September 2012

The steam rose slowly from my mug.  It was my favorite mug. On one side was a sketch of a jeep, the other side was the quote "Do what you love, love what you do.  Life is good."  I leaned into the mug and deeply breathed in the sweet moist steam.  Chocolate hazelnut --  a flavor most snuffed their nose at.  To me, it was the sweetness of cocoa in the smooth soft texture of a black tea.  Decaffeinated, it was what I thought I needed to get me through the next hour or two of scientific readings, but would still allow me to sleep soundly through the encroaching night.

It was well past dark out.  Fireflies that endlessly glowed were absent from my front yard and stars were no where to be found.  I could hear thunder, almost inaudibly, masked by the gentle rain that had begun earlier in the evening, before darkness took over.  It was a good night to read.  I was comfortably compressed in my desk chair, complete with soft sweats and a baggy hoodie.  In my heavily AC-ed house, the combination of lounge clothes and a hot beverage brought a certain relaxation to my mind, despite the heavy reading I was pressing through and trying to understand.

Despite the comforts I found in my house, I was distracted.  My sister had recently called and informed me of the dismal update on our grandmother.  Found on the floor, not breathing, she had suffered a stroke, so doctors thought at least, and was considered cautiously stable.  Our mother was already in Vermont, flying on a one way ticket, not knowing when she'd be home. I added more milk to my tea and took a long but slow sip.  I let the steam slide up onto my face, embracing the warmth and comfort it provided that my house lacked.

At the edge of my desk was a mostly empty bottle of Jim Beam.  The light brown clear liquid stared at me, taunting me, but the mug I was holding brought a warmth to my hands and soul that that bottle never could.  It was becoming an uncanny trend that I did my best research with a glass of stag in hand, like any good biologist I suppose, but tonight was an unusual night, for a number of reasons I didn't want to think about.

The update on my grandmother was certainly one reason.  Her health had been deteriorating through the last year, but bad news still always came as a surprise.  We all knew she had reached a point where she was incapable of getting better.  The only options from here were for her health to stay stable, or to simply get worse.  Though the stroke was bad news, this wasn't what was distracting me from my evening.

The news of my grandmother had brought about a sense of loneliness.  It was the first time I had thought about that embrace on the couch in Alaska, not out of force or habit, but out of longing.  I didn't long for that exact moment though.  That moment I knew was gone and he was gone with it.  I longed instead for a similar replication, only here, in my present location.  An arm that would hold me tight, teasing to not let go.  One that didn't disappear the next morning.

I took another sip, a short one, but as I swallowed the sweet beverage, I continued to hold the mug close to my face, letting the steam rise up onto my skin once again.  The rain continued to trickle off my window, steadily.  My body ached.  I was physically and mentally exhausted.  I had been training, vigorously pushing my body to unknown limits daily, on top of trying to keep up with classes and my research.  It was all taking its toll, and my sleep habitats, or lack there of, were reflecting it.

A loud clash of nearby thunder startled me.  Wind gusted against my window as the lights in my bedroom flickered.  I lit a candle, one that smelled of apple spice, then sipped my tea again.  Besides the approaching storm, my evening was calm and my mind was apathetic.  My grandmother, my tea.... him.  I let the storm outside enter my soul.  My evening, as peaceful as it was, was restless.  They were all restless.

Challis: Part 1

I sat back in my chair as I wrapped my blanket tighter around my shoulders and my arms.  My eyes were tired from staring at my computer all morning as I poked at numbers, trying to make sense of them.  Trying to find a pattern.  It was there, I just hadn't found it yet.  It was a Saturday morning, and usually I'd be out recreating instead of working, but today the winter weather kept me inside.

It was snowing outside, still.  It had started lightly last night before I crawled into bed, but this morning, all memories of yesterdays tracks were erased under a fresh blanket of white powder.  Now that daylight had finally broken free of the night, it was still snowing, with no signs of giving up.

