... And I'm home, Alaska

For years, while I was teaching at a mid-sized college in upstate New York, I sat politely through Monday afternoon Faculty Senate meetings, taking notes and looking attentive. But my mind was elsewhere. I hated being stuck in those meetings, especially on winter days when the sun was setting and I knew I was missing the best crepuscular light, would be stuck walking home in the cold, boring dark. I tried to make the best of it, plastering a faint smile on my face and spending most of the time memorizing poems -- Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, Robert Service. While others gave finance reports or revived perennial complaints about teaching evaluations, I daydreamed of geese and granite ridges, succumbed to "The Spell of the Yukon." Blah blah, department enrollment, dining hall options,... Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it, / And somehow the [tenure] isn’t all.

####

Puppy and I now live in the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder. After years of dreaming of moving to Alaska, I finally made the big move, not so much piking to the Yukon as packing up and driving/taking a ferry/driving to Fairbanks. In November. (The month before winter sets in is a perfect time to move to interior Alaska, of course.)

We've been here for nearly two months. Like every Sunday afternoon, we just took a 2 hour long romp through the forest -- my eyelashes and her whiskers freezing in the crisp, still air; snow all squeaky underfoot; early winter sun barely high enough to illuminate the treetops; one cackle of raven but no other signs of life. 

Now we're nestled back inside my cozy little cabin, with blankets and warm socks and a mug of hot cocoa on hand -- the epitome of hygge.

####

It doesn't seem like a place meant for comfort, though.

It's dark. 

Lightish out from about 11 to 3, nighttime until 10 and by 4. I've only seen the actual sun above the horizon once in the past few weeks, and even then, it was cheating (and brief), driving over hilltops. I constantly cycle through 2-3 headlamps, each of which only lasts 10-15 minutes before fading then quitting due to cold.

It's cold. 

Last I checked, the thermometer read -28 degrees Fahrenheit, with windchills forecasted for -60. (When yesterday rose to -16, I caught myself thinking, "Oh, it's warm out today.") Last week, I was farther north -- above the Arctic Circle, in fact -- and the truck said it was -38 out (though we weren't sure if the thermometer had just bottomed out at that point.) At -40, Celsius and Fahrenheit match and degrees don't really seem to matter anymore.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you, / The white land locked tight as a drum, // 

The cold fear that follows and finds you, / The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

My cabin's only defense against the cold is an efficient little Toyo stove (quite common up here), which runs on fuel oil but needs electricity to fire. The power flickers out a few times a week, leaving me at risk of freezing and an expert at resetting clocks.

Puppy keeps getting ice balls in her paws, but that's her own fault for repeatedly tearing off her protective booties. 

Every time I go outside, I have to put on socks, mittens, boots, a hat, at least one coat, and usually snowpants. 

I have to go outside fairly frequently, for I live in a "dry" cabin -- no running water. Jugs. An outhouse. The sink drains into a bucket. There are several places in town to get water -- some people fill huge tanks on the back of their trucks -- but I've just been melting snow. My pasta often contains a few errant pine needles.

It's a 4 mile walk to work, first through a snow-laden forest, then along a stretch of icy road (or, if there's a lot of traffic, a deep but safer ditch), followed by 2 miles of what I think are bike paths, criss-crossed with tracks from fat bikes, snow machines, and moose (moose!!), finally another stretch of icy road. At least I don't have to burn through all of my headlamps, because most of the way is brightly-illuminated by light pollution. Oh, and it reeks of vehicle exhaust. Fairbanks boasts more poor air quality warnings than windchill advisories. 

"...You hate it like hell for a season, / And then you are worse than the worst..."

I much prefer walking to work, though have to drive everywhere else. Like many western towns, Fairbanks never seems to have suffered any semblance of urban planning, just sprawled into a giant network of highways. All roads are permanently iced over. I have to scrape off my windshield every time I want to drive. I had my truck winterized (i.e. outfitted with special heaters that keep things like the battery warm when I plug them into an outside outlet) but no one warned me that my extension cord would freeze into a giant tangle of loops. All of my tires are flat. 

Luckily, gas is cheap. Food, however, is expensive. Plus, it's hit or miss whether fruits, veggies, cheese, and basically anything will be in stock much less fresh. I suppose I'll have to learn to fish and hunt. Only about 7 months until berries should be ripe!

