pancakes

The First Hard Frost

I anticipated the first hard frost here like an innocent youngster anticipates a chance meeting with their first crush, not really knowing the depths of what it meant or what it would bring. I was simply excited. I thought it would mean that Winter actually was on her way instead of just threatening to be, that our town would quiet down and the berries would sweeten up and off I could go to harvest them, a small feat which I’ve always turned into something larger and one which I’ve always set myself up to fail at.

You see, one of my own little personal Julia recipes calls for:

a bit of a procrastination

with a dash of self-doubt

mixed with a large serving of an uncanny expectation to do things right the first time.

(There are many more uplifting recipes, of course, but I might as well be honest about the collection).

This here concoction has set me up for failure more times than I can count but it has also done something worse: it has set me up to do nothing at all.

And so, this year I promised it would be different. I watched the weather and waited and when the first hard frost hit, I promised that out I would go to reap the benefits of the fruit sweetened overnight by the harsh conditions. Harvest and enjoy instead of again missing them. But like a first crush, I didn’t think about what else the first hard frost would bring. I was just excited.

And then I awoke, to the first hard frost. We’d had a frost a couple of weeks before and the buzz over thermometer temperatures had spun through town.

“I had 25 when I woke up this morning.”

“25! I had 29. Wow.”

Fall is coming.

And then she did. She blew right into the valley, down the 60 miles of dirt road and into our backyard (and presumably into many of back and front and side to side yards of others). And I awoke and immediately realized the fault in my young crush desires.

Because the first hard frost meant something I didn’t anticipate:

While the berries may have sweetened, most of my plants, the plants I had grown for months, some from seeds started in April, were now dead.

Before and after.

The plants that I have spent more time than ever before loving and trimming and thanking as I picked them and placed them about the house or into our food. The flowers that have brought me such joy when I return home to their shiny faces.

The plants that I have too slowly been harvesting because although I was anticipating her arrival, I hadn’t hurried enough for Fall’s approach or realized the (now obvious) tenacity with which she would arrive. It was a juxtaposition of wills and wishes that ended in an equation I didn’t quite add up.

Some plants survived and I immediately made a mental checklist of all of the preserving that I needed to do. Preservation? Canning? This, like berry picking and processing, is a major mental block of mine. My girlfriend had visited from California and the one thing she wanted to do in Alaska? Teach me to make fermented foods. I couldn’t bring myself to do it consistently on my own and so, we whipped up an entire batch, 12 quarts of beautiful sauerkraut adorned even with local juniper berries we’d harvested on a hike. It was glorious. And then, as fate would have it, The Chief and I promptly left in a state of emergency with Cinda and returned a week later without her to a house full of spoiled kraut. My first endeavor.

So yes, I have a bit of a block about it.

But this was the year to change that and now, it is time to get a move on. Perhaps this is where the procrastination part of my recipe, paired with a serious deadline from nature will come into play and our shelves will be lined with krauts and kimchi and pickles to boot from cucumbers and cabbages and berries harvested.

Perhaps,

perhaps,

perhaps.

I tried to revive the plants that didn’t survive the night but their shriveled leaves and broken cells were far past repair. I tidied them as best I could and then went to chop some wood to try to overcome the persistent cold that had settled into the house with the frost. I returned inside to see The Chief making pancakes.

Pancakes, people. Pancakes.

In case you don’t know, Pancake is my middle name (well, second middle name: Julia Elizabeth Pancake Page) and the last few months have been utterly devoid of the fluffy fantasy that is eating pancakes.

And so, one would think I would be overjoyed, for the only thing better than eating pancakes is eating pancakes you didn’t have to make yourself.

But instead of the elation that follows the presentation of a present as perfect as pancakes made by the man you love just for you, what followed were tears.

Big rolling alligator tears, slip-sliding down my cheeks and chin and down onto my robe (it was Sunday afterall) that soon slipped and slid down onto The Chief’s robe as he held me in our kitchen, pancakes pancake-ing in the cast iron next to us.

