Leave the city, part 3

It broke my heart to know you waited
I had so many things to do
It's true as far as a lot of stuff
You could have had a little better luck
But with you, I'm not givin' up
Tonight I'm not givin' up
— Magnolia Electric Co. "Leave the City"

It's one of the great cliches in life coaching — if you had a million dollars, what would you do? It's the kind of question people usually laugh off, but if you are stalled out and genuinely unhappy about your situation, I think it's an important one. The answer has always been very easy for me — I would live in a place where I had access to a lot of different adventures — good singletrack, long open roads, mountains and extensive winter trails. This place would have a community of like-minded souls — snow bikers, endurance athletes and mountaineers — that I could look to and learn things from. It would preferably be a small town, but I could stomach a mid-sized city. If you think this sounds like Salt Lake City, you're right, but I have another, most important requirement — it has to be in Alaska.

And what would I do for a non-recreational occupation in this place? That answer is even easier. I'd write. I'd interview interesting people and attend intriguing events, and I'd write about them. I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time writing soul-sucking query letters seeking publication, but I'd probably do a little of that, because it's always more fun to write for an audience (Hence my four-plus years of keeping a public blog.) And I would buy a nice camera, and take photos. And I would buy an art store out of their pastels and markers and paper, and I would start drawing again. I'd probably also buy a piano and renew that hobby — just to really round things out.

But here's the next question — what if I didn't need a million dollars? Nix the piano, camera and pastels, because that stuff is pretty expensive. And just cut it down to the basics — a place where I can sleep, store my bicycles and house my cat. A few spare dollars for lube, tubes and gasoline. Enough left over to buy rice and beans and Sour Patch Kids. Not forever, but just for a while. Maybe those soul-sucking query letters would even help pad the rice-and-beans fund. But even that wouldn't be fully necessary — at least for a while. One of the great secrets of life is that it's actually quite simple to follow dreams — as long as you follow them simply.

So here is my plan: My last day at the Juneau Empire is March 31. From there I'm going to make my way north and west. I'm moving in with a friend in the big city — Anchorage. During the month of April, I plan to fly to Salt Lake City. I want to visit my sister and meet my first nephew, who was just born last month. I want to visit my baby sister in Huntington Beach, and a few friends in between, hopefully in the form of a bike tour. This will probably take up most of the month. After that, it will be springtime in Alaska. I'm not sure exactly what will happen. I'm going to just ride the wave and see where it takes me.

So why Anchorage? Because, for better or worse, Anchorage is the center of Alaska. The city offers easier and cheaper access to so many places, from the Kenai Peninsula to Denali to the Brooks Range. There are many things I want to see and do that, if I stay in Juneau and continue working 50 hours a week, I will probably never have a realistic chance to experience. Moving to Anchorage will also be easier than moving to a random city because I have several friends in the Anchorage area already, from Kim, who has agreed to take on my cat and me as roommates, to Craig and Amity, a couple of my oldest friends from Utah. Having several familiar faces in town definitely helps ease big transitions. And Anchorage does have a great community of cyclists.

Plus, Anchorage is the state's center of commerce, so there will be more opportunities for income should the funemployment fund run dry.

So why didn't I just do this a year ago, when I first said I was going to? Well, there are a lot of reasons I stayed after I first "quit" my job in November 2008. One is my passion for newspaper journalism and my loyalty to the Juneau Empire. I realize the newspaper business is a slowly sinking ship, and that by opting out of my current newspaper job, I may not find another opportunity to re-enter this market. The Empire has done a lot for me over the years and I feel guilt about leaving. Another big reason is that I genuinely love Juneau. It is definitely a little bit of a "love-hate" relationship, especially during long stretches of snain (similar to the one we're currently in.) But Juneau is a place that grows into you like moss, filling the bare surfaces of life with brilliant green beauty. I can definitely see myself returning someday. In fact, at this point, I'm all but counting on it.

