I flew from Arizona back home to Anchorage and a friend picked me up from the airport at midnight (there are so many red-eyes coming into anchorage and picking each other up in the middle of the night is one of our only sources of entertainment up here) and in the car I felt delirious, sort of weird, and was having a hard time navigating to my house, thought why do I feel this way? Looked out the window at the greatly diminished snow after two weeks of freakishly warm 30-40 degree weather and tried not to think about the world ending, like which year will be the year that winter just… doesn’t come? That night in bed I felt really hot and when I woke up, yep, I had the flu, or something like the flu.
Covid test was negative, felt too nauseous to eat anything but a cup of microwaved bone broth and passed the day on the couch with my dogs tucked around me, watching True Detective: Night Country and trying not to think about all the work I was not getting done. Watched the sun come out, shining on the snow, real bright sun now that it’s nearly March. Kept thinking I would start to feel better and walk the dogs but just walking to the kitchen to make another cup of tea was exhausting, I did manage to take a shower and that felt heroic. The good news is that True Detective: Night Country is such a vibe, I honestly don’t care about the plot at all I’m just here for the arctic Alaskan representation and the relational truth that exists between the different characters. I’m not Inupiaq so I can’t really speak to it but it seems like the show is a really artful depiction of Inupiaq culture in Alaska In These Times- but again I am in no way an authority on these things.
Arizona was so wonderful. My beginner backpacking retreats went off without a hitch, thanks in part to the perfect weather we had and the brilliant hikers who attended and also to KK’s insanely good cooking, which all of the participants agreed I greatly undersold, and next year I’m going to try harder to really communicate how bonkers-good you’ll be eating if you attend. For example, on the evening the second session returned from our backpacking trip, KK fed us ribs, as well as spinach-artichoke dip mac n’ cheese (with a gluten-free dairy free version for me!!) and this salad that had roasted beets and a tahini dressing on it, and desert was sticky toffee pudding (gluten-free and vegan) with caramel sauce and ice cream. And every meal was like this! It was truly wild, and I felt like I was in heaven, because getting hungry via exercise and then eating is one of my favorite things in this world. And all the hikers did so good and learned so much and had so much fun with each other. And they were all such interesting clever people. And the good reliable sun made its way over the mountains each day, unfurling the poppies, and the globemallow was thinking about blooming, and the remnants of water in the washes from January’s rains sparkled, and each saguaro was exquisite in its own unique way. There is something so bring and shiny about the Sonoran desert in winter- my favorite desert! Before the heat comes on and bakes away watery, vulnerable mammals like me.
It was so fun to spend two weeks hanging with my hiking clients in the dez. I never thought I would start a guiding business- I just needed another job while I was waiting to sell the novel I’ve been working on (that might never sell ha ha)- but I’m so glad I did. As daunting and scary as it can feel at the time, I really appreciate how life pushes us to grow, shoves us out of the nest over and over. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. I would propose that it’s also the mother of growth. And I like that my trips are unique, different from what else is available- more educational, with a focus on preparing you for long-distance hiking (or for hiking cross-country routes if you haven’t done that yet) and for women, trans and non-binary people. Making my trips different from what else is out there wasn’t intentional- it’s just that I had no idea what I was doing- I’ve never worked as a guide, I don’t even know how other guiding services operate- I just know what my idea of a good time is, and that’s what I want to offer other people. And so my trips are unique, and in the end that makes me really happy!
Speaking of, there are still spots in my summer Brooks Range trips! Details and the application are here. My Brooks Range trips are for people who already have a good amount of long-distance hiking experience (or similar backcountry experience) and want to learn to make routes in caltopo. I’ll teach you to make routes, one on one, via zoom, then we’ll make a route in the arctic together, and we’ll hike it!
I put myself to bed early last night, slept easy in spite of my illness and woke at 5 am, feeling like a human being again. I drank tea and unpacked and as it grew light I saw that it was dumping snow. Good winter has returned! And yet, I felt a sadness creep in as I put away my backpacking gear- it felt so good to be around so many people in Arizona, to do work that involved other humans IRL. As much as I love the life I’ve created for myself, I spend most of my time working from home, alone; I try to make social plans as often as I can, but a dog walk or a dinner with a friend are usually the only times I interact with other humans, and if I don’t put in the work to constantly reach out to schedule hangs I quickly slip into a world where I don’t interact with anyone else at all. Working for myself is definitely the best fit for me, but fighting the baked-in solitude of my daily life sometimes feels Sisyphean. I find myself envying my friends who are nurses, or social workers- I know the grass is always greener on the other side and having a job where you can’t opt out of peopling comes with its own, sometimes very intense, drawbacks, but it seems so nice to have coworkers and also clients you see IRL every day- to be a people among people, as a job! I have big plans for guided trips I want to offer this year, and that will give me a lot of IRL peopling job time, but I think I also need to come up with a way to get that need met during the months when I’m at home, working on writing projects and having zoom calls with clients. I keep telling people I want to become a cake decorator at Costco, as a joke, but maybe it’s not such a joke? If only I could find a secret, third job that involved people, that I could do just a few days a week, and only on the months that I was in town… we shall see!
Every evening during the Arizona trips we did a ten-minute writing prompt. My favorite prompt was this one- you write one thing you see, smell, taste, touch, hear, and feel. I’ll leave you with mine.
I felt the rays of the beating sun
I tasted the agricultural contaminants in my powerade bottle of river water
I heard the cows bellering
I remembered the peaceful wash where we slept last night, the way it had been full of moonlight
I smelled my salt-stained shirt
I touched my sunburnt legs
I saw the fire-scarred saguaro that did not yet know that it was dead
Until next time,
Carrot
The world needs your book! I hope it sells or that you self-publish. Excited to see how it turns out
“tried not to think about the world ending, like which year will be the year that winter just… doesn’t come?” This! It should be collective fear. Thank you for taking me out (my head, my flat) with your beautiful writing 😘