I had spent the morning in and out of sleep, waking to my worst memories of Cinda, of the moments when she was in so much pain that the only words that describe the sound she would make is a bone-chilling scream. I was preyed upon by the memories of the hope we had repeatedly being crushed by the weight of obscenely unlucky circumstance. I was paralyzed remembering watching her try to walk and not be able to, trying to move and howling in agony. It haunts me though I try to shove it away. And so I had tried to shove it away this morning, the morning of my highly anticipated first frost, but when I walked outside and saw all of the beauty of my favorite distractions gone, I lost all ability to shove the haunting away.

The plants and flowers I grew had two purposes:

One: Joy. They made me happy. They greeted me as Cinda would have when I came home and made coming home to The Quiet a little easier.

Two: Food. They provided sustenance and flair to our kitchen. Fresh food that we didn’t have to buy. Fresh food I could be proud of.

But when Cinda died, they served another purpose.

Three: Ritual. Every day or so, I would walk to Cinda’s grave to add to and take away from the bouquet of home-grown flowers that I’ve kept for her since the day we put her in the ground. As I walked out into the frosted landscape to see them all shriveled and dead it hit me: we are moving into the next season without her. She truly is gone.

Recently someone asked me how it is that I decide upon what to write about each week. I told her my favorite image of myself writing: an idea comes when it decides it’s ready and then I circle around the idea like a dog trying to get comfortable enough to lay down. I circle it and circle it until it feels just right and then…I sit down and write it just like a dog finally settles in and stays put for hours, so do I. But recently, the only thing I’ve been able to circle around is Cinda and for the first time ever, I’ve not allowed myself to write about what it is that comes up for me. I’ve censored myself. And so last week, with the censorship in progress for fear of becoming a broken record even I don’t want to hear, I instead wrote nothing.

The thing is, writing is how I move through and eventually forward. I tried to censor my feelings during the first hard frost morning and out they came anyway and so, if I want to continue writing, there she will be, as she always was. I can’t censor her out.

And today, I miss her, more than usual and it won’t let me go. It’s what’s on my mind, it’s what I’m circling around. It’s the idea that won’t let up until I release it.

And trust me, I know I have it good. I know that, in fact, I have it great. I have a beautiful house in the middle of the woods in which I awake daily to a wonderful, handsome man who loves me deeply. We have loving friends and family and all that we need. I know we have it great. But just like I told my girlfriend who is going through her own feelings of loss now, it doesn’t matter what you have, you can still be sad.

It’s hard to take one’s own advice.

A death or a loss doesn’t just occur and end in that same instant. It is the shape that keeps shifting and just when you feel a grip, it slithers through.

And so today, I allowed myself to write about her because I want to move through remembering the pain and to remembering my baby, as she was, fuzzy eared and smiling, watching over me, ready to set me straight, ready to love me in even my worst moments. She was my starting point, my anchor and she’s gone.

And so, I will take a walk without her as I have done more times than I ever hope for in this past month and despite my personal procrastination recipe, I will go out and pick berries. I will harvest the fruits of my anticipation. The fruits that were only brought on by conditions too harsh for delicate life. The harshness that makes them sweet.

I hope that in turn, that this harshness too makes me sweeter.

Thank you to the seasons for your abrupt displays, for your jarring leaps into the next step, whatever that may be. Alaska, you shake me, you tumble and break me but thank you for extending a hand to help me back up again.

Goodbye Summer, The Summer of the Dogs, you were a tenacious beat I couldn’t always dance to.

Onward, towards Fall.

Onward towards Winter.

But right now, onward towards berries.

**Update: I did, in fact, harvest berries and I did, in fact, take a very much-needed walk. But I didn’t walk alone. Our neighbors’ dog Benny joined along and even warned me off of a seemingly impending bear encounter and by the end of our walk, we had two more pups in tow and a hat full of berries to share (processing to come. Probably).