"...It grips you like some kinds of sinning; / It twists you from foe to a friend; // It seems it’s been since the beginning; / It seems it will be to the end."

####

All this to say: I absolutely love it here thus far. The freshness, the freedom, the farness— / O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

I love how the snow squeaks, love how the trees wobble, love how the light barely hits distant hills. I love how puppy gets little whiskercicles, how my face freezes over but my toes stay warm, how I'm forced to go outside when it's 2 a.m. and nearly -40 degrees Fahrenheit (or Celsius) and I have to pee, only to get to see the most magnificent aurora shimmering greenly through the sky. I love how mountains sit on the horizon, how inversions turn them into mirages. I love how the profile of Denali pops out everywhere. I love that my job entails driving north of the Arctic Circle. 

I've never in my life felt so eager and overjoyed for a solstice.

####

So much to learn!

First, cold, personal-scale. 

The afternoon we arrived here was a grey and somewhat humid 17 degrees. I couldn't stop shivering. The first time it dropped below 0, I wore every single one of my layers and sweated buckets. The first time I walked to work below -20, I wore every single one of my layers and still sweated buckets. The first time it dropped below -25, I was sure my truck would never start again, but it coughed right to life. The first time the thermometer read -36, I thought my lungs would freeze when I stepped outside, but they didn't even burn a little. Lesson being: you get used to the cold. Not to say that I enjoy -28, poor little Toyo pumping away, but now -8 feels like a heat wave.

Next, landscape-scale cold. 

Instead of the typical lapse rate, which keeps higher altitude air pockets and land surfaces colder than lower altitudes, inversions rule here. Hilltops are warmer, as cold, dense air sinks and settles into the valleys. Even more importantly, local topography rules, with relative elevation key. I live on the side of a hill, technically higher than downtown, but lower than a circle of surrounding domes, so I'm stuck with a cold bubble of air. It's often 10-15 degrees colder here than at work. Driving the Dalton Highway, up and over several ridges and down into valleys, temperatures range from 10 degrees (above zero!) on the summits to -30 or less near the very frozen rivers. Plus, the size of the valley matters, or rather the size of the area from which it drains cold. Instead of a watershed, it's a coldshed, with local topography of far more importance than latitude or elevation.

Speaking of cold: ice. 

Ice does weird things here. River surfaces freeze, but can keep running and force their way up behind ice dams, creating layers of "aufeis". Lake surfaces freeze, too, but if enough snow falls, it can weigh down the frozen surface, pushing the ice into the water and creating "overflow." Puppy and I learned this one during one very mushy walk across what I thought had been a solidly frozen pond. Yet, ice and, better yet, snow, are the way to travel. It's infinitely easier to shuffle or glide across the surface of a frozen stream or along a neatly snowpacked trail than to wobble through tussocks or weave through sprucey bogs.

In part, that's why all of the rivers and tributaries are packed with place-names, while many of the summits remain nameless. When navigating through this region, only a few of the most prominent peaks are of any help; it's the water that matters. Also, high hills are called "domes" -- Ester Dome, Murphy Dome, Wickersham Dome. No one seems to know why.

####

Even in 2022 (soon to be 2023), There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, / And the rivers all run God knows where. 

It's all still so big. And so wild. How could any other place compare?

I came to the Arctic 4 1/2 years ago, out of some naïve, desperate hope to experience wildness and the sublime. I found myself deep in a land far beyond my dreams or nightmares -- a huge, powerful place full of "freshness" and "freedom" and "farness", where lives are "erring and aimless" and, yes, deaths "just hang by a hair." 

I barely survived, humbled and terrified. 

Enchanted. 

There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons, / And I want to go back—and I will.

####

Turns out, those Faculty Senate meetings were invaluable, after all. Thanks for the time spent memorizing Robert Service:

It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, / It’s the forests where silence has lease; //

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder, / It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

Farewell to Utah...

[Note: written in mid-October. Left unposted because it rambled off without saying anything worthwhile. Until it was put in perspective.]

####

Farewell, Agua Canyon; farewell, Grand Staircase. One last drive up to the Aquarius Plateau, aspen blazing in full autumnal glory; one final loop of Fairyland, hoodoos standing tall and misshapen as they were the first hundred-odd times I hiked that trail. Still a few more sunrises to soak in at Sunrise Point, still a few more sunsets at Sunset, then I'm off. Leaving this place.

