I know immediately that I made a lifelong friend in Jim
After our phone call ends, I feel a pillar of hope enter my life. Not only have my financial stresses subsided at the prospect of a new job , but something about the man’s voice and his manner of speech, assures me that in meeting him, I have found asylum. He says that he’s happy to have met me, and is assured that my positive attitude will ensure the future house’s good spirit, or “at.oow”.
The work on his house proceeds at a very relaxed pace. He shares with me the wisdom that he’s accrued over a very colorful lifetime, as a veteran helicopter pilot, a biker, a nurse practitioner, and foremost as a born again Christian. Overflowing love, humor, and generosity are all I would ever know from this gentle soul, who’s nature, like a pendulum, is also capable of swinging far into the opposing realm of wrath and retribution. Troubled by a history of violent trauma, the events of his life had played out as that of a legendary hero ordained by God.
We’re blessed with an unusually pleasant summer and make good progress on the house. Ashley and I move into our own apartment downtown, and Jim and his wife become like family to us. Using my credentials as a former park service employee, I land a job in a newly created position within the city as a park ranger. This position is modeled after a program designed back home in Austin, Texas. My supervisor, like Jim, hails from the New England area. I’m able to re-enroll in school for the fall. All the pieces seem to be falling into place.
However, this being Alaska, extraordinary chaos is ever-present
My second day on the job, an excavator tips over, nearly plummeting hundreds of feet from off of a cliff face. One of the workers involved was the man I saved from drowning. Nate, our old roommate who instigated Ashley’s arrest, returns to stay with us awhile, before we ask him to leave for heroine use. He was associating with the same individual implicated in a fatal jet-ski accident that precipitated the creation of my job position. Alaska is a very small community, and I try keeping a low profile in a high-profile law enforcement position.
The remainder of the summer is relatively uneventful, aside from dredging several tons of soggy books from out of a ditch, removing a dead man’s belongings from the campground, picking up discarded furniture from off of the beach, and discouraging hard drug users from shooting up in city parks. I familiarize myself with the city landholdings, as well as how to install and operate an elaborate system of security cameras, all the while dodging the daily human turd, and solitary sock, that seem to crop up no matter how far from civilization I might be.
Over the winter, I work part-time at the local ice rink while taking classes at the University of Alaska Southeast. I take Ashley home with me for the first time, over Christmas, where we take a side trip to Big Bend National Park. I’d visited once before when I was younger, but this time I’m struck with the area’s indescribable natural beauty and mystique. While hiking the Lost Mines trail, it dawns on me – the irony that after years of traveling, and a lifetime of wanting to see the world, I’m certain that no better place can exist on Earth than here in my own home state of Texas.
Upon returning back to the darkness of Alaska, I fall hard…again
This time I land on hard ground, not a vehicle, and narrowly miss a couple rusty iron posts. Again, it was during a birthday party. I was shown beforehand that the door lead to thin air (the house was under construction), yet somehow during the course of the night, I stepped out of it, in an overly dramatic way, that led everyone to believe that I was only kidding…until I really fell. In an effort to play it off, I ran back inside, and to everyone’s shock, danced it off. But I had crumpled like an accordion, and riding my bike to work the next morning, I feel it.
Concerned for weeks that I had seriously injured myself, but too proud to go see a doctor, I hold on to hope from a friend’s story about a similar back issue that resolved itself after the strain of hauling in a massive halibut. Sure enough, the excruciating pain drilling deep into my spinal cord like a giant tattoo gun, sometimes nearly rendering me unconscious, disappears after a volunteer firefighter training exercise, in which I must repeatedly climb through a small window in full firefighting gear.
The next ranger season holds more distinctively Alaskan issues
I capture footage of a wanted pyromaniac which ends a long string of old growth trees being set on fire. I track down and chase out a number of illegal encampments, clear trails of windfall and rockslides, and come face to face everyday with the growing issue of homelessness and mental illness – even using it as the subject of an ethnographic study for school. Some issues are trivial, like when cruise ship passengers come into contact with the skinning of animals along trail sides. Some issues are haunting, like when a hiker vanishes without a trace.
I’m constantly aware of the fact that I was once in the very position of the illegal squatters that I now pursue. Whereas I profit in having turned this experience into a career, they suffer, desperate and homeless, in being driven further and further from modern services. I’m always wary that my ability to snuff out camps, where no one else is able to, will give myself away, but much more than this, I worry of encountering my unidentifiable attackers out alone somewhere. I have no backup, and often no cell signal at all.
