The odyssey is over; I've returned to Ithaca. Or maybe this is my travel place and Denali National Park is my Ithaca. It's all a jumble.
There are the myriad pictures to remind me of the summer, the memories of voices, the sound of nothing but air, the feel of air crisped by a morning frost, the sight of Sandhill Cranes circling, soaring, and finally winging up to continue their flight south.
But running through my mind at odd points on the drive home were all those details that waited for me in Milwaukee: get the tire leak seen to, new muffler and windshield (each trip to Alaska in the car costs you a windshield), call the cable people, grocery shop, where did I leave the bag of tools. Oh, yes, eye doctor (ouch, new glasses). The serenity of a Mesa Verde sunset and moonrise made me stop...and put all the lists on paper. It worked. I thoroughly enjoyed those last several days of the trip--Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, dipping into Michelle and Bob's lives for a couple of days, breakfast in Santa Fe, climbing through the Raton Pass, and then the endless flat of eastern Colorado and Nebraska, the endless oscillation in Iowa, and--about 35th Street in Milwaukee, the smell in the air of nearby water. A summer spent in 24% humidity magnifies such scents.
As my Milwaukee life resumes, different details fall into place. The nested glass bowls live under the counter to the left of the sink; the hair dryer plugs into the outlet in the over-bathroom-mirror light fixture; the plants are down in the laundry room. Gradually what needs doing here will override the immediacy of what I just lived through. When you divide your life between two places, you have to create room in each to process what happened in the other. The day-to-day living doesn't offer transition time; that time you have to carve out...or simply delay the moment at which you sit down and put the past into place.
So with more calls to make, more items on the list to see to, I'll sign off for the moment. At some point the last six months will acquire more form. Hindsight, they say, is 20-20. Insight takes longer, and is nowhere near as quantifiable.
