Despite the skeptical looks we receive when we relate this to front-country friends, they were amazing. That night, we had no neighbors--another night waiting out the mosquitoes; another blessed daybreak that drove them back into the mangroves.

Tripp and I were discussing staple backcountry topics like our urine color over a can of beans the next morning when I heard an approaching motor. Before I had a chance to cover myself, the powerboat had cut around the buoy at the mouth of our bay. It rushed towards our chickee. I was woefully unprepared for such an encounter and, like Eve after the fall, was suddenly very conscious of my nakedness. It is only appropriate that our visitors were those carrying the responsibility of judging the righteous and the wicked out in the glades--the parkies. Their names were, I shit you not, Officer Money and Officer Mullet. Tripp and I were, for once, doing nothing wrong and soon Officers M&M went on their way.

Soon, we too had to be on our way. On the way out, we passed two parties of two each--they all were red, sweating, unprepared, unhappy. We were glad we would not be chickee neighbors with any of them. They were what I call destination people, obsessed over reaching some endpoint that, ultimately, exists because they created it. They then worship its achieving.That’s not my Eden. I’ve been trying to become less of a destination person lately, acknowledging the joy in relaxing in a hammock during the heat of the day, or of savoring coffee and a good book, or the walking barefoot down a sandy trail into the morning mist--or sitting naked in a chickee with my lover eating cold refried beans out of a can. That’s my Eden.

When we returned to Chicago, though May was now drawing near, it was still cold; the train was still a vessel of questionable smells. And yet, though my address was the same as before I'd left, I was in a better place.

Deadhorse: A Winter's Jaunt Above the Arctic Circle

Prudhoe Bay General Sto

Most of the passengers aboard the plane between Anchorage and Deadhorse wore some article of clothing emblazoned with their purpose of travel: a Mistras hat; a GCI sweatshirt; a BP windbreaker. Though my allegiances weren’t so overt, TSA undoubtedly knew what I was up to--they'd left their calling card in my pelican case that was filled with various types of vice. To everyone else, though, I'd been instructed to fly under the radar.

“If they want to know why I’m visiting,” I asked Tripp, “What’s my answer?”

“Tell them you’re a housekeeper.”

“When I say that, should I raise my eyebrow?”

“Yeah definitely, and then you should ask them which camp they’re staying at, and if there’s an ATM there.”

Fortunately, no one asked.

As we approached touchdown, I was uncertain if we were over clouds or tundra until I saw the pipeline beneath. We landed; the stairs out of the jet shook in the wind. By the time I ducked inside the terminal, my cheeks were beyond numb. I was overcome by this feeling that I was in a place unlike any I’d been before. I grinned and fell in love a little just then.

Sunrise on the Slope

Tripp was there, waiting. We grabbed the pelican case and swung up into his work truck. It was drawing near to 10 AM, but the sun was barely quivering at the horizon, looking sort of like a Japanese lantern in the haze. We drove out the Dalton--the Haul Rd. I drank in the expanse: vast, harsh, stark. It was impossible to discern the boundaries of land, sky, and sea--this time of year, they bear the same color and texture. It was windy: ribbons of snow were perpetually blowing, nothing to stop them. Driving against them was surreal, like going upstream the braided channels of a glacial river.

It was before noon when we checked into the Aurora Hotel, but we fell asleep shortly after, slumbering on through dinner, finally waking after midnight. It was clear; living in Chicago, you come to appreciate a dark starry night.

“Can we go for a drive?” I begged Tripp.

As always, he was ready for adventure. We fortified ourselves with a thermos of coffee and set out the Haul Rd. again, driving until we were free of the lights of town. This took some time, for it was so cold the transmission wouldn’t shift out of second gear. When we reached a properly dark pullout, we stopped and killed the ignition; wind shook the truck. Outside, the aurora was playing across the sky--great tongues of light passing overhead in giant swaths. A sly tear or two slipped out of the corner of my eye as I sat there next to Tripp, grateful to be there, and to be there with him.