I still don't know what to make of it. I still don't know if I ever really gave it a chance. 

####

It's such a beautiful place, full of the rich colors and unique scenery that are required for any national park to be a national park. Salmon-pink stone, forest-green pines, October sky an extra deep blue. Expansive views embracing distant mesas and asthenosphere-top clouds, intimate trails weaving down between narrow rock walls and around thousands of odd, lumpy pinnacles. Elk bugling in autumn, peregrines screaming in summer, ravens laughing all year round. It should be everything I could ever hope for. 21,000 acres of Recommended Wilderness, just out my front door, with millions more acres of canyon- and cliff-filled public lands beyond that. 

I have a puppy and a truck. A cozy cabin. A job I very much enjoy. Friends and neighbors, a hundred strangers a day who smile and say hello, delighted to be here.

But I'm leaving. Again. Leaving, always leaving.

####

Push-pull migration factors.

Pull: I've always said that I want to live in Alaska. (By that, I think I meant, you know, Ketchikan or Seward. Glennallen, maybe, but that's getting pretty far out there.) Pull: I've been dreaming of the Arctic for the past four years. (Granted, some of those dreams were rockfall- and river-filled nightmares, but dreams nonetheless.) Pull: A permanent job, one that I'm thoroughly excited for and hope to do well at. Pull: Alaska!!! Did I mention Alaska!

Push: This is not my place. 

Maybe it was never going to be my place. Maybe I was meant to just be here for a while, feel grateful to be free and happy back out West, relieved to have my life on the track it was meant to be on, then continue onward, leave. Well, good, that's what's bearing out.

But, nagging at the back of my mind is the possibility that maybe it could have been my place, maybe it should have been my place, maybe I failed it. It took time and perspective for me to appreciate the Adirondacks, it took time and perspective for me to fall in love with Black Canyon. Geographers still say, it takes time to develop an attachment to a place. 

I'm not missing the time-in-place here; the perspective is what's off. 

Or maybe it failed me.

####

I need to begin writing again. For a year, I've had an essay in me, waiting to be put into words. It's this place -- the story of this landscape, the factors and forces that shaped it, beginning with a lake/river and delta system through to lithification, burial, uplift, weathering, erosion. 

Erosion, it's mostly the story of erosion. 

How something as solid as rock is gradually broken apart and eaten away, leaving behind these weird and improbable fins, windows, arches, and hoodoos. And how the erosion and brokenness somehow becomes a thing of beauty.

Then, this unwritten ghost of an essay is also a story about my experience in this place, the factors and forces that shaped it. It too is a story of erosion. How hope and happiness can be broken apart and eaten away, not by gravity, water, or ice, but by interpersonal forces -- miscommunication, misunderstanding, selfishness. Cruelty. Whatever's left is broken and misshapen, but impressive in its misshapenness, both delicate and unbelievably strong, how can it possibly still be standing?

The words aren't quite there yet, though. There are more metaphors yet to be found, more parallels to be drawn. Hard, capping dolomite vs weak, melty mudstone. Slow, unseen ice wedges vs. dramatic bursts of rain. Internal vs. external factors. Sentience vs. non. I'm not ready. In part, because I'm still here. I have to leave before I can write. It's time to leave.

####

Puppy and I are packing the truck. (Well, I'm getting ready to pack the truck; puppy is helpfully gnawing on boxes and pulling things back out of bags). The drive north should be an adventure in its own right. (Ferry! We're taking the ferry up the coast of Southeast AK!) And -- puppy doesn't know this yet, but... -- we're going all in, leasing a little dry cabin in the forest outside of Fairbanks. (I know, I know, I'll regret this when it's 2 a.m. and -40 degrees and I have to pee.) 

For now, I'm rereading Two in the Far North, Alaska Wilderness, and Arctic Dreams. I'm excited, a touch trepidatious. “What does it mean to grow rich? ... Is it to retain a capacity for awe and astonishment in our lives, to continue to hunger after what is genuine and worthy? Is it to live at moral peace with the universe?” -- Barry Lopez.

I don't know. I really hope so.

####

It isn't just puppy and I, though. I have a partner in this mad dream/adventure, first for the drive, then, hopefully, at our little cabin in the forest come spring. That whole story takes much longer to explain -- maybe there's another book in me? -- but suffice to say: I'm happy. 

