As I head to the train tracks on the dog's morning walk, the sun is warm on my back. I know that by late afternoon it will once again feel hot like summer, but the signs of nature say otherwise. The dog looks for watermelon berries that she so gleefully gobbled just a few weeks ago, holding the plant stem down with her front paws and delicately extracting the sweet berries with her teeth. No berries appear to her. The fireweed that lined the road in waving plumes of purple now disperse their wispy white seed.
The orange nasturtiums in my window box continue to bloom protected by the eaves. I don't believe it has frosted yet. Their bright colors make me think July rather than September. Summer in Alaska is all to short.
A time of transition, something I'm not very good at, particularly when it means leaving one lifestyle for another. In my brother's most recent email, he spoke of the adjustment when returning to his home outside Denver after a summer spent in VT. He referred to it as “culture shock". Our rural life in Vermont is really not so different from our summer life in Alaska. Dust from dirt roads exist at both. In fact, our neighbors are closer in Alaska than in VT! It's the settling in and then moving on that's most difficult. Fall represents this.
I've always found it difficult to watch dying salmon. They lay on their sides appearing to be dead, then a gill opens and shuts or there's a contorted twist in a desperate struggle to regain the water. Their once elegant silver bodies become unrecognizable.
In many ways, I envy those who call Alaska home. The thought of never having to leave such a unique place is at times quite appealing. I enjoy life here at a slower pace. Activities focus more around day to day necessities rather than on things beyond one's control. World wide events become less important. I don't really care what Donald Trump is doing, but I do care what band is playing on the park this Friday! The simplicity of it------do we have enough water for dishes, fuel for the stove, something for dinner? Exercise slides seamlessly into everyday life. Ballet class which is so important to me, that I rarely miss a class, is replaced by daily chores. Hauling water jugs becomes weight work, maintaining balance on slimy river banks replaces one footed balance at the barre. Plies, jetes and grand jetes are replaced with extricating wading boots from set net monofilament while trying to keep upright against the tide's pull. Navigating the up and down tussocks of the tundra is nature's stair master.
No need for the torso twist machine when throwing wood. An impromptu nonregimented routine, spontaneous and dictated by necessity........is this cross training?
This post has rambled, but perhaps that's valuable in some way. Soon we'll be leaving this very special place, returning to Vermont. While at home we'll miss what we left behind in Alaska, in exactly the way we do when leaving Vermont. Transitions are hard.
a post on our caribou hunt coming soon