April 2, 2021

We arrived home last night. It’s time for me to reconnect to my life here in California.

Here’s the scene: Traveling at some kind of warp speed over highway 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains, like being shot from a canon and landing in the front seat of a 2008 Subaru Outback in the passenger seat asking the driver, my husband, “Why are you driving with your sunglasses on when it’s dark out?” Well it’s jarring, dislocating.

Before I snapped my fingers, I was walking on the Kuskokwim River on the Ididarod Trail.

Today Terry viewed his day from an invisible perch. Above the real scene below.

When we ascended from Seattle, the hues below were bright yellow, and green. They were so brilliant. The yellows were the yellow lines painted on the roads. All the vegetation was green. It’s funny what you see after two months of black and white and shades in between. To go from moving at pedestrian speed to jetting. From the silence of standing in a boreal forest packed in insular snow where not even a pin makes sound waves. From that to the clamber of a city airport . . .

We really are home.