Also! A few days ago I turned 37, the first birthday I have not spent on trail in six years. Which is whatever, just an interesting fact. Muffy and I started the morning with donuts and cold brew, and then drove to the top of Mt Lemmon, where it is 30 degrees cooler than in the valley. We camped in the ponderosas and ate homemade potato salad, corn on the cob, and burgers. We made out in the soft light. We trail ran with dogs. It was Muffy's half birthday! We had a fire and spoke all our intentions for the coming year into the flames. Muffy gave me a six person tent! For future gay glamping parties. It was the perfect birthday. Also I love Muffy. Here are some photos.
A week ago @muffyjdavis and I drove from Oregon to Tucson via Montana etc and here are some pictures from that, feat. the van, dogs, cooking and hiking and sleeping on public lands, and the Extra Very Good Queers of Missoula (photo of their sweet crumbling punkhouse by @shaadiamond ). We're in Tucson now, it takes less than two minutes to walk between our houses. September is still summer here, altho the temperature has begun to dip below 100. It feels so good to have a homebase again, a weight I didnt know I was carrying, lifted. I'm making saurkraut and salve in the AC and walking slow in the early mornings and dark hot evenings, under the pink sky. Our friends here are 💯, so wholesome and good it's kind of unbelievable. The Sonoran desert smells so good in summer humidity, I had no idea. I've got four more months to work on edits of #TheSunsetRoute before, hopefully, turning it in. Things are feeling rly steady, and rly chill.
"We follow another river to its headwaters and reach a huge open area between mountains. This valley is almost entirely marsh. We don’t realize this until we’re mired in it, standing in deep water and looking around us, water as far as we can see. We wrench our feet from the water and sink again, laughing, our toes turning to ice. We struggle to a slope of talus and work our way across the lichen spotted rocks. I see what looks like a cairn. I kick it over, and then feel terrible. Was that actually a cairn? If so, how old was it? These passes are ancient caribou migration routes, and the Nunamiut Inupiat have been hunting caribou here for thousands of years. Was that cairn theirs? Who am I, to project my white colonizer idea of wilderness onto these lands, to which I have no ancestral connection and whose flora, fauna, seasons and moods I do not know."
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My writeup from Gates of the Arctic is finally finished! Check it out on my blog at carrotquinn.com, or via the link in my profile. @calliehikes ' blog from the route is also bangin, u can find that link in their profile. Sweet sweet nature escapism for yall ✨
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!)