I grabbed my mug filled with warm apple cinnamon tea and let it's warmth run up over my face.  The mug was warm to the touch and brought about a sensation of "coming back to life" to my cold fingers.  I breathed in the cinnamon and other spices until my nose tingled.  As I went to take a sip, my huskie shepard mix, Challis, pushed the door to my office open and pranced my way.  I sat my cup down and stared at him.  He had a certain bounce to his feet this morning.  He was happy.  He was always happy.  But today he seemed especially happy.

He walked towards me with a gentle expression in his eyes.  I smiled as he effortlessly plopped his head in my lap, nuzzling his nose up under my hand, forcing a head pat.  I took a quick sip of my tea before rubbing his ears vigorously.  Despite my recent life changes, Challis was a constant in my life who I couldn't have loved more.  He knew when I was happy.  He knew when I was sad.  And he knew when I needed a dog obnoxiously in my lap for a distraction from my work.  My numbers that didn't quite seem to fit together yet could wait.  For the time being, I rubbed Challis, kissed him on the top of his head, and silently thanked him for being there when I needed him most.  I didn't need to say it out loud.  In his eyes and his body language, I heard him say you're welcome.

Birding Oasis

To those who care to notice, my backyard is a birding oasis relative to the urban community that not only surrounds it, but dominates the area for miles upon miles.  With no decent "wild" or "pristine" area existing without driving for hours west of my small town, my small backyard is my secret escape.

The chickadees are among my favorites.  Their small black and white bodies, puffed up to make themselves appear much much larger than they actually are.  A faint "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" that confirms their presence.  They frolic, carelessly, between our feeders, the maple trees, and across the water to our neighbors pine.  They often stare at me with curiosity, before flying away, almost unnoticed.  This small passerine has followed me throughout all my travels.  The mountain chickadee in Idaho, with its higher pitched call and its smaller statue.  The boreal chickadee in Alaska, with its rufus colored sides and more monotone song, daring to embrace a bitter winter.  The Carolina and black-capped chickadees in the southeast, almost impossible to distinguish from one another.  Yes, to me, seeing a chickadee is the feeling of home, and I refuse to live in a place where I can't find them.

The red bellied woodpecker, who's belly is in fact actually not red, taps at an almost inaudible level on a pine tree.  His bright red head shining as the sun catches it against the dull, gray bark.  A mocking bird on our fence, singing the tunes of a song unknown to me.  A sea gull yawning in the sky, floating in a breeze, moving neither backwards or forwards.

With the changing of the seasons comes the changing of our birds.  As our backyard transforms in fall, winter, spring, and summer, so do the colors of feathers.  In winter, our starlings come.  By the hundreds, they sit on our pool cover and play in the water that has built up in it.  Green-winged teals and hooded mergansers show their faces in the marshes that brush up against our property, but only if you look for them.  Yellow-rumped warblers play in our fence while house finches proudly display their red.

In spring, other colors come.  Purple martins rent out the tall structure we erected for them two years ago.  Yellow warblers play in our bird feeders, while other countless passerines overfill their bellies with seeds and fresh suet.  As tide retreats and the mud flats become exposed, lesser yellow legs and other shore birds walk gracefully, pecking at the mud.

Occasionally birds of prey show themselves.  Turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks, bald eagles and ospreys.  And if you listen at night, the great horned owl.

My backyard is my oasis.  For in the morning, I can brew my tea and sit on the stairs leading down from our deck, and count 50 different species that flutter in and out.  Passerines, hawks, waterfowl, shorebirds, woodpeckers.  I count and mark them off in bird books and journals, waiting for a new species that has never called my small backyard home before.  I watch their behavior, listen to their voices, and observe them carefully through a small set of binoculars.

To most, the joy of birding is no joy at all.  A park ranger told me that birders were among his least favorite groups.  They would barge into his visitor center, inquiring as to where to find certain species (unique to that area) and nothing more.  To him, these birders were after nothing more than checkmarks on their life-list, and to him, this encouraged poor wildlife viewing behavior.