Next Services 240 Miles--the start of the Dalton

When the coffee was gone and the aurora dim, we drove back to town and went back to bed. Tripp rose soon--too soon--for work. Fortunately, he came back soon, too. The day’s assignment had been at G&I--grind and inject. There, drill tailings are brought to the surface, and that which has been thousands of feet subterranean for epochs taints all around with an odor Tripp deems jurassic pussy. It smells about how you’d imagine something with a name like that would.

Tripp and a couple of his coworkers took me on a tour of town. Our first stop was a hotel-lobby coffee shop that had a pool table. These coffee shops are one of the only spaces for socializing--and, though Deadhorse is, on paper, damp (meaning you can consume alcohol if you’ve purchased it elsewhere), it might as well be dry; there are no establishments where you can drink it. Housing and vehicles are all company property, all dry. We then made our way to the general store. As expected, it was a fantastic medley of tourist crack (like mugs and crass t-shirts) and Slope essentials (like an entire rack of Hustler magazines). Town bears this atmosphere of a modernized frontier outpost. Buildings are all bland, alike except for the trademarks of the industries they represent. Most are hardscrabble housing for the hordes of transient workers. In fact, the entire place has the feeling of a work camp. Work stays; workers come and go. There are odd Alaskan amenities, like tanning beds for those here during the long, sunless winter hitches. Everywhere there are bull rails--tall hitching posts with electrical cords hanging down, to preserve your vehicles’ batteries in the cold.

Bull Rail at the Aurora

My third and final morning on the slope, we were socked in with fog. After I checked in for my return flight, Tripp and I took one last drive down the Haul Rd. The fog muted everything even more; there would be no chance of finding the muskox we’d seen distantly the day before. Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, is the end of the road and the edge of a continent...it feels like the end of the world.

Exposé on Grief

95 Hardwood Ln., Freedom. 

I:

On the maroon rolling chair under the fluorescent lights and stale air of the library’s computer lab, headphones covering my ears, staring into the screen, like I’ve done so much this year. This is the penultimate Friday of the semester—for me, the penultimate Friday of undergrad. A handful of people are here in the lab, scrambling: cursing the GIS instructor, toying with Lightroom presets, or, like me, tweaking the transitions and audio for the final film project. Premiere Pro’s pink, green, and navy labels in the timeline stand testament to months of vision, of relationships forged, of equipment lists and interview questions, of windy mornings spent filming (and counting migrating seaducks and gannets, for this project was founded on a guise that enabled birding) at Acadia National Park.

I’m proud of this, my first real film. I waded through hours of B-roll in search of the best clips; transcribed interviews to lift the strongest narrative arc. The coursework I tackled at Unity in my pursuit of a degree in Environmental Writing & Media Production were centered on this common ground: no matter the medium, no matter the topic, any story needs a beginning and an end.

I render it and, waiting, check my phone—a message from Gunnar—asking the whereabouts of a mutual friend. Tuesday, the three of us convened on Spankys’ vinyl bar stools, nursing beers while we traded stories from Thanksgiving break and planned future escapades. But I haven’t seen JP since. And I guess the last time anyone saw him was Thursday morning. The computer screen tells me the render is complete. For the first time since Labor Day, I’m on top of my schedule, am largely proud of the semester’s work. I’ve been lusting after this feeling—yearning for next weekend’s jaunt to Quebec, where my friends will join in celebrating the defense of my thesis. But instead of reveling in the moment, it’s overtaken by a sick feeling that bubbles up and seeps through my body with each pump of my quickening heart. I may be on track to graduate, but that doesn’t matter. Something’s not right.

II (Later that night)

“Can you drive?” asks the officer.

“Yes.” I push around people towards the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay over tonight?” insists Gunnar (and Danielle, and Sami, and Jon).

“I’m sure.” I back my Tacoma around cop cars, deafen my engine with the stereo, manage through quaking sobs to downshift and upshift through the hills, corners, and potholes between here and home, my refuge. I make it.

Even now a month after, it’s proving difficult to reconstruct the events of an evening that seemed at once both slow motion and fast forward from that horrible moment we all sprinted through soggy leaf litter and dripping woods. It was then the world around us ground into a crushing halt that brought us to our knees, brought us to tears, brought a weight to our shoulders that’s since remained as a burden that makes it difficult to face anything, from the most menial task to the greatest existential questions.