Haven't I learned anything from Bryce? Shouldn't I be wary, guarded? Protect what's left of these arches and hoodoos? Maybe. 

Probably. 

Definitely. 

Yes. 

But this feels right for now. All of this feels right. Terrifyingly, exhilaratingly, impossibly right. Right?

Farewell, Bryce, you've been beautiful. Enlightening. Something to that effect. 

I'm leaving stronger, lighter, as improbable as it may seem.

Desert Healing

The red rock desert of South-Central Utah is a land of barrenness and beauty, harshness and healing.

The barrenness is what makes it beautiful: clean lines and contours to the horizon, dusky palette under a brilliant turquoise sky, heat shimmering off of sunlit sand and coolness pooling in shadowed canyons. Here and there, the scurry of a lizard, the cackle of a raven. Scent of sage. Blinding moon or Milky Way at night, a universe worth of light unimpeded by trees or urban glow. All the true desert solitaire one could desire.

Within that barrenness, pockets of greenness: forested plateaus studded with ponderosa and sparkling with small subalpine lakes. Cottonwood- and willow-lined washes, rustling with leaves and laughing in ephemeral streams. Best of all, hanging gardens: canyon walls carpeted with moss and fern, seemingly emanating straight from stone. Unexpected gifts.

Other unexpected gifts: the occasional shock-red paintbrush or claret-cup cactus. Heat heat heat broken by the rush of cool air preceding a monsoon storm. The unique sense of peace that settles in after a cloudburst, rock steaming and dripping, potholes brimming with rainfall, dry washes running, birds singing the desert awake. Birds singing the desert to sleep. Shooting stars. 

The harshness is what allows for healing. Building thirst, hunger, and fear create space for relief. Satisfaction if not satiation with the most basic aspects of being alive: gratitude for the shade of a lonely juniper against the midday sun. Joy of a slight trickle of water after days and miles of dry sand and empty potholes. A thousand anxieties -- will a ridge be passable, will a rattlesnake strike, just how hopelessly and irrevocably lost am I? -- resolve into a feeling of relief and security once they've passed.

If they pass.

#

The marvel of deserts -- and all wild places -- is that they don't care about individual human lives. It doesn't matter to them what we feel or want, what we seek or find. They just go on being deserts. Or mountains. Or tundra. (True, true, humans as a collective are changing all of the planet, but even then, I take the geologic view that the planet will be fine in the long run, no matter what happens to our single, lonely, rash and irrational specie.)

The Painted Desert never cared that I loved it. The Adirondacks never cared that I hated them. It didn't matter to Alaska's Arctic whether I lived or died. Places can't be kind. Places can't be cruel. Rocks and rivers and trees and wildlife don't consciously decide what to do with whatever poor or quite happy lost soul wanders off across or through or under or near them.

That indifference is freeing. Places are what we make of them, what experiences we have and how we interpret them. People are so much more ridiculously complex, such bundles of determination and desire and emotion and irrationality. People can be kind, yes, but people can be cruel. Deliberately so. That whole consciousness thing, self-awareness, free will.

Give me a rockfall or a rattlesnake any day.

#

Things I've always wanted: a puppy, a truck. To feel happy. To feel free.

#

I have a puppy. I have a truck. The truck is able to get us places that I couldn't reach with my previous vehicle, a noble but very low clearance Subaru. Puppy reminds me to be safe and reasonable and to stop every now and then to play.

We're seeing all the places that I should have gone to last year, and get to marvel at now. The canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante, the plateaus of Dixie National Forest. Cottonwood Canyon Road, with the spectacular view of Grosvenor Arch and the Cockscomb; narrows just as marvelous for their tight, tall walls but comfortable enough for a puppy and a claustrophobe.

Hole-in-the-Rock Road, with a series of spurs to explore. True slot canyons, plus windswept washes and natural bridges. Dinosaur tracks. Soooooooo many miles of washboard.

"The Box" section of Box-Death Hollow Wilderness, with the cool waters of Pine Creek gurgling steadily through the several hundred-feet deep gorge they'd carved into the Navajo Sandstone. A near-perfect campsite under a bright quarter moon, marred only by the many cacti and a pervasive fear of mountain lions.

And climbing -- not only can I get to Cedar Canyon or the Jungle on the Aquarius Plateau within an hour or two, but I'm actually able to go climbing, whenever I can convince others to join me. Puppy and I can go wherever we want, do whatever we want. I'm living my own life again.

