Terry often says about himself,  “What should I be doing now?” I rarely think about that because I run to a mindless schedule. Don’t we all? I could hide all the time pieces here, but I’d still have my devices with lighted time flashing.

Here, I have nowhere to go other than outside by myself. The sun rises about 9:40 and sets about 5:30. Knowing this, makes me look at the clock wondering how much time I have. I always have the same amount. Only now I have no appointments. Light or dark, it shouldn’t matter.

Everyone asked me what I planned to accomplish here. So I set a goal to write 5 hours per day. Other than timing my writing, I have no restrictions. The 8 hours and 30 minutes of daylight should only influence my circadian rhythm not what I do.

The real problem is I’m wasting my time thinking about this. Yet I long to make a schedule. I want to put it on a calendar with time stamps. If I can accomplish anything while I’m here, it is to let time flow instead of putting it into boxes. I have one exception, I must time my runs, and track the miles and my pace. If I don’t have that data, I haven’t really run. . .

I woke up in my new bed right there in the living room. I’m sure this is the open concept so popular today. Hey, the kitchen’s right there too. And the door to the porch must remain open too so things don’t  freeze. The small diesel stove works miracles, no ice anywhere inside. I did find a fly walking slowly near the kitchen window. I let it be.

My writing has been a bit blocked by setting things up, mostly my devices. Hopefully, by Monday I’ll be caught up and my quotidian routine will be established. I am quarantined until February 16^th. I can’t go inside anywhere other than my house or the clinic if I get an appointment for the vaccine. I can be outside. So today I walk/ran out the road during the snow shower. I could manage a pathetic shuffle on the plowed portion of the road. But farther down the road in the deeper snow it was most definitely a walk. The temp was about -11. It’s not cold when you’re moving. I shoveled my deck twice and stacked my wood pile. It felt great and seemed fun owing to the novelty I sure.

At 5:00, I was able to connect to my regular Santa Cruz Zoom group. It worked better than at home. Everything is good. I think I’ll have enough food to see me out of quarantine. If I think I’m sick of powered milk now. . .

I beat my alarm and woke at 3:45.Being in a different place, in a different time zone, and being up late, I thought could be trouble. I was relieved to have the big suitcase off my mind. And everything went well packing up the few things. I Ubered over to Merrill Field for the flight to McGrath.

The small Alaska Air Transit office was the quintessential Ak Airport. Two other passenger were going home to Nicolai. The man had dislocated his shoulder. The woman had been to the dentist . She said her new tooth did not fit. Just after her appointment, she called the dental office who said to wait until her next appointment in a couple weeks. The receptionist had her ten week old puppy with her. Twice she wisked the pup into her arms exclaiming, “I think she has to poop.”

The plane was a nine seater with a good sized cargo area. Everything except me and my three small bags were going to Nikolai a town of seventy-five people, 190 miles from Anchorage. The pilot said, expect windchill of 55 below zero in McGrath.

We flew over the Alaska range and landed about an hour later in Nikolai. People were lined up with their snow machines pulling sleds behind. All were waiting for the door to open to help unload the cargo.

McGrath thirty miles away, was a 10 minute ride. The pilot wanted to know what I planned to do in McGrath. When I talked about writing, he told me he was a published author. So I’m going to order his book and hope he’s the flying pilot. It’s called Finding Carla the story that changed aviation search and rescue by Ross Nixon.

My new landlord was waiting for me. He gave me a quick tour of town. The cabin is great. Even my order from Full Circle Farms, a CSA in Seattle, had arrived a day early. The surrounding woods draped in snow are gorgeous. Welcome to McGrath.

At 3:00 AM, I was smashing and wiping ants into the sink. This was a high population ant morning. The murderous act set the day’s stage. Just a bit behind schedule now. 

This day had been at anticipated for months. The last week of October I called the owner of a cabin I wanted to rent in McGrath. We had been communicating for a couple of weeks, and now I reserved it for the months of February and March. He required no means of securing the rental saying he trusted me. That decision followed with three month of preparation.