This evening remains a patchwork of events that, currently, are squares thrown haphazardly into a box: untouched, unprocessed, unvisited, never stitched together. The task is too overwhelming, I don’t fucking have time, and I don’t think I’m fit to tackle it anyway. But the parts, even if they’re neglected, cleave to each other and bind themselves into a whole that haunts, maybe forever.

Scene III. (First day)

I come to on the concrete floor in front of my wood stove; my eyes are crusted shut with tears. I open them and gain a new perspective on the cat-hair dust bunnies in the corner. Housekeeping has never been my strong suit. I shove some more birch into the coals, relocate to the wooden chair. It’s grim outside; raindrops race down the windows like the tears racing down my cheeks. I let them fall, wish my words would fall as freely. The pen is poised, paper ready, but nothing comes. I want to write all the memories we shared, preserve them so they never decay—but they won’t come.

“Alison, I want you to know you definitely made my Unity experience better,” he said, less than a month ago.

“Then why are you gone?” I ask. He, one of my favorite partners in crime, made my Unity experience better, too: there was the time we tried (and failed) to bake sourdough amidst the keg and dozens of people my house hosted during my roommate’s 21^st birthday; the time we ditched another party (and an imminent Public Safety interrogation) to carry kayaks all the way from campus to the community bridge for a midnight float under the stars; the weekend the school sponsored the Outing Club to take a ski trip to Quebec. We took a ski trip, but it also had the dual purpose of a drinking trip: we spent at least as much time bar-hopping in the city as we did enjoying Jacques Cartier. When Unity caught wind of it, the Outing Club came under fire. I culled the tasteful parts of our experiences into a redemptive blog post that sort of salvaged our reputation, but preserved the full debauchery in a file titled “explicit Quebec.” I’d planned to give it to him when I graduated, along with a letter commemorating my favorite classless moments with him. That’s the sort of thing I should be writing—not a frantic memory reclamation.

I give up, text Rose, my former roommate with a beautiful soul who is, providentially, in town.

“I need you to come over.”

Soon, she arrives. I collapse into her arms before she even makes it in the door. This moment will be repeated scores of times today. Sometimes I am the shoulder, sometimes I am the tears; more often, I am both.

Campus holds a vigil that evening, and basically the whole school turns out, testament to his huge, unmatchable presence that has already left a gaping, joy-sucking hole in so many hearts—a hole that, if you spend too much time on the edge, will suck you in. He was an Adventure kid, and Adventure people do this thing where they popcorn words to describe something.

“Smile.” “Passion.” “Patagooch!” yells someone in the back. “Handsome,” says Shelby; a smile flickers on my lips. We all are thinking it, but she’s the only one who could possibly say it. 

Scene IV:

For at least three hours, I sit on Gunnar’s couch and work on my thesis defense. By that, I mean that, for three hours, I move blank text boxes around the same slide of nootka lupines. There’s this wretched realization that the next two weeks will be a continual choice between grieving and graduating; our lives don’t allow for a period of mourning. We must pick ourselves up and press forward, gaining a foothold in the world while our souls pay the balance. Today seems a little better for most of us, but that’s mostly because we were just so bad before.

Scene V:

Monday. I don’t have to be on campus until 10, but I languish in bed till 9:30, finally calling a friend and begging her to talk me out of bed.

“Are you up?”

“Yes. I mean, I’m sitting up in bed.”

“That’s not up.”

She stays on the phone until she’s convinced that I truly am taking steps towards facing the day.

I slouch into the entomology lab for the last time. Here, we’ve tested termites, eaten mealworms, endured our professor’s manic tirades. Today we present our research projects; our control freak excuse of a professor is the only one who knows the order. Turns out I’m second-up, following another of JP’s close friends. I remember standing up, sitting down, holding eye contact with the diabolical prof as I bullshit about dragonfly nymphs—nothing else.

