No Place Like Nome: Five Weeks Finished

The note below was written by a fellow who no longer exists, a character who represented the building blocks for the present edition, but who has been pulled apart and rebuilt many times over the intervening five years. Back then, that bright-eyed bushy-tailed me was still fresh-faced upon this newly adopted landscape only five weeks after he had arrived in Nome, and he jotted down this depiction of the window through which he then viewed the world around him. 

What of those five years that have arisen and passed away in swift succession? Only some of the most challenging and rewarding work I've undertaken to date, in both the professional and the personal senses. There was the requisite toiling and learning, loving and laughing, losing and crying. The full complement of human emotion has been my gift, over and over and over, like the ebbing and flowing tide, washing over me in sync with the moon's seasons. I but a simple chiton (pronounced: kitten - meow!) glommed into this intertidal zone, learning to accept what comes and goes, again, ever again. Unlike that chiton, I soon take leave of this small space, I grow wings to land in some far off place, I grow wheels to roam, to race.

This will likely be the final post at this locale - both physically and digitally - as I am leaving Nome, this work, and this blog. Leaving all behind, treasuring each present, reaching furthur now. Thus, future blog posts may be found here: Further Now. In the meantime, while that space is completed and until a post appears within its glowing confines, please make do with the recountings left below, by that boy of five years past.

Bellingham or Bust Episode Six: The Final Ebb

The sixth and final episode recounting a summer skin-on-frame kayak build and solo 130 mile kayak journey. 

From the start - read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth episodes.

Morning brightened in the mist

Woke me with a misted kiss

Invisible ships sounded horns of

Loneliness  - "heyyyyyyyy"

Heyyyyyyy, I'm

Here too.

The frosted rainbow glimmered a bright

Constrast to the wistfulness of woebegotten ships -

Hovering just west, proudly purpled.

Completely conflicted - proof of a

Presence, and proof of it soon

Failing to exist.

Good morning Burrows Island,

Farewell to the mist.

30 June -to- 6 July of 2014 | Burrows Island, WA -to- Ketchikan, AK

Dreamt deeply on Burrows Island after an afternoon of reading on the cliff's edge.

Yukon Episode Five: All Good Things Come to an End

Mary and I hitch from Fairbanks to Eagle, float a canoe to Circle, then hitch back to Fairbanks. 

This is the fifth and final episode. Read the first, second, third, and fourth episodes.

August 2013 - Yukon River

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On the fifth day we woke to wander the grounds of Slaven Roadhouse until the mosquitoes made us tire of our explorations in bloodletting. Tidied up camp on the hill then packed the canoe by the river. I couldn't resist a dip in the cold, clear Coal Creek, flowing into the Yukon just upriver. I walked a short ways to a hole deep enough to disappear in - eureka! A fine chilling dip, dried by the sun, bliss. Afterwards, returned to the lady who disdained this cold creek and steered our craft back out into the constant flow.

AZT Day 17: No more AZT, these tires were made for riding

You know what they say about plans? The best of mice and men come to ruin. "They" being Robert Burns, and the saying being a modern paraphrase. Plans are to my mind the tiny assistants to dreams. The trick is to let them assist, but not to let them run those dreams, for they are wretched at spontaneity and tend to scream DESTINATIONS when one should be slowing their roll, stopping to sit for a while, to strum a banjo, to chat with a new and temporary friend, to watch the clouds roll over and spy ships a'sailing in a marshmallow sea populated with dragons.

AZT Day 10: Out of the Canyon and Off-Trail

Made it up the, up the, up the … hold one moment please. Okay, finally made it up to the top of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, but not before consuming a gallon of water, a liquid breakfast of oats and nonsense, one snickers bar; nor before sweating that gallon of water back out in a perspiratory bath of proportions epic enough to suit the surrounding landscape; nor even before fielding 4,647 comments and queries on the open umbrella sidled along my backpack keeping this wilting human structure more or less in the shade despite the sun's eagerly inspecting eye searching out where flesh might be found within this baking pan of earth creased into the ground here in the desert.

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