So, then, why am I leaving? Because I have been unhappy for a while now. This series of blog posts have been the exploration of the root of my unhappiness. It may seem I'm blaming a lot of it on my environment, which of course isn't fair, but my environment does make it extraordinarily difficult for me to make any real changes in my life. When more casual acquaintances ask me why I'm leaving, I tell them it's because I "need a change of scenery." It sounds frivolous, but there a lot to that statement. The change of scenery I need is within the landscape of my own mind. If I continue to plow through my routine, and the only change I make is acquiring a Prozac prescription or taking up skiing, then I will always be haunted by the knowledge that I ignored an opportunity to make more meaningful change. The truth is, I don't really have a lot to lose.

As I discussed this move with my closer friends and family, no one was surprised. My closest friends in Juneau all said, essentially, "We'll miss you, but, yeah, you should do this." My family has expressed their unconditional support, even for my funemployment (which will be entirely self-supported and health-insured, by the way.) It means a lot to me that people who know me best have shown so much support, and has sharpened my belief that this is the right thing to do.

I am anxious and excited, nervous and scared. I am still planning to travel to Fairbanks next week for the White Mountains 100. I'm trying to buffer the expense by hitching a ride with a Juneau friend who's driving north for a crazy winter climbing trip. Then I will fly back to Juneau, solely so I can spend a week training my replacement (yes, this is purely for loyalty to the Empire, because it would be a whole lot easier just to drive north once.) I am hoping to get a few last mountain trips in Juneau before I go. I will truly, deeply miss this place.

But I have to go.

Leave the city, part 2

Half my life spent on a highway
Half my life I didn’t choose
And I have seen the North Star
Shining in the freight yard
And I knew it was a hard time that he'd come through
It’s made him thankful for the blues.
— Magnolia Electric Co., "Leave the City"

The abstract notion of going home begin to take shape as I drove north. It was a strange feeling to leave Salt Lake City, the place that had always been my home, and return to a city where I had no house, no family, no real belongings besides a few boxes, stuffed in the corner of a storage unit, whose contents I had long since forgotten. I was leaving behind all the good things that happened during the summer and going home to my disappointing history and personal failures and 9.85 total miles of singletrack bike trails.

Even though I had many reasons to love Juneau, these realities weighed heavily on me as I approached White Pass and the British Columbia/Alaska border. I was 20 miles from the ferry that would take me away from the present world I had grown comfortable with and strand me on the island of my past and immediate future. I wasn’t quite ready to face it. I parked near a high alpine lake and pulled my bike down from the roof rack. The saddle was missing chunks of foam and the frame was still coated in New Mexico mud - remnants of an adventure that left me feeling disappointed and hollow, if only because it had to end, and it was finally done. I rode along the talus-strewn shoreline until I found the faint summer footprint of a snowmobile trail weaving through the dwarf spruce trees. My nerves, long numbed by the robotic routine of driving 2,500 miles, suddenly buzzed with the thrill of new discovery. I traced the path through sock-grabbing bushes, over boulder fields and around switchbacks. As the terrain grew steeper, the trail became fainter, until I could do longer distinguish it from the rocky, bush-choked terrain. Like most places I had come to know in this region, it was a dead end.

As I did when I first moved to Juneau, I had an incredibly difficult time settling in. I couldn’t hold my focus; my mind wandered. Six weeks passed before I found my own place to live. At work, I made silly mistakes and missed deadlines. I told my friends and co-workers that I had been “Great Divided,” and I was just trying to regain my composure after the culture shock of the summer. But it wasn’t the truth. The Great Divide was a tiny gap next to the one I was trying to bridge - the divide between the former me, who had a partner and plans and future goals, and the new me, who suddenly didn’t have any of that.