Later, I hear his funeral is tomorrow morning. My thesis defense is early tomorrow afternoon. Friends ask me if I’ll reschedule; I tell them no. Asking for help is, like the overwhelming majority of things I’m faced with, too daunting. The friends persist and I cave; my advisors give approval. I go about setting up a new room.

“Sheila, I am rescheduling my thesis defense to December 13^th, so I can attend JP’s funeral…”

NO.

“Sheila, I am rescheduling my thesis defense to December 13^th, so that I can attend the service…”

I send it.

Scene VI:

I swing by Gunnar’s cottage for a shower; there, the guys are talking about wearing Chacos to the funeral; us girls reassure each other our clothes are funeral appropriate. I’ve read about people in olden times having a specific funeral dress, but I’m 24. I shouldn’t be needing one of those.

The service is in Belfast, so Adri and I climb in John Marino’s Subaru and drive the half-hour through rolling fields, freezing ponds, and tumbledown New England farmhouses. Yesterday, it snowed. JP loved snow—lived to ski—his always-smiling eyes got lit up even more when the first big snow came. He would’ve been happy for the snow this year, and I think he’d probably want us to be happy for the snow too, but “happy” is so far from my mind right now.

There’s something oddly immortal about death in the social media age. Hundreds of posts from his friends and family—people whose lives he touched and enriched—have honored him with photos, memories, feelings. It all demonstrates an incredible gamut of the way people deal with loss. Some are heartbreaking, some spiritual—some in celebration of this wonderful person we all loved. I’m envious of the latter sort. Yes, I understand how I should be grateful for the gifts brought from the nexus of our lives, but right now, I’m devastated. People tell me I should feel angry, that guilt is normal—but I don’t feel angry and I know there is nothing I could have done. Sorrow, deeper than I’ve ever known, is all that’s there.

We park on the street and walk towards the cathedral; from all directions down the slushy side streets, people in dark coats, hundreds of them, stream into the cathedral. This is a powerful gathering—a physical representation of just how big JP’s presence was—is, I guess, because just because someone dies doesn’t mean they stop living on in the people who are left. And maybe someday that will be a good thing, but today it just hurts, for his pain has been transferred to all gathered here and more beyond, like ripples spreading from a rock chucked into a placid lake.  

Adri points out a Herring Gull perched on the steeple—JP would approve; they’re nuisances with a tendency to take things that aren’t theirs, and this, in the most loving, diplomatic, manner could be said about him too.

Adri, Katie, and I hold hands through the service, ditch it soon after it ends. Too many sad people offering hugs—it’s oppressive.

On the drive back, we spit a few thoughts.

“I guess everyone’s got their own way of grieving…as long as it’s not hurting anyone else, there’s no wrong way.”

 “I’m worried that when I finally start feeling a little okay, I’m going to feel guilty that I feel okay again.”

“It’s been a week since I saw him. I just wish I would’ve given him a hug when he walked out the door.”  

“I fucking loved him. He was my friend.”

Mostly, I’m just thinking of the point in the service when we’re told to be silent and remember him. There are so many things to remember, but the only one I can conjure is of Friday night, when the world as I knew it stopped. I fucking wish that memory would stop too, but it’s always there, echoing in the background, louder when I don’t have enough to keep me busy.

Later that night, I—and most of his other friends—wind up at UHOP. The bar is packed, people are spinning, dancing, jostling into me, pouring beer down my dress.

Jon—all 6’7 of him—is dancing with Dave and Tom; I steer clear and huddle in a corner with Rose and Adri.

Marina dances over to me with a bear-hug and a shot of tequila; I accept both gladly.

My former roommate Kellen corners me and apologizes repeatedly—for this, for things that happened in our house, for not being a better roommate.

“Not your fault,” I tell him, equally repeatedly.  

It’s like a gallery of grief, everyone feeling it, displaying it, wearing it differently. I am entirely too sober.

Scene VII:

Every day, it surprises me that the sun keeps rising and the world keeps going. I’m not sure this is a good thing. I try to make it out of my driveway without crying. Every day, I fail. I’ve fallen so far behind that I skip a class to gain a little catchup time. I could spend this it fixing the audio on one of my interviews or going to crisis counseling. Graduate or grieve? I want to get out of this place, so I trudge down to the lab and work on my audio.

