First Post-School Ramblings
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| Lexi and I enjoying the view from Lost Lake trail |
Why is
it that those who are facing death make the most prolific statements? Do you reach some
sort of literary enlightenment in those moments? A friend and I once postulated that the
reason words the dead have spoken carry more gravity is that the person will
say no more words, so we hold on to those final ones, because what else is
there to hold on? There will be no more
clarifying, expounding, redacting or changing of minds. It was said and that is that. The antagonist of one of my favorite books, Looking for Alaska, had an obsession
with famous people’s final words, so it’s clearly ‘a thing’.
During
my first two years of being a nurse, I had the honor of taking care of many
patients who were facing death and ultimately met their death, either at home
or in our custody at the hospital. They
poured their hearts to me, let me pour mine to them, and provided such great
insight to a young 20 something year old who was trying to weave her way in the
world, usually around 2am when the best conversations seem to happen.
The
name of my blog came from one such patient- an 80 year old man who had leukemia
and also happened to be born legally blind.
He found a career which he was able to successful in and prided himself
in never being ‘on the take’ from government programs for people with disabilities,
even though he rightfully deserved such support. He was stoic, strong and resilient throughout
his entire disease and progression.
I
discussed my plans to move to Alaska with him, about the beautiful wilderness
and my hopes of graduate school in addition to all the unknowns I was sure to
experience. Since he was mostly blind
and could only see shapes and shadows, his other senses were more astute. This led him to overhear a coworker flatly state
to me waaaay down the hall one night- “you’ll be back in 6 months, you’ll never
make it in Alaska. You’ll be back”. This person wasn’t the first to say such
things to me, so I disregarded the comment without much further thought. But, as I went into this patient’s room a
while later to give him some evening meds, he said to me-
“You’re going to make a fine frontier woman.”
Me- huh?
Him- “I heard that person say you weren’t going to make, but
they’re wrong. You’re going to be a fine frontier woman”.
I don’t think he ever knew how much his faith in me, from
our limited encounters, meant to me.
Another patient was equally, if not more, excited about my
adventures. She was also in her late
70s- early 80s and had lived a rich life full of family and love. She loved to hear me talk about my plans and
was always curious as to my progress on my adventure (getting nursing license,
finding roommate, etc). One day her and I
were talking about my move and she said something to me that has stuck with me
ever since. She told me “traveling is
something no one can ever take from you.
You can get a degree and a license, and something can happen one day
that makes you lose it all. You may get
a great job or house, but something can happen and you can lose that job and
that house, but the memories and experiences you have from traveling- no one
can EVER take them from you”. Such a
profound message, huh? [side note- I called this patient a couple of times
after I moved to Alaska, and I cannot say who was more elated to talk with the
other about my new adventures…]
All to
say, as I am winding down into the last season of my Alaska adventure, I have
caught myself becoming quite sentimental.
Since school is for all intents and purposes finished, I plan to utilize
these lasts months to the fullest and it started this past weekend. Ben was driving to Canada to help someone buy
a camper this weekend and I was wanting to break up the monotony of sitting
around the house by myself with the dogs, so I texted my friend who lives in
Seward to inquire about motels that allow dogs.
Her response was – “I don’t know what motels allow dogs, I’m
sure they exist, but you should just stay at my house.”
So, I made plans on Tuesday to go to Seward on Friday after
work and crash my friend’s (and classmate) house for the night.
Here is are all 3 dogs in my itty bitty German car
as we head to work (yes, they all came with me and they all hung out in the car
for 8 hours while I was at work).
Here is Buddy displaying his disdain of being in the car for
8 hours and then being in the car for 2 more hours driving to Seward. It gave me a lot of practice for the future “are
we there yet?!?!?!” comments. Hopefully
my children have better smelling breath, but I won’t count on it.
In all of my recent nostalgia, I decided to buy a pair of
Xtratuffs since my $40 Wal-Mart boots started leaking last summer- nothing is
quite more Alaskan chic than a pair of Xtratuffs and a dress. I wasn’t wearing a dress, but I was waiting
to go to the bathroom at the gas station in Girdwood.