Thank you to the dogs and people of our town. Your company means more to me than you can know.

So…what are your favorite canning, preserving, pickling, etc. recipes?

Please, do tell…

Today Was a Good Day

Some days stand out more than others. Some days remind me more than others of where I am, of the majesty of this place and of the refreshing concoction of absolute wilderness and strangely cosmopolitan offerings we enjoy and of the importance of friendship.

It was a Sunday and a somewhat gloomy day in the very first moments of September. Some gloomy days welcome me to the indoors, others make the indoors feel frantic and claustrophobic. This one embodied the latter. Although I typically think of Sundays as a home day for family time (and pancakes. Lots of pancakes), our schedules haven’t really met up to make this shiny Sunday ideal a possibility. And so I sat in our cabin alone, knowing I should be writing or reading or whatnot and enjoying the peace and quiet but I was instead feeling stifled by the four walls around me. I needed to get out.

In these moments I typically suit up and head out alone, walking the River Trail by our house (hoping the dog doesn’t ditch me) and returning refreshed. But that day I needed more than the River Trail. I needed an adventure. Since my post about getting out a few weeks ago I’ve been on a sort of mission to explore more whenever possible. Sunny days make it easy, it’s the gloomy ones that feel a bit like a ball and chain. But once you’re out, and break free of whatever imagined heaviness you felt, you realize you were always free and well, it’s on.

And so I ventured out of my typical approach of solo outings and contacted a girlfriend instead. She is someone I’d enjoyed meeting up with all Summer but we hadn’t made time to have intentionally set girl time, it had always been by a gathering’s happenstance instead. She replied immediately.

“I’ll be ready to go in 30 minutes.”

Oh, snap.

Apparently it was time to get moving. In true Sunday fashion I was still donning PJs, sleepy eyes and a head full of bed.

I started collecting what I’d need. We had decided on a walk to The Toe (the end of one of the local glaciers). I dressed and I packed (snacks, water, a knife, extra socks, jacket, rain jacket) gave the house one final look and set outside to get going. 30 minutes had already passed. She was going to walk and meet me down at the parking spot (literally one spot to the right of the No Passing sign down at The Toe) after 30 minutes. I realized that she didn’t know how far I lived (and I had overestimated my get up and go timing) and told her to hold those horses but that I was on my way.

Right?

I remembered then that I had told our neighbor that I would exercise his pup that day. And so I loaded Cinda up into our new (to us) truck and headed out to gather him.

Nope.

The truck (which had been giving us quite the go around in true wilderness vehicle fashion with an un-diagnosed fuel issue which had already stranded us multiple times) started but the moment I put it into reverse it chugged to a stop. I tried again. This time she fired up with gusto (thattagirl!) and I decided to take a few steps forward before venturing backwards again (there was a hump within the first few feet behind us which required a bit more power than the little lady seemed to have). She roared forward and then started strong backing up and…chugged to a halt. Cinda looked at me like she did while I was learning the stick shift last winter, as if to say “Lady, I could do this with my eyes closed”. Well, close those eyes Cinda Jones because this is about to be a do-si-do dance of frustration. I tried the back and forth a few more times before calling it on account of gas. She needed a fresh pot to brew on (she seems to think she’s empty when she’s not and so sometimes adding 5 gallons of gas does the trick, even if there’s already plenty of fuel to spare).

I topped her off and ta-da! Off we went with Jones rolling her eyes the whole time. We were on our way and, dog-disses aside, were having a pretty good time already. I popped on some tunes and headed to get our second backseat driver: Cinda’s brother Diesel.

After shocking him half to death just by opening the door due to his hearing loss it then took me almost 5 minutes to get him out the door. I pet him and cooed at him and made big gestures, all the while hearing the truck chugging in park (no way was I turning the beast off after all that) and hoping she would continue. Finally, he rose, stretched and gaily skeedadled towards the truck. He knew the drill, even if he’d never seen the truck before. I loaded him up and got in myself as the dogs settled in with their backs to one another, looking out their respective windows without so much as a ruff of acknowledgement. Oh siblings.