Scene VIII:

One week. The relationships forged that otherwise might never have been aggregate in a cozy home on the Pond. We eat, we drink wine, we talk, reminisce—laugh—maybe my first genuine laugh since it happened. It feels strange, but certainly not unwelcome. A bowl of words gets passed around the table, each one pulled has an uncanny significance to the person who pulled it—“play”, “adventure”, “resilience.” We all choke up. I pull “strength.” It hasn’t been easy, but it hasn’t completely eluded. It’s a strength I didn’t know I had, a strength that isn’t always an attribute.

Scene IX:

I survey the room full of professors, friends, and my parents. There’s Laurel—we wrote a grant together; Stef—she gave me a squash and goat cheese for my birthday; Barry—he taught my first class at Unity, stats, and was solely responsible for the increase of my usage of “goddamn.” I take a breath.

“Thank you so much for coming today, it means a lot—I couldn’t have done it without you.”

I explain, justify, and read from my thesis—two hard semesters where I wrote a book. It goes well, and I feel surrounded by love, support, and pride. I hug my dad after. “I did it!” I say in disbelief.

But I definitely don’t feel the triumph and joy I’d been banking on for those two semesters of toil. Instead, a deep exhaustion percolates through my being. That’s over—now what?

Scene X:

Today is the day I pack my house up. I light a fire, pack up the lower level while I’m waiting for the heat to rise to the upper levels. I retrieve the Budweiser can from the recycling bin—the last beer we drank together. I wish it had been a better one, and he probably did too. I hand the can to my parents, who’ve been sober my whole life. “I’m saving this.” They shrug and place it in a box with other things from my kitchen. While the water tank upstairs drains, I sit on my bed and watch the sun sink behind the white pines. Usually, I get all sentimental about leaving. Tonight, I just want to go.

Scene XI:

Graduation, it feels inconsequential. I feel like walking across the waxed gym floor in heels without tripping is a bigger accomplishment than anything else that night represents for me. People cheer for me, Alison Világ, B.A., and I appreciate the love there is for me in this place, and the love I have for those here. I could not have graduated without any of them, especially after this week. They’ve given me couches to sleep on, shoulders to cry on, ears to spout into. Later that night, I’ll spend quality time with many of them—but I cherish the moment for them being there, not for anything that I’ve accomplished.

Classically, the school forgets to give me my honors cord when I’m walking across the stage and pull me aside afterwards, apologizing. I tell them it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t feel like anything matters, really. I always thought that graduation would be a joyous celebration, triumph and festive, not a hollow formality. People tell me I shouldn’t let the last weeks take center stage, and though I guess they mean well, I feel like telling them to fuck off. They weren’t there.

Scene XII:

Today, we leave Freedom, my home for the last year. It’s ironic—living here has been the least free season of my life: there’s been continual stress about finishing my thesis, increasing existential angst about life beyond graduation.

The last thing to do is load my canoe on my truck. Dad and I drive to the farm, carry her up from the barn where she’s lived since summer. I love this boat; she’s gotten me through heartbreak before, and has done more for my soul than any other material possession possibly could. We’re tying on the last strap, and I notice a dreadful cold crack, undoubtedly a result of the below-zero night last week. I guess Freedom got the best of her, too. Driving off, I feel way sadder than I should be. I’d been entertaining a trip down a wild river, alone, where maybe I can find healing and solace like I have before. But instead of kneeling in the canoe--

Scene XIII:

I’m kneeling on the tile floor in front of Gunnar’s toilet, hair wrapped in a towel. The shower took care of the stale booze emerging from my pores—but that’s about all. I think of the imminent drive between Connecticut and Michigan and gag. I think of whisky and gag again, and again. Finished, I take a look at the filmy slick of spinach, clams, and booze rippling in the porcelain bowl and feel accomplished. It’s been months since I’ve thrown up from drinking, but it’s not just that—for the first time since he passed, I finally feel anger. Last night, the bartender had poured us shots on the house. “You’ll hate me tomorrow,” he promised as we clinked glasses for the last time. But it’s not him I’m angry at—it’s JP. “This is because of you,” rings in my pounding head. It’s not his fault—I chose to drink this much. But I wouldn’t have had a reason to if he was still here. It’s all strangely cathartic.

