Quiet days of fall

Date: Sept. 12 and 13
Mileage: 31.8 and 32.0
September mileage: 334.9

There's a sameness to the air again as the sky sinks down and the clouds settle in for the long season. For many, fall is a season of color and change. In Juneau, our colors are subtle and often washed in gray. Change here is subtle as well; as autumn rain takes over, temperatures drop in undetectable increments until one day, you walk out the door and it's winter. When I lived farther south, fall was always my favorite time of year. I loved the vibrancy and crisp air and promise of new passion. But since I moved to Juneau, my experience with fall has been muted at best - as though the entire season passed in one drawn-out, gray day. If I was given the choice of two months to do away with here in Juneau, I would pick September and October, without regret.

That's why it's vital that I kick myself out the door once in a while, but I admit, my motivation has been flagging. My cycling has continued since I stopped training for Trans Utah, though on a less focused level. Because I recognize that I will lapse into a bad cycle if I don't do something I feel is productive, I have been working hard on my writing project again. Basically, what I am doing is drawing up some of my past experiences into literary essays of sorts. I wasn't always a blogger, so a lot of my experiences are being increasingly diluted in an ocean of memories. I wanted to get them down on paper (well, computer). Dredging my memory bank has been fun, but surprisingly exhausting. I am remembering all kinds of nearly forgotten details that really make the moments come alive for me again. At the same time, I'm not a tape recorder. I find myself taking some creative license with conversations in order to avoid being completely vague. So it's not journalism in its pure form, but there's no intentional fiction, either.

The project was unfocused at first, but has started to develop around the theme of "how did a scared little suburban girl from Salt Lake City end up on the Iditarod Trail." It's really not nearly as hokey as it sounds. Anyway, since it is September 2008, it just made sense to center the essays on the Iditarod race because that is my most recent and dramatic life experience. It's been really interesting to revisit that week through the lens of six months later, now that I have had more time to process different events and decide what it meant to me as a whole. Plus, I have a really great record of it already, so it hasn't been hard to fill in the gaps.

So that's what I've been up to this weekend: boring riding, but interesting writing - even if only to me. Last year, my grandmother published her memoirs and distributed them to her whole family. It's been a fun document to have - not only to learn more about my grandma's life, but to see how she views her own life. Writing about past experiences, good or bad, is a project I would recommend to anyone - it's a great way to learn a lot about yourself, and much cheaper than therapy.

Pre-season explorations

Date: Sept. 11
Mileage: 37.8
September mileage: 271.1

It's starting to be that time of year when snow and cold creep into my consciousness. Long before the ice forms and the snow actually flies, I find myself thinking often about winter ... about the transformation of the landscape, the blank slate surfaces and all of the possibilities for new adventures. I want to try harder this winter to access more terrain (and yes, a lot of that will have to be on foot.) But I'm also starting to think about new options for my bike.

So I set out today on a recon trip around the Eaglecrest road. I actually found a few sections of new-to-me singletrack. With endless gloppy mud and big, slippery roots, I have to say these trails don't do much for me in their summer state. But if I were to get ambitious this winter with a pair of snowshoes, the clearings they twist through could provide a fun spur where I could stamp down a snowbike trail.

The singletrack explorations were slow-going, and I became cold enough that I finally just had to get off the bike and jog. For most of the afternoon, it rained really hard. (Camera flash used for emphasis.)

But this was pretty ... (Devil's club: Beautiful to look at, deadly to brush up against.)

I continued up the gravel road, stopping often to survey the sidehills. I think this new road is likely to be mostly rideable uphill during the winter, as long as it's groomed at all (Although I fear the ski resort may just let the snowpack cover it. I'm hoping they decide to groom it as a fun, easy "green" run.) If it is groomed, it will open up a ton of new terrain for Pugsley (Only when the ski area is closed, of course. I don't want to annoy and/or be killed by skiers and snowboarders.) I'm excited!

The construction guys who are building the road tried to shoo me out of the area because they're still blasting. They were really nice about it - too nice, actually - and agreed I could hike around some more as long as I was off the mountain by 3:30. I really pushed my timetable by taking a meandering route up the bowl and starting the climb toward the ridge. By the time I looked at my watch, I realized I only had about 20 minutes to get down what took me 40 minutes to climb up. The terrain was so slippery with mud, runoff and wet groundcover that I could hardly stay on my feet walking down. Finally, I just sat on my butt, pushed off a rock, and slid. You know how mountaineers sometimes glissade down snowfields? Yeah, imagine doing that during the summer. I hit a small rock and it didn't even slow me down. Now I have a bruise in the area where I sit on my bike saddle - but I did make it back to the road by 3:30. There was a construction guy parked at my bike, waiting for me. I felt horrible - and apologized profusely for wasting his time. I was never anywhere near the blast zone. You'd think they were about to blow up the whole mountain ... but I can understand why they have to be careful. (And they should probably just close the whole area off. I won't go back up there again while they're working.)

