Tomorrow our tech overlords will unveil the post human future but before their plan can be put into place
a nuclear winter will take us but spare the wolves
Beavers will make the rivers wild again
Farms will turn back into wetlands
Look at the way the light is marigold
this time of day;
The sparkles on the swimming hole, this water is cold snowmelt from the ponderosa forest high above, where it's quiet
We've brought guacamole, avocados were 50 cents at the store, there's sand in everything
My friend's face is so open, she's been crying because her heart was broken
Tomorrow death will come but today,
Our hearts can still break
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Alternate caption: the future is gay swimming holes
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Alternate alternate caption: my friends r my muses
I thought this trip to Alaska would be lonely, isolating and full of grief. By chance I ended up staying at a house in Anchorage suffused w history and peopled with some of the kindest and most genuine and generous ppl I have ever had the chance to meet. The trip that was supposed to be hard and sad was instead full of laughter, warmth, connection and companionship, and now Anchorage, a town I never thought I could love, truly feels like one of my homes.
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Did I find my mother, though? I wish there was an easy answer to this question. I met more people who know her and know her habits, but the truth is that it is incredibly difficult to figure out how to support someone who does not want to be found, contacted or supported. It's a long process, and a complicated one. I'm back in Tucson now but I'm returning to Anchorage in the spring to spend a longer chunk of time there, to keep chipping away at this thing.
✨ (I didnt get photos of so many of the brilliant ppl I had a chance to spend time with, these few will have to suffice) ✨ 📍This is Dena'ina land
Foods I have eaten since being in Alaska: muktuk, caribou organ scrapple, moose stew, caribou bratwurst, smoked salmon, coffee blended w coconut oil and butter, dumpstered chocolate (that's it, that's the whole post)
My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic who does not want to be found. When I do get information on her whereabouts it's because someone at a shelter or homeless cafe is breaking the rules; a volunteer tells me he's been seeing her around for a year, she went off her meds and was extra cantankerous but now she's back on them. He tells me to return at 6pm but when I stand in the cold and knock on the locked door that evening another worker cracks it and tells me, with a serene face, that she can't give me any information because of confidentiality, nor will she be able to give me any information at any time in the future, nor will I ever be allowed to come inside.
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I know why these rules exist, and I respect them. I respect my mothers' autonomy. She's survived 22 winters homeless in Alaska, she knows how to survive another.
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It's cold in Anchorage right now. The temps have been below zero almost every night that I've been here. I visit a winter homeless camp, where tarps have been piled on top of each other in the shape of a low cabin and empty propane tanks are stacked in the snow. A cheery man in a light jacket tells me he hasn't seen my mother. So many people are homeless in Anchorage, even in the winter. It is beyond hardcore. Every year, many people die. I imagine my mother, who other homeless folks have described as "a frail little lady with white hair who often uses a walker", sleeping outside when it's fifteen below zero. ✨
I tell myself I'm going to find that man who broke the rules for me, and become his friend. Or someone like him. I don't need to have a relationship with my mother, if she doesn't want that. I know how bad she feels when she has to interact with people, and I don't want to make her feel worse. But I don't want her to die in a snowbank, either. I'm going to find someone who knows her, who sees her on the reg, and through that person, find a way to help her. I stuff my hands in my pockets and shuffle down the snowy sidewalk. I can feel my eyelashes freezing. I imagine my mother off her meds, hurling verbal abuse at the people serving her dinner, and chuckle to myself.
As an adult coming back to Alaska in the summers I never wanted to spend much time in Anchorage; I hardly knew anyone here, there were ghosts everywhere, the city made me too sad. I thought this winter trip wld feel like that- lonely, isolating, haunted. ✨
But by some trick of serendipity I ended up in a house of rly good ppl whose long histories are, amazingly, intertwined with mine (all of us being west coast punks of a certain age) and instead of feeling alone I'm being reminded that actually, I've been connecting w ppl/cultivating relationships w ppl my whole life, weaving my history with others year by year, and my aloneness is an illusion that I create but don't want to anymore- I want to tear it down like cobwebs, and keep tearing it down when it grows back.
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I thought I wld feel extra super alone on this trip but instead the ppl here feel like home, they are the kindest, most interesting smart and generous ppl, and the fact that this is happening in the place that is also my hometown is almost too much, like it makes me mad at the universe. We spin our wheels and we spin our wheels and we never get anywhere, but we end up where we're meant to be all the same, right?
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I dunno, I'm starting to believe that home is a real thing, maybe the most pedestrian thing, unglamorous, easy to overlook but waiting, brilliant, covered in hoar frost
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📍This is Dana'ina land
Sounds like an excellent zero day! I’m happy to hear you have reconnected with some good people. Looking forward to further updates from the trail!
From her fingers once again springs the fount-of-youth which, by reading, shall cause us all to remain young and vibrant and hike the trails of life forever and ever! Yahoooooo!
“We are young, and this will last forever. Won’t it?”
The curse of self-awareness.
Wonderful entry again.
I love The Village!
I wish I knew the backstory of some of these trail names…like Track Meat.
Love hearing your voice in these words. And I love all your ankles connected to those shoes!