Between traveling to San Antonio in March for a week of training, returning home wrecked and happy to have gone, re-spraining my ankle, sitting around while it fixes itself, and wondering what to write about outside my personal journal, I've found very little to say here.
Jumping logs on the beach yesterday felt wonderful--though the distance was short, and the duration shorter. Before, while step-slipping down the path to the rocks, I'd chosen the steeps to be hiked with all-fours on return. Trudging up through the sand and stones, hauling backpack and determination, I took the most difficult pieces of the trail quadrupedally--not so much in distance when looked back at, but enough to forget myself in each grabbing hand step, and every push of my forefoot and toes. And today I remember that I'm to go slow, build back proper, take my time. In my excitement to be healed I imagine all the challenges to attack, some so close to home. I prepare for my return, stretch, rotate, test and prod, and try to be steady and strong.
Time from movement--usually healing--brings me deep into quiet self-reflection. As the spring wears on-- such a chilly spring, though the flowers seem not to notice or care--I've started daydreaming of commercial fishing again. Southeast Alaska, salmon for the win, twenty hour days and rocking on wave nights...The sting of jellies from five a.m. to whenever I'm cleaner, waking to the roar of the diesel engine, groggy and cold, slipping into my sweats while still in my bunk, layering, groaning, boottops folded down until the very last moments before I don my raingear. I'll scratch at my head and yawn all morning, wishing for a shower and warm rooms, and breathing deep like I can take the air back with me.
I'm not a cook, but'll make a pre-breakfast pot of oatmeal, brew coffee and stretch myself warmer, hit the head, and set the gear, and wait until it's bright enough to see the jumpers splashing. We'll find the fish, close around them, and I'll haul gear at regular intervals all day, jellyfish water burning all exposed skin, blown around by the wind whipping net. Working quickly and methodically, I'll wonder daily why the hell I'm here. Between sets I'll write in notebooks, or juggle kelp balls, or stare out into the living crystal water, thinking about that time with that person that I'll go home to and enjoy. I'll be alone and working until the sun sets, with the crew, yes, but so in my head; if I go out to fish again, it isn't for the money, but to try myself internally, forcefully, and in full.
I want to go back to remember why I'm me, to face again the challenge of alone among men, to miss my home and friends, and the life I've so carefully built for myself. I can't know what I have until I step far away, peering back to see, discovering newness within, adapting training to 48ft., getting minimal sleep, and having dozens of quiet projects to complete. It's like running away to be myself, enjoying the vastness of the north but-not-that-north, preparing the entire time to return--better, stronger, and reassured of the life I pursue. If I choose to go again, it's to change myself, refine and redefine, like I'm spell-checking me, reviewing punctuations, switching terms, tossing paragraphs, and simplifying content completely...
I life my life with the intent to write it down; that doesn't mean I will, but if I do, I'd better have things to say. --Beyond lamenting this middle ground of not quite somewhere; I want more than this always place of in-between, where I'm almost comfortable enough, but missing something. I take my story seriously, building the plotline carefully, observing flaws to remove, the ones to tweak, loving the lucky phrase placements that come unexpectedly, and wondering--always--what's to happen next. I'm like an obsessive saga, conscious of myself--enough that I want to test--thoroughly--the reality of my epic authenticity, and give myself real reasons to exist so vividly.
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