Last Post from Alaska -- Eight Pictures, Five Anticipated Changes, Unifier of Friends

After another stunning drive, I reached Haines in the middle of yesterday, and this evening I'll be on the ferry bound for Bellingham and the Lower 48.
That ferry ride neatly bisects my trip, and I've been reflecting on some of the changes to expect.

 Change 1: I expect to exchange empty roads and very cold weather for increasingly warmer weather and more heavily trafficked roads. "Cold and empty roads" means one can pull over--gawk, breathe; pee, even--wherever one pleases.
At sites like Lake Dezadeash, just south of Haines Junction...

 Turning around and photographing from the same spot...

Cold means descending a stairwell of spruce back into the US, to a sudden cathedral of winter-bare cottonwoods.

 Just past the ferry terminal east of Haines is Lake Chilkoot. I hiked there yesterday afternoon, getting my final lungfuls of glacial air. The air was above freezing, but you can see how deep the snow is: check out that buried interpretive sign.

 This is the outflow from the lake--thaw underway; check out that straight and sheer drop of frozen waterfall.

Other changes involve how what gear I have on hand and how available it is.
Change 2: No more cleats and boots. Normally, my very heavy duty ice cleats live in the gutter of my driver-side door--sometimes I can't get out of the car without putting them on. I wouldn't have been able to hike without them yesterday.
Don't think I'm going to need them that handy anymore! Likewise the kneeboots I've been wearing all winter. My sneakers will probably come out come Bellingham!

Change 3: No more snow shovel and ice scraper! I have a small snow shovel and good-sized ice scraper in the back of the car, and even as loaded as it is now, those items are up at the top of the pile. Some repacking soon will disappear them, I think.

Change 4: Coats. Usually I wear my North Face down jacket with a heavy duty (and very high visibility!) fisherman's waterproof coat over the top of it. And a fleece vest underneath, and a sweater, a long-sleeve, and a T-shirt under that. The pocket-patting dance as I try to figure out where my keys/wallet/phone/notebook got slung is pure comedy, I'm sure. Now we're going for streamlined.

Likewise, my cooler up to this point has been for preventing apples and carrots from freezing (while trying to keep frozen peas frozen); onward, I suspect the cooler will reflect its name more accurately.

Change 5: Plethora. The flip side of being in a more densely populated area will be the plethora of offerings available. More high-speed Internet, more organic produce--more produce period; more cellphone coverage...More old friends too, although I'm going to miss so many friends in Homer and Anchorage.

That's the common thread. Dear friends here, dear friends there, dear friends wherever I go. As introvert as I am; as poor at expressing this appreciation, I am so thankful for the love by which I feel myself surrounded and protected and blessed on this journey.

Thank you.

First Missive from the Road -- Five Pictures, Two Lessons, and a Soundtrack

Well, for heaven's sake! Here I am in Haines Junction, Yukon Territory, Canada. Just yesterday morning, I left Anchorage after some tender, delightful visits with dear friends there. I drove away feeling so loved and held, and I still feel a sense of closeness, despite having driven almost 700 miles since yesterday morning.

This adventure I'm currently undergoing/creating/being created by is a visual fiesta and an endless series of lessons and prompts. I'll use the two as framework for my travelers' tales going forward.

Picture 1: Homer, my last full day there (Tuesday morning) -- one of the biggest snows of the year.

By the end of that day, Homer was shiny with wet pavements and blazing with sunshine.

By the end of the next day in Anchorage, I had six fewer boxes in my car, and a much clearer view out the back. 
Lesson 1: Don't be tyrannized by the status quo!
I get inertia around status quo. I'll undergo inconveniences or do without things I need because they're not easily in reach but require some uncovering. And that's even when I'm at home! So I was proud of myself when the friend I stayed over with Wednesday night encouraged me to take my time the next morning--I had the whole day in town, after all, but she urged me not to feel pressure to leave when she left for work--and I took her up on it. I pulled most everything out of the car and repacked without the "get out for an appointment" time pressure of the previous morning. I'd already shed four boxes--things I was giving away/letting go--and was able to eliminate two more just by consolidating.
Not only did that make me feel safer with the improved visibility; it also demonstrated to me that repacking really isn't hard. I'll probably do it many more times in the next couple weeks!

Picture 2: My car gets the duct tape job, just in time for leaving Alaska!