To be a birder, there are a number of characteristics you must possess. Most importantly, curiosity.  No one becomes a birder to pursue the life-list competition.  The life-list is a list a birder keeps, mostly to himself, of all the species he's seen in his lifetime.  This list is not kept for bragging rights.  It's simply a list, particularly for when rare birds are seen.  Curiosity is what drives a birder though.  Most days, we all go out birding knowing we will see the same species we saw yesterday, last week, and last year.  But every time we see the same species and observe it for even 5 minutes, we learn something new about it.  We notice a new behavior, or a difference between that species and a common relative.  We pursue visitor centers and new species not to add a species to the list, but out of curiosity.  A curiosity of animal behavior, of natural ecology.  The curiosity of life.

This park ranger also told me that birders are not naturalists.  I beg to differ.  To be a good birder, one must meticulously understand birds.  The changing winds, weather that drives them, the subtle changes in vegetation that can trigger a species that  an occur there.  Behavior patterns, other species that affect a bird's occurrence.  A birder may not know everything about nature, the way a true naturalist does, but a good birder is a naturalist all the same.

Birders must possess patience as well, and a great deal of it.  I remember days in Alaska, sitting on the rivers edge at 10 degrees.  My toes going numb, wind slapping my face, my fingers barely movable, all in hopes of watching waterfowl.  Goldeneyes and pintails, swimming in water that would surely kill us in minutes.  Yet they swam and played on the ice the way we do the beach in summer.  No bird, rare or common, is found without patience.

The other piece of the puzzle that describes birders and the idea of birding can't be described through one word.  It's an inner component.  A sense of satisfaction that comes from birding.  I did not come to love the chickadee through reading books or watching movies.  My love for chickadees comes from the countless hours I have spent observing them, and through this, I've developed a connection.  In spring time, I enjoy nothing more than the simplicity of calling in a chickadee and watching it turn it's head as it tries to figure me out.  Birding is the one outdoor pleasure I have that can take place still in any environment, even an urban one.  And even my small backyard.

My backyard is small and plain.  But to those who care to notice, it is a birding oasis.

East Coast Travels

Though the airport was foreign to me, it felt familiar and brought a needed comfort to my morning.  It was small.  One check-in counter, and behind the currently closed security check-point, 3 “gates” that really just consisted of one medium sized room.  A single, small aircraft sat on the runway as a dozen or so passengers stepped down the planes steps and walked across the landing strip toward us.  Minutes later, I boarded.

I was in Coastal North Carolina flying out of a small regional airport.  But as I sat in my window seat, the seat next to me empty, my thoughts wandered.  In my mind, I couldn't have been further from the east coast.  It was raining.  More specifically, it was sleeting.  Our travels became delayed as a pink misty fluid was sprayed over the plane to prevent icing.  My window was blurred from precipitation and all I could really make out was a weedy runway and evergreen trees.  Low fog further dampened my view and as we took off, we quickly flew above the cloud layer.  As I stared at the gray cloud, I was happy I couldn't see whatever broken landscape lied below us.  I stared at the gloomy clouds and let myself dream.

I was back in Alaska.  Below the clouds was the cook inlet, a highly productive body of water unknown to most.  We were flying over expanses of untouched wilderness.  Spruces and birch, moose and porcupine, boreal chickadees and redpolls.  Yes, I was leaving from the Kenai Peninsula, that small dusty airport flying Era Alaska, an airline that serviced all the remote communities across the entire state.  In my mind I pondered…. Where am I traveling to?  The possibilities were limitless....

As clouds lifted, I was brought back to my reality.  I was traveling to Atlanta, Georgia.  The landscape below me transformed.  I saw pine trees in rows that were clearly planted, lakes in perfect squares, and housing complexes that appeared endless.  In my mind though, I stayed content in Alaska.  As I stared mindlessly out the small window, I imagined vast expanses of tundra.  Caribou herds as large as those housing complexes.  Small ponds called kettles and rivers that carved the landscape effortlessly.   From my eyes, I envisioned the view I longed for.  

I closed my eyes, and I stayed there.

Morning run

I leaned over and pushed snooze once again.  It was 6:09 am.  For what felt like the first time since I had arrived in the Southeast, I had slept deeply through the entire night without the aid of liquor.  I couldn't believe it.  It was approaching the end of the week and I was glad.  Each day had been a different emotional roller coaster and despite feeling great this morning, I was ready to start a new week.  Monday had started productive.  I had made some good progress in my study design, but by Tuesday afternoon I had reached an emotional breaking point.  On the verge of tears, I had called my Dad.  I had called him because I wanted to tell him I was ready to quit.  That I was ready to give up and start over again sometime later.

