I am still trying to get back in the dance of normal days after weeks of being here and yon. And now I’m running for assembly, which may seem crazy, but my not so sub-conscious motive is that then I will have to be home and so can’t say yes to events that take me away. Plus, I care about this place and the people who live in it, and think I can help do better for us.
This is the news from this mornings tour of Haines on our bikes: There’s a cruise ship at the dock and tour buses are rolling up the highway and rafts are floating down it. Moose hunters are preparing camps up river (the season opens Sept.15), there’s a bright bucket full of wedding flowers at the end of the newlywed’s driveway at 8-mile, and no bears or salmon in the creek at 10-mile, but Santa Claus Mike is catching plenty in his river net at 13-mile, and the coffee is hot, but he wishes he had more firewood. The fresh snow on the Cathedral Peaks is no joke, he said. It’s chilly before the sun rises. The sun is out and the new neighbors are raising the roof beams high today, and then it’s soup and salad at the school for lunch with my favorite second-grader.
Here’s something to think about: On our beach dog walk yesterday I was singing the praises of nude bathing among women of all shapes and sizes in the Tenakee warm spring bath house– and no, that is not radical, it’s the law:
And how it’s pretty neat to meet people just as you are — I mean really are. I like how a well-used body looks. There’s a patina to it like driftwood, and don’t you think nudity encourages a kind of humility that comes from being so..exposed? (Of course we all averted our gazes in the bath from all that skin, and kept firm eye contact when speaking to each other at all times.) Still, I thought I was making a pretty good case for women and our bodies and souls and what matters when my friends both snorted something like, “you’ve got to be kidding” and “no way.” The last word, before we changed the subject to elder care and preschool yoga, came from my friend who hooted (by then we were all laughing at our selves) that as far as she was concerned, at our age, “Clothes are a gift from God,” and by God she’s keeping hers on and hopes everybody else does too.
