Ann. Letter: From the Wild Lands

There’s a bumper sticker around my town that says, “Talkeetna: Where the Road Ends and Life Begins”. That’s the jumping off place for the heart of the Alaska Wilderness. 2001 was my Talkeetna, the time when the training ended and the living a life of meaning, purpose, and perspective began. Where I left behind the comfortable, routine wanderings of youth, those roads paved and well-traveled, and tried to really find my own way through the thicket of conflicting ideas, endless challenges, and uncertain peril. There is a place and time when everyone must face the wilderness, to wade into the raging rivers, the arid landscapes, the swampy bogs in order to transform into who your heart calls you to be. If it calls you to sort out the missteps and clarify your purpose; not just yearn to be better, than you have been, but to be it; better in a way that only you can truly judge, out of 6 billion potential critics, then you have to not just face the wild, not just roll past it with the windows open and take some snapshots of it from the comfort of the highway. You have to put boots to dirt and venture in. Some people become crazy or perhaps just ridiculous, but crazy isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, nor that common, really. For every real crazy there are a thousand who fear it, and so do nothing. And for every sojourner who emerges back onto pavement, surer in step and firmer in purpose, there are many who long to hear what it’s like. You can show them.

The interesting thing is that so many of us are already wandering in our wild lands, ready to reemerge. The way out is usually the hardest part, you’re tired, you’re weak, you’re tempted to take shortcuts, you may be asked to turn stones to bread, or bow down to something truly dark in exchange for an earthly dream. Who will you then become? Who will you lead by your example? They say the road is the destination and I don’t dispute that the journey matters and that life is a trip, but it ain’t always Interstate 5, easy and straight…yet isn’t that a boring, crowded road anyway?

I look forward, as always, to what awaits us, both with anticipation and foreboding. I've lived long enough to see that not all change is progress. The old folks may have been disorientated by the gadgets and trends but they usually became savvy about human behavior. They warned me about a lot of things and now that they are passing, I'm seeing more often how right they were. But at the same time, I see that most of them weren't trying to depress me about the future, but to guide me, and all of us, to keep a tight rein on some of those trends. It's easy to admit that granny was right, harder to admit that a parent was right, but now that we understand what they struggled with (us!) we can find some sympathy and confidence when we confront the unbridled desires of our own tiny babies that stand on the edge of this new century. The new stuff is cool but there are a lot of old ideas that are worth hanging on to, even crucial. Remember the Mokan villagers by the Indian Ocean? The younger men wouldn’t listen to the elders who saw the changes in the birds and the sea and knew a tsunami was fast approaching and refused to evacuate at first. Who listens to old men anymore? But someone did, the villagers ran to higher ground, and everyone was saved, unlike so many others…

I spent four decades hearing about “the year 2000” and all the terrible, wonderful things that awaited us, everything from flying cars to the end of the world. The year arrives and civilization holds; 1-1-2000 turns out to be just another day, as are the days after that. There were so many promises made, by family, by friends, by society, by God; how many were delivered? How many ever will be? Lives come to a close and you’re not sure if in them satisfaction was ever found. The excitement of youth, the zeal with which we look forward to independence and freedom is soon beset by the demands of responsibility, a day to day struggle between optimism and obligation. Love can endure and grow, but what was once all promise, even at its best, requires sacrifice and effort. It is also such with the arrival of a baby; the promise and hope of a new life becomes another human, flawed and needy. Life turns into experience, and living becomes a strategy. Along the way joy turns into a guerrilla warrior, elusive and cagey, quietly surrounding you, dangerous if you pursue it too hard, calling out to you if you give up, but apt to strike when you least expect it, because it is always out there. Are we too busy to welcome it? Are we too preoccupied with fear to give joy to others?

SO much of life is spent just enduring the days, weeks, months, and so little is just spent on adventure. In between we take too many little pleasures to keep us occupied & help us get through the days: rich food, daydreaming, bad TV. We console ourselves about the fact that we aren’t rock stars by pointing to the fact that lives of excess lead to their own unique & acute suffering, but there must be a happy medium between rock star and mundane futility. That, I believe, is the most common American Dream, the one that drives us and reigns in our worst impulses. The middle road between too much and too little.

Jackson Brown’s old classic “Running on Empty”is the perfect song for the thirtysomething age.... now I’m starting to notice all the people trying to move past “empty”, trying fill themselves with real fuel for the next leg of the trip. The journey ahead has so much at stake: older kids so complex, and anxious, aging relatives trying to find serenity. All around us are younger co-workers & people in the community, looking for guidance, some subtle leadership, and encouragement that their own long journeys are worth the ride. And I see people our own age trying to get it together and make life count, rather than moan any longer about what they can’t count on. They, we, are ready to try and face the losses we can’t possibly avoid, and accept the rewards we can’t even imagine. Didn’t all of us budding geezers learn so much the hard way? We could be turning our bitterness into resolve, our experience into instruction and comfort for so many that are following. We could be learning to read the sea and give comfort, instruction, joy, and peace.


“I’m ready-
I’m ready for the laughing gas,
I’m ready for what’s next
I’m ready to duck,
I’m ready to dive,
I’m ready to say I’m glad to be alive,
I’m ready,
I’m ready for the push…”
---U2, Zoo Station

...to be continued...