Mukluks to the Inner Passage

This is structured from an email I wrote last week.

July 21

There's burning in here too. I want to hear the beat of a drum that pervades everything, I want to be taken over by it, to become rhythmic waves. 

 I'm in the anchorage airport. I've been here for a few days, it's been raining outside, so I'm making this basecamp as I get caught up with the Internet before hitch hiking north.  A few hours ago I followed the sound of loud guitars and singing voices.  I sat at the source across from two guys around 19, jamming without a care.  One sang a song he wrote, singing from his soul, opening his chest wide open, lifting up his head and closing his eyes...the sound echoed through the entire airport.  There were some uncomfortable glances, but no one stopped him.  As I sat there, I wished I had what he had, so in line with a deep fire and creative force, being a vessel for it to break through this boundary of silence...of distance.

Upstairs there was an unveiling of a new Native American exhibit.  I watched as natives beat drums and sang native chants and girls danced in sync, with animal skin boots, and fans made of fur. I was overtaken for a moment, imagining them and me, in the woods at night, around a big fire, dancing, in it for real, not this recreation for the white folk in the airport. Tears came to my eyes.  I long for so much.  I long for so much.  I feel so alone sometimes and I think I've been trying to avoid that feeling.  But in my most honest hour I feel far from others souls.  I long to be found, but so few are looking.  And I long to find, but so many are inaccessible.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "souls never reach their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with."  I feel him, but yet something in me sails on through these silent waves.  Something in me feels that, though this sea remains uncrossed, maybe if I keep sailing deeper I'll find that inner passage. And soul will touch object.  

Most of the dancing girls were half-native and in their late teens, but one was full native and maybe 13.  She was the one I watched, she was fully submerged in it, fully undivided, she moved like the ocean, the waves from the drum moved her soul like seaweed in the surf. She seemed completely at peace, not a thought, effortless.  Something tells me that I was seeing a glimpse of the truth, right there, in this girl's movement, so simple.  

Very few people watched, most rushed by, nervously trying to make their flight. 

What do we do when the beauty that has been tucked away in corners is pulled out for once, and most rush by unaware?

I don't know, but I'll keep looking in corners.

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.

In the heat of the season

July 7

The days are starting to blur together, I'm having a hard time telling if its morning or evening, we fish for eight hours then sleep for a few, fish for ten, sleep for a few, each day feel like two.  And the sky is only dark for a few hours.  The mighty salmon have been good to us this year, not killer good, just good enough, the seas have been calm, it's pulled my food out of me only once.  And it's put food in many times. Last night we filleted, breaded and fried another salmon, cooked up black African rice and green beans, had a priceless feast anchored there on the south line among 500 other boats filled with fishermen who miss women all over the states. I'm listening to Peter Paul and Mary, getting very nostalgic for the 60s and 70s, and for free people, and for receiving and giving complete love, and for pushing to one. 

I'm grateful for Casey, my fellow crew, talking about life and the universe and the course of the human race on the back deck as we push through the seas and lay our net and call to the fish to culminate their destiny giving to us. Pulling jokes on each other and laughing and dancing.  Creating ideas together that rival the best shows.

And now it's time to fish, and watch the Alaskan ocean, and a 360 sky filled with clouds like you've never seen before, depth, color, texture, and a horizon of boats, and rejoice over every splash in the net.

Teleport off the port

June 29
When the immediate light of our sun shoots from one end of the horizon over the valleys of a distant mountain range through the crests of the brown waves and crashes against the shoreline cliff, I forget for a moment that I have a life, the dirt-fronted, tundra-tufted cliff face blasted with sun so fiercely it is knocked out of its home in Alaska and into my head, where nothing exists except waves refracting light, this cliff and distant silhouetted mountains. Then the light hits my head, my skin, and my eyes directly. The waves of light fire my neurons which immediately shakes me from my other-dimensional hermit perch and like sparks from a flint I appear now as part of this scene that used to be apart of me. The drone of the Cats Paw's engine, this gill net fishing vessel, the hurdling of the waves that my body has already learned to counterbalance, the other boats fighting the current to find a calmer water to anchor for the three hours that the district is closed. It all starts to come in clear. I'm back, I'm an Alaskan fisherman, and I'm basking in the sleep-deprived glory of the wild land, the textured sky, the endless water and the mighty salmon.

Temporary Farwell

Friends,

I'm leaving for Alaska in a few hours.  I will be hundreds of miles from internet on a boat in the Bristol bay for a few months.  I've appreciated the opportunity to share some of my experiences with you guys.  And I can imagine that on the other side there will be many more opportunities.  I love you all, and wish you a beautiful journey.

Be well,

Mark

Yosemite

I just spent a week in Yosemite, during which time I hitched rides with 10 different amazing people.  Some were guides or outdoor educators, a swiss family in a motor home, who i got to watch as they saw the valley for the first time, one woman from the dominican republic who talked of her dream of a world without borders like the show futurerama suggests that she watches with her kids, one breast cancer survivor who crafts wind chimes and goes to Africa half of the year to help recovering child soldiers, one bro who wanted me to go boating, and one hippy who described to me the pinnacle concerts of the grateful dead, he appologized to me that his generation ruined a good thing: hitch hiking. But I never waited more than an hour.  The first day I hiked into the northern back country and was halted by a massive fever, which had me shivering in a sleeping bag for a day.  The cool thing was that, because I wasn't moving, nature carried on as if I wasn't there.  So I had a first row seat to it's spectacles in an altered state of mind.  My favorite was the covey of mountain quail that fed near me.  Feathered horn pluming out of it's head, wings sparkling iridescent.  The chicks less preoccupied with fear.  A deer grazed near me later in the day.  I woke up the next morning to find my water filter out of batteries, so I decided the backcountry wasn't meant for this trip, and I hitched into the valley of Yosemite where civilization was and where the heavy hitting wonders are.  One night I hiked up to mirror lake.  The next morning, I wrote this.