I didn't say any of that to him though.  My Dad knew me better than myself and before I could even begin to form the words "I quit", he told me he knew that I wasn't where I wanted to be, but to stick with it.  That things would come together and in the end, at the end of all of this, I'd get to where I wanted.

It didn't really matter how many times he told me that or how many times I told myself that.  It didn't even matter how much I believed and knew it was true.  The journey to get there, most days, was just too daunting in it of itself.  The days where I felt like I just couldn't handle things were paralyzing.  They beat me down and made progress feel impossible.  And without progress, I'd never reach the end.  Without progress, I'd never get back home.

6:19am.  My alarm clock, again.  I leaned over and instead of pushing snooze, I turned it off.  Throwing the covers aside, I grabbed my gym shorts, a long sleeve jersey, and slowly picked at one of my protein muffins as I sluggishly put on socks and sneakers.  I was still tired, I was always tired, but in my continuing effort to take advantage of what I had in front of me, I was preparing to start the day off on the right note: Beginning it with a sunrise run.  I finished my muffin and headed outside.

It was cool this morning, just like it had been all week.  It was mid-September and a tease of fall was in the air.  Just the thought of it brought ease to my stressed mind.  Temperatures had been cooling off and although I knew by the afternoon it would be hot again, I was glad for the temporary relief now felt in the evenings and early mornings.

I began my normal loop -- a series of uphills and downhills that tested my stamina and my leg muscles.  When I had first arrived here, I couldn't even make it up the first hill without stopping.  Now, 5 weeks later, I was running up the first hill and progressing the rest of the 3 miles without stopping.  I wasn't a fast runner.  The 3 miles were tediously slow, but I ran them nonetheless.  This small accomplish, unknown to anyone else but me, was one of the few things that made me smile here.  It was evidence of something improving inside me, something pushing through the hard spots to keep going and not quit. 

As I crested the first hill, I turned up the volume on my i-pod.  In the previous weeks I had switched up my work-out music from up-beat party tunes to the mellow musical genius of folk artists like Gregory Alan Isacov and Radical Face.  The song "Idaho" had just come on, a song that both soothed my heart and made it weep.  A year ago, it was this exact song that convinced me to stay in Idaho for another month and a half and to not give up on my dreams.  Shortly after that though, I set aside my wants and chased my needs.  What I thought were my needs, at least.  Instead of staying in Idaho I chased an old flair. I knew I didn't love him.  I wanted to love him -- but I couldn't.  When I realized I made a mistake, I boarded a plane headed to Alaska, where I stayed for almost 9 months.  I had felt more or less just as empty there as I did here in the Southeast. I had let golden opportunity slip past me.  Every now and then I played the "what if" game in my head.  It was futile, I knew.

"Down in the bardo,
There was nothing to hold so we let it go.
We were empty, we were hollow,
Shined with everything we were living for."

Every time I listened to the song, everything was different.  I would feel completely removed from my current situation and set back down in some happy place I did not yet understand.  A place I knew existed, but hadn't been to yet.  The song, in some hidden way, stood for what I stopped chasing a long time ago, but at the same time, was still chasing today.

"And you see your soul,
like some picture show,
across Idaho."

The guitar infused with violin lifted me.  I smiled.

It was fully light out now, the sun making it's way over the horizon.  The clouds glowed ember red while the sky stayed a faint blue.  It was gorgeous.  Even through the trees, the sunrise was powerful.  It was the start of a new day pushing past the troubles of yesterday, leaving it behind.  That's all I wanted to do -- leave yesterday behind.  Leave every yesterday behind.

TRAVELS - Part 2

TRAVELS: Part 1  <-- Click to read the first part.

