On Mendenhall Lake. Photo by Jenna Schnuer.
So, the lies. At the end of 2009, I posted a list of All-American Travel Resolutions for 2010. It included things like driving cross country, living in Alaska for the summer, and, finally, visiting the Grand Canyon. When I wrote that post, I did really believe that, by Labor Day (which, by the by, is also my 40th birthday), I would have racked up the miles, spent several months in my beloved AK, and gazed down into that giant hole in Arizona.
But, really, it turned out that those were lies I had to tell myself and, cause I do this writing thing for a living, you. A few months earlier, after 17 years in the city, I had moved out of New York and returned to my hometown just across the George Washington Bridge. I felt a little floaty, a lot lost. I had (and have) some things to fix. (No need to worry. It’s mostly stupid recession stuff. I’ve never been a good money girl.) It all felt a little overwhelming. I was nervous. And, so, to keep myself from getting stuck, I told myself—and, you—some lies about things that, gosh darn!, I was going to do to keep my life exciting. I wasn’t moving out of NYC, I was moving onto bigger and better!
Reality: I didn’t make the cross country thing happen. (Hell, I don’t even own a car yet.) The move out of NYC was enough. I wasn’t ready to make another big change and go somewhere else for a bunch of months.
Here’s where things picks up a bit: work-related travel (which, yes, I’m lucky, is always to places I want to go anyway) started falling into place. It started with a trip to Hawaii for a magazine article (currently scheduled for Aug/Sept 2011) and then there was a whole bunch of time with our fine neighbors to the north—Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Quebec—and, finally, I did get back to Alaska. (It has always felt right on my skin.) For three weeks! Three dream weeks, mostly in the temperate rainforest of the southeast—and it hardly rained at all. I got a sunburn in SE Alaska. That’s not supposed to happen.
I returned from Alaska to New Jersey on August 7 with 10,000 photos, an assortment of experiences that I’m still sorting out in my head—many of which I’ll share with you out here in the coming months–and a renewed belief that, yes, I can handle what’s to come. (No, don’t worry—not going all [book and movie that shall not be named] on you. And, on the days that suck (checks are late, health insurance payment is past due, the multiplex shows crappy movies, whatever), I can pull up my photos and, in seconds, feel the cool calm of paddling past icebergs or the luck I felt when I met a 60-something former country singer who told me his life story as we wandered past the totem poles at Sitka‘s National Historical Park or the flat-out joy I experienced while jawing with the old cranks at Wrangell‘s best breakfast spot, the Diamond C.
And, of course, I’m still plotting that cross country trip. It’ll happen. (You need your car this winter?)
*If you’re a fan of The Swell Season and their excellent song, Lies, I apologize for the terrible play on words. I do these things. I needed some fun in the midst of all that honesty up above. Exhausting stuff, honesty.
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