A Breath of Fresh Air

I had a nature break. Sophie came up for a visit and we all went out kayaking in Prince William Sound.

This is what happens on a nature break:

• You breathe air that has not been inside walls. (Tent walls don’t count as walls.) Air flows. Do you know this feeling?


• You get to be inside a tent while mosquitos hover outside or rain pelts the tent. The sense of protection is very immediate. I am home right now, and it is raining outside, but I don’t notice it. In a tent, you notice.

• You pay attention to the tides. You have to locate your tent above the high tide line. You choose lunch spots and new camps by the tide tables. In my regular life, tides don’t even get a mention.

• Your day consists of waking up, preparing breakfast, packing lunch, and setting off. The big decision: choosing a lunch spot. In between, you look around. That’s all: you look around. When you come back to camp, you make dinner, maybe read your book, wash a pot, bowl, and cup. Your day is FULL and you feel satisfied.
  

• Whatever you look at is beautiful. Giant glaciers and mountains, tiny wildflowers, spectacular waterfalls, smooth beach rocks, oddly-shaped icebergs, orange-billed oystercatchers, a whale (!), paths through foliage. Tim explores a little, says he’s found a “magical world.” He shows you. Yup.


• All your personal items fit in one small dry bag: underwear, one extra pair of clothes, rain gear. Two books. A camera. Nothing electronic.

• You cook and eat things you would never buy otherwise: salami? Instant mashed potatoes? Cup-a-soups? Black bean flakes? Instant oatmeal? Beef jerky? They’re incredibly delicious – those black bean burritos were phenomenal – and they’re done in one pot.


• You smoothly fall into your camping roles. Tim handles kayaks and tarp erection. I pack food and organize tent interior. I am intensely proud of my system of using the plastic bags I have saved from every shopping venture to code the meals: lunch was in the Container Store, beverages in AARP, noodles dinner in Alaska Regional.

• Nevertheless, when you figure out that poking the paddle into a corner of the tarp raises it just right and holds its position, you feel like you have accomplished an architectural feat.


• You get really, really dirty. You are a medley of salt water, sunscreen, bug dope, glacial silt, sweat, mud, berry stains, grass and seaweed stains. After a while, you look like something discovered out there, not something that came from somewhere else. You have to stop brushing your hair because it is a gluey mass of bug dope.

Back home, you have to pick up the mail, catch up on emails, water the plants, tend to the garden. You have to clean the sink and tub, make the bed, recycle the newspaper, check voice mail. Doing the laundry and cleaning and storing the camping gear is a pleasure because they are Big Jobs. Those other tasks, they’re Maintenance. They’re Chores.

Back home, there’s another Mom Crisis. Back home, Sophie has to leave.

Back home, the air is inside walls.

Back home, you take a shower, get clean, sit on a toilet with a sink right next to it. You brush your clean, sweet-smelling hair. Tim shaves. You get into a delicious bed with sheets and pillows.

You’re back home, the same You who was there before the nature break. Your demands on yourself resurface. How come days of just preparing meals and exercising were so full out there, but back home they feel lazy, maybe self-indulgent, not “enough”?

Back home, you realize you need an attitude adjustment. You need to figure out how to bring the pleasures of the break back home. How to feel full, how to just look and find beauty, how to de-clutter the maintenance tasks.

How to pay attention to the tides.

Of galaxies and glaciers

Not only is the earth not the center of our solar system, but our sun is not even in the center of our galaxy. Today I learned that our Milky Way galaxy is called a “barred spiral” galaxy: in the center is a bar-shape of stars. Our sun isn’t even in the two biggest arms that spiral outward; it’s in a lesser one called the Orion Spur.

We are a teeny-tiny bit amongst billions and billions of stars, and we are back in the wings, on the periphery, not center stage. I find this reassuring.

Right after I moved to Alaska, I went kayaking in Glacier Bay. It was an astounding trip: beautiful, blue glaciers; the stark black-and-white landscape that I love; utter quiet. I stayed out long enough to forget about coming all the way back.

At one point, I spotted a dirty glacier. It was blue, but it had lots of debris and dirt and was really splotched and marred. At first, I felt as if it were some horrible aberration in the universe, a defective glacier. And then I thought, This glacier is so huge, and its stain is so huge, and still it’s powerful. And this is me, and my defects are huge, but compared to that glacier, they are infinitesimal. My problems are insignificant!

I have to remind myself of this every now and then so I check out astronomy, where I am reduced to insignificance again. I am a major fan of the UAA Planetarium; as members, we get to attend the shows for free. What I like is that the shows come with real, live, local scientists who are actually doing research that the films introduce.

I once was a physics major. Eventually, I stopped understanding it but remained in awe of it, so I switched to philosophy of physics. The questions still enthrall me so I take Olé classes taught by Travis, a UAA astrophysics professor. Today, Betsey and I agreed that Travis is so clear and comprehensible, we actually understand general relativity until we get home.

So the current class is about finding life on other planets, and it reminded me of another class with Travis. He had said that life would not look like little green men, but we were looking for the elements and conditions that might support life. He spent a whole class talking about how we might go about categorizing, identifying, finding those elements. Finally, one woman raised her hand and said, “Well maybe that’s not the way to go about it. Maybe we should first figure out what the little green men require and then focus on finding those places that might support them.”

Blows your mind, too, doesn’t it?