My arrival to South Carolina, and the South east as a whole, was oddly welcoming.  The warm air, the insects, the colorful sunsets.  It was all familiar, and familiar was exactly what I needed for the time being.  But the feeling I felt reminded me of the way I felt when I had first landed on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, on that small bush plane in the middle of the night.  The landing strip that was covered in snow and ice, the stars removed from the sky by clouds.  It was a place new to me, but at the same time a place imbedded in my memory from its existence in my life years ago, as a child.  I didn't have any clear, identifiable memories of the place, but it was the feeling of knowing I had, in fact, been there before.

I don't know if I'd ever been to western SC as a kid, but the environment was all the same.  For the first time in years, I soaked in the sweet smell of honey suckle. I could taste it in the air.  That yellow flower clinging to small green leaves that as a kid in Virginia, we ate and sucked on for hours as if it was the forbidden fruit in our own backyard.

Honey suckle wasn't the only familiar thing.  One evening, as I walked outside to grab something from my Jeep, I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye.  Lightening, I had thought at first.  But then I saw another flash, and another.  Not lightening, but lightening bugs.  Seeing them had brought an unexpectedly large grin to my face.  I briefly thought about running inside to grab a jar so I could frolic in the front yard and needlessly collect the innocent insects.

I chuckled at the thought.  Still, I couldn't help but be captivated by the flashes of light occurring throughout our neighborhood. As I watched, I felt soothed and calmed.  I could not remember the last time I saw lightening bugs.  I had forgotten how magical they looked in a dimming sunset haze.

I didn't watch them for long that night, or any subsequent nights thereafter.  While the numerous things that felt familiar, like honey suckles and fireflys, calmed me and made me smile, they also brought an uncanny sadness to me.  Though familiar and needed, they didn't fill the void that was the feeling of home.  Instead, it was this constant reminder of that void. 

The best comparison I can make is the difference between riding on manufactured snow verses real snow.  Manufactured snow is a perfectly fine substitute.  For the most part, it acts and behaves the exact same way as real snow.  I mean, it is real snow, in technical terms.  It's crystallized water.  And anything you can do on real snow you can do on manufactured snow.  But if you've ever ridden on natural snow, snow from mother nature herself, there's just something about it that's different.  Something that feels better on your board (or skis) as you carve down that mountain side.  Something you can't really describe.  Something you just... feel.

For me, feeling something familiar was like riding on manufactured snow.  Sure it felt great, but it wasn't the same as the feeling of carving Mother Nature's best intentions.  It was true.  Feeling something familiar here in the South was a cruel reminder of how much I missed the feeling I felt where I felt at home: The Rockies.  That feeling you get riding on real snow, something you just can't quite describe -- you just feel it.

I tried to ignore the feeling.  And most days I was successful.  I made a constant effort to set aside my past and embrace this new place.  It was temporary, I knew.  Week by week, and month by month I got closer and closer to it being just another place I had lived and worked.  I filled my countless days with hiking and backpacking, hundreds of miles of biking in the country, research and coursework (a never ending amount of reading), and my new passion - Bouldering.  This new hobby exceeded my expectations of driving home the point that I could make this place work for the time I had to make it work.

But some nights, nothing could drown that exact statement.  The feeling that I had to make it work.  As if I didn't have a choice.  And in a sense, I didn't.  It was make it work, or be miserable.  And half fake happiness equally united with actual happiness seemed much better than total misery.  The few nights I felt hopelessly discontent were few and far between, but the occasional night it did occur was painstakingly depressing.

The discontent I felt, while miserable when I felt it, was also motivational.  Next to my desk I had hung the map I had used to drive to Idaho.  A map of the entire United States that highlighted my route from Eastern Virginia to South-Central Idaho.  The 2,100 miles I had driven, half crying out of fear.  The 2,100 miles I gave up so much for, not knowing what I'd feel when I finished it.  The 2,100 miles that ultimately led me to a place so new and everything unfamiliar, but felt exactly like home the second I placed foot in it.

Though it was a daily disappointment to stare at that map and see where I wanted to be, but wasn't, it was also the daily reminder of what I was working towards.  The idea that where I was truly was temporary, but that I needed it, like all my other temporary locations, to get to somewhere permanent.  Somewhere I wanted to spend the rest of my life.  Someplace like Idaho.

