Little Hamlet By the Sea

I can't believe I live here...

It had never occurred to me that I might fall immediately in love with this new place, and yet it's happened. We're right on the water. The fog rolls in off the strait and covers everything at night. The atmosphere and sea-smell are similar to coastal Alaska, and there are gulls and seals and otters in the harbor. All weekend long I drifted around the docks looking at boats: trawlers, sloops, dories, dinghies, and long-liners, inlaid with hardwood or mother-of-pearl. Boats that people live on, handcrafted, that are a way to make a living but more than that, here, a way of life.

I've met so many people, and absorbed so much information in the last week and a half. There are 40 volunteers with the North Olympic Corps this year-more than they have ever had. And every single one of us brings something enlightening and new to the table. It was incredible to be welcomed to the job and this new place by an entire group of people who are cohesive, united in our differences perhaps more than our similarities. Whether it's at work, or sitting around at the local pub over beers at dusk, or wandering around town, I've been impressed upon by our backgrounds and stories, by how much everyone wants to be here, and how certain we all are of what we're doing here, and why.

It was difficult to leave Alaska, knowing that it's home, having thought that I'd never feel comfortable somewhere else. My sense of community was eroding, though, worn down by more frequent instances of violence in the city, by the feeling that something was missing, and not knowing what. I feel here like a child must when learning to walk: surrounded by things that are stunning, fragrant, delicious and now attainable. We are all embarking on the missions we set for ourselves out of altruism, preparing to work on improving the environment, housing, education, and the lives of children. There are festivals and live music and fruit trees laden with pickable things.

I am taking my first steps. I am rushing headlong into the world, to make it the world I want it to be. Volunteers will be awarded exactly $11,800 in stipend/living allowance for an entire year. Most of us have applied for food stamps, heating assistance, and transportation assistance.

I have never been so rich.

You're a poem of mystery/You're the prayer inside me.

So I'm stubborn. Ruthlessly so. When it comes to taking someone's advice in regards to music or movies or which book to read, I tend to adamantly refuse to do so until weeks or months after the fact. The lines that title this blog are part of an Iron & Wine song; Iron & Wine being a band I flatly refused to listen to, simply because everyone and their dog seemed bent on telling me how good they were. How I'd probably never heard of them. I'm stubborn about taking advice. I'm stubborn about letting go.

I let go totally once. Three-quarters of the way up a mountain face, trying to run a line back down, dangling from a thin, green-barked tree. Hanging into a glacial waterfall.

To be fair, I didn't get hooked on a 'pure' Iron & Wine album, but rather a collaborative EP called "The In the Reins EP". Iron & Wine collaborated with a band called Calexico to produce the record, and it is this record's title track that's caught me thus: a low-toned string harmony behind a deceptively simple-sounding acoustic guitar. And then out of nowhere, a deep, strident voice that sings over the instrumental in Spanish.

The singer sounds like he's ready to give up, and yet, is still noble, and there's a nobility to that, too, isn't there? Being left standing alone and choosing not to follow what's moving away from you. I lost my line coming down the scree. I had no choice but to leave it. The sun was out.

Iron & Wine came to Anchorage last year. By the time I caught wind of it, the shows were both sold out. Back then I didn't really care. I wasn't aware of the EP that would knock my wind out. Of course, back then, I didn't know why I'd want it to, why I needed the strings and that noble Spanish verse. I didn't know that without them, I couldn't cry.

The sun was out but glacial runoff is never, never warm. It was either this, or go back up the mountain. And the tree was slick, so I let it go.

It terrifies me that it's all out there now, here, typefaced and silhouetted against, well, the Internet. As if by my own hand, by choosing to put it into words, I've already lost you. Oh, not entirely. You'll resurface someday, while I'm still chilled from this fall, from the lung-crushing weight of the plunge, legs shaking, chest contracted. You'll say hello, maybe. Maybe you'll ask how things are for me. You may very well say nothing at all.

Because that's how cold it is, how indescribably cold, that water. And I knew I could get out of it, and the heat still beat down on the top of my head, while above me the scree rattled: another runner coming down, someone else either very confident, or completely lost.

I'm stubborn, you see. Stubborn about letting go. Save for that one time, just once, up high on a mountain whose jagged scree and dusty, narrow trails cradled me. Save for the day we met, the day you walked out into the sun from the confines of a coffee shop and shook my hand.

Behind me the little tree snaps back into shape. In front of me, though I don't know it yet, you bend to pet my dog, the straighten again. Somewhere in the middle, I'm holding out for the sight of the trail again. Somewhere in the middle, I'm holding onto you.

But I knew this was it, didn't I? I knew the second I laid eyes on you that in one way or another, this would be it for me. I repeat this over and over and over, to anyone who asks. To some who don't.

I turn the first track of my first Iron & Wine album on again. And I run, now, years after cutting my shins & bruising my hands on the rocks on that mountain. Outside where it rains, where the rain makes tears and sweat taste like the grass that grows where river meets sea. And sometimes I find I can cry.

And most days, I find, one or two things drop, like my body from the cliff face, like a bird diving for moths. Most days, I find, I let a little more go.