living slow & wild
I live with one foot in the river, and one foot on land, knowing the importance of both.
Homeward, Kristin Vantrease.
On my last day of being twenty-three, I was sitting on a rolling desk chair, pushing myself back from the plastic keyboard across the plastic sheet covering the plastic fiber carpet, standing up to greet people as they come in to talk about/handle/hand over money. There are worse jobs, I realize, especially when your bank is smack in the middle of downtown Skagway, a town of 1,100 residents on the Alaskan coast. Anyway, I smiled and nodded and hoped my breath didn’t smell like the black tea I’d been chugging all morning, and this customer and I made small talk about the weather — “Finally sunny today!” “I know, it’s a miracle!”
In my head, I have a grimy throwbag crunched in my left hand, my right hand’s alighting on an oarlock just long enough to steady the balance of my half-frozen foot on a faded yellow rubber raft. When I land, both feet hit the silt and pebble embankment alongside the Taiya River; I’ve got to whirl around quick, turning to the right so the rope trailing from the throwbag bends around my back. Right hand grips the rope tight, left hand keeps the bag cemented to my hip, and my knees dip down into a crouch as the boat, swept down by the power of the clear, cold water, swings into the bank. And I call out “Little bump, now!” and laugh with the joy seekers sitting on the damp thwarts as eagles swirl overhead, just below the howling, triumphant peaks of Face Mountain and the Coastal Range.
On my first day of being twenty-four, I left the first to go back to the second. By leaving a bank teller job, I left the idea of solid ground (stability, structured days, PTO, benefits, wearing clean clothes) sinking like a silty riverbank behind and plunged my feet back into the water. Stability is all well and good until you compromise your reason for working, for living in the place you want to live, or doing what you want to do.
My 24th birthday brought about a tidal flood of change. It was my last day at the bank, I had just spent a week pounding medical jargon into my brain, an ex stepped onto a boat bound permanently for home, and 1,000 new people showed up in Skagway for the summer season. I didn’t have my family; I didn’t have my best friends. It was disconcerting, and not altogether great. But I guess it was a grown-up birthday.
Here’s the problem: I have this idea that your birthday should be your best day. You eat what you want to, do what you want to, see who you want to. You don’t have to do things like laundry or scrubbing toilets or oil changes; you read for an afternoon or eat cupcakes for breakfast or drive all day until you find a pretty place and take a nap. I didn’t do those things (well, I did eat cupcakes at 10 AM, but that’s beside the point), but I did fly in a friend’s plane over glaciers and mountain ranges that I’ve never seen with my own eyes. I did have an entire bar of friends sing me happy birthday, much to my embarrassment. While I may have left the kind of job that my parents’ practical sides would have loved me to stay at, I knew what I was doing.
The quote from Homeward — “one foot on land, the other in the river” — has come up a few times over these last few weeks. It came from an essay I read on the Salmon Sisters blog, talking about the necessity of knowing where you and your food come from. And, honestly, the importance of appreciating both. That quote reminds me of where I’ve chosen to plant my own two feet. On the days where I’m missing back home, missing family, scared of what I left, unsatisfied with what I’m doing or how I’m doing it, I’ve forgotten to appreciate either the land or the river. Another blog reminded me to live slow and wild, which is something I still struggle with – mostly the living slow portion. Even on a day off in Smalltown, Alaska, I’ve struggled to find the rest that I know I need, to not motor through the wilderness, but to slow down and relish even the hardships that come with it.
Going back to the outdoor industry is something that I needed to do. It may not be slow, but it is certainly wild. It was time to balance on the landlocked foot, but I continue to dip my other toes into new waters, whatever and wherever they may be.
On my 24th birthday, the summer was rising like the tide out in the harbor. The sun and more seasonal workers came flooding in. My one-year anniversary with Alaska came and passed. I have had 24 years to live, with the next 24 focused on living slower, more wildly, and with more awareness for the goodness of this wild land. Cheers, to the rivers and the land — and to living well on both.