#

Once upon a time, I used to go to deserts (and mountains and tundra) seeking the edge of peril, looking for that mix of thirst and quenching, hunger and satiation, fear and joy. I wouldn't say I deliberately put myself at risk (well, aside from Gates of the Arctic), but I certainly wasn't seeking the easy route. I wanted challenges. Type II fun. And always just soldiered on through any discomfort or danger.

With puppy, I have to be far more aware of just how hot it is and how many treats I have in my pack, whether there are unsurmountable cliffs up ahead. Water, I carry lots of water. 

This erodes at my freedom (i.e. no solo canyonneering in the near future), but is more likely to keep me alive (i.e., no solo canyoneering in the near future.) Instead of aimlessly seeking barrenness and harshness, I have to plan ahead, focus on the comforts as well as the beauty. It's a different type of healing -- one I've never tried before -- distinguished by views out across the high plateaus or Grand Staircase, from the seat of a reliable truck. A mattress in the camper bed and shorter, shadier walks. Rolling in sand. A black and white blur trying to herd lizards and tumbleweeds, followed by a furry lump curled up on the sleeping bag, softly snoring. Belly rubs, all the belly rubs. 

I think she's happy? Then, I am, too.

Winter Truthing

All wrong, and I knew it. Not the place--I'm still trying to figure that out--but the way by which I've been approaching it, exploring it, living it. Ignoring it.

Until now. Winter. Fresh, sparkling, clean, cold, candid, winter. I'll remember how to live again.

         

****

Nearly eight months ago, I wrote of "the desire to rid myself of the stress and sorrow that I've accumulated over the course of many years."

The desire "to swap heartbreak and loneliness for solitude or, better yet, friends."

The desire for "natural splendor and awe and a sense of real purpose."

I wrote that I had come to Southern Utah's canyon country with the intent and hope to learn from the hoodoos and the trees and the peregrines, the skies and sunrises and wilderness.

And then, one solo backpacking trip. Maybe a dozen backcountry field days. Loops and loops of all of the local established trails, but no wandering off on wider expeditions, no soaking in the stars, no sinking into the rocks or pines. No chance. I didn't give the place a chance. All wrong.

       

****

Just days after writing, with full conviction, that I needed this place, that I hoped it would heal me, that I was going to do my best to soak in it and let it teach me how to be alive again, I met someone. He was tall and articulate and had grey-green eyes and an adorable dog and was eager to go rock climbing with me. We had one glorious day high on the Markagunt Plateau, little-known crag all to ourselves, wide-open views out across volcanic fields, a surprise thunderstorm followed by a rain-washed sunset, all enhanced by engaging conversation and that adorable, furry, wiggly dog. (Oh, how much I love that dog.) The next morning, he came over for chocolate chip pancakes, then basically moved in with me.

               

From that point forward, I lost where I was, who I was. 

We never had a day like that again.

For months and months, summer into autumn, he became colder [crueler] and I became more conciliatory. Instead of wandering off on long post-work walks, I rushed home to cook us dinner. Instead of stepping out early to greet the day, I had to wait for him to wake. Instead of researching slot canyons or studying topo maps, I strategized how to coax him to put down his phone and get out of the house. No more essays or books, an end to sunrises or sunsets, marathon hikes or hours spent sitting with the scenery, quiet contemplation or meaningful human-to-wilderness conversations. No reading, no writing, no thinking or feeling. 

(Oh, how angry he got if I was too sad or too happy.) (How critical he was of everything I did or tried to say.) (How he hated it when I cried.) (I cried every day.) (I was not allowed to cry.) (I was not allowed to kiss him.) 

No hoodoos, no monsoons, no wildness. No me. Only him. All him. I let him. I wanted to love him. He made it quite clear he didn't care about me. Much less, about this place.

But it's winter now, and winter changes everything.

    

****

He's gone now, working in another park, where he claimed he'd be happier. Even after he left, for months, I couldn't be present here--visited him so he could ignore me over long weekends, listened to him talk endlessly about himself during nightly phone calls, internalized my loneliness and confusion and hurt and failed to ask anyone for help. 

Wilderness, please help.

Meanwhile, temperatures dropped. Fog filled the valleys. Snow fell from the skies. Chickadees dee-deed and coyote tracks danced across the meadows. Scent of pines, everywhere, icy sharp in the dark, starlit mornings.

