August 4

Putting together a trip to Fairbanks tomorrow after resisting the impulse to flee again today. What I build I build of balsam, of hay, of sand or air itself. & watch it blow away. How many ways I have tried to cover the hole in me, tried for passage to its other side, when ever it seems I fall, & around me clapping dust where I settle, shard & splinter, palimpsests of echoed words, the grass & lichen singing you again, you again. An odd progress that would tether you to your beginning & call you swiftly back, dressing your wounds, picking at your scabs. Here, step forward, that in stepping the wind will carry the form from you, the brittle architecture of dried leaves, & that you may pause, & well note you’ve come undone. Well note the ground follows you beneath your stepping. Well note how in your heart it feels like some old prayers clink around in a dusty gloaming. & how if your present consumed you you would not even become a ghost, so implausibly empty your hours, so complete your distances, so remote the call-note of your fugitive joys. & it is neither remembrance nor hope nor openness that does you good, though you can’t yet discern what would. & so. Stare down the moment & it will pass, & a new moment will step into your leaden-eyed gaze. You are muttering some soft syllables. Your tail in your mouth.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crow Pass Crossing

There was a point there, sliding on my ass down a hundred-yard snowfield rippled with minute waves of ice & buried rock, when I wondered if perhaps I ought to reorient myself in order to avoid slamming into the jagged boulder looming below. & there was a point while loping across another pitch of snow sidelong wherein I noticed I might well slide a mile off course if I didn’t hit the footholds. There was incessant rain, beating down from the report of the starting pistol until the finish line, & a fierce firn wind weaving through the willows, the Devil’s Club, the sedge-green grass. & the feeling on the far shore of Eagle River of wholly numb legs wobbling underneath me. I completely ate shit a half dozen times, tripped & recovered a dozen more, stubbed my twice-broken toe, stepped knee-deep in beaver ponds, slid & slopped through mud, leapt over twenty piles of fresh bear scat & clutched looming thistles to right myself, committing the ensuing mile each tim
Read more

Suggestions

I want to thank everyone for the supportive, constructive comments on the previous post & more importantly for the collective will to effect positive changes to the way things look moving forward. I have every respect for the ITC, for the volunteers, the veterinarians, mushers & dogs involved in the race, & it is out of that respect & love for the sport & the Iditarod that I hope we can all agree upon changes. I hope it’s also clear that I encourage & support every opinion to be voiced through this & any adversity, regardless of whether or not I’m in agreement. We all assume the burden of these things individually, even when the brunt of them is not our own, & we process them in ways that are often incompatible or contrary. Even still, I believe that every person inclined toward utterance in the wake of Dorado’s death wants the same thing: the prevention of repeating that tragedy in the future. & I think everyone can agree that nothing is more effect
Read more

Dogs First

On the trail to our cabin, the wind shifts & sculpts the landscape at whim, hurling blankets of sustained 30 mph gusts across the tundra & depositing snow in undulating moguls that cover over our precious tracks. We see gales of up to 75 mph fairly routinely. I have skied home ten feet behind my wife on many occasions & been unable to discern her tracks. Say a word & the wind will carry it aloft & away. Drop a liner glove or a hat & you wait until spring to retrieve it. In the places I’ve lived prior to Alaska, I’ve known snow to behave in any number of ways. Here, for whatever diaphanous splendor it may reveal in the structure of the flake, it is always, always dry. When it drifts, the sugary weight of it transforms into the consistency of concrete. People use chainsaws to dig out trail. & when the wind & the snow conspire, people here know precisely what to expect & what to do. No matter the temperature, our community knows to check routinely o
Read more