I have been in Juneau for a few days visiting the kids, and now I’m in Kodiak. Last night I had a wonderful dinner with a book club full of women that have known each other a long time. There was also a Schnauzer/Poodle that looked like a terrier named Murphy who carried around a mermaid Barbie and sat by my chair.
They were talking about Seth Kantner’s book, A Thousand Trails Home, about his very unique upbringing in a sod hut in the Arctic amidst caribou and snow and ice, and what he knows and sees.(He still lives up there and is a photographer. The pictures are great.) It is a hard book sometimes to read, there is a lot of blood and hair stuck to everything, as caribou sustained the family– food for people and dogs, clothes, sinew.. bones– but what a brave wonder it is to share so much about a place, a world, a way of being, that otherwise we’d never know about it. Seth knows stuff in his bones and sinews and brain that I never will.
The conversation went from light to heavy– loss, death, assisted living, elder care ( the women were all of a certain age) and one thing that I came home with — is that they are like me, and Seth, in that their place in Kodiak, like ours in other parts of the state– is their home, and their family too, both friends and relatives are here — sure, they don’t mind a little travel– But they are sticking to this rock that sustains them. The community. Trees. Waves and the smell of fish. Alaskans are lucky this way– and alike.
Also, I’m reading Methodist Lent mediations from Boston University and taking an on-line course on wisdom from Catholic Richard Rohr’s center with Episcopalian and sort of mystic, Cynthia Bourgeault. This morning I listened to her talk about moving as wisdom– what our bodies know– and how to listen and learn from them. floating on your back ( a miracle when you first take the breath and trust the water to hold you up) and riding a two-wheeler with the training wheels off. Skiing down a hill. Letting the river take the raft. Balance. Speed. Grace. That’s my kind of preaching.
Here is a chant she taught us ( that I said as the plane into Kodiak bounced around over the waves and shot down on that runway sticking out onto the rocky shore) —
As you will Lord
As you know Lord
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy
It helped. Now I am going for a walk, then to the high school to talk about writing- which is more a way to be and see than anything— with a couple of classes. Tonight I give a reading and tomorrow it’s a writing workshop for adults on obituaries and our stories–
(Also, if this works, I will be very proud of myself for figuring out my new lap top and having the courage to send this out to you from far away from my usual place.)