    

****

Other seasons are so easy. Who doesn't celebrate spring, that first whiff of bare soil, fresh growth, the obnoxious yet welcome honking of geese? Then summer: not the glaring heat of midday, but the pastel reprieve that follows it come dusk. Sleeping outside or with windows open. Storms. Autumn's everyone's favorite, aspen-gold hillsides blazing against the blue blue sky, forest ringing with elk bugles. (Aspen! Elk!)

But winter? So dark, so cold, so laborious. Headlamps, eyelash-sicles, bundling up in a dozen thick layers just to step outside. Exhausting, breaking trail to tromp to work (or, for others, scraping off and warming up the car.) Nerve-wracking, monitoring the forecast to see if it's safe to go anywhere. Painful, urging numb fingers to tingle back to life. Sad. S.A.D. I don't remember the last time I saw my toes, un-encased in socks. 

I love it. 

I love winter. You have to earn the beauty, overcome the hardship, appreciate the raw edge of being alive.

****

Having hiked the Queens Garden - Navajo Loop (the park's most popular trail connection) repeatedly during the summer, I hadn't bothered to return for months. Yes, yes, hoodoos. Yes, yes, lumpy pink-red-orange-grey-white pillars of rock, improbably carved and balanced, alternating with tenacious old Ponderosa pines. Stellers jays and cliff swallows, views out across the Grand Staircase, blah blah, blah blah.

(It's not that it's possible to get tired of seeing spectacular things. Rather, it's possible to forget that the world is always fresh and new.) 

But here I was, alone again, sad, restless. Old habit: go for a walk. Strap on boots (and microspikes. And a balaclava under my wool hat. Wool socks, wool mittens) and go see what's happening outside my lonely brain. Queens-Navajo the obvious choice, closest and comparatively easy. 

But wait, all different? Snow-white caps to the hoodoos, snow-blue shadows in the ravines. Sparkles on the trees, ice on the trail, those opaque, dry, bright cloud-puffs in the sky, where was I? What was this place? Was this what it was like, to feel wonder, to feel joy?

I danced down the trail, then up up up again. Returned the next day for a fog-filled, sun-blessed sunrise. Moon-round, sun-blessed sunset. All through the holidays--through the birthday he failed to wish happy, through the Christmas he never wished merry, through the New Years he made it clear we were finished--it snowed and snowed and snowed. Three inches, eight, fourteen. I tried to go skiing the day after Christmas and was buffeted by 40-plus-mile-an-hour wind gusts. I did go skiing just before New Years, laughing through soft, brilliant powder. New Years Day, I defied the windchill of somewhere in the negative teens and looped back around Queens-Navajo, trail all to myself. Fool. Who would risk frostbite just to go for a walk? But such a happy, exhilarated, not quite frost-nipped, alive-again fool. 

You have to earn winter, let it be dark, to be light again.

****

It hasn't snowed since. Climate change, La Nina, just the off luck of a dry, mild year: boring blue skies every day. Still the pain, the confusion, how could I let someone be so cruel to me? How could I not help him? The failure, the loneliness.

Winter stars keep sparkling. 

Winter winds keep howling. 

Winter birds keep singing. 

Winter sunrises keep gleaming, sunsets keep gloaming-ing.

Spring is still months away, then summer. I'm ready this time. I'm learning. I hike trails again every weekend, am making plans for backpacking trips. So much to see here, so much to learn. I'm learning.

****

Meanwhile, I now have a new companion. One who loves snow as much as I do, who will go hiking and backpacking. Who will love me back--as long as I give her treats--and who won't deliberately break my heart. Bah, to him. I have a puppy. We're ready to like this place.

No Expectations, No Desires. (All Desires, All Expectations.)

Usually, when I set out to explore a new place and/or start a new chapter of my life, I tell myself: "No expectations. No desires." In fact, I've written that advice / warning / injunction on the first page of several field journals. And, more than once, repeated it on a page halfway through, as a reminder / re-order. "[Really, I mean it this time:] NO EXPECTATIONS. NO DESIRES."

With desires, you're setting yourself up for likely disappointment. With expectations, even more so. I've learned this the hard way, over and over again. "Amaze me!", I asked the Adirondacks, for example. "Heal me!", I demanded of Badlands. "Just give me any small snippet of wildness?", I begged the prairies of Kansas and the woods around Oneonta. With the first two, I slunk away, crushed. The latter two, I came to resent. When I approached Gates of the Arctic desperately needing to feel whole again, naively expecting to feel wonder again, the place barely spit me back out alive.