I needed winter clothing. They are hard to find in Santa Cruz CA. I like to keep my Amazon purchases to a minimum. I won’t get into the politics of that. Also it’s nice to try things on. I relied on Backpacker magazine’s winter gear guide to determine the warmest gear and did shop online at REI. Seems everyone was warming up in cold-weather gear and I waited for weeks for stores to resupply. By mid January I finally received all my orders.

I put much thought and research into the most efficient and cheapest method of getting what I needed to the cabin. I shipped a tub in early January via USPS. My landlord said it could take three weeks to arrive. Almost everything arrives via the “mail run” a flight from Anchorage to McGrath on either Tuesday or Thursday. I paid $150 to ship my 40 pound tub. It arrived in McGarth in three days well ahead of my arrival. I ❤️ the USPS. Despite my affection and admiration for the postal service, I decided it was cheaper to buy a HUGE suitcase for $50 and take other “needed stuff” as checked luggage. I’m good at stuffing a suitcase.

So by the evening prior to departure, I had the Huge suitcase, my typical carry on suitcase, (that I was checking), and my two carry ons, (my laptop bag, stuffed, and a over the shoulder bag stuffed), and an incidental purse I hoped they wouldn’t notice. I had become the traveler I usually roll my eyes at.

Arriving at the airport a bit late, I was unable to hug or kiss Terry because bags were draped from me, plus I was double masked and face shielded. I pushed my roller behemoth and it’s baby sister up to the counter. No lines. No passengers in sight, an agent helped me lift Mr. Behemoth onto the scale. She declared it was over weight before it was actually weighed. She was right. It weighed 67 lbs, only 50 lbs were allowed. The agent suggested that I redistribute the weight to other bags.

I whined, “that’s seventeen lbs!”

She looked at her watch, “You can make it. You’ve got time. It will cost $100 if you don’t. You can go to the scale right there. Open your bags, weigh the items you wish to distribute. You can do it.”

Later I realized how super she was because 15 minutes later the bag weighed 50 lbs. However, distributing the items amounted to haphazardly stuffing my carry ons. This wasn’t compatible with navigating security efficiently. Where was my iPad? I had to find it and put it in the tray. The conveyer belt to the x-ray machine was halted by my throwing things out of my bags. The pandemic was my friend because it wasn’t busy.

By the time I reached the gate, they were boarding. I flew into Seattle and then on to Anchorage. My PPE which included a shield and double masks, was anxiety producing. Oh to breathe unrestricted! Those who have had to work while wearing PPE deserved so much more respect than I gave them.

There was no chance of sleeping, so I  watched a short Canadian documentary about the reverence the Cree have for their Elders’ ways of knowing. It was simple and slow. That atmosphere spoke to me.  

They believe that everything in nature, even a blade of grass, is a living and breathing spirit. Their ancestors were connected to them in these natural settings. The beauty was in the simplicity.  I fell into its spell. 

This may have something to do with it being on a small screen. I get so intimate with the movie when I’m physically close to it. I remembered when I first got Netflix, I watched everything on my laptop. Sitting at the kitchen table, I connected with the fine movies that they sent me. Many of them were foreign and many of them were documentaries. Films I couldn’t have found in Skagway AK where I was teaching in 2002.

On the flight seated less then a foot from my phone’s screen, I was pleased to ponder this simplistic gem and my idea of being closer to the ground. When you live somewhere with layers of removal from stores and roads and conveniences, you have fewer possessions and more time for the simple joys.

On my arrival to the motel in Anchorage, I was proud to successfully wrestle all my heavy bags up to my room. Unlocking my phone, I found a message from Alaska Air Transit my air carrier to McGrath on Tuesday. I called Collette who informed me that I could not bring more than 50 pounds on the plane, a change in policy. My big suitcase alone with 50 pounds. She directed me to call two other air carriers that might help. I called both and got no answer or call back.

I was pretty well panicked. First order of business was to go to GCI to buy a chip to have phone service in McGrath. After asking what I was doing in Alaska, my Uber driver, who was listening to Mozart, btw, told me he had written a book similar to The Jungle, by Sinclair Lewis. I had read it in high school and it bolstered my vegetarian ideas. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to ask if the book was published.

