that's how many days i will have lived in alaska. i'm nearly finished packing and almost moved out of my place. have several things to do monday, then will spend the night at my friend's who lives right by the airport and will get dropped off at 4a for my 6:10a flight. i'm leaving for a good reason, but i'm not happy about leaving. tonight's possibly the last time i have internet access while here, and i can't sleep because it's my last night in my apartment in the mountains with this view over cook inlet. what i see from my window and from my front porch is probably reason #1 that i thought "i gotta get a camera" back in april 2007. i've been blessed to live and work in some beautiful locations- northern wisconsin, minnesota and the upper penninsula of michigan along the shores of lake superior, the black hills and badlands of south dakota, northeastern wyoming, joshua tree national park, breckenridge colorado, the north san diego seaside communities, the sierra nevadas, baja mexico, and coastal sonoma county- all magnificent places in their own way, but none of them could come close to what i saw on a daily basis from my residence in alaska. i saw colors in the sky at sunsets that i didn't know existed. i had animals in my yard (and one time in the house) that you usually only see in zoos- black bears, brown bears, lynx, moose. "i gotta get a camera".
i think my favorite aspect of living where i have the last 1849 days is that the natural beauty is immediate. i could walk 20 minutes from my house and be above treeline without another soul in sight. an hour's walk from the house felt like hundreds of miles from the nearest town. you do not have to travel far from anchorage to feel remote. remote is everywhere in alaska. the openness of the terrain is a close second favorite. i love hiking above treeline and on the tundra up north where you can see all around you for miles. i will miss both of those while i'm living in the st. louis area. almost every time i leave my house in alaska i bring my camera because the odds are good i'll see something beautiful. i don't even have to search it out- it's right here all the time. every day when i'd go hiking after work or on the weekends was like going to church for me. i don't know where i'll get that in southern illinois. i've forgotten how to live without having wild, remote and beautiful areas to spend my free time. i never took it for granted while here- not once- but i also never thought i'd leave it. maybe it's good that i'm leaving it.
up until my mom had an aneurysm and got dropped into a coma, and when it became clear that i needed to go to where my family lives (it feels weird to call it "home" because i didn't grow up there) to be of whatever support i could, i was content to live in my apartment with the beautiful view and go on solo hikes every night after work and for most of the weekends with my dog and my camera. substitute cross-country skiing for hiking in the winter and the contentment was just the same, even more so at times. if i could get to denali 3 to 4 times for four-day weekends in the summer, then i was a really happy guy and didn't need or want a whole lot more. in fact, i likely could've spent the rest of my life carrying on like that and probably wouldn't have gotten bored, ever. the trails in the front range that butts up to anchorage are getting more crowded by the year, so i'd probably have started driving further away to find less-used trails to get that quiet and remoteness that i crave. i might've complained about that, but it wouldn't take me but a few seconds to realize how lucky i was to live this close to what i have (had) here. i guess my point is that i might have gotten stale in a way. sure, i might have mixed it up in a year or so and gone out to the wrangell mountains in eastern alaska to see what that was about. but i also might not have been forced to experience real personal growth. i might have become more of a hermit and a loner (not the dark, freaky kind that hides in the shadows, but one who just spends all his time alone). i might have made enough money to buy myself a cabin up north in the alaska range. if that had ever happened, i would've done what i could to stay there as much as possible- by myself with my dog- and avoid returning to anchorage. the way my life and thoughts were going, that would've been wonderful in my eyes- little cabin in the mountains with a wood-burner and 6 feet of snow in the yard. quiet all day, every day. wildlife steps from my door.
i guess my point with my daydreaming out loud here is that if i had the resources i could easily see myself retiring to a bungalow in the woods away from the world. if i didn't meet my wife-to-be before i did it, then i'd go without. i know a guy from where i used to work. he lives by himself and on a 20 mile atv/snowmobile ride along a trail outside of talkeetna. i've never met him in person because he doesn't come to town, but he's the nicest person i've ever talked to on the phone. he's also blind. he sounds happy as can be to be living 20 miles from the nearest road in the middle of god's country by himself. i used to be envious of him. i wanted that. i think this move to the more urban/residential city of edwardsville, illinois will do one of two things to me: i will either see the benefits of being closer to my parents, sisters, and niece and nephew, will want to live closer to them and give up having the beauty-on-a-daily basis of alaska (if i did move back to alaska i would make it a point to create extra income to save for two to three flights home each year) and find ways to constructively deal with my dislike of living in a more urban area; or, after a couple years i will have gone so crazy from the traffic, the much larger population of people, the lack of natural beauty, the hot summers, and all around stress of society and being there and not here that i'd buy and drive a camper back up to alaska and live in it somewhere outside of mckinley village 250 miles north of anchorage for the rest of my life, working odd jobs on an irregular basis so i could buy lentils and torillas to subsist on. somewhere between those two is what i'm hoping for, and hope to experience the personal growth over the next couple years that will rid me of the potentially unhealthy desire to live away from everybody and it all.
chris mccandless, of "into the wild" fame, made sense to me. my mom told me that when she was watching the movie that she kept thinking that she was watching a movie about me. i read the book a few days after arriving in alaska 1849 days ago. while i was reading it, i could identify with much of what was said about his personality. there were a few differences- a couple being that i felt like i was more mature (hopefully- since i was at least 10 years older than he when he took off to the school bus) and not as impulsive. but we were so alike in most other ways that while reading it i though a few times- "i bet chris is an aquarius." then i got to a part in the book where it stated he was born on february 12th. that's my birthday. i'm a believer in astrology (not the kind in the back of the daily newspaper), and it was clear to me then why he made sense to me- he and i were cut from the same loaf of bread. i'm the chris mccandless that decided to stay closer to town and near a grocery store, but i could see myself getting fed up with the world today and seeking out my own fairbanks borough school bus to live in one day. i don't think that's what i was put here on this planet to do, though. i don't have a clue what i am supposed to be doing here, but i'm hoping as chris and my's birthday approaches and i reach two years away from forty that i start to get a clue.