Places don't care what we think or wish of them. They can't save a person. They can't fail a person. All they can do is be there, with their rocks and water and wildlife and skies, for us to look at, marvel over, talk about, think about, use, abuse, remember, forget, try to survive, and project all of our feelings and fears onto. The Adirondacks, Badlands, and Oneonta are perfectly lovely locations; my disappointment in them was just that--mine. Gates of the Arctic just did what it does--roar with water, slide with snow, teeter with rocks, surprise with storms, shroud in mist, carpet with tundra, erupt in flowers, ring with mountains, mountains, mountains, mountains, all tall, sharp, too steep for their slopes. It didn't fail me; I failed it, far too small and fragile to face such a place alone.

Beyond disappointment, the real danger is that if you go to a place already wanting it to be or do something for you, it's not an honest relationship. In seeking to fulfil personal goals, you'll treat the place differently, seeking particular beauty or meaning, ignoring any features or aspects that don't fit neatly into your criteria. You might miss out on something spectacular, or you might find yourself overeager, underwhelmed, more and more convinced that the world you're in can't live up to the world you remember or dream. When I returned to Black Canyon of the Gunnison for my second season, or Petrified Forest for my sixth, more examples, I wanted only to relive and recapture past joys. Of course, this backfired, as I not only failed to make new happy memories, but tarnished several old ones in the process.

But oh, my first experience of Petrified Forest. Still, almost 20 years later, I can remember my first view out across the wild, colorful expanse of the Painted Desert and, better yet, my first tentative, then joyous steps out into it. I had had no idea such a place existed. I never could have envisioned or imagined it, asked nothing of it in those moments. Experienced it with raw wonder. Same for Tongass, and Wrangell-St. Elias. I hadn't done much research before showing up at each of those, didn't really know where I was going or what I was getting myself into, and thus approached Alaska's forested seashores and glacier-laced mountains at face value, no preconceived notions. No expectations, no desires. Sheer awe.

All of this to say, I know better. 

After traveling to, working in, living in, thinking about, and hoping I'd learned something from places such as these, I [should] know better.

I've moved to south-central Utah: Bryce Canyon National Park. And I've come quite consciously and deliberately full of expectations and desires. I need to be here. I need this place, with its unlikely-eroded hoodoos, its impossibly-balanced rock spires, its arches and overhangs and bright pink cliffs blazing in the morning sun. I need this place, with its scent of ponderosas and junipers and freshly-fallen snow; its sound of wind and woodpeckers, peregrines' screams reverberating off the rock faces; its views out across mesas and canyons and mountains twenty, forty, ninety miles away. I need the skies, need the dust, need the millions of acres of surrounding public land at my fingertips and boot-heels. Millions of acres of forest and slickrock, canyons and sage, Wilderness designated and non-, I need it all.

(To amend Aldo Leopold's foreword to A Sand County Almanac : “There are some who can live without wild [places], and some who cannot." 

I cannot.)

I've come to Southern Utah's canyon country with the desire to rid myself of the stress and sorrow that I've accumulated over the course of many years. I desire to swap heartbreak and loneliness for solitude or, better yet, friends. I desire natural splendor and awe and a sense of real purpose. Is that too much to ask of a place? 

[Yes.] 

And yet, I expect [by which I mean: I very, very much hope] that the rocks and the falcons and the thunderstorms will oblige. Already, the sunrises are something to celebrate.

Place non-attachment

 Although generations of geographers (myself included) have studied “sense of place”—scrutinized, surveyed, and theorized; coined new terms and debated old ones; written papers and books and dissertations—anyone alive in the place-world (thus, everyone) intuitively recognizes: the more time a person spends in a place, the more we fill that place with memories and meanings. A simple matter of opportunity and exposure. More moments = more memories. More memories = more meaning.

Memory-full and meaning-full does not, however, mean memorable much less meaningful. Sense of place does not automatically translate to place-attachment, an affinity for a place.

After living in a small city in Upstate New York for nearly nine years, I have left. I am not sorry to go.

