Inside the Full Circle

Dried mud on my feet, and a heaviness pulling me into where I am.  Sitting in vicarious anticipation, smiling on the inside along with these humans looking expectedly to be reunited with this someone they have missed so much.  Lives flash before my eyes as I get a front seat to these crisp moments when people are reminded of how much they love each other, and run into each others arms, a moment void of the pain between them, a moment when the veil of separation is pealed back and two souls reach out in the dark, loosing themselves in each other.  I think there is nothing more beautiful than what I'm seeing now, here at the anchorage airport where friends and family wait for arrivals.  

A woman and two curly hair kids look unwaveringly past the do-not-enter sign. I can feel the butterflies in their stomach, until at last, something wells up inside of them, leaping, almost unable to contain their joy. Eyes bright, the kids run. The father is already bent over and sweeping forward, reflecting their excitement.  They meet, a kid in each arm, the mother joins, and in this moment four lakes of built up ecstasy burst forth and run together. They become enveloped in something so pure and so magical that nothing else matters, nothing else exists.   

Two lovers see each other, already one, already wrapped up before their physical bodies touch, a smooth gaze that comes after years of love, eyes locked, lips lock, eyes closed in deep happiness.  

Is this moment the peak? I wonder what the rest of their lives together are like.  Will this level of joy fade? Even before they are out the door their eyes return to the way they were before. Why does this joy not sustain? If this is a glimpse of something, what is it a glimpse of? And why is it so rare?

Unlike these people all around me I'm not waiting for someone, I came to be reminded of the light and bask in it.

I just flew in from dillingham where I fished my third gill-net salmon season.  Upon arrival, my captain, fellow crew and I walked to earthquake park, 3 miles from the anchorage airport.  I took my sandals off, and ran and slid in the mud down the beach.  Then they continued to the lower states and I'm staying here to head north, into a land that feeds my soul, that nourishes me in a way I didn't know I needed.  

Yesterday I stood on the banks of bear bay in western Alaska, miles from any civilization, and watched the river turn red. Thousands of florescent fins propelling the salmon upstream, where the scent of home will guide them within forty feet of where they were born. Where they will lay their eggs and die, to provide the vital nourashment for their babies. The ultimate sacrifice.  This, after years of swimming the big Atlantic to Japan and back.  It was a sacred ground, I stood in awe. As I walked up the creek, alert for bears, I noticed that these salmon would form groups just before a shallow stretch. Hardly swimming, they would muster energy from their weak bodies to power forward, wriggling, half out of water, sending pulsing splashes into the air, until they reached the next pool where they would return to slow twisting back and forth. I rounded a corner where the river stretched straight for 200 yards, the entire extent penetrated by hundreds of fins, glowing red as if a light was shining from inside.  This scene only exists a few places on earth for only a few weeks out of the year. I will never forget that holiness.

I love meeting characters pushing the frontier of what it means to live.  In dillingham I met Martin, who just finished fishing and was getting ready to hike back to anchorage, 300 miles over tundra and glaciers.  This was a dream I had last year.  Here in the airport I met Andy Knight, a New Zealander, who has spent the last two years bicycling around the world.  He's done all of Europe and Asia, and today he starts the America's.  He will bike north to the Arctic Ocean, then south all the way to the tip of Argentina.

This airport is the same place where my great journey begun last year.  Where I entered life with no plans, and discovered freedom, and started to see the world.  I've come full circle with an amazing year behind me, and I have a lot to ponder.  There are so many things in my heart, there are things I need to look at.  Life is such a massive thing and we have this one life, with infinite possibilities.  I don't want to walk through life not stopping to consider how I'm living, and how I want to live. I'm looking forward to my first stop, a cabin in the woods close to Denali national park. I'll be helping a couple I became close to last summer, who homesteaded the land years ago. They have a bed and breakfast and have a hard time keeping up the 100 acres. I'll help them half of the days and walk into the forest the other half to be, to learn, to see, to consider who I am and how I want to live and what life is, and where we can go, and what freedom is and how I can most fully propagate it.

I wonder what life is like from your perspective, and I hope you are doing well.