That drive, the 2,100 miles through 10 different states, a drive that took me through 1/5 of the geographical boundaries of the United States, somehow represented exactly where I was now.  A long, long journey through so many things I'd never comprehend.  That map stood for something both incredibly beautiful and disgustingly ugly. The map was greed, envy, success, and accomplishment.  It was the sweat and pain that goes into achieving something truly unachievable.  Something that comes with a price.  Not a price of monetary value.  The monetary cost on that map was negligible.  No, the cost I mean is the cost of giving up something to achieve something intangible.

When people ask why I feel such a connection to Idaho, I can't answer the question.  I try to explain it, which turns into a lengthy verbal spout that maybe leads that person to some understanding, but at the end of the discussion, I shake my head and tell them that still doesn't explain it.  It's something someone from the outside can't comprehend without experiencing it and feeling exactly what I felt.

South Carolina felt good.  Don't get me wrong.  It truly was a place of opportunity.  The recreation was beyond amazing and the people that shared my passions were not only within reach, but willing to recreate with me.  The research I was doing was top-notch as well.  I had no doubt that at the end of it, whenever that actually would be, would lead my professional career in a direction that was unstoppable.  I wasn't sure how much I actually comprehended that statement, but I believed it whole-heartedly and would fight anyone who would dare disagree.

Somewhere between my current position in South Carolina, a place familiar and needed, and my distant past in Idaho, a place that felt like home, laid Alaska.  Currently, the days were getting rapidly shorter.  Nights were filled with the aurora borealis and days were undoubtedly filled with autumn colors, ripe berries, and mammals feasting as they prepared for a long, cold and dark winter.  Alaska was also filled with memories of him, but for the most part, my time in South Carolina distracted me from those.

With every passing day, I thought more of Idaho and the future that awaited me there, than of him.  Somehow, that final embrace was nothing more than a memory that every now and again entered my head, more by force than by casual chance.  I had moved on quicker than expected and was focused on more important things.  My research being my number one objective; getting back west, a close second.

My research was a work in progress, something that, like a child, would require my constant attention and affection.  Getting back to the west coast was simply a dream at this point.  It was something I could obsess about, but something I had no control over right now.  Staring at the map, I set down my west coast dreams and locked them in the same mental box I had put that embrace in Alaska.  Both were simply memories.  An existence in my head I could neither change nor manipulate, no matter how hard I tried.

For the next 2 years, my life would consume the Carolina's and the research and lifestyle that existed in those boundaries.  Like the map, it was something incredibly beautiful and disgustingly ugly, though in this case, I wasn't sure as to which side it leaned more towards.  All I knew was I had a choice: to live with it, or to not.  But it wasn't really an option.  My only choice was to live with it, and so that's what I did.

Temporarily, I told myself.  Temporarily.

TRAVELS - Part 1

I was quickly brought back to reality as I came into the office Monday morning, my last Monday, and finished writing over 16 pages filled with short write-ups, protocols, and site descriptions.  I checked back over entered data and analyses, enjoyed beers and pizza as a final huzzah, and before I knew it I found myself saying my goodbyes to supervisors, co-workers, and new friends – People I’d likely never see again. 

As I packed up my final things in my small cabin, I sunk myself on the couch and nestled in close to my friend.  With his arm wrapped tight around me, I soaked in a feeling that would end all too soon.  I closed my eyes and briefly imagined my plane that would take me back to Virginia to ultimately spend the next 2 and a half years in western South Carolina, conducting the research I had always dreamed of.  I missed him already.  I imagined the time spent there that would be devoid of travels to unknown locations, new people, and him.  Instead, my soul would devour text books about statistics and ecology, write papers through midnight and at the end of it all, supposedly be qualified and prepared to make wildlife management decisions.

I thought back to the things my next years would be devoid of.  I knew I was being dramatic.  But after a year a half of rustic travels and adventures taking place in dry cabins and my backpacking tent, settling back into the bustle of a college town in an urban southeast environment somehow felt displacing.