I've been watching a school of six carp glide silently beneath the surface of the crystal clear Tenaya creek.  Their bodies glow of green, almost phosphorescently, their image beautifully distorted by the ripples on the surface, which throw in elusive hues of rainbow.  A foot beneath them, on the brown-pebbled bottom is a web of dancing lines of focused light, like fingers of electricity, flickering in patterns beyond my comprehension. They flow continuously upstream with the breeze.  Above the surface a moth glides across the water drinking when it dips. A blue dragonfly hovers; orange, white and black butterflies flutter by.  On the banks, the grass is abundant and the sand is white.  The long slender willow leaves glisten in the sun.  From a hole in one willow branch a group of babies chirp their hunger to their woodpecker mother who cautiously approaches to transfer the green worm from her beak to theirs.  Vaux's swifts dart from bug to bug, they are one of the parks endangered species.

Beyond the willows are spires of ponderosas. And when the wind dies down, the reflection in the Tenaya reveals sheer cliffs.  I direct my eyes upward to see the mighty half dome 4700 ft above me, the sun has just passed the half-way point in the sky and has cascaded down its smooth, vertical, 2000 ft surface, streaked black with algae.

Here I am, sitting on a log, in the middle of all this. It's been a while since I've felt HERE, like this. 

To my right, an Indian man sets up his go-pro mounted drone, which he then controls to get sweeping shots of him and his girl, even maintaining control while kissing her.  When it flies over my head it sounds like a migrating beehive.  Now the crowds are starting to show up, a group of Asians scream and laugh as they cross the "cold" creek.  Babies pushed in strollers like kings are unaware of the fading luxury they have inherited.  Toddlers splash in novelty, a family picnics, lovers hug and take selfies. Many people have go-pros on poles documenting what they're seeing. Perhaps because of this longing to share what one is experiencing with people he loves.  Maybe a similar reason to why I'm writing this.  

Flux and Coulter

Hello world,

There are so many stories I want to tell, it gets overwhelming to think about.  Since I wrote last, I've been in 15 different states. Each one with a set of experiences and people that have been irreplaceable.  And as much as I'd like to write about all of them, I'm not going to be around my computer for a while.  I came home for a few days for mother's day, connected with some key cup-fillers, and now I'm off to Yosemite for a few weeks.  I'm looking forward to exploring and reading and writing.  Here is one piece I wrote a few weeks back, thought I'd put it up.

Last night I was in Ohio.  I started out the day in Indiana.  It took me just two rides to get to where I wanted to be.  I decided to make use of the bus system because hitchhiking was going slower than I wanted to.  So I walked to the Greyhound station in Toledo.  The next bus leaving was going to New York, so I bought a ticket, and as I got on the bus and found a seat the bus pulled away.   For those of you who don't know, Greyhounding is always an interesting experience.  You've got foreigners who are trying to see the country as cheap as possible.  And the American's on board are for the most part a different class of people than you would see traveling by plane.  Which is partly why I enjoy it.

As I squeeze into my seat I notice the guy next to me across the aisle is writing down what seems to be lyrics or a poem, talking to himself as he searches for the words he wants, enveloped in his own world.  Of course I'm curious what he's writing and try to sneak a peak.  After a bit, he puts the binder away and I take the opportunity to engage.  "were you writing a song?"  "Ya! Do you write?"  His eyes were lit up from the beginning, full of enthusiasm.   19-years old, Coulter has the Irish eye sparkle, medium-length, straight, brown hair that hadn't been washed in a bit.  He wore a plaid collared shirt, jeans, and some unique old leather boots, untied.  A cigarette hung from behind his ear.  It didn't take long to realize he was a kindred.  There was nothing normal about the conversation.  We laughed at how there was no linear structure, it was just a flow, many flows at once.  "Flux," he said.  Soon we were both pumped for the 12 hour ride we had committed to.  I only slept for a few hours, and the rest of the time we talked about everything under the sun, and some things that aren't.  As we talked the question became, "how can we start a revolution?"  We came back to that question a lot.

Coulter went to a semester of college before deciding it's not what he wants for now.  Now he's living in a similar way to me.  Taking each day as it comes.  He was just in Michigan for a month collaborating on writing and recording music.  He said he wants to hitch-hike west in a few weeks, then head to Alaska for the summer.  Haha, that's basically my itinerary.   He isn't following any society-made structure, he is about as free as I've seen anyone.  He is quirky and brilliant.  Many times he would skip a week of school then ace the tests in high school.  He lives for art and writing, carrying around a bag of books and paints.  He didn't care what people thought of him, he spoke his mind and he jumped into connection with so many people.  Jumping up to help Indian parents clean their babies vomit, and giving generously to homeless who asked.

We had an hour layover in Cleveland, so we explored the town and ended up playing some foozeball.
I learned a lot on that bus ride.  Coulter doesn't live in any box, he sees the world for what it is, and he's not being mindless about it.  He is happy, and spreading really good energy to people.  He is not afraid to be who he is, to say his opinions and stand firmly.   It was one of those interactions that rekindled my fire and gave me hope.  I had been thinking how I wanted to meet someone like him.  Someone who is awake, who sees the world around him with an intense energy, and breaks the mold, leading into a loving rebellion.    He's someone I'll be keeping in touch with.  We're going to send each other writings for feedback.  We said farewell knowing that when one of us starts a commune, the other is on the top of the invite list.