Alaska

As some of my readers know, I took a 17-day cruise to Alaska in May with my hubby Lee, and my brother Jay and sister-in-law Nancy. I wrote the following when I was on the cruise, and am finally getting around to sharing it after an ultra busy summer. Alaska remains embedded in my heart now, and if you finish this blog piece, you’ll see how it lives on with me in yet another unexpected way. Please, imagine me now sitting on our tiny balcony, my feet propped up on the guardrail. Before me stretch miles and miles of mountains, one behind another, fading pale into the far distance. Below me are chunks of glacier with birds atop. Above me stretches a sky of shining cobalt blue…

‘”Utterly overcome’ is not a phrase I normally use, yet it seems the only one that can even begin to express my experience of this boundless land. My first couple days of the cruise, I walked about in a tingling, trance-like state with with this sense of my heart falling, tumbling into the landscape. From every window, every deck rail, every small port, the country sang.

My heart whispered over and over, “This place is not yet wrecked. Somehow, it has lasted. It belongs still to the creatures, the winds, the trees, the waters.” It is not wrecked yet. The WILD still lives here…” It feels almost rude to put any name to this land. It is deeper, wider, taller than any word can hold. Breathing quietly on a small walking path yesterday, I could feel the power moving through this land, like a vibration in the soles of my feet and in my palms. Alongside me are plants that I recognize from home, and plants that are new to me. I know the word “Devil’s Club”—a medicine plant that I’ve never seen, and suddenly, here it is all stabbing armor and large rough green leaves. It is taller than me, and has a serious face.

Power in the plant, and power in the land. How easy it would be to make a wrong turn, and lose one’s life in such a land, yet the danger makes the place even that much more precious, that much sweeter. To be alive here is to be blessed moment by moment. So much gratitude that I stand here, not undone by frigid waters, or bears with mouths like jawed caves, or cold winds that could easily turn my body into a stiff blue icicle.

I stand face-to-face with this huge expanse of mountains and ice and woods, trees and stone reaching out gently to touch every part of my fragile body. Huge life, pressed up against tiny life. A candle walking alongside a wildfire. Can we somehow hold hands? This vast consciousness of place touches an ancient fingertip to my eyelids, and I am struck over and again with awe and humility to be alive here—right in this moment—beholding such a wonder.

Alaska is outside and all around me, yet I also sense a blood deep calling of kinship. Last night, I asked myself in meditation, “Am I feeling a sense of this place—or am I feeling my fantasy about this place?” Spirit quickly replied, “It’s the same thing. There is no such thing as fantasy. It is all real and at the same time nonexistent in consciousness. And yes, you feel true.” 

I asked, “How is it my body goes nearly weak with something that feels like remembering in holy places such as this?”

(And this next follows me from that moment all the way to home…)

“Because…” comes a quick and surprising reply—a revelation: “…There is no time you have spent on Earth in which you have not been indigenous, tribal. Your soul is an indigenous soul inside, outside, and everywhere.” A tangle of unbidden memories follow: Drum beats, sacred dance steps, a hula, a SunDance, costumes and customs, a ceremonial fire somewhere, anywhere. “All your ancestors are indigenous…” Inside my soul, I weep tears of remembering.

Suddenly, clearly, I understand why I am in this world, but only rarely of it. I have had no lives in the density of civilization. No wonder I’ve  felt so out of place most all my life. No wonder I can have a more profound relationship with a tree, a patch if moss, a pollywog, than I can with most people. No wonder I can respect a a stream or a stone more than I can respect a peopled city and all the misery we bring with it to this precious Earth. 

“These are not my people.” And yet here I am. “Learn to respect everything” Spirit whispers.

Today we went to the Hubbard Glacier in Yukatat, Alaska—the largest tidal glacier in the world. Dressed in our warmest jackets, we pressed against the railing to see the towering Blue-ice wall up close. And our captain managed to get us really close. A rarity, I learn later. Hundreds of cruisers packed along the bow railings. The chatter was—as always—nonstop. Amidst the press of humanity, I could the glacier speak. Somewhere deep behind the blue-ice wall, huge chunks of glacier were sliding down, cracking off into the unseen waters. We could hear it, and some of us could feel it: A roar like thunder and lightening combined, but so very much louder. Again, that stunning vibration of raw and vast power speaking in a language I would give anything to understand. “This is sacred ground,” I imagined the ice-thunders might say. “Sacred ground…” I said to myself. “Hello,” I said to the glacier. “I. See.You.” And I clasped my hand and made a little bow. For all the time we faced that glacier, the ice told us stories, one after another after another. So many stories, they shouted over each other. Some stories, you just have to feel. I’ve lost my ability to translate these ancient languages.

As our time at Hubbard Glacier lengthened, I listened more deeply: Everything has a voice. Animals, of course, but trees, also, and wind and snow. Hurricanes and tornadoes have their own voices. Water chatters in the language of rain drops, snow fall, brooks, rivers, and glaciers. Stars speak also, in a voice beyond the range of our ears. But our bodies feel the tremors of these celestial bodies, astrologists would say. Stones and mountains—like elephants—speak in their own low octaves. Everything speaks.

What also calls to my heart in Alaska are the small and close-knit communities off the beaten track. In towns of only a few thousand people, you can be known by mostly everyone, especially in winter when the population shrinks even more. These days, I do belong to my land, my little round house and tiny forest, and to Lee. That matters a lot to me. 

I love where we live now, but it is not so much of a community as a suburb of Seattle. Maybe after we’ve lived there longer, I will find my way into it. These reflections have me pondering about the native Alaskans’ connection to their lands. These tribal people have lived on certain sites for thousands of years. How would it feel to know that the bones of all your ancestors for millennia were in that ground? How would it be to know that all of them were shining their love right up to you from deep in the stoney soils? Would we care more for our Earth if we in Western culture had that kind of connection to place? Here in America, most of us are tourists to this continent. We move from place to place, and our ancestral connections are mostly oceans away. We share little ethnicity with them once we start living and breeding in America.

This cruise is igniting months, perhaps even years of reflection and study for me when I return home. And in the most velvet chambers of my heart, I’ll be bringing a bit of Alaska home with me.”

So home we came. May was almost gone. I hurried off to our native plant nursery, and purchased two small Devil’s Club plants. I hear they bloom red. I doubt I’ll ever use them medicinally. For me, the medicine will be their presence.

A couple of months later, an arborist came by to identify which of our dead trees should be turned into tall snags. I took him to a tree at our yard’s edge that another arborist had not been able to identify. “Well hey—that’s a Sitka Spruce,” he grinned. “You don’t often find them down down so far south.” I smiled, too. One more bit of precious Alaska living here in our little Shire woods.