Faced with the prospect of reinventing myself, I turned to the places where I felt the most at home. I was burnt out on cycling and still suffered lingering, nagging pains spurred by pedaling, so I took to the mountains on foot. When the terrain was easy, I ran; more often, I climbed or scrambled or staggered. The clear air was freeing, the views spectacular. I could look out across ridges stretching beyond the horizon - places the didn’t dead end; places that, if I could muster the strength and stamina and skill, could carry me as far away as I longed to wander. They were places where I could be free without guilt or regret. They were places where I could be alone without feeling lonely.

And it’s strange, because these are the places where I started meeting new people. I was three days off the ferry when I met someone while climbing up Mount Juneau. We went on a handful of subsequent hiking dates. I met another new friend on Ben Stuart, and yet another on the Sheep Creek Trail. Another friend set me up with a skier/kayaker. I was a biker/runner. We both acknowledged we had little interest in the other’s passions, but we found common ground in the mountains. We had our first “date” on Blackerby Ridge. We climbed up to Cairn Peak in a drenching September rain and watched the clouds clear just as we settled in to a hut perched on a high ridge between two glaciers. I looked out over the stark white ice field and felt a thrill of wonder, because Juneau really was larger than I had ever imagined.

I’m not sure how or why that all started to fade. The snows of late autumn came, driving me to the limits of my novice mountain skills, driving new nostalgia for my past life, and driving a wedge between the skier and me. Conditions at work, which had already been so consuming and stressful, deteriorated even further, until the time-suck often took me away from my last remaining passions - cycling and writing. And just as quickly as Juneau had opened itself up to me, it closed again. I’d wheel my bicycle out to a dead end, and then another, and then another, until the sameness stripped away any motivation I had to keep pedaling. I continued to climb mountains, but under the armor of winter they became more prohibitive, more frightening, more exhausting, in a way that made me feel like my skills were actually getting worse rather than better. But the most frustrating part about it all was there was nowhere I could go to escape the long shadow of my past self, still lingering on the other side of the divide. Everywhere I went, her joy and discovery echoed like a sad song, reminding me of everything I’d lost, of everything I wasn’t. Without even realizing it, I’d become invisible, a ghost haunting a world that had moved on without me.

To be continued ...

Leave the city

Broke my heart to leave the city
I mean it broke what wasn’t broken in there already
Thought of all my great reasons for leaving
Now I can’t think of any
It’s true it was a hard time that I’ve come through
It’s made me thankful for the blues
— Magnolia Electric Co., "Leave the City"

I'll never forget my first few moments in Juneau, as I stepped off the ferry into a cold, black, startlingly empty summer night. It was July 2003. I wasn't an Alaska resident yet; I was a tourist, one of four friends spending an entire summer coaxing a sputtering Ford Econoline van around the 49th state. We left the van and our bikes in Haines. The ferry landed just before midnight. No one told us the terminal was 14 miles out of town. We stood in the dark with our overstuffed backpacks, somewhat stupefied by a sense of being stranded. After several minutes of indecision, we split into three groups. Geoff and Jen set up a tent in a gravel pit across the street. Chris hopped in a taxi. I started walking. By dawn, I had reached the downtown library.

We'd had big plans for Juneau. We were going to hike the trails our guidebook gushed about — Mount Juneau and Mount Roberts. We were going to see the glacier. We set up our tents at a small campground recommended by the same guidebook. Our site was literally notched into a steep hillside overflowing with mud and devil's club. The other campsites were strewn with elaborate tarp shelters, plastic bags and loose garbage. We later found out this "campground" was actually a city-sanctioned homeless camp. The rain started the afternoon after I hiked to the library. It didn't stop. All of our tents started to leak. We pulled them together, wall-to-wall, and threw our single tarp over the damp cluster. My sleeping bag got soaked. So did my pillow. For three days, we played cards and wandered around the T-shirt and trinket shops downtown, waiting for the rain to let up. It never did. We never even caught a glimpse of Mount Juneau or Mount Roberts, towering invisibly somewhere over the fog. We discovered only tour busses took people to the glacier, at 15 bucks a head, and we lost interest. When we finally boarded a ferry back to Haines, all four of us had relieved smirks on our faces, because we knew, unlike those unfortunate residents, that we had the power to leave this place. We had traveled all the way from the Top of the World Highway to Prudhoe Bay to the tip of the Homer Spit, with the Denali, Seward, Whittier and Richardson highways in between. We had it on good authority that Juneau was the worst place in all of Alaska.