I made it to GCI. I was told to wait in line outside, a fine idea to freeze to death on my first day. When I mentioned my concern, they let me in and I left with a chip for me to install in my phone when I arrived in McGrath. I hoped that would be as easy as he promised.

After much stewing and consulting with my brother and Terry, I decided to try the post office to mail my suitcase. At 10:00 PM I got an Uber to the post office. Success!

Next Monday, February 1, 2021, I will board a plane forAlaska. Despite winter and Covid 19, I’m going. There, I’m creating my own writing retreat, my villa in Tuscany of sorts, except it’s a cabin in McGrath. 

It’s a solo venture to cloister myself from interruption and scrutiny. Stimulus will be low. Deprivation high. 

“Life is found when you’re closer to the ground.” This is not Thoreau but rather from a Dominique Fraissard song. Itcaptures my sentiments. 

My days should be simple in the cabin. It’s in town, I was told. I visited McGrath twice twenty years ago when I was teaching in Graying an even smaller village on the Yukon River. McGrath seemed like the city. It was the District office of the Iditarod School District covering an area the size of Ohio with 7 small school in small villages. But now, with only a dim twenty-year-old memory, I think I remember a couple of places, but not the idea of what we consider a town. This is what I always love about going somewhere or doing something new, how will if be different from what I imagine? I started thinking about this plan in November when I called McGrath’s City offices to see if there was someplace to rent. They gave me a phone number of a guy who owns two rentals. One was a cabin. I have a picture of the cabin and everything else I know about this place is constructed by me.

When I arrive, I will quarantine for 14 days. That should be easy in a village of 304 strangers, 350 miles from the road system. 

My siren landscape is the arctic region. For over twenty-five years, I have dreamed of going to Baffin Island, Nunavut, Elsmere Island, Greenland, Anaktuvuk Pass, Yellow Knife . . . If you’ve visited any of these places, please tell me what you found. 

The idea of running, hiking, snowshoeing and X-county skiing across a bare landscape calls me. I plan to bundle up every day and go out. I expect not to see anyone on my forays. I expect that the Kuskokwim River will have a snow machine-packed road running near the bank. A team from Anchorage will probably be out on snow machines, a mere 350 jaunt, to smooth the trail for the upcoming Iron Dog Snow Machine race. Eventually maybe I’ll make it to the neighboring village by skis that Terry will bring in March. Before he arrives, my hope is to Snowshoe far enough to see Denali. 

While my sirens called me to McGrath instead of Amalfi, Ihave the same goal. I plan to finish the mystery novel I started writing in 2016 and stopped writing in 2016. That year, I wanted to attend the Catamaran Literary Reader’s Writing Conference in Pebble Beach, CA to participate in a workshop with John Straley an Alaska poet and mystery writer. Before I was accepted, I needed to submit twenty pages of writing. I thought it probably should be a mystery—something I’d never considered. 

The conference was inspiring enough for me to continue writing the mystery. Two months in and ninety pages later, I realized my fool’s errand. I knew nothing about policing, investigating, sleuthing, weapons, murder. Nor had I read about any of this. So, I enrolled in the Santa Cruz Citizens’Police Academy. Ten weeks of fun, but not enlightening for my ignorance. I was working at the time, and I soon lost steam and never went back to finish the novel. Now I think the Novel Coronavirus maybe will assist me. It’s given me the time. I haven’t worked since mid-March, yet I’ve only succeeded in painting rocks. I’ve set the bar low.

July 28, 2020

We woke in our tent at the backpacker campground 0.2 miles from Red’s Meadow Resort. It was about 5:30 AM. One or two of the forty or so campers were stirring. It had been a celebratory night for the younger hikers, thrilled to be surrounded by fellow hikers who, too, love the trudge and solitude of distance trekking. They partied hardy until an elder unzipped himself from his tent and yelled, “Shut your fuckin’ pie holes.” Charming.

