Posts tagged Arctic Circle
A River Named Jim

Justin and I were moving slowly south, reluctant to relinquish the quiet of our time in the Arctic. Between the late summer snowstorm spent holed up in our truck in the Brooks Range and several days spent wandering along the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk river laughing over driftwood campfires, we glimpsed only a small handful of people from a distance as they raced one direction or the other along the Dalton Highway. 

We relished the solitude. We relished the simplicity of concerning ourselves solely with the basics of life: warmth and weather and nourishment. We fell into the rhythm of the place, listening to the chalky river push around the rocks lining its bottom and watching the shadows move across Sukakpak Mountain’s massive marble peak as the days passed.  

The last of August’s summer warmth fled the moment September arrived and we welcomed the signs of fall that greeted us everywhere. The alders and aspens and birches tucked in among the spruce were suddenly all golds and yellows. The blueberry and lingonberry turned deep garnet, the mountainsides and valleys rolling seas of fiery reds. Tessie’s fur thickened in the chill, but even so, we pulled out her down jacket so she could sleep alongside the fire in the sort of comfort to which she’d grown accustomed…

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Simplify! Simplify!

One of my very favorite (possibly true, possibly not) literary anecdotes of all time is when Henry David Thoreau exclaims, “Simplify! Simplify!” in Walden, and his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson offers the feedback, “One simplify would have sufficed.” 

Doh.

I think of this story often. It represents the bulk of what holds me back in life (and I’d venture to guess I’m not alone here):

I overcomplicate a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be complicated. 

I go on and on with two “simplifys” when one would have sufficed….

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Safety Deposit

We are talking when Justin halts mid-sentence for a moment and then says it’s stopped raining, pointing at the roof of the truck cap. I pause and listen. Sure enough, the drilling of raindrops that has been ever present since last night has stopped. We smile at each other and I turn to wipe the film of condensation from the window closest to me and peer out. I start laughing.

That’s because it’s snowing instead!

We open the back window wide and look out at a world turning white before our very eyes…

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