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Message |
| Posted By: |
mlurtsema |
| Date: |
12-Dec-2003-19:31:39 |
| Subject: |
North to Alaska |
I recently moved with my young family to Alaska. We made the move early to beat the oncoming winter; but winter came early. The first snow was falling as we exited the airport and put our luggage in the back of my brother-in-law's pickup truck.
The first thing I noticed in the crisp mornings as the sun was rising above the Chugiach range, or setting in the "South", is the power of the land. The body bristles with a fundamental energy.
Standing at my kids bus stop at the end of the day, waiting for them to come home, it is icy and cold--below zero cold. There is an "arctic" feel to the coldness that I have not experienced before. It goes beyond the clarity and crispness of cold I have experienced before, in places like Wyoming and New York. The coldness go toward a brightness, intense clarity, and immediate "tinkliness" (for lack of a real word) where reality is so much that it can shatter along with an icy breath.
And it does.
Day-to-day reality gives way to something indescribable that we all are, that the mountains, the trees, the snow, the ice, the cold is. It is nearer than the cold air I breath, nearer than a knife at the throat, it is everywhere and everything.
A car slides as it comes to a stop on the icy road, and it goes through the stop sign. I smile and the driver and she smiles back. It is all part of this reality where samsara and nirvana (if we must use jargon) is all the same.
Then the bus stops, and I help my five year old off and my nine year old takes off toward our warm home near the Arctic circle. And there is only a peace that can barely be stirred even by blistering cold.
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