Finally we were off.

We decided on a new meeting place: The Restaurant. After all that, this girl needed some stronger coffee. Coffee, some chit-chat and an enormous breakfast burrito later and now all of us were off together.

I realized quickly that I didn’t know where I was going. I had been driven down to The Toe once last year when I had first arrived and once again via the Wagon Road coming from the opposite direction on the back of a 4-wheeler where I was more concerned with spotting the bears leaving the plentiful piles of bright red berry bear poop than I was with remembering directions.

Thankfully, my girlfriend had a solid knowledge versus my inkling and she guided us safely into harbor.

The leaves setting the mountains afire in color.

It was beautiful. The day which before had felt gloomy now felt luminous. We started walking to the glacial lake when we spotted what looked like a photo shoot. Three girls were gathered behind a rock. Two were doting on one, bringing her flowers and fixing her locks. Then, I realized that I knew one of them. I waved hello and she shouted back joyfully:

“We’re having a wedding!”

We shouted our congratulations to her friend and looked to the left to see the groom and his men waiting for the lovely bride. It was beautiful and set such a sweet tone to head into nature with.

We walked along the cliff’s edge of the lake as the dogs ran up and down the steep terrain. Eventually it evened out and we descended on an easier slope.

Icebergs ahead!

Just then, the dogs went crazy. They had picked up a scent (they were no longer ignoring one another. Once out in the open they run together, trading off leading and deciding together what should and shouldn’t be peed upon by both of them). They followed it with a voracity that is normally reserved for…uh oh.

Bears.

Just as I realized that my girlfriend coincidentally said: “You know, I was going to bring my bear spray (essentially a massive can of pepper spray that is a favorite accessory out here if one is without or not in favor of a gun) but then I realized that I was with you and you’d know how to handle it.”

Funny you should say that. I had packed two dogs as protection but noting further.

Just then, as we neared the water’s edge, I looked down.

There they were.

Bear prints.

Not just any bear prints. These were brand new, and huge and clawed, meaning that they likely belonged to a grizzly bear.

Oh joy.

I alerted my girlfriend and we both looked up to see the dogs running after the scent. The good news was that the tracks were heading in the direction we had come from, and thus away from us, and so we called the dogs off and to us and continued hastily in the opposite direction of the enormous prints.

We walked and we walked and we walked, occasionally looking over our shoulders for a hungry grizzly, until we made it to the far end of The Lake where we dropped in to explore some new caves. The ice of the glacier proved too slippery without cramp-ons (little metal teeth you attach to your shoes) and so we decided to continue on to find more easily accessible caves further into the moraine (basically the dirt and rock on top of the glacier which is sometimes very thick and sometimes so thin that a mere scratch exposes the ice below).

…and then there’s the enormous boulders too.

The best part about hiking on the moraine is that you never know what you will find and there is only the trail that you make. Nothing is laid out in front of you. And so we chose our route, sometimes following the dogs, sometimes choosing to scale different approaches more friendly to our two-legged selves when we came upon another body of water. The color was unbelieveably blue. Just across from it was a beautiful cave created by the melting and morphing of the glacier.

The moraine and the glacier are a constantly evolving landscape. Sometimes huge “wormholes” (big holes standing tall above the ice created by the melting of the ice) will suddenly be gone, collapsed and melted. A lake within the glacier can break and flood through the holes and crevices and places we explore. Rocks fall. It is a beautiful place but also a place for vigilance. Look before you leap.

And so as we went into the hollowed out cave we watched for falling rocks and debris, noticing the piles from previous falls. Just as I had finished taking a picture of a little ice bridge formed by melting and had turned my back to walk back to the little lake a shift must have occurred and rocks and debris came spilling onto the area where I had just been standing seconds before.

This cave is made completely from ice and covered in rock and dirt.

Time to move on?