Oh, duct tape. It's the cliche go-to solution for anything and everything, and the badge of honor for many a piece of venerable but stalwart equipment nursed along by Alaskan folks. Part of the pride of my car when I got it a year ago was that it was in such good shape. It was a self-esteem boost! Preparing for this journey included several timely repairs to the car's machinery. but I hadn't realized the rubber flanges on the passenger doors had worked loose. Normally, I don't open them very often. At the moment, I'm opening all the doors several times a day.
This is a safety issue, too. If those worked loose enough to start that whistling noise I would go crazy! Thankfully, the Subaru folks in town helped me tuck it all back, but what was I thinking? I was going on the road without any duct tape in my on-board toolkit! And I didn't want the flanges to work loose again. So, bright-red cold-weather duct tape it is. I taped the flanges on my break yesterday.

 Picture 3: turning around from picture 2, this is what I could see:

The roads yesterday were better than I could have prayed for. As were the skies. Glorious. Almost no ice on the road; sunny skies. Alders and willows by the sides of the road sleekly red, ready for spring. There was good warning every time the pavement was gravelly, and those patches were few. I saw maybe four cars coming toward me between Glenallen and Tok; only one other in my direction.

The Snowshoe Motel in Tok was comfortable and simple. A blessing to be able to unfold and unwind in a quiet, private space with the sunset warming the bed.. I was supposed to write a blog yesterday, but I hadn't realized how tired I'd be.

Lesson 2: It may not be me. It got very cold in Tok last night. Good job I pulled all my food indoors, but ironically, I turned the fridge too low so my carrots and fennel froze anyway. My poor car, struggling to start up with all its fluids so cold--I ran it for a good twenty minutes before setting off. A couple other motel guests were starting out too. Cars warming up when the air is barely above zero Fahrenheit (and had been colder yet before dawn) make odd groans and whines, and odd smells too, sometimes. I brought an armful out to my car and picked up a nasty burnt-oil odor. I can worry about my car, not being a skilled mechanic, and I had some moments of misgiving. But then a voice said, "It's probably not even you"--a liberating lesson one can also learn from the tears that come from onions, or the anxiety contractable from someone else's nailbiting.

Picture 4: the moment I thought I was driving into a blizzard:

The first 30 miles or so south of the Canadian border were gnarly--basically unpaved. As elsewhere, though, whenever the road was going to be bad, there was a good heads-up. The stretches of bad road were another reinforcement about flexing from status quo. I would get so used to driving a certain comfortable speed, but all of my stubbornness couldn't counter the obvious fact that I needed to slow way down. I hit a frost heave too fast at one point and almost went airborne. When the skies went from blue to blizzard, I acknowledged it had always been a possibility. But I drove out of it just as quickly as in; it was the mountain's snow shadow. Gratitude...

Picture 5: Kluane Lake. Just up the road from where I'm spending the night.

Soundtrack: I had a fantasy of driving away from Homer to the Monteverdi Vespers, whose opening gives me chills and tears every time I hear it, as do many other passages.

The opening is a solo baritone--"Deus, in adiutorium meum intende" (God, make haste to help me)--like a laser pointer of focus, one voice of all the hundreds in the several choirs and instrumental sections of the score, and at the end of his "intende" the full chorus, strings, organ, leaping trumpets break out with their first "Gloria!" 
Oh, and what an auspicious beginning to my journey: as I pulled away from the house, this prayer for God's help, and then the massed-voice "Gloria" broke out just as I rounded a bend in the road to find myself looking straight into brilliant sunrise.

From "precious" to "previous," and triggers to epiphany

If you're local and would like something of mine, knowing my tastes, contact me! I'll bet there's something I'd love to give you that you'd love to have.
Ah, dear Homer--raining and snowing at the same time! 

We've been spared so much of that this winter, but I think being forced to drive in deep, wet, heavy snow on slick pavement with high winds and lots of airborne slush has been great trip preparation, as well as good memory-building of quintessential Homer.

On Sunday night, I realized the time had come whereat I could either let things slide along and have a very very dramatic last forty-eight hours in Homer next week, or I could make some lists and schedule time and plot slots, and make a calm, self-assured exit. I'm pleased to say I made the latter decision--I didn't get out of bed on Monday morning until I'd made a few pages of lists. Boxes are being taped, packages consolidated, emptied, passed on, used up. There have been some lovely serendipities as I've sought new homes for things that have been precious to me (and now, through an easy typo, are previous to me) :)
If you're local and would like something of mine, knowing my tastes, contact me! I'll bet there's something I'd love to give you that you'd love to have.

