Reflections on Alaska

We're back from Alaska and the Yukon. As you move up through Alaska, the Yukon, the Far North, the land is so big. Feelings arise from some unexplored place in oneself – feelings that have a primeval quality that both beckons and yet also puts one on one’s edge. I had felt these feelings 30 years ago the first time I hitchhiked up to the Far North. At that time, I simply gazed dumfounded at the space, the vastness. This time, as a family, we were searching for a word. “Beautiful” felt too civilized and vague. “Raw”? I started with “enchanting”, shifted to “entrancing”, and ended with “extrancing”.

There are several different thinkers I’ve read who develop the idea that a culture creates a collective trance. Not in the sense of deadening the senses but in the sense of focusing attention on certain things, of spinning certain interpretations on what we experience, and of generating a certain aura or mood about being alive. These thinkers tend to say that one of our individual challenges is to wake up out of the collective trance.

One of the exciting things about travel is it plops you into regions where you hear a different lilt and different words, see different homes and entertainments, experience different music and food. Such travel bends and expands assumptions. It keeps one on one’s toes. It makes one realize that we have access to far more ways of being than we practice. One is less confined within a particular form of trance.

But in the Far North, more than anywhere else I’ve experienced, one stands staring at the Land. The Land. It is always there in one’s vision, one’s awareness. Hours are spent just looking at the Land, feeling its presence all around you. It is so vast. The thinnest (so there is no distortion of the shape of bedrock) of vegetations colors glacier-shaped lands. Not just a high mountain valley but thousands of square miles smoothed into majestic sinuousity. It lies outside of any trance. No trance can contain the space and the power of that elemental land. Before any trance was such land. Thirty years ago I felt the Far North casting a spell on my spirit. Now I think of it differently. The spell of the Yukon is the lack of a spell or trance. It is simply the Land in all its primeval primacy. It is so overpowering like blasting sunlight that we have created trances like psychic sunscreen.

It’s intense in the Far North. In the Grand Canyon, the sense of space and the power of time is immense but one knows that the civilized world is just over the horizon of the Rim. Or on many mountains, one looks out in at least one direction and sees the mountains giving ways to foothills and ranches. In such places, one is at the center looking out towards the edge. But in many places in the Far North, after walking several miles from the few roads, one is still at the edge gazing inwards hundreds of miles towards a center that you know you will never reach in your lifetime. The difference is deeply moving.

Glaciers receding

One of the biggest shocks in returning to Alaska was seeing how far the glaciers had receded. Not only had they receded but more visually obvious, they had thinned. If a glacier thins by say, 100 feet, that is 100 feet of ice that has melted away. However, rocks don’t melt and glaciers are laced with all the rocks that have been plucked from the bedrock by the gouging glacier or have fallen from the cliffs above. As the ice melts away, all the rocks once within that ice accumulates on the surface of the glacier. It is a shock to look on a valley that, in your memory, had curving white flows and see a vast field of black and gray rock instead.

I had read an article in the Wall Street Journal a year ago talking about how global warming seems to be accentuated in Alaska. But to see the change in the glaciers brought it home. At first I was caught off guard that significant geological change had happened during my lifetime. "Has that much time gone by?" Have I grown so old that glaciers have receded? There is a tendency, perhaps, when talking of millions of years to assume that the world we know will remain the same. Uplift of a mountain range of an inch or two a century is thought of as invisible to us. Yes, we know that the change is happening and that it will accumulate into significance over the eons but I tend to think of the accumulation has happening somewhere "out there", not in the space of my lifetime. But it’s happening in my own lifetime. However, the other feeling is shock at how fast the change is happening. Climate change so dramatic stuns me. I’m stretched between two lines: a monetary bottom line trance state heavily invested in the momentum of the status quo and the bottom line of the natural world that treats short-term gains as blink-of-the-eye delays, aberations that are brought back in balance.

Another of Alaska’s symptom of global warming mentioned in the article was beetle kill of drought-stressed spruce. And yes, it is happening. You stand at Homer on the Kenai Peninsula looking across at Katchemak Bay and it looks like the entire spruce forest is dead. Homeowners worry about wildfire.

