In the presence of ice

 

Blog for March 29, 2009

 

Light snow is falling outside. I nearly wrote January as the date before I was reminded by a chorus of songbirds below me at the feeder that spring is heading this direction. It must be unavoidably detained somewhere far to the south of here though, and sent the birds on ahead.

 

Yesterday Scott and I took the skiff to Camp Island and LeConte Glacier. The signs of spring were subtle. A shadow of shorebirds flashed across the water heading north. Small avalanches in the bay sprayed white veils of snow down the steep walls of the Fjord. The waterfalls are frozen. Snow is deep, burying the valleys and mantling the ridges up in the bay. Winter is curled up and sound asleep at the face of the glacier.

 

Being inside a place of such drama and beauty is hard to describe in words. It is a visceral experience, not  intellectual. I feel tiny and vulnerable in the face of powerful forces. Ice, tides and rock are in relationship here. I am like a little insect landing lightly on the table or a vole running across a meadow, completely exposed to the sky. My life does not even register on the scale.

 

There is no room for mistakes here. We were watching the glacier, waiting for ice to calve off the face, when we suddenly realized the lead behind us was closing in. Scott carefully maneuvered the skiff back into open water as I pushed icebergs the size of small vehicles out of the way with an oar.  It only took a few minutes, but with a steady breeze and the tide, if we had waited we would have been locked up in the ice pack.

 

I realize living here has made me watchful. Sometimes people tell me I “worry too much” or say people in Petersburg are “fear-based”. This trait is described as a Nordic dourness, or a certainty that something is always about to go wrong.  Perhaps it is a vigilance learned by living on the water or at the edge of wilderness, where forethought and caution save your life. Of course, then it can tip into negative thinking which colors everything. It is all a matter of scale.

Thinking about contingencies on the water is an essential survival tool. When it comes to obsessive control over party details, well, then it tips off into craziness. I have seen both in my town, and I believe somehow deep down they are related. Maybe it is the lack of sunlight too.

 

The landscape and weather of Southeast Alaska have shaped us. When the skies are clear for a few days in a row, people in my town run themselves ragged being outside. If dry weather continues for more than a few weeks, soon people are getting crabby and exhausted and secretly hoping for rain. They become worn out. They won’t clean their house or do any inside chores because they know it is going to start raining again, and it might be weeks before it stops. So they run around outside and garden and paint decks that take a week to dry, and don’t stop moving until it gets dark and when the days are long, this takes a toll at least among the over-30 set.  When the sun shines here it is on of the most beautiful places on the earth.  This just doesn’t happen that often.

 

You think I am exaggerating, but I know children who did not see the Full moon until they were two years old. I remember summer days in Petersburg when businesses on Main Street closed because it was sunny for the first time in weeks.   When I would go back and visit my family on Martha’s Vineyard in the fall, the weather would still be balmy and warm. I would run from sunup to sunset, biking, clamming, swimming, boating, scalloping, and hiking all in the same day. My sister and mother were mystified. They asked, “Why is she like this? Is she on drugs?” Part of my behavior was a reaction to being trapped in the galley on the boat all summer, but part of it was a reaction to the sun. I was drinking it in like a parched person, marveling at the subtleties of shadows and light.

 

WHY DO you live there?? I hear this over and over. People here sometimes ask themselves the same question. I look out at the gray and green landscape and the snow flurries this morning, and realize I love it here. I love the snow-shrouded mountains, and the strong tides rushing past the harbor. I love LeConte Bay and being in the presence of wilderness and forces of nature that dwarf human endeavor. People sometimes perceive the silence and slowness of natural forces as emptiness. I see it as a fullness that infuses my heart with peace. Being witness to the forces of ice and water and rock for me is walking in the presence of Grace in the universe.

 

The silence and the solitude create space in my heart and make it possible to live in a small town where lives are so entwined. I bring perspective back like a gift carefully wrapped to sustain me on my journey, lifting me like clouds of shorebirds rising off the water over the details and busyness of my daily life.