It was a good day exploring. But, yeah ... I'm about ready for winter.

Three years

... that’s how long I’ve lived in Alaska.

Geoff and I moved up here the way many people do, driving up the Al-Can with little more than a job offer and a small car packed to the roof with worldly possessions. Geoff had already technically “moved” to Alaska three months before. He flew back down to the States to coax me away from my comfortable life in Idaho Falls. I did not want to make the move north, and convinced myself over the summer that it wasn’t going to happen. But then a rather casual job interview I had conducted over e-mail, mainly, yielded a real offer. “How do you feel about Homer?” I asked Geoff. The last time we had been through Homer was July 4, 2003, when we were crammed with about 50,000 other tourists on the Homer Spit. Geoff was not thrilled about Homer, but he saw it as a reasonable compromise.

We first crossed the border on Sept. 9, 2005. We spent my first night as an Alaska resident camped at a state park. I can’t remember the name of the park, but I do remember it was the same place we camped as tourists right before we left the state (not including an ill-fated jaunt to the Southeast, which is another story all together) in 2003. It was the first time Geoff and I had stopped driving before dark in four days. I lingered on the dock and watched the sun set behind craggy silhouettes of black spruce. The was a deja vu sort of comfort to the scene, and something in it made me feel like I had come full circle, like I had made the right decision - even though, outwardly, I was less than convinced.

We spent our second night in Alaska with old friends who had moved to Palmer a year earlier. They also happened to be hosting a group of fellow Outside expats who were on their way out of the state after finishing up seasonal jobs in Denali National Park. That was an ongoing theme during our trip - lines of RVs were streaming south. We seemed to be the only ones heading north.

We drove down the Kenai Peninsula on Sept. 11. It was this beautiful sunny morning and autumn leaves lit up the landscape with yellows and golds. The mountains climbed straight out of the Turnagain Arm; their peaks were already brushed white with snow. It was one of those jaw-dropping drives that anyone would feel privileged to experience as a tourist, and I couldn't get over the thought - I live here.

That quiet sort of awe continued until we crested the last hill of the Sterling Highway. I think anyone who has ever moved to Homer must have the experience of rounding that bay view corner for the first time forever burned in their memories. We were suddenly hit with a panoramic vista of Kachemak Bay, hugged by the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Kenai Mountains, and the Homer Spit stretched out like a ribbon across the bright blue water. I was in the passenger's seat, eyes wide open, bottom lip hanging out, voicing what I could scarcely believe - I live here?

The rain moved in that evening and we spent our first night in Homer wet and homeless. I started my job at the Homer Tribune the next morning, and that afternoon we looked at apartments. Everything we saw was cramped and expensive and kitschy until, almost as an afterthought, we checked out this place on Diamond Ridge. The "one bedroom loft" turned out to be a 2,000-square-foot cabin on two acres of land. The landlord was out of town, so we had to peer through the windows. The spacious interior was all wood. The view through tiered glass carried for miles. We called up the landlord and, sight unseen on both ends, asked her when we could move in. In true Alaska fashion, she said, "You can move in tonight if you want."

Her friend couldn't bring us a key until the next day, so we knocked on a neighbor's door and asked him if we could borrow a ladder. He took one look at these two people he had never met, who were driving a car with Idaho plates, and in true Alaska fashion, grabbed a ladder from his yard and helped us break in through the kitchen window. He proceeded to spend most of the evening with us, helping unload my car and talking our ears off about oyster farming and the ten feet of snow we could expect in the winter, and before he left, offered Geoff a job. (The job didn't pan out; the ten feet of snow did.) I remember staring out the window that night at the pink light of yet another incredible sunset, just as a cow moose and her adolescent calf sauntered through our back yard. I couldn't get over the satisfaction - I live here.

Sometimes I think I gave up on Homer too quickly, and sometimes I know I did. But there is one thing I know for sure - I wouldn't trade my experiences from these past three years for anything.