Catching one’s breath – Getting a Feel for the Land

The trail up to the Harding Icefield is deservedly popular. They say it’s only 3 1/2 miles but its steepness makes it feel longer than that. This was my first solo walk of the summer. I was eager to make time. I started briskly but soon found myself getting winded. I remembered a trail lesson learned long ago – always start off slower than you think you can go. I started slowly but soon found myself pushing myself and getting winded yet again. Start off slower than you think you can go. The breathing will rise to that occasion which will then allow you to walk a bit faster. Breathing and one’s pace coevolve upwards to the maximum sustainable pace but only if one defers to one’s breathing rather than one’s ambitions. With many false starts, I began dropping into my pace on this steep trail.

I became more aware of the act of walking uphill. Each time I discovered that I was outpacing my breath, I noticed I was walking in a way that "clenched" my body. When I slowed down and let my breath catch up, I noticed that the walking felt like a delightfully releasing stretch – like a cat stretch. Lay my front foot down rather than stomp it down.

As I relearned how to stay within my breath, the trail became more engaging because its steepness or ruggedness determined my pace. The trail, in turn, is shaped by the land. I started feeling how my walking, my breathing, the trail, and the land were all connected. The land shapes one’s breathing. A kinesthetic awareness of the land flows through the mindfully walking body. "Getting a feel for the land" takes on a breathing vitality.

Alaska deepened my awareness of my body. Breathing. Walking. Maybe it’s part of waking from a trance. I’ve been paying more attention to the difference between the "clenching" and the "stretching" kind of walk. I habitually practice the former so I have to be willing to slow way down in order to practice the latter. The best place I’ve found to practice is walking straight up steep slopes. Does the weight shift (from hind foot to the new front foot) begin before or after the new front foot makes contact with the earth? When I do it right, I’m continually amazed at how the pushing up onto the toe of the hind foot somehow always transfers the weight effortlessly up to the front foot.

If the weight shift happens before the front foot touches the ground, then one is always "catching oneself" as one falls forward. Because there is no guarantee on uneven ground that one’s center of gravity will be over the center of contact between foot and earth, I’m always having to brace myself for being thrown off center as I fall forward.. But when one shifts weight to an already planted front foot, the center of gravity shifts smoothly to a point above the foot’s contact with the earth. If the foot came down on the side of a rock and is twisted, I assume it will be precarious and I feel myself clenching. And yet the center of gravity moves above it and the line is steady, reliable. No need to clench.

“Clench" refers to two parts of the body. If I “fall forward”, then part of my weight is still planted back on the hind foot and so the front leg has to "pull" that weight forward. I feel this as a clenching in the area between my knee and my thigh. The other area of clenching is my lower back and abdomen. Part of that clenching is that if my front foot has to pull the rest of the body up to it, I reduce how much weight has to be pulled forward by bending forward and shifting all the upper weight forward, possibly ahead of my front foot to act as a counterweight in the effort to pull the back leg forward. The other part of that clench is that if I am always falling forward, an instinct is to bend forward to catch myself. But always bending forward increases the chances of falling forward. As I practice mindfully walking up steep slopes, the most challenging area is this lower back area. I can feel the straightening; that feels good and breathing becomes fuller. But I also become aware of a more numinous "ground-hugging" orientation in my being that is invited to somehow practice a rising up orientation.

Teklanika vigor

There were many wonderful moments along our journey but I want to share one of the spiritual summits of the trip. We did a week-long backpack in Denali N.P. There was a place I remembered from my ranger days where the space is incredible but it would take several days to get there. We got there in the late afternoon of our fifth day. The space and the light were indeed incredible. The weather had been fast moving broken clouds so cloud shadows drifted over sunlit tundra green. We camped at the confluence of three glacial braided rivers so there were four amazing space U-shaped valleys. Three looked upstream towards perched glaciers on steep mountains. One looked downstream over a very broad braided river valley towards the Outer Range ten miles away. Every hour one of the clouds would trail a light shower that would either sprinkle us for a few minutes or, more likely, miss us but change the light within the valleys or fill it with a rainbow. The light was ever changing.