It’s a perfectly nice little city: safe, comfortable, scenic in its nestled-in-a-river-valley-surrounded-by-farms-and-forest-coated-hills-rural-Upstate-calendar-scene sort of way. The valley fills with fog in the spring and the hillsides erupt in color come autumn. Geese honk along the river and I’ve seen more than one bald eagle soar right over Main Street. The city itself is eminently livable: downtown features shops with classic brick storefront charm, creative restaurants and college-town bars, a plaza for the seasonal farmers' market, Christmas tree, and an endless parade of parades. (The town sure loves parades.) Elsewhere, there are tree-lined streets with big old houses, parks with tennis courts and baseball diamonds, people on the sidewalk who wave and say hello. It’s the sort of town where strangers saw me out walking and stopped to offer a ride, even in the middle of the pandemic.

I walked a lot. Some 30,000 miles, I estimate, through several pairs of shoes. That’s how I get to know a place. Memories, meanings, step by step.

I remember walking up the hill to the college where I worked. Not a steep hill, but enough to get the blood flowing 6 a.m.-ish. Peaceful in the pre-dawn darkness: past sleeping houses, a dark patch of woods, a starry open stretch onto campus, just me and the deer and a steady line of cars. Relaxing in reverse, near or post-sunset: more people on the sidewalks, more traffic on the streets. Sheltered enough during rainstorms, pleasantly cool in late summer; less enjoyable in winter, when I came to anticipate which sidewalks would be shoveled and which would be knee-deep in snow or slippery-smooth with ice. I must have walked up and down that hill 700 or 800 times. It was a nice enough commute, but I will not miss it.

I remember the long loop around—a full eight miles up and down hills, past hops fields, hayfields, horse pastures, trees, trees, trees. In some spots, a view out across the entire valley; in others, tight ribbons of water tumbling through steep streams. I came to know where to look for the first trout lilies and where to keep an eye out for porcupines; where there are apple trees in autumn and maples tapped in spring. Where drivers tend to be distracted and cut corners. When the school bus drivers honk and wave hello. That route, I probably only walked a few hundred times. I will not miss it.

Then there’s the stretch of road leading west of town, along the river valley, between the highway and the railroad tracks, river itself inaccessible. Finally, free from trees, houses, sidewalks, with an open view of wetlands, hills, sky. (Electric wires, buildings, traffic.) That, I must have walked at least a thousand times, each direction. I walked through white-outs and thunderstorms, past herons and eagles, a hundred red-winged blackbirds and a million peepers singing to the spring. Hawks on electric poles, beavers and turtles not quite dodging traffic. Near-daily photos of cloudscapes. I will not miss it.

Better yet, the town is full of trails. Well-maintained and well-used, yet never overrun by hordes of hikers or mountain bikers. I got lost dozens of times in the tangle of routes in the woods behind the college, spent Sundays looping the flats down by the river, and, most importantly, found solace in the network directly behind my house. Clad in sandals in summer or snowshoes in winter, I could step out my door, up into the woods, and wind around for hours. Alongside a pine-studded ravine running with waterfalls or icefalls, speckled bright in the morning sun. Past series of stone fences, laboriously constructed, now fading into moss and fallen leaves. Through birch groves and brush glowing green in summer, grey-white in winter, and color upon color upon color in autumn. I couldn’t possibly count how many times I paced those trails, or simply went up into the woods and found a spot to sit. Unlike the walks to campus or around town, those weren’t part of a daily routine—that space was my refuge, where I went when I needed to think or unthink, the only area I might possibly have missed.

But then, last fall, a diamond-shaped, bright orange sign appeared at the entrance: “Logging in process. Keep out.”

I kept out for a little over a month, while machines tore up the trail and tore down the ash trees (and any other trees in their wake.) Then, when it seemed like the operations were done, I crept carefully up the wide, muddy tank-wide scar to stand in a tangle of logs, stumps, and branches. Everything I’d known there was gone: the pine, the birch, the brush, the trail. Rationally, I know that it was a salvage operation—an attempt to prevent the spread of the invasive emerald ash borer—and that the woods will eventually recover. But that knowledge/hope doesn’t change what I saw and how I felt. Devastation. Devastated.

It was all wrong. For nearly nine years, I kept rationalizing, reasoning, trying to figure out why I couldn’t appreciate the landscape and community the way anyone ought to be able to. It’s such a nice town, such kind people, such a pretty place. But, through all of my walking and thinking, my moments and memory-making, I knew: not my place, not my place, not my place.

And that's okay?