I moved to Juneau in August 2006. It wasn't fully intentional. I was burnt out with my job in Homer, Alaska, and just happened to receive a cold call from the managing editor at the Juneau Empire. She offered me a job on the spot. It seemed like a sign. I'll never understand how I talked my ex-boyfriend, Geoff, into moving to Juneau with me — to this day, no matter how many pretty pictures I post on my blog, I still can't talk my friends Chris and Jen into coming back here to visit. But three years after bidding good riddance Juneau for good, I stepped off the Alaska Marine Highway ferry and set up my tent again, this time at the Mendenhall Lake Campground.

The new job was stressful. It took me three full weeks to find a place to live that would accept two cats and two people that we could afford — and even then, the single-bedroom basement apartment cost more than we had been paying for a large cabin on the ridge above Homer. I stayed 10 days at the Mendenhall Lake Campground. The August rains were thick and unrelenting that year; from Aug. 7 to Aug. 20, I never once saw the sun. During my last nights at the campground, the tarp shelter I had built over my tent — the same tent that accompanied us to Alaska in 2003 — had long since failed. My sleeping bag was soaked. My pillow was soaked. I used work clothes to mop up puddles of water on the floor. I couldn't believe I had dragged myself back to this dreary, soul-crushing place. I didn't think I'd last through September.

I've often wondered what makes a home a home. Is it the place where you were born? Where you grew up? The place where you form the most memories? Your favorite memories? The place where most of your family chooses to reside? How about friends? Is it the place where you find work? Or passion? Is home simply the place that you find yourself wandering day after day, moving through buildings and city streets and trails until they become an inherent part of your story, of you?

By the time Geoff broke up with me in April 2009 — and, yes, the split was a long time coming — I had come full circle with my feelings about Juneau. I was as hollow and homeless as I had ever been when we boarded the ferry to drive south. Geoff asked me what I planned to do when I returned. "I'm never coming back here," I said. "There's nothing for me here."

Even though I had already committed to return to the newspaper in July, for most of the summer, I believed I was done with Juneau. I reconnected with my family and trained for the Tour Divide and thought vaguely about my future — a frustrating and mostly futile exercise because all I could see were dead ends in every direction. I put it out of my mind.

During the 24-day Tour Divide, I relished in my homelessness. It was wonderful to wake up in the morning and realize that not only did I not know where I was going to sleep that night, but it didn't even matter. I had everything I needed in life strapped to a bicycle; the whole world was my home. Thoughts of a more substantial future started to creep back into my mind toward the end. I can barely recall the night I spent in the forest outside Cuba, N.M. I had been throwing up all day with what was likely food poisoning. I was dehydrated and sick and so tired I was delerious. I laid out my bivy sack in an open grassy meadow. Before I lost conciousness, I stared up at the Big Dipper. The moon, hidden behind mountains, cast a dim glow that turned the sky royal blue. I blinked with vague recognition. It looked just like Alaska's flag.

A storm moved in before the next morning, bring with it temperatures in the 40s, an overcast pall and steady, drizzling rain. I climbed up to 9,000 feet and looped around a stunning overlook of the valley below. The gray light of the rain drenched the ponderosa pines in rich greens, and wisps of fog draped over the treetops like silk scarves. It looked so much like the hillsides of Southeast Alaska in an August storm that I choked up with emotion. For the first time all summer, I felt truly homesick — not for the place where I grew up, but for Juneau.

It seemed like a sign.

... To be Continued.