Something incredible happens on the night before my 25th birthday
While camping on a secluded shore with three other individuals, we’re presented with a phenomenon characteristic of the uniquely Alaskan relationship between man and nature: the northern lights materializing as a solitary glowing figure hanging just over the nearby waves. The shimmering green shape arranges itself into the totemic figure of the Kach.adi lady; a form with hair that flows with the bodies of salmon – a representation of the landmark boulder, from out of which two streams flow, located directly opposite us, on nearby Admiralty Island.
A white wolf ventures through our campsite at dawn. Ashley wakes up early to cook a nice breakfast over the campfire, and unwittingly stokes the embers with kindling containing a live .22 round. I awaken on my birthday to the sound of a gun blast and a bullet shooting by, within feet of my head.
Summer progresses
We show off Juneau a number of times to guests visiting from back home, and then unexpectedly one night Ashley and I finally break up for good during an argument over Chinese food. I’m unable to deal with the loss after coming so far. Perhaps in a subconscious act of self-sabotage, I begin quickly squandering my half of the considerable savings we’d amassed. My sleep schedule, like my behavior in general, becomes erratic and unpredictable.
Bouncing around from place to place, I buy things quicker than I can figure out where to put them. I drop thousands on a boat, a kayak, guns, and tools… never mind what I spend on staying out late every night. My life becomes a mess. I move into a fixer-upper trailer Jim gifts to me and during it’s renovation I cause the roof to collapse. I fall behind in school, and start running with some real shady characters. Just as things seem to be reaching a breaking point, Jim and I leave for a week-long moose hunt.
The ferry ride to Kake is absolutely sublime
We’re followed by a pod of orcas, and I’m given a layout of the local Tlingit history and place names. Jim lived in the village for several years, as his wife calls the place home. Because of this, we are readily accepted into the community, and I’m offered an insider’s perspective into a way of life that has long disappeared from much of the rest of southeast Alaska.
Our arrival coincides with the commemorative totem pole raising ceremony in honor of a dear friend of Jim’s. Instead of heading directly out into the bush, we linger for the first two days, in order to lend a hand with the carving and painting. While taking a break at the local family house one day, I’m offered smoked dear and salmon, a side of potatoes, stink eggs (fermented salmon roe), and seal oil to top it all off. I love it.
After a very touching totem raising memorial ceremony, Jim and I head out towards the mountains, and bag four hooters (grouse), presenting them to the village culture-bearer. We return to our camp later that night. I wake up to relieve myself in the woods, and just then the hammock I’m sleeping in crashes to the ground. I dig myself out, and while peeing in the pitch-black forest, a bear charges me. Instinctively, I unleash a primal yell that sends the bear running back into the trees.
Back at the hammock, I have to tell Jim that it’s just me so he doesn’t shoot me from inside his tent
We set out to a secluded bay on kayaks early the next morning. Jim stakes out a spot and conceals himself, while I follow moose tracks along the shore a ways. I build a fire and drinking devil’s club tea, while attending a Tlingit language class over the phone. Shortly after class is over, I hear Jim fire and see him carrying something large and red down to the shore. “Could it be a moose head?”, I ask myself.
I turn back to join him and he shouts, pointing behind me. Turning back around, I spot a truly gargantuan specimen of a moose staring right back at me, from just beyond my campfire. His rack is massive. I raise my rifle to take aim and, true to his image, as some ancient guardian of the forest, he magically disappears back into the wilderness, never to be seen again.
The remainder of the trip is mostly spent attending to camp chores: purifying water, drying out gear, and traveling back and forth across the bay. We miss a shot at a pair of deer very early on, and wouldn’t see any other creatures for the rest of the trip. The shots that Jim had fired (before the moose revealed itself) were made to scare off a black bear that came too close and startled him awake after he had slipped into a short nap while posted up beneath a tree.
A heavy storm rolls in on our last night
Luckily we find ourselves on the mainland side of the bay, and we catch a few minutes of sleep inside Jim’s vehicle. We pack up, ready to roll out, and realize that the car battery is dead. Just then, another pair of hunters pull up and jump our vehicle with their truck. Later, we would learn that one of them is suspected in the case of a brutal murder of a young native girl just a few years before.
We join a hunting party of Coast Guard rescue swimmers before sailing back to Juneau
Immediately upon arrival, I get sucked back into a very unhealthy lifestyle. Ashley and a close friend perform a kind of intervention. I visit a mental health specialist who suspects that I may be suffering from bipolar disorder. A few phone calls back home reveal that the disorder runs in the family. I make arrangements to move back home with family and seek treatment. Before I know it, I’m back where I started in Texas.
