April 1, Afternoon

Late afternoon on my first full day in Homer, the sun still blazing through a diffuse air, the gargantuan white-capped mountains sprawling across Kachemak Bay, an ashen haze obscuring the view. Earlier, took Willa down to the Spit, where she chased gulls along the shoreline, sprinting headlong into the frigid water over & again while the wind whipped the waves in over the packed sand & rounded stone. What can I tell you about Homer? The view in every direction is absolutely breathtaking. Muir, who spent a good deal of time along the Inside Passage, cautioned people against coming to Alaska. Once they’d seen it, he wrote, everything else would seem an ordinary disappointment. In one of his essays on Alaska he began by writing about how everything here strains beyond our regular notions of scale; writing about a place up here is like capitulating a universe in a sentence. I have found something interesting, too, in viewing it all alone. Somehow, its geologies seem clearer, more keenly articulated against a backdrop of solitude—not because I want them to, but because of how I find myself situated in relation to them—no tether, no backdrop, no buttress, no sounding board. I am diminished by this landscape, to the point of curiosity. Rendered suddenly so miniscule, one feels a compulsion towards natural unity, towards the sympathies offered by the mineral world. It makes sense here in a way it hasn’t quite before—that selfhood can find oblivion & fulgence at once, singing through aphasia. There is a bird in my heart when my tongue goes still.

I am staying in a tiny one-room cabin right outside of town, my window opening out to a view across the bay. Everything glows at this hour, a kind of aureate emanation. It is twenty-four degrees before wind chill.

Between Watson Lake & the Alaskan border we covered roughly 550 miles in just over thirteen hours. Towards the border I nearly veered off the road at every turn, stunned by what was laid out before me. That range cuts up like I imagine the Alps do—sharp & unforgiving & confidently wild. Glacial rivers crawl between peaks, slit valleys into hard granite & coal. Permafrost on the road, along with spots of fairly intense snow, made for interesting passage. This highway is neither for the faint of heart nor the weak of stomach (being both, I am confident enough in that caution). At the border, I was asked a quick round of questions, the only traveler in sight, & motioned along without any drama of any sort. The Wrangell-St. Elias range to the south along that stretch of highway is among the more remarkable things I have ever seen in my life. Reaching it at sundown, orange-blue cloud & shade appertained, with darkling lavender tones giving way to slate-black in the recesses, peak after peak after peak. You pull over & you see what must be at least a hundred formidable peaks, the tallest 16200 feet high, lining the entirety of the horizon. That night, we pulled into a rest area to sleep, Willa in the passenger’s seat covered in my coat, me in the back curled up in my bag. At four o’clock, after a good deal of shivering & a scant bit of rest, we pushed out. Above us, there was a kind of semicircular gradation of light, a clip just barely discernable that bore the shape of an eclipse. As we drove along it began to transmutate, to drip into changling forms, a green phosphorescence. The Northern Lights. It felt good to be alive.

When I finally came upon an open gas station three hours later, the woman inside, after peering out the window at my plates, laconically asked if I had driven all the way from Washington for a cup of coffee. My thrill at finding some must have been fairly evident.

I ended up driving fifteen hours yesterday, taking my time, walking Willa in the deep snow, stopping over at the Anchorage campus to have a look. Once we reached the Kenai Peninsula, what I had thought was already an extraordinary landscape became something else entire—my words fail at every turn, but along this last stretch, they cannot even begin to relate even the finest of details with any degree of precision. Imagine your moment of most elevated awe before a landscape & multiply it exponentially. I must leave it at that. We reached Homer just before nine, the sun finally setting, & found this cabin immediately. A turkey dinner from a nearby restaurant & I was out for nine hours in a warm bed.

Today I awakened to find my tire flat. 2500 miles without incident, & the moment I arrive, I find a flat-head drill bit lodged in my rear tire. Switched to the spare with the help of the innkeeper here & then had the tire shop switch it back patched. An easy fate. Afterwards, I gave myself a tour of the area east & west & tried to ferret out a place to rent without success before deciding to just be still for a solid stretch of time. Willa is curled up on the bed, her nose tucked under her tail, the sun slanting in across the bedclothes. & I sit by the window, heavy sad of a sudden. To go through this & be in transit was one thing—to arrive, to find myself here, is another entire. I am fond of the town, floored by it, really, & remain resolved to be here. At the same time, it seems the furthest thing from a rational or even sane decision. This epic journey I undertook to mine some heart’s ore. How I miss her. How I miss her so terribly. How I feign to have it figured out, put forth my best argument. I know nothing of what I do, invent & reinvent each morning, flail hard against intrepid current, but I am certain that such flailing will cut a path, will come to progress, wend me who knows where, but someplace I am meant to be, someplace I mean myself to be. Fare forward, Eliot wrote. A mantra to me.