Though this morning is a bad morning, it’s just the debt from a good night, one strewn with honest conversations that left each of us with the reassurance I’m not the only one who’s not okay.

Scene XIV:

I’m home; Bob comes over to make cookies.

“In your life, when’s the time you’ve been the most sad?” I ask, for this is mine.

“I guess after your accident,” she says, which is surprising for to me, this event wasn’t a big deal. “It just flipped a switch or something; I was sad for the next two years. It sucked.” The turning point in her sadness was when we hiked the Kalalau Trail in Hawaii, when she got heat exhaustion and threw up on the trail and found strength she didn’t know was there to carry her back to the trailhead. I’m glad I’m not the only one who uses vomiting as a life milepost. Wilderness healed her, and I know it can heal me, too. I look up how to repair cold cracks and pull out maps of Quebec and Ontario. Give me a river—one with rapids and spruce and Winter Wrens.

Scene XV:

The next day, Bob blindsides us all—including herself.

“Can you ask Mom and Dad if I can move back in?” she texts me. Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad. Your present this year is your two emotional wrecks of daughters and all of the shit they’ve accumulated. At least we can cook? I go with Bob to the house she’s shared with her boyfriend of two years and help her move out—it’s something I’ve gotten pretty good at.

On the way in, we cross paths with her ex. He’s oozing pain, slams the door, squeals his Silverado and fishtails out of the driveway. In between the bouts of her lying on the floor sobbing, we put all her belongings—four vehicle loads worth of them—into boxes and carry them out. I’m so fucking tired of being around hurting people. Back at home, there’s a pile of stuff in the living room, in our bedrooms, in the garage, in the basement.

“It’s good that you’re back home,” my dad says. “She’ll be glad to have you around for this.”

I love my sister more than I ever have or ever will love anyone else and I want to be there for her too—but I’ve got nothing left to give. I want to curl up on the floor and cry too, or go daydrink by myself. Fortunately, there aren’t any bars within walking distance that are open at 10 AM.

Scene XVI:

I cry all day; I’ve been trying to write about it—to write about anything—but the words still aren’t coming, and their absence is suffocating. Do you have any idea how scary it is to be unable to do the task you just got a degree in? I have no purpose, no drive, no excitement for any of the things I've always loved. I assume it won’t feel like this forever, but they’re still terrifying feelings. How much are they going to take from me before I’m better? Is this what he was feeling? No purpose, no place in the world, an existence hard to justify?

I’ve been trying to get out of bed in time to see Bullet, our Brittany, eat breakfast. He gets so excited about his meal that his spastic tail, almost-suppressed woofs, and happy tap-dance are almost contagious. It’s comforting that something is still enjoying life without inhibition.

When people ask me how I am, I don’t tell them “I’m fine,” because I’m not. I shrug instead. “I’m here,” is more honest, will suffice. But it’s really hard to talk to people who aren’t privy to the situation; I’m quieted by some strange mix of wanting to spare people my burden of pain and feeling unsure how to talk with someone who hasn’t been there before. I’m here, but the insomnia and the PTSD are wearing me down. I can’t walk a sweep to find a Long-eared Owl; I shut down and shake when my sister stops texting me after she goes to the ex’s house to grab some things; sirens set me off. I withdraw from it all, don’t want my pain to transfer to everyone else.

Scene XVII:

Driving to O’Hare to get Scott, the anchor I've needed, I get on the toll road by accident, delaying our overdue reunion. It’s just another episode in the sequence of stupid shit I’ve done in the last few weeks—stuff I’d never do ordinarily. I don’t even have the cash to pay the toll. On the radio, they’re talking about the New Year, 2017. I think of the last three years. They’ve had their high points, but there’s also been a broken engagement, a serious family illness, a violation of my body, a roommate that had once been my rock losing his sanity, the election, this. I realize that if right now, I knew the next three years would have this sort of pain, I’d probably decide it wasn’t worth it. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t yet know what they hold.

