22 May 2005

I am not done with Pacific invertebrates.

Here I am, just really beginning to settle in, feeling comfortable with my specific knowledge of the area, and I've but 2 weeks of employment left. What? Where did it go? What am I to do? I am in love with nudibranchs, echinoderms all, chitons, limpets, worms in all their diverse forms, the elusive cephalopods. I am just beginning to get my footing in the forrest, learning what plants I can eat, finding caddisfly larvae and leeches in the lake, and I am going to leave?, tear myself away from this intensive learning experience. It would seem so. I wasn't planning on all this emotion, wasn't planning on falling head-over-heels in all-consuming love with the planktonic larval forms of barnacles, dreaming of cumaceans, wasn't planning on the smell of this once unfamiliar low-tide feeding my soul. Great, now when am I going to get a goat?

What a silly thing this life.

2 weeks at the field station to be covered in one brief report, hmmm, how to approach the task at hand? The Postal Service and more coffee will get me through it, I hope. What will get you through it?

Last week the children were all private school students from Anchorage. The first half of the week was dyslexics and too many parents. Unfortunate overcrowding reduced the overall quality of the program. Rich parents hiring their own watertaxi to get out to the station, treating the station like it was theirs. Someone even crapped on the floor of the outhouse. However, a lovely milf of a trophy wife collected and sauteed fiddleheads for lunch on their last day, and a father slipped Matt a $50 tip. Minor redemption. The second half was 2 24-hour programs with 7th graders of Grace Christian. 7th grade being a horrible time, no matter what, with the hormones and social pressure, these kids came unprepared and with horrendous additudes. During introductions one student put it best, when asked why they were on this trip he responded, "Because we are rich." When I wasn't fighting apathy I did my best to talk about evolution, human impact upon the earth, and human beings as animails just like all the others. A girl needs a crusade I suppose.

All in all a tough week. It didn't help that it coincided with higher low tides and this girl being pre-menstrual, a more emotionally vulnerable time. The lack of hope I felt for humanity some of those days was potentially an all time low. The question 'Why?' was oft at the forefront of my tattered mind.

However, I did see a bear, a live false jingle (Pododesmus macroschisma) and a pair of opalescent nudibranchs (Hermissenda crassicornis) in the same pool, a face-off between a false lemon-peel (Archidoris montereyensis) and a shaggy aeolis (Aeolidia papilosa) (both nudibranchs) when placed in the same small tub, rhinophores out for all the world to see, and went for a swim.

The bear I saw walking along the beach. After putting the kids to bed I like to creep down to the water's edge for a moment of stillness and to check my voicemail to see if anyone loved me during the day. Sitting on the steps, in the fading evening light (at 10:45 p.m.) about to make a phone call I looked across the small inlet of water. A bear is just lunbering about on the beach. She leans in, makes a little sniffy motion towards some beach rye, and lumbers off again. The next day on the trail we found a print.

The swim came about after one of the 'Alaska Man' chaperones, who had to do EVERYTHING his own way, left our raft tied to the dock, and then left on the boat. From shore Matt and I tried to pull it in and found it stuck. In 2 short jaunts, clad in t-shirt and panties, I swam first over to the outer beach and then to the dock, climbed up the raft and cast her off. I loved every moment of it. I have been completely annointed with the waters of the Alaskan Pacific. Luckily it was a nice, calm day.

The 'Alaskan Men', a funny breed, really don't seem to know what to make of me. I think I leave them a little bewildered. Huh.

My goodness, this has been a lot of words, and a lot of coffee. Maybe enough of both, for the time being. Know that I ache to hug and be hugged by each and every one of you, with every fiber of my being.

Until then.

One of the best things about Alaska right now is that when I leave for a bike ride at 10 p.m., when I return at 11:30 p.m. it is still light outside. Just rode out the spit and back, but paused for a few to watch the moon emerge from behind one of those snow-capped mountain-y things. Did it through a spotting scope out on the spit so I could see all the craters! It looked so fast.

Sweet dreams.

4th of June, 2005

Woah.

Um, I am told that I can slow down now, but it doesn't yet feel like it is over. Doesn't quite feel like I am actually saying goodbye to the tides that have forced their way into my heart. In fact, my barnacles, my stars, (my garters?) all the invertebrates, the microscopes, the daily hikes, the mosquitos, the wearing foulie boots everywhere, and a serious hunk of my heart has already been left across the bay. I am once again in Homer, where the air smells of freshly cut lawn not the intertidal zone. My laminated tide chart is no longer in my back pocket, I feel concurrently lighter and lost. Maybe a little lonely too. The harbour seal who would visit at high tide, how will I know how she fares? The small pool of pink corraline algae & lined chitons on octopus rock that was once invaded by true stars, that I wanted desperately to pull all of them out of there, but relented to natural (non-tara) processes, and eventually it cleared, who will check on that every day?

Will I still dream of mechanical cephalopods? Of children walking horses past my boat? Of octopus escaping from bags?

