Enough Truth to Spill: An Evening of Writer's Strain

And so it began last night when I arrived back at Whittier School, my home for the next two days, where I have been residing basically half of this past school year.

It began on a couch, a rotten and rotting couch, already ancient, faded and pathetic when I inherited it seven years ago with my classroom. The cushions let you sink much too far down, the computer is uncomfortably warm on my lap, and there is too much synthetic stimuli all around, including Petco-purchased tetras toiling back and forth through green aquarium water that is both bright and dark green at the same time. There are laminated North Face ads spinning on fishing line from the ceiling, clusters of desks where worksheets, pencils, erasers, and rulers go to die.

I’m in the same room as my massive teacher's desk—a hulk surely from the ‘80s that is the home of too many papers, too many books, too many stacks of random school paraphernalia storing the potential energy of every one of my educational questions. All of my seven years of visions mixed in with seven years of disappointments and confusions, and the attempts to try again, day after day. I wrote a page, figure if I do that each day I’ll at least have the volume. Figure each day holds enough truth to spill.

And if I manage to make do in a room filled with too much of those circular suffocating memories, I feel pretty good about my chances when I let the windows open and allow the noises of the outside world to invite me instead.


Leaving Lake Iliamna ~ 04.15.09

Clearing Roads

The world comes crashing down in the Springtime. We literally see more of ourselves and of the world every day because of the hours of daylight that inch and inch longer and longer. In Alaska, we've the lost the comfort of darkness. The night doesn't come until well past midnight now, and the vast amount of remaining snow only reflects even more pure white back into our eyes. It all leads to a different kind of cabin fever.

Near Portage Lake, one mountain has literally begun to fall down, turning the fever up a notch. For the past month, the road to Whittier has been closed due to a massive rockslide that has only continued to build with efforts to clear it. At first sight, the Department of Transportation needed to hire out contractors because the rocks in the road were bigger than their equipment. After several drilling measures, helicopter scouting missions, and a large blasting, D.O.T. has finally given official notice that they will open the road on Friday the 8th.

The road will have one lane available from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. each morning and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the evening. Some call it progress, some call it not enough, and surely there is someone in Whittier who is working on ordering a tank from the Lower 48. Sometimes you have to blast your way to freedom, whether the walls are in your mind or standing right in front of you.



For updated information on the rockslide, click here.