End of Season

Frost this morning up here on the hill. The tundra glows with color--deep orange for the dwarf birch, spikes of brilliant yellow flame up in the patches of balsam poplar, Crayola red bearberry. Black-green spruce provides the backdrop; granite outcrops show now on the hills on Kantishna; the Alaska Range shows new snow lower on the foothills after each rain. And NO mosquitos or black flies!

The counterpoint twines with this melody: freezing cold cabin in the morning, the even freezinger cold outhouse (if there were any way to pay someone to go visit it for me, I'd have long ago exhausted my savings account), and the slippery deck at the back of Potlatch. Trek planks ice up quickly, and one has to step carefully.

Still, it's worth it to be here in the autumn.

With only ten more days until departure, I harbor mixed feelings about leaving Camp Denali. Of course I'll leave. Everyone leaves; the place shuts down, boards up, and waits for winter. But for more than three months, this has been my home, and what I do here has been my work. The people with whom I've lived and worked have become like family; some have become dear friends I wish I could keep with me. Perhaps that's why there is a next summer.

In the course of this more-than-three-months, I've discovered again what I need to live. Back in 1996 when I set out for a winter in Anchorage, I had to decide what I couldn't live without for those nine months and then make sure it fit in a VW Jetta. This time I did better, but I a) had an employer-provided list of what to bring, b) a tiny laptop, and c) a bigger car. However, what required reactivation was the ability to suss out what I would really need to make my life liveable at the back of beyond. I brought King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream, my hymn book, a borrowed Bible, two knitting projects, one beading project, the Alaska bird and flower books. I brought the chargers for my camera and iPod, far too few of my earrings, and more socks than I could use.

I discovered that you only need enough clothes to take you through to the next day off, when you dump them all in the washer. Forget what the labels tell you about separating "like" colors. You can wear ratty underwear and ill-fitting 'externals' while the other stuff dries on the line. Another discovery was gel insoles for my shoes. Ten hour days means ten hours on your feet, lifting, toting, shifting around, moving between buildings. Gail, in Anchorage, mailed them, thank goodness. Judy mailed another knitting project when a co-worker asked if I'd teach her to knit. If I added flannel sheets and a warmer jacket, I'd have covered every base. And it fit into a Honda Accord with room to spare.

My Milwaukee life is more encumbered, and not entirely in a bad way. Trust me--I am eager to return to the comforts of heat, indoor plumbing, and a shower I can pad to barefoot. My flowered dishes and blue glass tumblers wait for me; a quiet bedroom and wide bed are more precious to me after a summer of twin bed and shared quarters. But I'm not quite ready for the press of appointments, meetings, gatherings. The city noise will shock me and be initially unbearable; the sheer numbers of people and cars, the speed at which things move--I'm not certain that I'm ready for this. Thinking of them, anticipating them, tightens my stomach even as I look forward to the change.

But it takes some introspection to recognize all over again the difference between identifying what you need to live, and surrounding yourself with what softens the edge of your living. The process enriches both ends of the spectrum, and you grow to accept both what is basic to body and soul, and what eases your passage.

So leaving here comes with add-on's. Once again, like all the other times I've left Alaska, the time here hasn't been enough. Even having recognized that I can't live here easily, this far away from daughters and siblings and sister-in-law, I will not have an easy leaving. The summer has calmed me and filled me with the utter solitude of this magnificent land. Yet, in ten days I expect to tear up when the bus leaves and when it leaves me at my car at the east end of the Park. Indeed, I'm tearing up as I type.

At the same time, I understand that Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be back.