We watered the dogs and ourselves and then ventured out and up and took stock of our surroundings.

In all truth we didn’t have any real idea where we were and suddenly it was getting late.

Looking down towards the cave after crawling out. Suddenly neither of the lakes were visible.

We had a few hours before we needed to be back still but we had been walking already for hours. We took in the landscape and starting positioning ourselves in a general direction. We didn’t want to take the same route twice and so we went up and over hill upon hill upon hill until we hit a treeline with sandy dirt and easier walking which led up all the way back to the truck.

Icebergs, Lakes, Sand?

Cinda Jones in all of her glory.

It was ice cream time. I had been stalking a cone of ice cream from the General Store for two weeks now. Every time I had tried to get ice cream they had been closed or I had been working. It just wasn’t happening. But not today. Today I knew their hours and I was ready.

We loaded the pups and set off for an ice cream sundae Sunday.

Or not.

The truck wouldn’t start.

Thankfully, I had 5 gallons of gas in a can that I had thrown in the back of the truck (I had already pumped the can full twice that day: once before trying to leave, then I had emptied it into the truck in our driveway when she wouldn’t start, then I had gone through the rigmarole to fill it all over again.

Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t gas.

The battery was dead.

Thankfully, I remembered that The Chief had told me he had put jumper cables in the truck.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a soul around except for us. The wedding party had left, no one was there and we wanted to solve this via the ladies, not just by calling our boyfriends for help.

Thankfully, we remembered that our other girlfriend was in the Hill Town that day. I called her. My phone wouldn’t work. It rang and picked up but I couldn’t hear a thing. Thankfully, my girlfriend’s phone did work and she was able to get a hold of her. She said she’d be happy to but that she was almost out of gas and wasn’t sure she could make it home if she also came to get us.

Problem solved. We had 5 gallons of gas for trade.

She was on her way.

A little while and some trail mix later and she arrived to save the day. We all laughed realizing that we three approached the task differently, but too many cooks in the kitchen worked out just fine and a few minutes later the truck was purring again. We filled her tank with a couple of gallons and thanked her.

Notice that the lights are on? Yup, me too. I’m still new to the truck and, well, I forgot they were on.

She had to leave then and so we continued on our way back to town with just enough time to make it to yoga class (yoga class in the woods?! I know. Pretty amazing). By now our ice cream dreams were in the past. Another day.

We parked and walked into the old cabin where yoga was being held. We arrived to the welcoming smiles of other girlfriends. A big bellied stove in the middle of the room took the chill off until the motions could warm us on their own. It was beautiful and exactly what I needed and suddenly two hours had flown by.

By the end, the hike and the yoga had started setting in and a serious tiredness was taking hold of me. There was live music in town that night at The Restaurant and as we drove by the glow of the place was as inviting as could be but I was done for the day. I hugged my girlfriend and thanked her for the day, for inviting me to go to yoga with her (something I always mean to do but rarely make it to), for getting lost in the wilderness with me and for brightening my day. We had brightened it for one another and a new closeness was born.

I slowly made my way home. The dogs were pooped and sprawled out in the backseat. I puttered towards the bridge when I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. I stopped the car.

Fireworks.

I drove to the middle of the bridge and put the truck into park and sat watching my own private show of the lights.

It’s a pretty special thing to start a day with a looming gloom only to end it with an impromptu fireworks show and fill it with every sort of soul warming goodness in between. That’s the magic of this place.

I made my way home that night feeling happy and fulfilled. I had nurtured a friendship, cared for myself, adventured and been awed, all in one day. I arrived home (after stopping to give The Chief a kiss and say goodbyes to friends until next year at a BBQ in our neighborhood) tired in the best of ways and happy in the most important of ways and the only thing I could think to myself over and over was:

today was a good day.

And it was.

Love in the Woods: Year One

A year and one week ago I met my person at the Friday softball game. We talked all night after the game at the local watering hole and as I fell asleep that night my girlfriend told me I had whispered to myself that I was going to kiss him.

