The Light on the Flats
A few years ago, I more or less went blind. Oh, I could still see. Sometimes. If the light was right. And if I didn't have to blindfold myself because of the pain in my eyes. Went to every specialist in the city, they never did figure out what was wrong with me, and one day, my sight just started to come back. Except for night vision and peripheral vision, but who needs those, right? I have an Arizona driver's license. It's good until I'm 60.
At perhaps the most blind part of all this, I flew up to Alaska, rented a car, and drove a couple thousand miles. The first day, driving out of Anchorage, I rolled the window down, and just past Eklutna--not even 20 miles from town--I started to feel really lightheaded, sick. And I thought no, no way, not on the first day of my trip.
And then I realized it was oxygen. Pure oxygen high. Living in Phoenix, I'd forgotten what air was supposed to be like.
The trip was quite an experience, because there were frequent times when I couldn't tell the difference between the road and the trees along side the road, and I must have hit the brakes for a couple hundred stump bears.
Near the end of the trip, I was at Beluga Point, just south of Anchorage. Twilight--the time of day when I saw the least--was coming on, but there were maybe thirty belugas headed towards the point, and I wasn't about to miss that.
We could hear them from maybe a mile off, barking and calling to each other.
A young woman sitting on the rocks near me noticed I was having trouble and handed me her binoculars, wouldn't take them back once I told her what was going on. "A pleasure shared," she said, "is a pleasure doubled."
The belugas came right up to where we were, just feet from the rocks. Listening to them was like listening to a room full of hyperactive kids make balloons squeak. But there was also that exhale sound, when they came up to breathe, and once, just once, I saw a baby, neatly tucked in behind its mother's fin, as the two of them moved in perfect unison.
And I thought, okay. If I go blind after this, okay. I saw this.
Thankfully, I didn't go blind. And today, I drove, on a road that was pure ice, out to Dyea, over the bridge on the Taiya River, past the slide cemetery, past the campground, past the parking lot for the ghost town where there were once twenty or thirty thousand hopeful miners, waiting to head over the Chilkoot (that dreadful famous picture you see, insane people walking straight uphill in snow). I'd never gone past that before, but the road continued, over a one-lane bridge, and then out onto the flats at the head of the inlet.
Maybe two feet of snow on the ground--deep enough it rubbed against the undercarriage of the car sometimes--the "service 4WD" light blinking on the dash, and then the sun came out from behind the one cloud in the sky.
It lit the inlet on fire, turned the snow into a blinding spotlight, focused the mountain light like we were in the bottom of a giant parabolic mirror.
And I was, for just a moment, blind again.
And again, I was okay with it.
At perhaps the most blind part of all this, I flew up to Alaska, rented a car, and drove a couple thousand miles. The first day, driving out of Anchorage, I rolled the window down, and just past Eklutna--not even 20 miles from town--I started to feel really lightheaded, sick. And I thought no, no way, not on the first day of my trip.
And then I realized it was oxygen. Pure oxygen high. Living in Phoenix, I'd forgotten what air was supposed to be like.
The trip was quite an experience, because there were frequent times when I couldn't tell the difference between the road and the trees along side the road, and I must have hit the brakes for a couple hundred stump bears.
Near the end of the trip, I was at Beluga Point, just south of Anchorage. Twilight--the time of day when I saw the least--was coming on, but there were maybe thirty belugas headed towards the point, and I wasn't about to miss that.
We could hear them from maybe a mile off, barking and calling to each other.
A young woman sitting on the rocks near me noticed I was having trouble and handed me her binoculars, wouldn't take them back once I told her what was going on. "A pleasure shared," she said, "is a pleasure doubled."
The belugas came right up to where we were, just feet from the rocks. Listening to them was like listening to a room full of hyperactive kids make balloons squeak. But there was also that exhale sound, when they came up to breathe, and once, just once, I saw a baby, neatly tucked in behind its mother's fin, as the two of them moved in perfect unison.
And I thought, okay. If I go blind after this, okay. I saw this.
Thankfully, I didn't go blind. And today, I drove, on a road that was pure ice, out to Dyea, over the bridge on the Taiya River, past the slide cemetery, past the campground, past the parking lot for the ghost town where there were once twenty or thirty thousand hopeful miners, waiting to head over the Chilkoot (that dreadful famous picture you see, insane people walking straight uphill in snow). I'd never gone past that before, but the road continued, over a one-lane bridge, and then out onto the flats at the head of the inlet.
Maybe two feet of snow on the ground--deep enough it rubbed against the undercarriage of the car sometimes--the "service 4WD" light blinking on the dash, and then the sun came out from behind the one cloud in the sky.
It lit the inlet on fire, turned the snow into a blinding spotlight, focused the mountain light like we were in the bottom of a giant parabolic mirror.
And I was, for just a moment, blind again.
And again, I was okay with it.
posted by e. Readicker-Henderson at 11:07 PM
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