One of the first things I do back home is pay a visit to my favorite person in the world, my grandpa Frank. We grab lunch together, and carry on as if I had never left at all. No form of description could ever do justice to the depth of love and purity of peace that I feel in his presence at this time, just as I always had each time we visited together before. Little did I know that this would be the very last time that I would see him in this way.
It’s the first time that I’ve been back (outside of winter) in years. The atmosphere, company, and weather are all blissful. I seriously question why I ever left in the first place. I quickly forgo any attempt at finding work or treatment. Instead, I soak up the sun during the day, and at night, and visit with everyone I’ve been meaning to catch up with for years. I smash a bike to pieces, receive a mixtape called Being Bipolar, get tatted up, and buy a whole new kayak setup – intent on living wild, out on the fringes of Texas, until the next ranger season comes along.
My dad, brother, and I take a guy’s trip back out to Big Bend NP
After exploring the sandhills of Monahans, we overnight at Balmorhea State Park, where I lose all patience trying to work things out with Ashley over the phone. There, my dad dispenses to me the same wisdom that his dad once gave to him long ago. He tells me that sometimes, if something is too terribly difficult, the best thing to do is to just let it go.
The next day, after swimming in the local springs, we continue the journey on towards Alpine, and eventually to the Cottonwood Campground of Big Bend National Park. In the morning, we set out for my favorite trail in the world: the Lost Mines trail. There in the parking lot, we are faced with the most unlikely of circumstances: a beautiful foreign girl accompanied by her parents. The moment I see her, it’s love at first sight. But, still very much burnt by love, I mean to have absolutely nothing to do with her.
As they pass us, my father calls out “Guten Tag!”, to which the three enthusiastically reply back. I know my aim is now in vain, but I still make it clear that under no circumstances are we to communicate with these people. My dad just looks at me in amusement. My brother seems every bit as bewildered as I am.
At every turn in the trail, it seems, our two groups exchange a little more information
The only proficient English speaker among them is the father. He seems interested about life in Alaska. I suspect we’ll keep a good dialogue going, as I had gotten ahead of myself, and accidentally revealed to him our evening plans of watching the sunset from the nearby hot springs. Sure enough, we meet once again at the springs, after another brief encounter at Boquillas Canyon.
We’d just returned from a short swim across the border and back, when the three arrive. They’re Swiss apparently. The father facilitates all communication, until eventually his beautiful daughter, Fabienne, swims up next to me and asks me about the wound on my arm. I barely finish one sentence, before her eyes grow wide and she swims away in embarrassment . She later comes back and asks me if I know what a Luxemburgerli is. “It’s like a hamburger”, she says “just without the lettuce, the tomato, the meat, the bread…”. My mind just goes blank.
She gives me her number. Despite her having a boyfriend, we keep in daily contact. Around this time, a long-lost friend from elementary school, named Eli, returns back home from Colorado under suspiciously similar circumstances as myself. We meet up and I agree to take him back to Alaska with me. He tells me that, in the morning, if I’m up for doing anything, I should get in touch with him.
The next morning, Fabienne writes me that she’s alone in a hotel in Dallas for the next couple of days, since her parents flew out and until her boyfriend flies in. I use this as an opportunity, and convince Eli to drive me up there to play wingman. The three of us have a wonderful time together….doing nothing much in particular other than telling stories and making each other laugh.
Eventually, the fun is over
We head back home, and she leaves for a road trip with her boyfriend. Meanwhile, my grandpa’s health rapidly deteriorates. His faculties digress to the point where even being around him becomes unbearable. My mom tells me that his last words, before finally succumbing to asphyxiation, were “Where is Jordan?”. “He’s out fishing”, was her reply.
His passing brings great relief, actually. Though the trauma of his cause of death is horrifying, I enjoy the feeling of his continual presence. Fabienne and her boyfriend quit their road trip early to spend a couple weeks with Eli and me – a strange dynamic, especially since I had long exhausted my finances. Nevertheless, she leaves me a love note before departure. At the end, it asks me to keep my nose out of trouble, and that getting arrested will make it very difficult for any future visits.
