Three days aboard the Malaspina, with plenty to think about. In the last three months, I've visited those that mean the most to me. Home for a spell in Gardiner, down to Colorado to link up with family and friends and a couple quick games of catch in Boulder, out to Utah for some relaxation, 3D movies, and hockey games, and on into Nebraska for the holidays with family and a moderately wild pack of seven house/farm dogs. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I managed to squirt down to Panama and hitch hike around for a few weeks, witness the exploitation of the global South by the global North, and dip myself into a couple oceans. Pretty heavy load to reflect upon on this journey back north...
I told a few people over the course of the last months that I am truly at peace, that I am happy. Now, here in Juneau at 5:45 in the evening, where the sun set two hours ago, I can still say the same. That I am happy. Yet, despite that, I must admit that the most recent goodbyes were some of the most difficult I've had. Teary eyed in Gardiner, Denver, Salt Lake, and Lincoln. What a salty set of weeks for a guy! You'd think after five or six years of saying these goodbyes, they'd become easier. They haven't...
As the ferry motored past Vancouver and up the eastern shelf of Vancouver Island with those thoughts rockin' around in my brain, there was some sense that the darkness and clouds were trying to forcibly tell me something. That after such heavy goodbyes and heading north into the winter, something dark and heavy was ahead.
Waking up the next morning with a cup of ferry-brewed coffee black, I stepped out onto the deck to investigate the temperature. I didn't realize until I'd stepped outside that the moonlight was illuminating the ridgelines of eastern Vancouver Island. I stood outside on the deck with a breeze biting my cheeks, absorbing the moonglow on the snowcapped ridges and thought to myself: shit, if this isn't what it's all about, what is? My camera was stowed away on the bottom deck, so there weren't any photo opportunities for the photo hungry beast that is me. Which I think may have been a good thing. I stood on the deck shivering like a southerner on a sea vessel nosing its way in the Alaska direction for a couple hours. I watched close to 30 miles of rugged Canadian coastline pass near me. And indeed, they were rugged miles of coastline.
The clouds loomed ahead, and overhead, and remained on top of us all day.
I ate dinner and had a great conversation with a travel nurse, thinking about what a lucky son of a gun I was to be in a cozy vessel motoring into the icy waters north of us. And onward we pressed.
I went to sleep thinking about family and friends, and what was in store for me with this new opportunity in downtown Juneau. Again, obeying my internal alarm clock set for mountain standard time, I woke up at about 5:15 local time. I put a few bagels down, returned for another cup of ferry's famous coffee black, and stepped outside to see what was happening. The sunrise was trying to manifest into something beautiful on the southern horizon. I went back inside and snatched my coat. And since the sun is at its wintery angle, I watched the below scene unfold for the next hour and a half..
Sunrise pressing its way through the forests north of the Dixon Entrance.
An hour and a half later, sliding into the harbor at Ketchikan. I talked to Erin on the phone while I was in Southeast's southern reaches. I had on a sweater, a hat, and a pair of gloves and couldn't have been more comfortable. Meanwhile, in the midst of another cold front, Erin was freezing her tukus off a thousand miles to the south...
Another early morning glimpse at wintery Ketchikan.
A few hours past Ketchikan, the clouds began to roll in once again. Things started to look a little more wintery. And within the course of half an hour, they felt wintery as well...
Heading out of Ketchikan toward Wrangell looking at the snow covered evergreens, I thought to myself this: happiness isn't the product of one isolated equation. It is not only Gardiner + sense of home + exceptional friends = happiness. It is not only Colorado/Utah/Nebraska + dogs + road trips + an exceptional set of siblings + an exceptional set of parents = happiness. True, those things equate to enormous happiness. But happiness can be found anywhere, if you're willing to feel it. It can be found on a farm in Nebraska, in the cloud forests of Panama, with family eating a favorite home cooked meal in Utah, in a sleeping bag in central Colorado in the back of your dad's truck, in a grotesque liquor and sex mecca of Central America, and it can be found facing a nasty winter wind heading north into a 3:30 sunset. It is where you feel it. And thanks to family, friends, dogs, and travels, I've felt it a lot recently.
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