I grabbed my phone to access the bus schedule. In order to get back to our car, we’d need to catch a bus from Mammoth to Lee Vining and then catch a different bus to Tuolumne Meadow’s. I learned there was one bus that would get us to Lee Vining leaving at 8:20. And there are no buses on the weekend. Crap this was Friday and now it’s 5:50 am. Reserving a ticket is highly advised because of limited seating owing to Covid. I could not load the reservation page. Our signal was too weak.

“We need to pack up. I have to go to the resort to get enough internet signal to allow me to reserve tickets.”

On that morning, we won the quick pack up award. Those whippersnappers saw how it was done.

Our quick work was to no avail. Either the internet was not cooperating, or the website had not really been setup to reserve tickets. Terry was questioning staff and patrons to see if anyone was heading to Mammoth. No one was heading out. In fact it appeared that all the people in line for breakfast were heading out on the trail. There was only one employee in sight, who was trying to get breakfast out to the masses. This moniker “resort” should be taken light-heartedly in this case. I would never suggest a hiker should not stop here. For a hiker, it’s a slice of paradise. But don’t expect a ride into town.

We headed down the hill believing there would be a chance we’d find someone who wanted to help us out and who had forgotten there was a pandemic.

Pick-ups, SUVs and sedans looked as we feebly displayed a thumb and a $20. We were left behind on this long and winding road, that will never disappear.
Why leave me standing here? Let me know the way.

And then, when it was too late to make the bus anyway, we experienced the love of a Subaru. Two young women stopped, jumped out of the car and rearranged their gear so we could fit in the back.

“Sure we’ll give you a ride to Mammoth.” The driver was from Jackson Hole and assured us she had to pick us up because that’s what Subaru owners do. We asked where they were coming from and going to. They had just dropped off a resupply at Red’s Meadow Store, and they were heading to Happy Isles to begin their JMT trek.

“This is a lot to ask, but could we ride with you to Tuolumne Meadows?”

“Sure! No problem. We need to stop there anyway.”

🙏

August 27, 2020

We cut our three and a half day hike down to three days because today we did 16 miles. It was mostly down hill on dusty, blasé terrain, but it was liberating to actually make decent mileage. It made me believe I could go on. However as the hours went on, my calves were cramping. I felt spent. I hadn’t stopped or taken my pack off since our 1:15 lunch break.

I didn’t get into Red’s Meadow until 5:50. Terry had gone ahead thinking that the Red’s Meadow Resort store and cafe would close at 6:00, and it turned out he was correct. He arrived ten minutes before I did and bought some cold drinks. He headed over to the cafe hoping to buy French fries. I purchased two ice cream bars and two showers. They didn’t have fries so he returned with two ice creams. Ice cream supper it was. At least we thought we could take a shower. As it turned out we could have if the cashier had told me we needed to pay for soap and towel rental. Oh well.

We felt lucky to get a spot to put up our tent in the backpackers campground. We shared a beer, a large one, and headed over to the hot springs tub (106 degrees) and I was at peace with my broken body again. We would worry about how to get back to our car tomorrow.

August 26, 2020

It’s clear that I’m not the woman I never was. What was I thinking? We only made 9 miles today. Sure it’s up and down on trails with large steps and rocks. And we’ve stayed between 10,000 and 11,073 feet. But 9 stinking miles?

The scenery is incredible at every turn. And that is why we’re here.

I must write about my solo hike gig. I make all my own decisions and have no one to blame. It changes your thinking. Shortly after the Covid SIP, I felt like I was suppose to disappear some where for forty days and forty nights. I would surely discover the real wilderness by being alone. Then my friend, Robin, put me onto the series Alone. It makes you feel as though you can do things you haven’t considered. So I took my own mini alone hike, forty miles from Donner Pass to Sierra City. It felt empowering.

Terry and I missed out on a number of planned trips this summer. So we were looking at the possibility of backpacking in the Sierra. But everybody is backpacking because the wisdom is “It’s Covid safe.” It was hard to get permits for the popular shorter hikes. Terry said he really wanted to do the JMT again. My first thought was that it was too much work. But I submitted three trip agendas and we got a pass. But by then Terry was roofing his house and couldn’t go, so I thought it was a good opportunity to go it alone.