Here is the view from where we ate dinner- Chinook’s. It’s a fairly new restaurant and I highly recommend
it if you are in the area! I had some delicious crab cakes, salad and seafood
chowder. We watched several people
wandering around the docks, going in and out of boats, starting to get things
out of hibernation mode like most things in Alaska during the winter.
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| Shawna and I enjoying live music and the local nightlife in Seward |
I had to sleep on the couch, which turned out to be
phenomenally comfortable and the view outside of the window was unbeatable-
that is Mount Alice peeking through the clouds across the water.
We took the dogs on a few walks around the neighborhood,
which was two blocks from the water. This
is where we saw this regal looking bald eagle just handing out on an old post
Saturday morning. It was as if he was
posing for us. We also saw a younger
eagle up in a tree who looked to be taking pointers from his elder.
We decided to go on a hike in the morning, so after my
friend cooked me a yummy breakfast of bacon, eggs and English muffins on a cast
iron skillet, we headed to Lost Lake. I
had never hiked this trail before so I was super excited to try something new.
The
beginning of the hike looked like something out of a fairy tale due to Seward being
located in a coastal rain forest- moss,
budding trees and bushes were all around.
The rich earth below our feet smelled so lovely compared to the somewhat arid, moon-like surfaces I typically wander around in the Valley.
It did not take us long to climb out of the lush green and
find ourselves in some snow! My hiking
shoes are vented so my feet were almost instantly soaked, but luckily it was
sunny and warm enough that it didn’t prove to be an issue- but definite poor
planning on my part. Here are some
pictures of all the mutts involved as well as traversing some of the snowy
areas. We punched through the snow a
fair amount which led to a lot of falling on my part and exertion of energy
(read- I am out of shape AF). I kept
having to remind myself that my friend is training to hike Denali this summer
(she was wearing a pack full of textbooks to help her train) as to not feel too
sorry for myself.
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| "Come on mom, just walk across that little piece of snow" |
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| More proof of my lack of preparedness- only wore cotton clothes- yes that is sweat. I present exhibit A titled "Cotton is Rotten" |
We finally made it to the cabin at the top of the hike which
provided beautiful 360 degree views of the mountains, Seward and Prince William
Sound.
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| My favorite views consist of nature's beauty and a dog butt |
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| Sun finally poked through |
It is safe to say the Lost Lake hike kicked my butt (and I didn't even do the whole trail, we only did a 6 mile hike), so
before I left Seward I got a nice big sandwich, chips and Gatorade from Carrs
and chowed down to try and restore some of my electrolytes before driving 3
hours home. Interestingly enough, the
dogs didn’t give me much trouble on the way home other than a lot of heavy
breathing and snoring…
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| Listening to a CD my wifey made me and enjoying the beauty of Turnagain Pass on the way home |
Once I hit south Anchorage, Ben tells me we’ve been invited
to go camping in Palmer with some friends who were taking their new camper on
their maiden voyage and wants to know if I want to go. My canned response for the last 8 months
would be “Uh. Um. I have a lot of
homework…SOAP notes…manuscript writing…etc to do. I don’t really want to go. I’m really tired. I just want to sit on the couch and do
nothing….” And Ben would heavy sigh and say “ok, I’ll tell them we can’t go”.
It was like he has existed with this person with horrible
depression, generalized anxiety, situational anxiety, social anxiety, chronic
fatigue syndrome and probably 7 other mental illnesses combined this whole time. He likened me to a piece of furniture one
time referring to how interactive (or lack thereof) I had become. I couldn’t argue with the analogy.
So, when I replied “Sure! Sounds fun! I’ll be home in an
hour” I could almost hear the surprise in his silence.
I picked up some Thai food to bring home, we ate, packed the
camper up and headed to Palmer. We blew
a tire on the camper on the way there, but managed to change it without major
mishap and got to the campground just in time to watch the sunset over
Matanuska Lake.
“Didn’t you just post something in Seward this morning? And
wasn’t Ben in Canada last night?”
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| Checking out the lake in the morning |
Ben and I haven’t been the most adventurous people by a long
shot- life has just gotten in the way- but we hope to make the best of these last few months by spending time
with those we care about, doing things we love, and making memories that no one
can ever take away from us.
Looking forward to sharing more of those adventures here in
an effort to chronicle them more efficiently :o)