The past few weeks have been the sort that make you less innocent, that force you to face truths about the world you didn’t have to believe in before. They awaken feelings inside you never knew that you had—feelings that scare, that sober. Although I’m still aching from his loss, I’ve moved past mourning him to mourn the person I used to be.

Any story, regardless of medium, regardless of content, needs a beginning and an end. This time though, I’m finding the resolution elusive; I need someone more experienced than me to show the way. The counseling office finally calls me back; their next opening is January 17. Immediately, I start to write—people have different ways of grieving, and this is mine. I force the reluctant words out, capture them so I can remember to tell the therapist what’s wrong. This time, I know not to bury the pain alive.  

Fall's Advent

Moody seas at Ridge Wall, August 2016

It's difficult to pin a date on the advent of fall in the Pribilofs. When the first southbound Ruddy Turnstone pecks down Marunich's rouge-and-olive kelp racks, it's the last week of June. Relicts of spring--a Gray-streaked Flycatcher lurking in my beloved Upper Cut, pausing on its journey north--remain. This time of year, when you walk home from the bar at 1 in the perpetual twilight, you're already racking species for the new day's eBird list. Sure doesn't feel like fall.

Is it fall when the Crested Auklets lose their namesake breeding plumes, follow their fledglings off the cliffs, out to sea until next spring?  This is late July, and it still doesn't feel like fall.

Last year, "fall" to me was synonymous with the Season of Sharp-tailed, when rain squalls abated to reveal masses of the bright sandpipers snaking out of the fog, into the tundra. We'd just started bird-dogging through the hip-high celery. The skies were troubled and the days were short and it felt like fall.

But this year, fall seems earlier. Perhaps, this is just my flawed imagination, for my own seasons are changing--I leave next week, two months earlier than last year. I'll miss out on the masses of Sharp-tails and the celery sweeps. But maybe the reality of this pushes me to notice nuance--the wind is more insistent. Young longspurs are gathering on the roads' edges. We're lose daylight by the minutes now--we use our headlights when we retrieve our clients for breakfast at 7:30. The seal pups edge closer and closer to the water while the Orcas come closer and closer to land.

Orca, Southwest Point

I eat constantly, remain unsatiated. Have this overwhelming urge to move, to migrate, like I always do this time of year. But do I feel this way because it's fall, or is it fall because of my feelings?

Fall is leaving: school then and now, the Philippines, laying under the stars with a summer fling as a few of the myriad songbirds winging south divulge their presence with a seep. The leaving has started hurting more than it did before. Places become a part of you. The more times you leave, the more of you remains behind. There's part of me that will always be on an Au Sable River dock, another part uncomfortably wedged into a bamboo floor on a Palawan mountaintop. And yes--some of me nestled into a St. Paul cliff, where seals porpoise across the Bering Sea and murres laugh under me.

I'm not sure what they've got to laugh about this year--sitting on the barren cliffs watching everything fail this year has made me feel like crying.

Almost everything. The fulmars at Ridge Wall made a baby, and it is adorable, a fluff explosion with a tiny tube on its beak. Although they're not as charismatic as the puffins, the fulmars are one of my favorite cliff birds here. They're masters of the wind, gracing land only to nest. When their breeding season ends, they'll depart the cliffs, their mate, but both will return to the same spot the next year, start the cycle again.

I wonder how a fulmar feels about leaving its land and its mate, if it leaves part of itself on St. Paul, then part of itself in the deep ocean canyons where it forages. Perhaps, fulmars do not feel such things, but they sure seem happy whether on land, where they cuddle and preen their mate, or over sea, where they ride the winds joyously.

Northern Fulmars, Low Cliffs

Back in mainland Alaska, a Tacoma and the AlCan are waiting for me. I'm excited for new horizons, sad to leave St. Paul and the part of me that will always live here. Fall is here, with unsettled skies and an unsettled spirit.

St. Paul Island, late fall 2015