April 5, 6

For the most part, unpacked in the new cabin, the agreement signed, meters tallied, & out my window I see the sun crisp over the peaks across the bay. The moment I closed the door behind me, as has been the case in moves past, I was overwhelmed, unable to find any defense against the inertia I’ve built up & deferred. Now, hours later, a trip to the grocery store under my belt, I stretch out into my new home. It is the second cabin, up East End Road, which boasts electricity, heat & a functional range in the kitchen, even if it does lack water. Always a honeybucket if I need it, though I have constant access to shower & toilet up at the main house. One room, a kind of rectangle with a sloping roof, stucco in semicircles. A relatively clean beige carpet covers the majority of the floor. Rough-hewn & unfinished two-by-fours frame each window, nails & coat-hangers sticking out at random intervals. There is a twin bed to wrap my queen sheets around, two camel-brown couches considerably the worse for wear, but clean enough to the eye. Rail shelves cover half of one wall. I have seven windows, three of them looking down to the water & beyond. Moose make frequent stops on the property, & I am told to be weary of calving mothers, especially with my dog. Bears make their visitations as well, I am warned, though they generally target obvious food sources—dog food left in bowls outside, fish entrails in a trashcan, that sort of thing. & so I am to settle into this quiet, breathe it in, know it as my own. After a day or two I’ll hunt a job. Tomorrow, I’ll open a p.o. box & a stop at salvation army to find a suitable desk at which to write, I hope. Make a go of it. Tonight, I will cook myself dinner in my own kitchen. That, at this point, is enough.

***

Morning, the sun weary to spread. Across the water, past Kachemak Bay State Park, I somehow just this morning noticed three gargantuan glaciers—Dixon, Portlock & Grewingk, each of which cuts a wide swath in jutting peaks, a frozen river hefting moraine ahead. The snow is melting along the shore & up the first hills on either side of the bay. Here, the afternoon sees mud & puddle & rushing runlets, culverts flooded, ditches widening against the spring run-off. I am on a slope, as most of Homer is, with Diamond Ridge & the Skyview loop behind us, looking over our rooftops & out to the water. My windows themselves give over maybe three hundred more feet of elevation drop before water’s edge (garsedge in Old English, a word I love meaning, perhaps obviously, grass-edge). They are high enough, the windows, that while I am seated I can only see sky & spruce-top, rolling cloud, which prevents me from prolonged rapture (though I pause & stand at them often enough).

It was a quiet night. No radio, no television, a few books, a bit of writing. Quietness & commitment create, an echo I hear again. Today, an address, I hope, & afterwards a few household items, a run along the Spit if the ash is better-settled. The birds down there befuddled by the eruptions, the eagles already stark & starved by the death of Homer’s Eagle Lady, who made it her personal mission to feed them daily for twenty-eight years. They look on Willa with a ravenous yellow eye when we walk at Memorial Park Beach. People with small dogs are warned against taking them to the Spit at all. Always a predator in Alaska, I suppose. Enough, though. The day waits.

Comments

Unknown said…
Blessings to you, Z man.

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