Wednesday 9.23.2015 Anchorage, AK 8:31 am.
Fall as inversion to summer’s long channel swim —
bright, a tidy crush of beauty.
Sun a bit slower each day,
coming around mid-morning to dole wares stained yellow.
People, unconvinced of this beauty, destined to exclaim it so much preamble.
Our winter wandering down the face of the Chugach;
white quite fashionable as the presence of all color.
Dark without sorrow. A house void of peoples, shuttered to the concrete expanse. Time ticks through long drawn curtains. Dust colonizes. The traffic, indifferent to this time and space, continues to hurtle. It’s a beautiful scene in the way something can be until you screw up your courage and blink again.
The Alaska State Fair [2015]:
Ages seem to have passed – time and space as precious, slipping liquid. Still, the bulbs [mostly] burn and skies clench rain while rides groan and heave and twirl. Girls at the appropriate age for public screaming do just that.
It has been a full decade and then some since I’ve attended. But still, the fair is something akin to opening a well loved children’s book and discovering shades of your senses long unused. Sugar hangs thick in the air. Eyes find humor in the general costume. Ears cart off sound bites, trailing snippets of the entertained.
People seem mostly a mere conveyance for foodstuffs and precious purchases. Each lane producing another opportunity for homemade soap, elephant ears, a hot tub, some shiny car, turkey legs, or change to join the military. As though we came to this place to get clean, eat, have a soak, go driving, then eat [again] while joining the Army. It is a teeming mass of Alaskans doing just what people do. Pig races here. Lumberjacks over there. Giant, tired vegetables shack up with goats whose eyes are empty as hammers.
All the while, blue none-too-distant peaks of the Chugach offer provenance. Pioneer. Matanuska. Lazy. Their faces burdened with torn cloud and flecks of rain. Sandhill cranes slip by high overhead. Balloons freed from the sticky hands of children not far behind. The coming reds and yellows of fall march through the surrounding forests and we putter beneath quite happy to partake in this humming machine.
While not on this airplane, I am on another. Headed quite soon to Anchorage, or home.
August presents herself; summer’s cape gone florid in the sudden breeze and black nights. The light descends. Valley and lake and forest all commission themselves as bold, quite beautiful. Each night the sky deems to rent herself into photographed pieces. Light meets dark meets the utter jag of mountain peak. Sit humbly. Dress up and stay home.
Winging about. The roil and plunge of mountain and stream. The world dips away beyond a thin window and one pair of eyes. Alaska is so beautifully empty, the privilege in being here never seems to slip away. There is some secret absolutely left untold.
de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver (in avionic detail):
The Wood-Tikchik State Park, Solstice 2015:
The scratch of distant winds, receeding ice. Winter’s grip not quite so iron this year. The goodness of sun leeching back into our days slowly, like a yawn. To wit: looking south and west. Lake Beverly beneath and the Wood River Mountains beyond.