August 28

Participated directly in my first search & rescue last night, my shift in the communications center parlaying nicely into a three & a half hour hike that took us past midnight. Two women from Israel lost on the bank of a river with no clue how they ended up there, & since the incident commander operates from my office, I was able to force my way into helping, joining two others on a route from the south trailhead of the Triple Lakes trail up towards Riley Creek. Privileged to witness the winnowing towards their errant center, questions about the color of the water, the rocks along the creek-bed, the slope of the land, the vegetation. All of these things & they ended up almost precisely where it was conjectured they might be. From the beginning, we firmly suspected one of the other teams would locate them, but nonetheless we set out headlights blazing past the lakes & into the brush, along a game trail towards the creek a piece, a solid hour & a half before we were told they’d been found. I have hiked Alaska at midnight before, but closer to summer solstice when the sun still lay dull over a landscape that, though shadowed & muted in its recesses, nonetheless stood out fully formed to the eye. Cutting through the oil-dark night at that hour was new to me. Owls in their quiet reedy songs. Shadows blooming into full dark. & light scraping the willow-tops to plunge into sink-holes where foot-slips pull you down in silted muddy water. It was not easy hiking, but it was exhilarating nonetheless. & the search successful, & the sleep after a long day punctuated with a hasty hike fine.

This morning, the yawning grey that seems to greet me daily anymore, the sun & I on opposite schedules. When I am working, weather breaks & clears & permits of a crisp autumnal beauty. & when I am not the rain & the slate sky conspire. So a quiet day in, some laundry, some cleaning, some writing, guitar playing. & then to work again. Day to day, there arise these quiet surprises, rifts along a riverine path.

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