Glacial rivers are very silty and drinking silty water in such a place just did not feel right. So in the evening (realize that evening in Alaska’s early July lasts 3-5 hours) I set off up a large alluvial fan to catch us some clear water. As I was walking up, a large dark cloud moved overhead. Instead of a shower, this one brought a squall. Strong gusts of wind and rain for probably 20 minutes. Thinking it would just be a short shower, I kept walking. By the time the storm finally past, I was near the top of the alluvial fan where, as I had assumed, a cold stream was cascading down out of the canyon at the head of the fan. The mouth of the canyon had cut down through vertically tilted strata so dark, hard rock walls rose straight up on either side. The water was cold, sizzling with air bubbles as it cascaded down drops of several feet at a time. I filled my bottles from the midst of one cascade. Oh, it was wild water! Great slurps of oxygen water sliding down my open throat. Air after the squall alive with energy. Looking out from the head of the fan through the space of those four valleys whose clean air had now been purified by the squall to ultra-pure clarity and all the green tundra radiant with rain-cloaked vegetation sparkling in the golden evening light. Yes! I bellowed and stuck my 5 day unwashed face into the pool at the base of the cascade. Frigidly clean. The spirit was stronger than the cold and I submerged my face again and again, rubbing it clean with my hands. Behind the ears. Back of the neck. The throat. Drink more wild water. Then in my face went again and mindfully I gently inhaled the cold water up into my sinuses until reflexively I rose up snorting and taking deep draughts of air in through my clean nostrils. I did it again and deeper and fuller was the air inhaled. I stood up with stoked vigor. I wasn’t ready to return to camp. Going to the side of the canyon mouth and up the bordering slopes gained me gently green steep slopes of soft alpine tundra. The slopes had shapes that drew me up and around, away from the canyon. I’d see a sitting place ahead. I’d go and sit with the intention of then heading back. But the light and space was so intoxicating that I’d sit there gazing far longer than I assumed. And during that time, beauty further up the slope began to beckon so that when I arose, I arose to rise higher on the slope. And there was a herd of Dall Sheep ewes and lambs, so golden white bedded down on so golden emerald green high above me. Ground squirrels and marmots announced my traversing presence. I walked and I climbed and such overwhelming beauty surrounded me and vigor filled my body. Every few minutes I was spontaneously exclaiming "Yes!" and "My God!" and "How Beautiful!" and "Thank You!" because of some new sight that came into view or because of some shift of light. What a gift this life is. How pure and direct are the pleasures of walking the hills of this Earth. What a blessing to be alive. And, delighted by the vigor I felt (after all I had hiked 5-6 miles with a heavy pack a few hours earlier), I realized I had allowed myself to drift into a pudgy existence over the last decade. I was capable of far more than I was practicing. Though I don’t have the energy I had in my twenties, I have far, far more than I had permitted myself in my fifties.

All of these awarenesses led me to appreciate the following quote I came upon in Banff/Jasper on our way home. “National Parks are maintained for all people - for the ill, that they may be restored, for the well that they may be fortified and inspired by the sunshine, the fresh air, the beauty, and all the other healing, ennobling, and inspiring agencies of Nature. They exist in order that every citizen of Canada may satisfy his craving for Nature and Nature’s beauty, that he may absorb the poise and restfulness of the forests, that he may steep his soul in the brilliance of the wild flowers and the sublimity of the mountain peaks, that he may develop in himself the buoyancy, the joy, and the activity he sees in the wild animals, that he may stock his mind with the raw material of intelligent optimism, great thoughts, noble ideals, that he may be made better, happier, and healthier.” J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of National Parks, c. 1930

Preventative Maintenance

There’s this stuff I don’t like to deal with. I’ll call it preventative maintenance (flossing teeth and changing the oil are prime examples). I’d rather spend my time nourishing upward spirals. However, these two activities are symmetrical in a complementary way. Nourishing upward spirals accelerates things upwards; preventative maintenance decelerates things moving down. Decelerating something going down is kin to accelerating something moving up. From the point of view of physics and the exertion of force, they are the same. A spiritual challenge for myself is to feel the kinship and do the preventative maintenance with the same gusto I seek upward spirals.

Meadow get together next summer?

I spent this last week in “my” meadow - a beautiful, special place that nourishes my desire to become a better person. Practicing small-scale water diverging with snowmelt put my mind in a relaxed but focused place. I remembered an idea I have mentioned a few years ago of hosting a group of kindred souls to spend several days in the backcountry sharing our resonating interests. This meadow would be a great place for such a time. If you are interested in coming to Northern California next summer, backpacking 3-4 miles cross-country, hanging out and sharing in late July-early August (depending on the snowpack), let me know and we can start putting together a good time.

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Business Stuff

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