My wounds will heal, my mosquito bites will stop itching, I'll eventually do some laundry. But what of my heart? Where am I left now? How is it that I love more and equally? My love for a new habitat does nothing to pale former loves, in some way only makes them that much more splendid for their specific traits. Nor does it outshine the love that already exsisted in my heart for the soft sandy beaches of the Atlantic, for the depths of the Hudson, for the horseshoe crab (sorry julie), the hogchoker, the atlantic blue crab (Callinectes sapidus). Does my life need focus? A mission statement? Purpose? Goals?

At the moment maybe I just need another cup of coffee. Maybe that is simply how it works. On the daily level, not the big picture. For this girl, at least.

I don't know.

Thoughts?

Drinking a mug or 2 of 'Deadman's Reach' coffee, I love coffee, and tying up loose ends, trying to finish my time here in Homer, at the Centre well. In other words, burning cd's of Bree's that I am interested in, using the computer one last time as I don't know when I will be able to again, and rigging the plankton tow like I promised. O, and of course ignoring the packing that awaits me just upstairs.

I realize that I've not summed up my last 2 weeks at the station, don't yet know whether or not that is important. Exhausting would be a good word for 2 weeks of kids with less than 24 hours off. One school group among them shone, which helped. Their teacher actually cared about waste, and for their 48 hour program they created but one bag of waste. Hurrah, especially when compared to our last group which created 5 bags in the same amount of time. Oy.

I have been so completely defined by my job that yesterday I had a hard time remembering who (whom?) else I am. Still don't really remember. An unsettling feeling to be certain. Suddenly freedom and choice have been thrust upon me, I am overwhelmed. But plans are already in motion for at least the next month of my life. Today I fly out of Homer back to Anchorage, and hopefully one of the chaperones from our trip will be there to pick me up and wisk me away to the Mat-Su valley. I will get to see some of the interior, the farmlands (perhaps a musk-oxen farm) and Denali. And fresh water. Away from the sea, away from the expansive opening of the mouth of Kachemak bay. Huh.

All coffee and no food seems to make of me an incomprehensible girl.

xxox
tara

Raining. Raining good and hard on the lake out my window.

Liberated fiddlehead ferns, king salmon fishing (the line broke, but I did see another vessel haul aboard a glorious fish, so vital, so muscular, I shouted 'that's a big fish!' with unbound glee), wisked away by mosquitos, carried a sleeping 8-year-old girl in from the car, hosted a birthday tes party as a rabbit, watched a slide-show of the 'field trip' at Houston middle school, almost criedm so good to know that the experience had some impact, signed yearbooks, something I haven't done since highschool, a fleeting minor celebrity.

Not much, haven't been up to too much. Tonight perhaps red wine and a movie, a reccomendation from dad. Need to listen to more music.

Tomorrow night a big party where I will know no one, in a sense freeing, in a sense a bit lonely. We shall see.

yours in triumph & defeat

Sigh.

Yesterday involved a lot of the running about variety of sightseeing, but ended in the incredibly charming town of Talkeetna where we were treated to views of Denali and a delicious pizza and beer dinner with live music (how long had it been since I've heard live music?). Huh, Yup, mountains can be impressive.

The morning prior I ate some moose sausage, while the skull of the same moose watched over me, its former flesh entering mine. I had also seen the photographs of it as a fresh kill. Intense. I didn't actually like the texture, been awhile and all.

Such a brief amount of time...

Basking in the love Julie Edwards and Seattle at large.

Contentment washes over me, I may soon go into culture shock (like when Julie walked me about the market but had to clutch tightly to my hand so that I would cry or simply stop moving), but for now I am calm.

Here, In Ballard, people at one time seemed to care about architecture, I like that part, in fact gushed all over the streets about it on a walk with Charlie the other evening. The flowers are making a shameless showy display of themselves, sex is in the air.

The coffee flows like a non-tidally influenced river, in other words it ebbs not, and yes, it is good. The days seem amusingly short, and I fall asleep earlier. Don't feel more rested, I just sleep more. Funny that.

On the direct order of Ms. Whitworth I am reading "The Time Traveler's Wife". Mmmmmmmmmm book.

Upon my first attempt to post I mis-hit a key and received this message "*your reply: please provide some content" I hope this counts.

like the coffee, my love ebbs not...
t

Alaska is taking its time settling into my bones, permeating me, becoming an inseperable part of the girl. It can't be sped up, it won't be hurried. I strive for patience, try not to force it, try not to beat myself up over things taking time. Surrender. Wait for it.

5:43 Eastern Standard Time

It is one of those mornings where I awake and want to stand at the edge of the sea and shout into the Universe, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?". Why don't I have anything figured out? Why aren't I an adult? What's the point of me? My value? What do I want anyway? Any why don't I have it? I think I am getting worse at being unemployed, which is ashame, because in one sense I like it a whole bunch. Maybe it is just being unemployed in South Jersey that does not treat me so well.

Maybe I am just so fidgety because I am on day 3 of a cleansing fast, and now my mind is trying to clean itself out along with my body.

Maybe I should go back to bed.

The morning light is still cold and flat. There is a chorus of birdsong right out my open windows, and I note that my ear remains untrained in discerning which species goes to which song. I like the world when teh human animal is still quiet. Maybe I'll go drink tea on the porch.

Yours, for what it's worth,
T