A year ago today that kiss happened and it took us both into a whole new life.

I resisted at first, tried to tell myself that it wasn’t a part of the plan but it was a resistance like politely refusing the last pour from the bottle of wine. No, no, no. I couldn’t possibly. O.K well, maybe.

I drank from the cup and the potion suited me just fine and I finally relaxed into the reality that I was done for (in the best of ways).

The reality that we were together at last, since once I met him it felt like I had finished a journey I didn’t know I was on, overcame the planner in me. I went with the flow and answered questions about our future with “we will see”.

But eventually, as the Summer started to come to a close and my departure to California rang the leaving bell louder and louder, we needed to plan in order to see one another again.

The Chief had always said he would never leave Alaska for any stretch of time longer than he had to.

I left Alaska in the last week of August to meet a girlfriend visiting from Norway and to attend two weddings of four people I love dearly and, of course, to see my family and friends.

Thank goodness for the draw of loved ones; it would have been tough to pull me from Alaska otherwise. In some ways it was fear that made me want to stay in Alaska, fear that we would change while apart or forget what we had. But after living my life in that way for so long, I knew I needed to stretch and to leap with at least a little faith. I mean, geez, I had been drawn to Alaska like a magnet. Time away from one another could either make that draw stronger or dissolve it completely and that was a reality I couldn’t change. So leap I did, back to California, back to the comfort of my people and the joys of a long shower and electricity.

At times, perhaps fueled by the worries of others, perhaps fueled by my own inner gremlins, I wondered if in fact The Chief would get on that plane on October 5th. Maybe he would have a change of heart. Maybe the uphill battle of leaving would be too much. He would need to winterize the house completely and shut her down for who knows how long. He would need to get the dog approved for flight. He would have to leave paying work that rarely occurred into Winter for pick up or no work at all in California. He was leaving all his comforts to meet me in mine.

But leave he did with a one way ticket and no plan of return.

We both leapt.

California was both wonderful and rough but we made it through together. We moved countless times, packing and repacking ourselves into nooks and crannies of wonderful hosts. We were given an RV and thought we were ready to roll, only to find out that it would take a lot more time and money than we had planned, plus we would have to find a place we could park it. Oh, and the dog got skunked the first night we spent in it. It was pouring down rain and there was no covered area for her. We couldn’t leave her outside so essentially, we all got skunked.

Oh joy.

But oh well.

We love her.

Still to this day I can smell skunk when she gets wet.

It was constant logistics and shuffling.

Our toothbrushes in the RV. Looks like one of them and got pushed off the pillow and almost the bed. This is us in toothbrush form.

We spent a few minutes in the morning and a few hours together every night since I was working like a fiend to save enough to get me through Winter while The Chief tried to busy himself during the day finding random work or adventure in order to give our hosts some privacy. We had to pack up my storage unit to the brim, gather last items from my ex and tidy up my life to actually leave for a stint (since last time I had planned to be back in a tic).

We were tired and overworked and underplayed and so in love that it didn’t matter because we would rather be in Choreland all day than be 3,000 miles apart.

You make me smile.

Finally, we both felt it. It was time to leave. We had already been through so much together and yet it was time to embark into more unknowns. This time, the unknowns would be for me.

Winter in Alaska.

As we left my parents’ house my Mom and I both went weepy. If I had a choice, we would live down the street from one another but my preference would be my dirt road in Alaska and hers would be her paved road in California and so we bid adieu and an “until we meet again” and hoped that again would be sooner rather than later.

Just a slight family resemblance, eh? Cinda Lou could not care less.

I felt stripped down and built up all at once as we left. We were starting a new chapter. This was no longer a simple Summer Romance. We were embarking on a life together. We had met one other’s families and friends and now it was time to create our home.

It may be harder to read this way but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. On the plane, headed to Alaska. In Winter.

