Writer's Group

I had an entire day filmed to post on this blog. The pictures were spectacular! There was me putting on make up. Me at my princess chair at my princess job. Me eating a delicious meal with Karen. Me voting. Me picking up Marina from Basketball.

I had another blog discussing the way the color is draining from our world and how Marina has been making me go on long hikes documenting the different leaf variations.

I had another in my head about the long drive to Suzanne's for the writer's group. See, we are writing a book. I got the idea last summer (arg! summer seems so far way now!)for a book called Extreme Housewives of the North. You can see the title is a take on the Real Housewives of _(wherever)___ and Extreme _(whatever)____. I thought it was a hilarious and good idea.

Irene ran with it and now we are focusing our mighty power on the first chapter, "How I became an Alaskan." If you know any publishers who are interested in taking us on please contact me before I start substitute teaching! (My substitute teaching story will follow in the next few weeks.)

Since, nothing seems to fit here in this blog with these pictures, I think I will share what I wrote with the group. (Be warned, mine was the least skillful of all our essays. And this is a rough draft! Irene and Suzanne really have something going here.)

HOW I BECAME AN ALASKAN

I realize now that there was never a time I was not an Alaskan. Oh sure, I owned shorts and tried to be tan, but my heart was never in it. As I aged and grew into adulthood and sought out answers to the inner workings of my psyche, deliberately searching for whatever it was that my heart was looking for, I would find nuggets of peace in the most obscure reaches of my state: The 'free camping' beach in Avalon, the bank of the Merced River in Yosemite, the front seat of my car as I drove through the valley on 99 heading North, the road side taco trailers, the foggy aroma of a San Franciscan morning, the coffee bars, the talks on street gutters with strangers at midnight, the bitter of strong coffee, the smell of fuel, the soft bark of the giant sequoias, the raging waterfalls...I got to the point that in order to satiate my heart I realized I must pack my truck and drive to Alaska. Alaska. "Can't you go for your two week vacation?" They'd say. "I want to feel the darkness and the light. It takes more than two weeks for that." I'd explain.Did I become an Alaskan or was I one when I got here, like a Micronesian returning to his island? And when we got to Homer...When we drove over the Baycrest Hill and I caught sight of the Homer Spit and the Bay...When we turned onto Pioneer and I saw the giant coffee cups attached to Cafe Cups! It was an omen! Not only did I find my island, I also found my village!When did it happen? The metamorphosis from Californian to Alaskan? I am sure that some would recover the memory of their first snowfall or icy road. The bull moose that walked past the window of their rental cabin. The blisters in the palms of their hands from chopping wood. Perhaps they would sight when they witnessed the fireweed seeds alight in the fall wind, for this is something an Alaskan treasures; the ending of the productive time and the beginning of the reflective. A true Alaskan recognizes that.

I will tell you that for me it was when I picked up my first hitchhiker without a hint of anxiety or discomfort. (Californians don't do that. We learned that lesson from that girl who had her arms cut off.) This was the same season that I stood on a cabin deck with nothing holding us from falling over the side but a simple rail made of 2 x 4's on posts. We stood there and looked up into the evening sky to watch the Northern Lights crackle across the stratosphere. They reached for us like witches fingers. That night we could even hear the aurora snapping the air was so full of electricity. The cabin was swaying from the movement of the people inside dancing. Fishing/cannery season was over. Darkness was over taking the daylight by five minutes each day. The hours of the day began to loose their significance. No one that I had met asked me what I did for a living, instead they asked where I was staying and how was I going to stay busy over the winter.
These events occurred after a month of my sitting in the meadow of Seaside Farm. For an entire month I spent most of each day sitting looking out over Kachemak Bay and onto Grewingk Glacier. I just watched. When the rain would come I would sit under the rain roof and continue to watch that glacier move while Matt Yaki strummed his guitar. That glacier was telling me everything my soul had missed during it's absence and my body responded by becoming slower. The atoms twirled in my cells a fraction of a nano second more slowly after that month and everything made more sense. Any sense of rush faded as Matt plucked away and the light rain fell on the Plexiglas roof.
Of course I was destined to be here! I was given this strange, un-Midwestern name by my Midwestern parents which I have only seen replicated twice in it's exact manner and spelling (once at a beach in Mendocino County and once in Tokyo). Here is this state Alaska. Three vowels three consonants. And here is this name Alana. Three vowels two consonants.

I will admit, while I am here I don't feel much like an Alaskan. I have my wonderfully supportive Alaskan husband who has taken over most of the highly Alaskan activities that we must participate in for our comfort. By doing so he has made it so that I can focus on the family and children (and myself!). But when we get on an airplane and leave this state, regardless of where we head, everything around me makes me realize that I am an Alaskan, completely, and that it won't matter where our roads take us from here on out. My fate is sealed. I can only leave in body.

I am an Alaskan.