the two images on this post are both views from my porch. the top one is from a morning last week; the bottom was the sunset this past saturday night. since we've been cloaked in clouds since, i guess it's the last sunset i see from my porch in alaska. i will miss them, and always felt blessed to see such magnificent sunsets on a near-daily basis.
i think my favorite aspect of living where i have the last 1849 days is that the natural beauty is immediate. i could walk 20 minutes from my house and be above treeline without another soul in sight. an hour's walk from the house felt like hundreds of miles from the nearest town. you do not have to travel far from anchorage to feel remote. remote is everywhere in alaska. the openness of the terrain is a close second favorite. i love hiking above treeline and on the tundra up north where you can see all around you for miles. i will miss both of those while i'm living in the st. louis area. almost every time i leave my house in alaska i bring my camera because the odds are good i'll see something beautiful. i don't even have to search it out- it's right here all the time. every day when i'd go hiking after work or on the weekends was like going to church for me. i don't know where i'll get that in southern illinois. i've forgotten how to live without having wild, remote and beautiful areas to spend my free time. i never took it for granted while here- not once- but i also never thought i'd leave it. maybe it's good that i'm leaving it.
up until my mom had an aneurysm and got dropped into a coma, and when it became clear that i needed to go to where my family lives (it feels weird to call it "home" because i didn't grow up there) to be of whatever support i could, i was content to live in my apartment with the beautiful view and go on solo hikes every night after work and for most of the weekends with my dog and my camera. substitute cross-country skiing for hiking in the winter and the contentment was just the same, even more so at times. if i could get to denali 3 to 4 times for four-day weekends in the summer, then i was a really happy guy and didn't need or want a whole lot more. in fact, i likely could've spent the rest of my life carrying on like that and probably wouldn't have gotten bored, ever. the trails in the front range that butts up to anchorage are getting more crowded by the year, so i'd probably have started driving further away to find less-used trails to get that quiet and remoteness that i crave. i might've complained about that, but it wouldn't take me but a few seconds to realize how lucky i was to live this close to what i have (had) here. i guess my point is that i might have gotten stale in a way. sure, i might have mixed it up in a year or so and gone out to the wrangell mountains in eastern alaska to see what that was about. but i also might not have been forced to experience real personal growth. i might have become more of a hermit and a loner (not the dark, freaky kind that hides in the shadows, but one who just spends all his time alone). i might have made enough money to buy myself a cabin up north in the alaska range. if that had ever happened, i would've done what i could to stay there as much as possible- by myself with my dog- and avoid returning to anchorage. the way my life and thoughts were going, that would've been wonderful in my eyes- little cabin in the mountains with a wood-burner and 6 feet of snow in the yard. quiet all day, every day. wildlife steps from my door.
i guess my point with my daydreaming out loud here is that if i had the resources i could easily see myself retiring to a bungalow in the woods away from the world. if i didn't meet my wife-to-be before i did it, then i'd go without. i know a guy from where i used to work. he lives by himself and on a 20 mile atv/snowmobile ride along a trail outside of talkeetna. i've never met him in person because he doesn't come to town, but he's the nicest person i've ever talked to on the phone. he's also blind. he sounds happy as can be to be living 20 miles from the nearest road in the middle of god's country by himself. i used to be envious of him. i wanted that. i think this move to the more urban/residential city of edwardsville, illinois will do one of two things to me: i will either see the benefits of being closer to my parents, sisters, and niece and nephew, will want to live closer to them and give up having the beauty-on-a-daily basis of alaska (if i did move back to alaska i would make it a point to create extra income to save for two to three flights home each year) and find ways to constructively deal with my dislike of living in a more urban area; or, after a couple years i will have gone so crazy from the traffic, the much larger population of people, the lack of natural beauty, the hot summers, and all around stress of society and being there and not here that i'd buy and drive a camper back up to alaska and live in it somewhere outside of mckinley village 250 miles north of anchorage for the rest of my life, working odd jobs on an irregular basis so i could buy lentils and torillas to subsist on. somewhere between those two is what i'm hoping for, and hope to experience the personal growth over the next couple years that will rid me of the potentially unhealthy desire to live away from everybody and it all.
chris mccandless, of "into the wild" fame, made sense to me. my mom told me that when she was watching the movie that she kept thinking that she was watching a movie about me. i read the book a few days after arriving in alaska 1849 days ago. while i was reading it, i could identify with much of what was said about his personality. there were a few differences- a couple being that i felt like i was more mature (hopefully- since i was at least 10 years older than he when he took off to the school bus) and not as impulsive. but we were so alike in most other ways that while reading it i though a few times- "i bet chris is an aquarius." then i got to a part in the book where it stated he was born on february 12th. that's my birthday. i'm a believer in astrology (not the kind in the back of the daily newspaper), and it was clear to me then why he made sense to me- he and i were cut from the same loaf of bread. i'm the chris mccandless that decided to stay closer to town and near a grocery store, but i could see myself getting fed up with the world today and seeking out my own fairbanks borough school bus to live in one day. i don't think that's what i was put here on this planet to do, though. i don't have a clue what i am supposed to be doing here, but i'm hoping as chris and my's birthday approaches and i reach two years away from forty that i start to get a clue.
the two images on this post are both views from my porch. the top one is from a morning last week; the bottom was the sunset this past saturday night. since we've been cloaked in clouds since, i guess it's the last sunset i see from my porch in alaska. i will miss them, and always felt blessed to see such magnificent sunsets on a near-daily basis.
No comments:
Post a Comment