Saturday's dinner party is over, and now I can concentrate on amassing the stacks of stuff I will tote back to Alaska for my second summer on staff at Camp Denali/North Face Lodge. My second summer of living in an indescribable national park (although that doesn't stop me from trying to describe it). My second summer of testing my limits of physical endurance.
No, I'm not climbing up anything or trekking from point A to point B. I refer simply to working 10-hour days this far into my sixties. While the job description is different this summer, I will be in the same location, and I'm hoping that more hours hiking on days off will balance the increase in time spent at a desk in the office.
Like last year, I'll be driving the formidable Miss Scarlett, my red Honda, All. The. Way. To. Alaska. Unlike last year's direct trip northwest, this year's route detours to Carmel, California, and thence north through Oregon, Seattle, (to visit friends and relatives) and British Columbia. I'll pick up the Alaska Highway at Fort Saint John, BC, ending up in Anchorage on the 11th of April.
There will be some who'll gasp and groan at my planned 14 days on the road (come to think of it, so do I, just a little). But just remember that I absolutely love to drive, love to absorb everything I see around me as I go, and yes, I really do enjoy days in the solitary bubble of my car. It's delightful to chat with people I run into along the way; it is instructive to see that others respond happily to out-of-staters at gas stations, restaurants, motels.
Others will ask if I listen to books on tape (no, too distracting), or to music (occasionally), or the radio (NPR is right there at the left end of the FM dial). Often I sing. I make up songs or just dootle-doot-do a tuneless melody. Invented conversations bounce around my cranium, and many of them end up on paper. At a friend's suggestion, and because some of those particularly scintillating inventions bounce right out the window, this year I'm taking a small tape recorder with me. It will sit in the gearshift console, right next to the Nalgene bottle of water and the travel cup for coffee.
Blog postings will come fast and furiously while I'm on the road--they're my conversation at the end of the day, full of observations, random thoughts, even a bit of insight. It's amazing what the brain conjures up while you're alone in the car for nine hours at a stretch. As I did last summer, I invite you to follow my blog for details of "retirement" in the far north. It's the best way to keep each of you current (sort of) with what's going on in my days.
Excelsior!
No comments:
Post a Comment