Now I feel broken. I’m comparing this to my hike in July. I was averaging two mile an hour and now it’s closer to one mile an hour. But of course this is so much harder. My body hurts.

It’s not possible for me to go on by myself without planned food drops. I can’t carry enough food for my slower speed. Food drops have to be arranged in advance. So I’ll exit with Terry at Red’s Meadow.

Disappointing, by well worth the great weather, no smoke and no mosquitos.

August 25, 2020

It had been a month since we were treated to dark skies and billons of stars. The air remained clear without a hint of smoke. The last time we we visited Tuolumne was when we hiked the PCT in 2014. it was packed with visitors, campers and thru hikers. The cafe and post office had lines of people. Now the post office and cafe are closed, deserted and dilapidated. The tent cabins are just frames standing ghostlike.

Our campsite for hikers was quiet all night, no snoring or talking, just the hoots of great horned owls. We were one of the first hikers to leave at 7:30 and remained alone for an hour or so. But when the hikers started to show up, it was a stream heading north from Reds Meadow. I guess the Mammoth area has fewer Covid restrictions.

The Meadow was healthy and the river running through it was clear as trout swam near the shore. About three miles before Donahue Pass we started our ascent. It began with a steep incline over rock steps. A half mile into the drudgery my pace was barely a crawl. I was overcome by the altitude and insufficient training. Perhaps a week breathing unhealthy levels of smoke didn’t help. If I had been alone, I would have called it a day. This would have offered another day of acclimation. Terry was feeling it too? But at 2:00 who wants to end their day? So Terry slack-packed me for at least an hour. He went ahead and dropped his pack and came back and got my pack. This allowed me to hike without a pack.

We found a campsite near a steam. We had only put in an 8 hour day but we were both spent. We’re still 1.75 miles shy of the pass. With no news or word from home. Terry has decided to continue with me. We know the days ahead will be less challenging and if thekp evacuation is still in effect, he can’t roof his house in Scotts Valley.

August 24, 2029

Terry drove me up through thick smoke. We were navigated to Highway 49, but it was closed. The fire was spreading out from Groveland. We had to backtrack. We went up some backroads to highway 120. About ten miles out of Yosemite the smoke cleared. The white granite mountains shone brilliantly. Our first clear vista in a week. The air smelled of air.

We were amazed by no lines or cars on the roads. You had to have a permit to enter. In a few hours we had our permits checked twice. The numbers were held to their prescribed quota. Few people get to experience Yosemite as such an intimate setting. It’s similar to winning the lottery to drive the length of Denali at the end of the season. I was driven to pursue that opportunity and this. The loneliness that is ours.

It was about 1:00. We thought we could be on the trail by 2:00, but the ranger set us straight. If your permit said August 25 that’s when you’re supposed to leave. She sent us to the backpacker campground for the night. It’s probably a good thing because between the smoke and the altitude, I was feeling it.

I put my backpack on and walked the 1/4 mile from the parking lot to the campground. I rolled the pack off onto the picnic table and deemed it way too heavy for a 1/4 mile passage let alone a 13 day trek. I had to do serious culling. All food is supposed to fit into a bear canister. I couldn’t fit it all in. So I was carrying a bag with extra food. Well this is illegal. I started there. I looked at each item of food for caloric value and weight.

Terry will hike the first day with me and spend the first night on the trail with me. Part of the idea is to carry one day of food. Good this gives him room to take my excess food. I tore apart my whole pack until I felt I had trim superfluous items. It felt much better.

We headed down the road in our car to locate the parking lot and trailhead from whence we will begin tomorrow. A hiker came from over a bridge and asked for directions to the hiker campground. it was hard to direct her. So after she got out of earshot we confessed to each other that our directions sucked. So we decide to give her a ride and show her where to go. Her voice reminded me of a friend in Hayfork . They had the same inflections. Into our conversation she told us she lived in an intentional community. She told me the name and I said I had a friend that used to live there. Yes she knew her. We had an instant connection. We’ll connect again.