Once on the plane, I watched an Alaskan landscape get smaller and smaller.  I longed for the spruce, the glaciated braided rivers, the barren landscape that challenged man and animal all the same.  I was glad when we finally got above the clouds and I couldn’t see the green beneath me.  I didn’t want to yearn for a landscape that would never be mine.  The clouds below me were pink with the glow of sunset.  They undulated like giant icebergs in a frozen ocean.  I wondered what they felt like.

I ordered a whiskey coke and began to read “Faith of Cranes”, a novel about a man finding his way through a changing Alaskan landscape.  Not a story about finding yourself in wilderness, per say, the way Christopher McCandless did, but instead finding yourself in, well, yourself.  The man in the book traveled searching for something he didn’t know.  He fell in love with a rural foreign environment that would never be his and left it to return to his home town in southeast Alaska, but the contrast between busy urban cities and the loneliness he experienced in remote villages still didn’t fill the void inside him.  In between it all, he fell in love with a girl, but was too absorbed with finding himself and being independent to ask her to stay, even though he knew she would have.

The story felt too familiar.

 “Although it was slow to take root, Uramuro planted the idea that moving would keep me from ever finding the contentment under my feet.”

As I re-read the line from the book, it resonated in my head.  I sipped my whiskey -- my second one of the night, this one stronger than the first.  The bitter taste of whiskey on my tongue surprised me.  I put the book down and returned to my airplane window where I watched pinks fade to orange and orange fade to an empty gray.  Behind us, towards the setting sun, a fire red glow skimmed the horizon, but towards the front of the plane, towards the fate that lied ahead of me, was a cold and dismal dark blue expanse.

I sipped my whiskey again, then breathed deeply.

I knew the book was right, the idea that continuously moving would keep me from being content.  It was part of the reason I wanted to escape seasonal work and begin the progression towards something permanent and stable. I was tired of never feeling complete.  I had been traveling my entire life.  First, following my dad as a military child, oblivious to any other kind of life style, and then for seasonal work during college summers and again after being handed my undergraduate degree.  My more distant travels began the very day I got my degree.  Seasonal work was great.  It was filled with endless adventures, no rules, and a great community.  But it was always filled with inevitable goodbyes.  The constant search for the next position and accompanying location. The persistent stress of packing, moving, unpacking, and starting over somewhere new just to know in a couple months, you’d be leaving.  But the memories and experiences are well worth it.  I don’t regret a thing and wouldn’t change my challenges for anything in the world. 

Through my Dad’s travels we moved from South Carolina to Vermont to Alaska to Washington to Virginia to Alaska to ultimately retire in Eastern Virginia.  This is where I called home.  Through my own travels, I moved from Eastern Virginia to western Virginia to North Carolina to Indiana to Idaho to southern Alaska to interior Alaska just to find myself headed to South Carolina – right where I started.  But I had needed all of that to get to exactly where I was now.

A plane, headed home – Temporarily.

Temporarily.  I played with the word in my head as though it were something malleable in my fingers.  It made me smile for the first time during that long plane ride.  Maybe it was the whiskey.  I sipped it again, this time a long, refreshing drink.  It no longer tasted bitter.   I continued to play with the idea of “temporary” and everything it stood for.  Opportunity.  The cold and dismal dark blue expanse in front of us was hidden opportunity.  I repeated the idea in my head and challenged the words as if it gave the sentence difference meaning.  I smiled again.

My thoughts were interrupted as the stewardess asked if I wanted another whiskey.  Red no longer lined the horizon and I found myself holding a glass filled only with melting ice.  In the dark and quiet airplane cabin, I nodded and silently mouthed yes please.  I was one of the last ones with eyes still open.

I wanted to be upset about leaving Alaska.  I wanted to be angry at myself for supposedly settling for a south east urban journey and leaving everything I loved and pursued in the west.  I wanted to feel like I was giving up.  But I couldn’t.  It didn’t matter I was leaving the tallest mountain in North America and the 6 million acres that surrounded it.  It didn’t matter I was leaving the tundra, the grizzly bears, the caribou.  It didn’t matter I was leaving him.  I looked out the window.  It was dark outside.  A faint glow separated the sky from the clouds, barely.  None of it mattered because it would all go on the same without me. The same way I would go on the same without them.

