Days like this, sprinkled with light Alaska rain and drenched in unexpected sunlight (and trust me, sunlight in Alaska is a rare thing indeed), with the taste of chocolate rich on your tongue and the confidence brought on by a good cruise behind you, and the sound of a well played piano dancing in your ears – make you relatively happy in your lot in life. You may not laugh, you may not even smile, but there is contentment there, a resolution. You may not always be strong, but nor are you always weak. And sometimes even in weakness there is strength.
If you were living inside of my head these days, all of that would make sense, but none of you are (okay…*most* of you aren’t..and even some of those few that are might wonder precisely what it all means), so it probably doesn’t.
Simplify it to say this: what you heart wants is sometimes not as good for it as what it needs, but if you give it what it needs you will find that it in the long run is much more at ease.
One season, I would love to come to Alaska and not have it be three months of live altering introspection, I would love to have a summer season that is simply care-free and scare-free, with days that smell of fresh caramel corn and taste of smoked salmon.
But it would seem that the Great Land isn’t done with me yet, and there is still a great deal of work to be done…and things do, after all, come in threes.
So I turn my eyes to the distant northern lights and I say this: I’m as ready as I’ll ever be…clear out my cobwebs, reset my balances, douse my hair in salt and blind my eyes with snow, heal my heart of the network of cracks that still mars its surface…do whatever you think I need…I’m ready.