I parked at Loussac library, the big library where, as a kid, I would hide from the cold or, alternately, my home life, which was much messier and more scary than the cold. In the library, as a kid, I sat in antique leather chairs under walls of beautiful old books. I read magazines by the light of a glass lamp. The air had been still. Quiet. Predictable. Sometimes my mother would be there with me, muttering to herself in a corner. Hiding with me.
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"Yeah I know Barbara," said a woman in the homeless camp in the woods behind Loussac. We were standing among the birch trees. The air was warm, and I could feel the loamy ground beneath my feet. It's nice here, I thought. I imagined my mother in this forest, in her tent- did she have a tent?
"I used to see her when I worked at mcdonalds," the woman was saying."I would give her free food. Tiny frail lady, pure white hair. Talks to herself a lot. I last saw her two days ago. She's always around this area." The woman's pitbull whined softly from within his kennel. The light dissolved in the boughs of the trees and the reformed, pooling on the mossy ground. All around us, people rested in their tents. Nearby was a folding table with huge blue jugs of water. boxes of food and piles of blankets were stacked next to it. An older white man and an indigenous elder sat in folding chairs at the entrance to the camp, where the mowed park ended and the path into the forest began.
"We do security here," said the white man."We take shifts."
It's nice here, I thought again.
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Half the staff at the local homeless cafe said they knew her.
"Barbara, yeah. Little old white lady, sometimes uses a walker? Keeps to herself? She's in here all the time. Was just in here this morning."
"What?" I said. I looked at the clock. It was noon. I sat at one of the long tables, next to the people eating lunch. Sloppy joes and boiled carrots. I looked around the huge room, checking all the faces, but moving my eyes quick. If any of these folks were paranoid like Barbara, they wouldn't want me looking at them.
"What are you staring at me for!" Shouted the woman sitting next to me.
"I'm looking for my mother," I said. (1/3, Cont in comments!)
Today I got to see Laura, my best friend from when I was a kid. Laura and I used to shoplift books on Wicca from Barnes and Noble and do spells with citronella candles and culinary spices. We memorized all the lyrics to Meatloaf songs. We made up our own sign language. We sewed medieval clothing for our barbie dolls. We had a seance on the lawn of our junior high when Kurt Cobain died. Laura had two moms who ate tofu and recycled, and I wanted them to adopt me. Instead, my grandparents in Colorado adopted me when I was in highschool and after I moved away Laura and I would talk on the phone for hours, weeping. We met up in Seattle when we were both 18 and got these matching tattoos, straight from the walls of flash. ✨
Today I met a man who knows my mother. He's the executive director of a community mental health org here in Anchorage, and we were sitting in his cluttered office on worn chairs. "I know Barbara," he said. "I used to see her often. Tiny, frail lady, always had her little suitcase with her. A bit of a loaner." He smiled, as though at a fond memory. "I haven't seen her in, oh... five years."
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That was the dead end of my leads for the day. I'd followed various ribbons as they unfurled until this bonanza, a man who knew her- but he hadn't seen her in a very long time. "Try to get support while you're doing this," he said, looking across his chipped desk at me. "Talk to someone who knows about grief. Don't white knuckle your way through this." I started crying in his office. I felt like he could see right through me. ✨
On my way to Laura's, my friend Tara texted me more leads. Homeless camps in Anchorage. Where to look. There are so many. To heck with reality TV shows about Alaskans hunting and fishing, I thought. There should be a show about homeless people in Anchorage. That would be the most real Alaskan reality TV. Maybe a little too real. (Cont in comments!)
PCT trail days is this weekend, and I want to talk abt a problematic behavior I see in the PCT community. ✨ Being in the outdoors community is HARD. It is a nonstop mysogynist heteronormative abelist brofest competitive pissing contest and you must fight against this dynamic with every fiber of your being if you want to have an experience that is anything other than this. It's a lot of effort to create a different experience, but the effort is WORTH IT. And this effort creates spaces in which other folks who also want something different can join together, which makes the most beautiful sort of outdoors community. ✨ Sometimes I see long distant hikers from marginalized communities take a different road, tho. It's too hard to struggle against the current, and so they want to assimilate into the brofest. They want to assimilate so bad they will throw other marginalized folks under the bus if it helps them do so. There was a time when I wanted to assimilate into the brofest. Things could be so easy! I thought. But it wasn't easy. I learned my lesson in 2014, when I hiked the PCT fast in an arrogant way with a group of bros, a few of which were incredibly misogynist (And a few who were super great!). I wanted to assimilate so badly I stayed silent around terrible behavior, thereby enabling it, and I am still ashamed of that to this day. I learned a LOT of lessons during that hike, which have deeply informed my outdoors experience since. ✨ The point of this post is- if you're a member of a marginalized community and a long distance hiker, and you not only refuse to stand up to bullshit on the trail but also work to tear down other marginalized hikers who do stand up, all in hopes that this will allow you to assimilate- stop. It's not going to work. Not only will u never truly be welcome in that world but trust me, you don't want to be. That world sucks, even for the straight white cis bros who are in it! It is a vapid, empty world devoid of meaning, where everyone always ultimately fails. Even the bros want out! We ALL want an outdoors community that is different than the one we currently have. So go towards the light! You'll be glad you did. ✨
📍This is Yakama land
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The Machine endangers all we have made.
We allow it to rule instead of obey.
To build a house, cut the stone sharp and fast:
the carver's hand takes too long to feel its way.
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The Machine never hesitates, or we might escape
and its factories subside into silence.
It thinks it's alive and does everything better.
With equal resolve it creates and destroys.
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But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places
we can still sense the source: a play of pure powers
that—when you feel it—brings you to your knees.
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There are yet words that come near the unsayable,
and, from crumbling stones, a new music
to make a sacred dwelling in a place we cannot own. -Rilke
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(I just saw this Rilke poem in @queernature 's stories and it like, moved me, man. So I had to put it here.)
📍 This is Inupiat, Gwich'in and Koyukon land
Once I did this with dall sheep horns I found in ANWR and they were full of rotten horn juice that poured all over my hat, that's what I get. These are from caribou, caribou are cool, they make their huge strong animal bodies from just lichen and live outdoors in a place w rly brutal winters, makes humans seem like wusses when u rly think abt it
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This is Inupiat, Gwich'in and Koyukon land