I sipped my Whiskey.  It was strong again, but didn’t taste bitter this time.  My thoughts wandered.  I no longer knew what to think about.  I was sad to be leaving the last frontier, but I was happy to be embracing the new opportunity and lifestyle.  I was scared to move to the southeast and begin rigorous graduate level course work, but I was excited for my trip back west in 6 weeks for a wildlife workshop and the start of west coast networking.

I thought about him, briefly, but stopped.  I knew the momentary embrace we felt on that couch in Alaska would be our last.  Despite our summer romance, we had departed as friends.  Just friends.  We had joked about the lack of attraction and connection we felt that summer, but I think we both knew better.  I knew better.  My return to Montana in 6 weeks for the workshop, and possibly seeing him again, wouldn’t matter though.  It’s time and distance, he had told me.  Time and distance.

It was 1:27am.  I stared at my mostly empty glass of whiskey next to me and thought of my Dad, the one man in my life who never cared how far I traveled or for how long I was gone.  He loved me unconditionally and always welcomed me home with open arms and after 9 months in Alaska, I was excited to see him waiting for me upon my arrival at the airport at home. 

My Dad taught me everything I know, which always surprised me considering how often he was deployed overseas during my impressionable childhood years.  In the stories my mother told me, it seemed like he was never there, but in my memories, he was never gone.  I wondered if, as an adult, it was the same for my dad, if my persistent coming and going and the months I would be away without stepping foot even in the same time zone as him went unnoticed.  During my travels, I called him often, bouncing ideas about life, work and sometimes just for company.  My favorite phone calls were the ones where he seemed to need to company as well, and I was glad to oblige. 

My dad is the one constant in my life.  He taught me how to be strong when everything is going wrong.  How to fish, how to camp.  How to gut and filet a flounder.  How to chop wood for the fireplace.  He taught me how to grill and encouraged creative cooking in the kitchen.  He pushed me while learning to snowboard and became my strongest influence when I began slalom racing in college.  He taught me to dream big and to believe that the unachievable was always achievable; you just had to want it.  He taught me to believe in myself, to be independent, strong willed. 

When I got into graduate school in the south east, a vast distance between where I wanted to be and where I was ending up, he was the first to remind me that I wasn’t settling, but instead that I was making the right choice.  He reminded me it was exactly where I needed to be to get to where I wanted.

I hoped he was right.

The stewardess took my glass devoid of whiskey.  With my headphones clinging to my ears, I saw her lips mouth if I wanted another one, but I silently shook my head no.  Three strong whiskeys and I barely felt a thing.  I silently cursed the Irish in me and wondered if I would sleep at all on my redeye headed for Minneapolis.  I suspected not.  Not without another drink, at least.

I once again stared out at the dark landscape through my airplane window.  Sparse city lights and white expanses of snow covered earth just barely glowed under the full moon.  I longed for stars.  This dark landscape felt foreign to me.  It was the first time I had seen absolute darkness since April.  It was now August.  At the same time, I longed for the aurora borealis.  Mostly, I just longed for something familiar.  Something constant.  Something that, like the moonlight, I knew would always be there, no matter where I went.

I thought about my Dad.  Then I silently laughed as I thought about the lack of whiskey in my hand.  But I couldn’t stop staring at the landscape below me.  The all too soon replacement of spruce for yellow popular.  Snow for waterfalls.  Culture based on survival replaced by civil war reenactments. I felt abandoned in my own mind.  I knew the book was right.  I knew my dad was right.  I knew temporary meant opportunity.  I knew that one day, I would be back.  But as we continued to fly east, past everything I had lived and breathed for the last year and a half, I still felt sunken.

I thought back to that last embrace on the couch.  The way I sunk into his arms and let myself feel vulnerable to the changing world around me.  The way he kissed my forehead like we weren’t departing in a couple hours.  The way we casually said goodbye as if we’d see each other in the morning.

I didn’t long for that moment the way I thought I would.  I longed for something, but I didn’t know what.  Staring into the dark expanse that was my new future, I propped my pillow near the airplane window and closed my eyes.  I wandered in and out of light sleep until my mind finally rested with me.  I slept, gently, and dreamed of nothing.