Haibun: Oh Alaska
Alaska is a solitary state. With only three highways and about a person per square mile, there’s plenty of time and space to be alone. Whether it was walking a creek or finding Denali, whatever the conversation, our thoughts and opinions would eventually trail off into silence. I had plenty of time to be with the thoughts I brought with me.
As the miles went on, I sat with some of the power imbalances back home. As the trails twisted, I sat with some toxic relationships back home and on the screen of my phone. The positive thing about not pushing away these thoughts—of staying in their tension—was walking through them as I walked or rode along Alaska.
I bring all this up because it was in those woods and on US Highway 1 that I found my power. After I got back home, I pushed on the issues and, well, I ended up fired. True story! I was asked about my trip to Alaska and what got into me. I had that conversation in my found power. In my silent time on my trip, I leaned into how I would be alright if I addressed the maddening situations because I had plenty of opportunities. I realized it was a fear of change holding me back from everything. It was the worse case scenarios, in brief emotional urges that kept me from thinking through this before the trip. This is how I do life on autopilot. The crazy part was it was those long times sitting with those situations that gave me the power to have another job lined up in less than an hour, a job that added tens of thousands of dollars to my pocket as well as the freedom in stepping over my fear of change.
Too often I drift through life, showing up to what is familiar, going about my routine checked out. When checked out, my power sits behind a leaking dam. But within me, walked out away from distractions and entertainment, away from the rules and tyranny of an over-designed world, sits my ability to open up that dam, and like a river, to find my flow. And to find that flow, a flow that would destroy any city or suburb, it needs space where no one is around and nature can shape and harness it’s force. The power is within, but the space to find it is in the wild.
green before the white,
Alaskan daylight… fades to
fall, birds back in flight
