June 19, 1982
Clearwater, FL
Alaska was as beautiful as I remembered her, only this time it was a different season. Two years ago she was snow covered in early March as bitter cold winds slashed the Tundra. I ice fished on the Bering Sea, rode a dog sled while giant snowflakes stung my cheeks, and I flew above the Artic Circle. Then, I was in the barren northland, but this trip was different and even more wonderous and majestic.
From Vancouver, B.C., we sailed aboard Carnivale's SS Tropicale, on the inside passge to Juneau. There we transferred to the S/V Fairweather to cruise the Lynn Canal into the Klondike to Skagway, a notorious, rousing town, still imbued with it's "Gold Rush" aura.
We ventured from there into the Yukon via the Narrow Guage Railroad to Whitehorse, anothe town preserving her earlier traditions. There we boarded a motorcoach and
traveled the Alaskan Highway (ALCAN) via the thriving Metropolis of Beaver Creek, where the number of hotel employees outnumber the town's population of 75.
Here we dined on moose stew, fresh halibut and salmon. We marvelled at the magnificent mountains and glaciers, and were mesmorized by the panoramic beauty of our last frontier.
Wild but somewhat docile animals roamed. Caribo and moose migrated towards the mountain peaks and their summer grazing lands, as the young born in early spring
trapsed behind their mothers.
There was a newness, a wonderous openess, a beckoning of boundries to explore, vastness to see, and wonders to behold. I adored her, not in a literal sense but in an
esoterical sense. I bowed to her majestic beauty, praised her nearly untouched landscape, and glorified the unbelievable stroke of God's artistic hand.
She embraced me, enticed me with her charm and splendor, and I savored each moment,relishing every new adventure, aware that I could become her slave, returning again and
again to refresh myself in her unspoiled beauty.
"Please God, don't let her change," I prayed, "don't let the condominiums, hotels and tourist traps rob her, deface her. Keep her our last great, earthly frontier."
Each morning presented an overture to scenes that would unfold with a natural crescendo, proclaiming her brilliance, her undauted nature. At night, as we went to bed with daylight illuminating her stage, we anxiously awaited the next act, knowing the momentum was
building and her finale would engulf us into her very core, the essence of her majesty, the awesome totalness of her vast wilderness.
I equated with her, the fresh, new unscathed horizons as I had just entered into a fresh, new world of solitary adventures. living now on my own, alone, away from all that had been familar, all that was safe and secure.
Alaska has a family, the 'lower 48', as it is affecionately called, but she is not a touching part of it, just as I am no longer a touching part of my family. I am with them, a complete and total part of them, but so far away. My own horizons are yet to be sighted, my development still embryonic. The cutting of the umbilical cord was was not easy but necessary to sustain life. Sometimes in my new solirary enviornment I ache for, cry out for the solace of the familar, the security of the 'norm'. The lonliness evokes, promotes emotions before unexperienced. Virginal, anticipating, desiring, frightened that the ultimate experience might be less than satisfying.
Leaving my home and family was not easy and yet it was exhiliterating. It hurt, but there was a balm to soothe, the knowledge that the hurt and pain would ease, the scars would heal, and new skin would obliterate that which had caused the pain.
To leave home, knowing that the move could create the blight that might destroy the tree, was not easy but the fungus that had slowly encircled the branches and the very root, the foundation, was about to suffocate all that had once been beautiful.
The tree now stands minus one support system, but it stands sturdily, held together, clinging together to thwart the loss, to weather the changing terrain and climate. It will
survive and grow stronger, because the roots that were developed were sturdy, planted in the fertile soil of love.
The root, the main support system that now stands alone, fragile in its aloneness, quivering in the awareness of an unforseen future. Will the winds and havoc of time prove the un-wiseness of this solitary development, or will the root be able to maintain a unison with it's branches, the offspring of it's seed?
I was a part of a union that created and developed this family tree, part of the core, the sustaining, nurturing, pivotal base of the union. Now, as the structure has developed, contructing its own foundations, and migrating to it's own enviornment, I release the pre-construtual ties, but beckon each branch to maintain the familial bridge that routes each avenue from it's base.
I quiver, I hurt, I know the elemets of time can reode the familar. The future can dim the past. I stand alone, prepared to accept the future, praying fervently that they will never forget the past, the nurturing that I gave them.
In my aloneness, I momentarily retreat to the past, then quickly detour to the present. Somewhere, beyond the horizon, in the limitless space of time, I will find me. I will know who I am and what I am, and why I am, and I will reach the core of my existence.
I will know I came here to perpetuate the existence of time and development, and my contribution, no matter how small and insifnifigant, will have proceeded that which is to
be.
Please pray for me. Hope for me. Beseech for me, but most of all love me, for without love I am nothing.
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