up to May 28 I think
Sixty & sunny today & perfect weather for our morning low-tide run—the first since my back went out last, the return to it a kind of clarity, cutting in its motion. Stopped afterwards to refill waters & buy a loaf of bread & came home to clean up the cabin & start in on laundry. Got the call from NPS to set up my drug test, though they suggested I head to Puyallup down in WA & apparently have to take great pains now to figure out where in Homer, town of one hospital, I ought to go at this juncture. Once that settles, a clearer picture of the weeks ahead will hopefully emerge & I can plan accordingly. Until then, I remain tentatively Homerian, my few things yet unpacked, my focus now on achieving what I aim to here prior to departure—certain hikes, another fishing trip, an eventual beer at the Salty Dawg, etc. The minutiae of living in this small town. & around the house, too, tying loose ends—dug the four-foot hole through layers of permafrost & icy clay for an outhouse here yesterday, swinging the mattock again, & afterwards applied an undercoat to the cabin to pitch in by way of thanks to Greg. Here cusping on flux again, I relax into a spell of quiet time. Eliot awaits me still, though I’ve little drive to write while I whittle towards leaving again. & I read up on Denali daily, books checked out from the library—its history, its flora & fauna, mountaineers & sourdoughs & so on. It remains some vague insinuation of itself now, as it must, some imagined thing fabricated off that one rough glimpse of a distant range I had from Anchorage north. I find in myself an odd hesitation about it, a kind of skirting, timorous apprehension. Locking myself into a commitment that draws out to the end of September, given the particulars of my being here, touches some rare nerve in me. Four months a permanent sentence by my standards. I apply to faith in this—that, carried along, I will continue to emerge from myself, molt, shake from me the dross that appertains yet. If only to find confident footing. Come October I hear already the cold wind swept across the tundra, snow-blown, spruce-shook, a lonely scraping in that muted expanse. This, strangely, the moment that most lucidly presents itself—the moment of my departure from Denali, my final gaze over its endless visage. Only that glance, & never where it turns. The burning question in me that I hope finds its clear answer by then, this wondering where then to wander, under what auspice, what compass. & all the world blazing open. Where then, heart—
***
The storm hovering here, the sky a sallow bruise that will not break, will not rupture to rain more than pin-prick drizzle. Hiked past Roger’s Loop, the wind off the bluff pulling the gnawed willows & rustling the ash from the grass-blades, the cleft puddles & moose-prints filled with quivering brown water, the sky’s mercurial, argent reflection specked with dirt or feather. & the black spruce thick & unyielding against the gusts. Here in the cabin now, the birch out the window blown sideways, the clouds darkling over the ridge, though still, still no steady rain will come. Over the bay a pinkish halo before the wall-clouds. That muted grey everywhere in evidence. & me, no account. A day, is all. Dislodged, imminently displaced, hovering still over a keyboard or loaned book from the library, neither advancing. & the guitar sounding too loud. & my own voice too thin. & Willa’s breathe in sleep too serene now to disturb. Waking a facsimile of dream today, an ethered thing, slow & languid, like fine hair swaying underwater. Odd, though, that the darkness, however slight, however thinly veiled, seems a comfort after sleeping & waking to light alike so many days in counting. To not feel light’s charge, to drop heavy & bid indolence in, let torpor creep over me just these brief hours. Always alright for me here, in this place, to quiet over & let sleep the world. Come, then, rain, where there was ember & ash. Let lay the light that seems always to shine, a shook foil.
***
Stepping out for a ten o’clock walk, the world quiet & dulled in nearer darkness, the clouds roiling silvered globes. In the meadow, in which downed spruces are covered over with dried grasses & deep puddles cut a mosaic of sedge & bog across the heaving permafrost, we quietly walked directly & unintentionally upon a bedded moose. She rose when Willa was ten feet away, slowly, disturbed from a slumber that kept her well-hidden from us. & her countenance weary but unalarmed, a kind of tired “really?” in her glance. So we turned, & walked away. So many times lately we are deterred or detoured by a moose—in walking, in running, in merely leaving by the front door.
Across the highway & down Bonnie Lane then, those mountains above Halibut Cove a silver daguerreotype with the only color in the glacial shelves, those sheer cutting cliffs showing seaglass-blue, that purest hue, tinged with deep green, rich & profoundly piercing, even from these distant miles, even now at dusk under graying skies. Homer. I will, without doubt, miss this place & its quiet, magnificent beauty.
***
The storm hovering here, the sky a sallow bruise that will not break, will not rupture to rain more than pin-prick drizzle. Hiked past Roger’s Loop, the wind off the bluff pulling the gnawed willows & rustling the ash from the grass-blades, the cleft puddles & moose-prints filled with quivering brown water, the sky’s mercurial, argent reflection specked with dirt or feather. & the black spruce thick & unyielding against the gusts. Here in the cabin now, the birch out the window blown sideways, the clouds darkling over the ridge, though still, still no steady rain will come. Over the bay a pinkish halo before the wall-clouds. That muted grey everywhere in evidence. & me, no account. A day, is all. Dislodged, imminently displaced, hovering still over a keyboard or loaned book from the library, neither advancing. & the guitar sounding too loud. & my own voice too thin. & Willa’s breathe in sleep too serene now to disturb. Waking a facsimile of dream today, an ethered thing, slow & languid, like fine hair swaying underwater. Odd, though, that the darkness, however slight, however thinly veiled, seems a comfort after sleeping & waking to light alike so many days in counting. To not feel light’s charge, to drop heavy & bid indolence in, let torpor creep over me just these brief hours. Always alright for me here, in this place, to quiet over & let sleep the world. Come, then, rain, where there was ember & ash. Let lay the light that seems always to shine, a shook foil.
***
Stepping out for a ten o’clock walk, the world quiet & dulled in nearer darkness, the clouds roiling silvered globes. In the meadow, in which downed spruces are covered over with dried grasses & deep puddles cut a mosaic of sedge & bog across the heaving permafrost, we quietly walked directly & unintentionally upon a bedded moose. She rose when Willa was ten feet away, slowly, disturbed from a slumber that kept her well-hidden from us. & her countenance weary but unalarmed, a kind of tired “really?” in her glance. So we turned, & walked away. So many times lately we are deterred or detoured by a moose—in walking, in running, in merely leaving by the front door.
Across the highway & down Bonnie Lane then, those mountains above Halibut Cove a silver daguerreotype with the only color in the glacial shelves, those sheer cutting cliffs showing seaglass-blue, that purest hue, tinged with deep green, rich & profoundly piercing, even from these distant miles, even now at dusk under graying skies. Homer. I will, without doubt, miss this place & its quiet, magnificent beauty.
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