An unexpected abundance: two minutes after taking this photo, I'd found another half dozen paperclips and two more rubber bands. I never have enough clips and bands--until now!

This darling garden will have to come down soon. Since I'll be driving through Canada to get to the ferry I don't think I'll be able to carry dirt, but I'm thinking of sprouting clover in a mesh bag.

 Did I even talk about my birthday in my previous blog post? That post was maybe a bit too abstract, wasn't it? ;)
My birthday, plus the need to consolidate all kinds of ingredients, was my opportunity to play with this, which is danger zone for me...

 ...and to re-verify that this is a far far far superior alternative for me.

Five photos, five triggers. In the last couple days, I've been having some massive epiphanies around my relationship with food.
The need to drive in challenging conditions, the need to pack up and clean house, the practice of making treats for others, for myself, and seeing whether/what the differences between these are, have been tremendously instrumental in these realizations, and I'm feeling so grateful for the learning opportunity.

Do you want to hear more? It's an opening up I'm considering for my writing. Big changes are happening, and simply the fact that I can verbalize any of it is exciting to me.
Big love--local folks please hit me up soon if you'd like something of mine; anyone anywhere, if you'd like a postcard from the road please send me your address and I'll send you one!

Three Graphics of Resonance

Since sharing with you the news of my upcoming move, I've been enjoying the challenge of staying anchored in the Now, when the Now itself contains components of being "here" and being "there," of being excited and being anxious, optimistic and hopeless, suffused with a feeling of abundance and contracted into fear of lack.

I've been thinking about resonance, congruence, synchronicity. It's as if different aspects of life have to catch up to one another, or take place at different speeds. It was my birthday on Friday, but I haven't yet caught the "new year" flavor of this, and my birthday this year was nine time zones away from the one I was born in--and yet those "new year/life" intentions and reflections have been regulars of late, birthday or not.

We are graphic equalizers!

Source: http://www.waves.com/plugins/geq-graphic-equalizer

In my case, body-mind has started to wear the reality of living in the hot desert but continues to dress for the weather here. The dial is sliding from one spot to another, ahead of or behind "now."
Body-mind is freaking out over having stopped losing weight (even though losing weight hadn't started out as a conscious goal) but body-mind also knows that losing weight had to stop--everything else hasn't yet caught up to that knowing.

One of the participants at Sean Hill's poetry workshop last weekend wrote a piece around the concept that we're always seeing what "just happened"--what's just on the verge of being in the past--because of the speed of light. The rest of us were captivated by the idea and the way she expressed it.

When I feel the awkwardness and freakout in my body, I think of her poem, and of the graphic equalizer image, and I tell myself my pieces and parts may not have caught up to one another, or that the emotional pain I'm feeling is a trace of something already past.

Meanwhile, I visualize myself a wheel rolling smoothly south and east down this continent come the end of the month. Here and now, I turn from one task to the next and imagine myself a piece of clay on a wheel being shaped into a vessel capable of giving and receiving in abundance.

I love the image of a wheel identifying the various aspects of whole health.

Source: wellness.utah.edu

If these different spokes are at different sizes/settings, as on the graphic equalizer, then the wheel won't turn smoothly.
Which spokes are too short? Which might be too long? Too much attention on one aspect can shade toward obsessiveness and can take attention away from another aspect that needs it.
Do you agree with the elements included on this wheel? I think it's interesting that "nutrition" isn't on there as a thing unto itself--it comes under "physical." What else might be missing?

Sound and touch are so closely allied. I know when there's something wrong with my car, because it vibrates differently. I can hear it, and I can feel it. Any machinery, really--the whole house will tell you if the washing machine is unbalanced. If a neon light is on the fritz, I can hear it and feel it as well as see it, and I'd better get out of there fast! Are you the same way with neon lights?

Pendulum clocks in the same room come into rhythm with one another. Take two tuning forks of the same frequency, strike one of them, stand them both up, and both of them will sound--in unison.

Source: http://wikieducator.org/Openphysics/Sound

When my behaviors are in harmony with my intentions, they both sound the same note, and that note is stronger, mutually reinforced.
Interesting that "spooning" is also a form of resonating energy. Should this tuning fork phenomenon be calls "forking"? Not sure "knifing" can fall in the same category.
Please share with me your thoughts of resonance and congruence in rest and in motion.