California was a condensed version of hard and easy. Winter in Alaska was exactly the same and at the same time the polar opposite and with a longer life span than our time down south.

I planned our Winter in my head. Me at the oven pulling out perfect loaves of bread while The Chief played guitar for us and we all (The Chief, The Lou and I) sang along. Silly me, planning again.

Some days weren’t so far away from that glittery image and others were miles off. The Winter is something people here congratulate you for surviving, both in body and in spirit. On an extra cold day where all you want to do is cozy up with your person and read books but your person has to work all day in the cold, it can get lonely. A phone call to a friend while taking a walk can be the perfect medicine until your phone dies from the cold and the dog ditches you because she’s smart enough to head home in such weather.

You feel alone.

You miss the convenience and independence of your own car on a city road. You miss meeting a girlfriend for a drink or a walk. Heck, you just miss a walk where you don’t have to batten down the hatches and dress yourself for war with the elements to simply walk outside.

You miss your Mom.

But that is the whole point of the Winter. She brings you back to bare basics and strips away the comforts you expect. She forces you inward. She forces you to truly greet yourself, wherever you’re at and so instead of becoming tri-lingual or a master knitter I ended up spending a lot of time by myself getting to know me and trying to become the person I want to be.

The process wasn’t always pretty and in a 408 square foot home (counting the loft) it wasn’t something either of us could really ever could hide. And thank goodness for that. We weathered the Winter together and our relationship grew because of it. Without much of a separate room to go to in a tiff I would go and sit on our cooler in the kitchen to cool down (I didn’t realize the pun in that until just now) and then we would come back together with more understanding and less fire.

Spring Break came and the Break-Up began. I didn’t realize until later that people were also talking about couples. The sun shines a bit more and the hardness of Winter is over and sometimes as the ice breaks, couples too go their separate ways.

I can see how it happens but I’m so glad it didn’t. In fact, I wished for more Winter because between work and surgeries I never really felt like we got the Winter I had planned on. Whoops, I did it again. But that’s O.K. because we have so many Winters ahead of us. All of them will be different and all of them will probably differ from what I expect but I welcome them.

Now it is Summer again, the time when we met, the time when we fell in love. The leaves are back, colors are everywhere, bees are out and mosquitoes are trying to conquer us all, bite by bite.

Dandelion armies at attention, ready to recreate themselves.

There are little reminders everywhere tucked into ourselves and this town and the people within it of how we came to be and how I first saw The Chief. Now, as I know him deeper it’s sweet to look upon the past when he was still such a mystery and I’m sure in another year I’ll feel the same again as we both continue to change.

The other day, I was wiggling my toes as I wrote. I looked up to see The Chief smiling at them. He loves my feet, the one thing I’ve consistently been self-conscious about on my body throughout my entire life. I even tried to hide them from him when we first started dating by way of shoes and socks and covers but he found them. They were the one thing I didn’t want him to see and he loved them instantly and in a sense, this has been our way. The parts of us that we’ve tried to hide have found their ways from under the covers and instead of banishing them, we’ve tried to give love to the parts that the other sees as a flaw.

We’ve softened one other’s edges and brought down our shields because it simply hasn’t been possible to keep them up. For the first time I feel safe in my imperfections and safe in my person’s as well. Sure, there are things we both want to move past or change and we will but I feel a foundation, now one year old that has been strong enough to hold us together through all we have seen already.

Today is our anniversary and I am spending some of it writing because that is what I love to do. The Chief is happily researching fire videos to train the crew on rainy days and reading like a fiend. We will go out as a family (The Chief, The Lou and I) and explore and hike and then eat dinner with our friend family who brought us together and then watch an amazing friend do stand-up comedy at the Rec Hall. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect day. Heck, there might even be pancakes factored in there somewhere (there was).

Thank you Alaska for your hard-handed shoves and soft-fingered flicks to push me to where I am today: imperfect and in love in the middle of the woods. I never saw it coming and I only want to see it growing.

With all my heart, thank you.