February 12, 2011 - Suns out in Anchorage. Going to see Guy Davis tonight (a Whistling Swan event). Though reflecting on winters, and cold and my home for a moment...
I drive a lot - have since I was young. I tell people its been 42 times up and back on the Alcan, but think it might have been more. Easily more. But the miles roll under my car like time itself. And I've watched time - often surprised when I look in a mirror and see a shock of grey, a line, or feel the weight of life or see it looking back at me. We choose things - every day, every moment. We have before us the path of happiness, but will we take it? We live in drama and regret, but always within reach of something else. Will we reach? These choices determine so much, and we don't get to rewind, or redo. So we see the risk of life and many, fearful, settle for what they know. What is before them. We may ache for what we leave behind us, and yet revel when we have the wisdom to see forward. A friend once told me "If you ever change your mind, let me know..." and I loved that. For rarely are doors left open, whether or not we ever walk through them. We cannot know who we will be or what we will face over years. But the door is cracked even if, in time, forgotten.
When I was 19 one of my first powerful relationships ended. She was a singer with a voice that would melt any Alaskan Winter and I found myself tortured by a loss I could not comprehend - I had imagined a lifetime with her (but what can a 19 year old know of a lifetime?). So, when I could no longer handle the searing pain of loss, I packed up my old Toyota Corolla, stopped by a holiday party (Winter in Alaska), bid a dramatic farewell to my old high school friends (oh, to make her feel the sense of loss, I thought - never a good idea when the old girlfriend has already moved on), and then I drove away in the middle of the night, the radio echoing my choice with Supertramps' "Take the Long Way Home".
I had no clear idea of where I was going, but I knew it was to find my way out of this place that I knew had caused me so much pain. I knew I would find solace in the road. I knew I was gone. Baby, I was out of there... I might have said to her.
I drove under a clear sky and, before the moon rose, I saw the Northern Lights, a necklace around the night and then the moon... As the miles ticked by in that wasted subzero winterland, I grew more and more tired, eventually falling asleep and flaming out into a ditch some 240 miles North of Anchorage. Tok a ten mile walk away. 5 am. No vehicles. And so I got out and walked, and reflected and in that cold, as each step took me closer to that flashing amber light (visable from ten miles away), I thought of who I was, where life goes, how we choose...
Car towed out, I didn't head home. I continued. A resolve had come over me on that walk and I'm sure it changed my life. I knew that I would always pull myself out of the ditch, and move on. That knowing I could be at the party, or on the road was no choice at all. It had to be moving forward. Reality bested metaphor, and I became my own music or poem. I drove that time through the states to DC and I was gone from Alaska for over five months. In many ways I never returned, though I did physically come back. I knew then as clearly as I know now that you live once (as far as you can know) and in that life there are few limits on what is possible.
I recall at one point having driven past Crater Lake Park in the middle of the night and heading to Eastern Oregon. The road was silent, cold, the night clear and, as I drove down from the park, I saw a flashing amber light ahead of me. Experience told me it was at least ten miles away. And, with Fleetwood Mac's "Sara" playing full blast on my 8 track, I drove away from my past to somewhere only the road could show me.