A coyote crosses our path the night we are arrested
After hanging around the local bars, catching up with old classmates, we pass by a park on the way home and decide to “hunt” a steamy car we find parked there. The moment the driver jumps out at us, swinging a tire iron, the cops pull up. Eli puts his hands up, and I take off running. I’m lucky to make it a few miles without getting shot. The shadows from their flashlights in the thick forest put a stop to my getaway.
I’m convinced that the resulting charges will cost me my job, causing me to fall into a deep depression right as winter descends. I work a series of humiliating minimum wage jobs while living at my dad’s…feeling like a complete failure, and unable to afford anymore the treatment that I so desperately sought in coming down to Texas in the first place. Fabienne and I keep in touch, though deep down I struggle with the idea of just saving her the trouble, and dropping all communication. Ashley and I resume contact once again.
The same neighbor who once saw me off, in prophetic fashion years before, locks eyes with me as I leave once more for Alaska
I return to pick up the pieces of a life that now seems to be the product of a total delusion. Foolishness is what brought me here to this backwater, and molded me into the maladjusted wreck that I’ve become. I’m inundated with school and hospital bills, tickets from the State Troopers for not returning my moose tag and for falsely registering as a resident my first year in Alaska. My car is shot, my belongings scattered, and my circle of friends suspicious. All the while, the case in Texas hangs heavy over my head.
I withstand a very difficult summer season mostly in self-isolation. I occupy a room in a house with little else but a borrowed cot. I regularly go to therapy, and despite my poor condition, am told that there is nothing wrong with me. Simple communication becomes a burden. Life is gloomy. The city campground (where, years before, the old camp host was involved in a game of Russian roulette which left somebody with a gunshot wound to the head) begins drawing an increasing number of seedy characters that make my daily visits a nightmare.
Miraculously, the case is dismissed. I’m able to pay off my debts, and even sign up for classes full-time over the fall semester. I work on the side, doing small home renovations for a couple preparing to sell their house and move back down south. I’m finally able to feel comfortable interacting with other people again, as well as feel at peace with myself when alone. I move back in with Ashley, on a catamaran in the harbor, and try my best to cut off all communication with Fabienne as the fall semester commences.
Fueled by the shocking ordeal I had just overcome, I overcompensate by trying to smooth things over with Ashley, while taking on an overly-ambitious workload at school. It’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, but the scars of what I’ve just overcome convince me that this is the only way for me to move forward in life, after having fallen so far off track. I’m miserable, but determined to push through in order to make a success out of myself. This becomes a downward spiral, leading to a total burnout.
Eli moves on the boat with us shortly after our neighbor dies, while passed out drunk, from the fumes of the gas stove he left on. I breakdown into crisis towards the end of the semester. I refuse Fabienne’s suggestion that we meet over Christmas, and she tries permanently blocking me. At this point, I weigh my options: either I try continuing down the “successful” path that has never worked out for long, or I take my chances at giving it all up in pursuit of the woman I really love. I send Fabienne an e-mail, telling her I’m finally ready to try and make things work.
I take a trip to the Caribbean country I wrote a report about for my geography class
Over the course of my 2 weeks there, my resolve becomes solidified. Ashley moves out. I feel like I know what I’m really doing for the first time in my adult life. I start taking better care of myself, both physically and mentally. I get back into both climbing and paddling, and find a cool new group of friends who introduce me to aerial silks.
I really start traveling, finally. Fabienne and I meet for the first time since Texas in Las Vegas for a weeklong road trip through the Southwest. Afterwards, I fly out to the Seattle area, to help in the construction of a pergola, at the new house of the folks I did work for back in Juneau. With the money I make there, I travel to Hong Kong together with my brother.
I fly back to Juneau, the night before the next ranger season starts, and wake up (severely jetlagged) in my hammock to the sound of my wallet and phone plopping into the ocean below me. Eli comes home that evening from a ski touring trip in which his guide was nearly mauled to death by a brown bear mother. A friend of his moves in with us. My boss reveals that he’s been dealing with the severe bipolar episodes of his mother’s husband, and I make the mistake of telling him that I was once considered a plausible candidate for having the illness, myself.
I’m almost adopted into the Deisheetaan clan, we survive days of being swarmed by seagulls, and a mysterious gang of identical, tattoo-faced longboarders can be seen around town being pulled by their dogs. We invest in an airhorn to placate the deathly screams of an insane lady who moves in across from us. A few floats down, a Hell’s Angel moves in. He introduces himself, politely offers to sell cheap homemade cigarettes, and let’s me know that the day before he suffered from a heart attack.
One of my best friends flies in from Texas to live with us on the boat. I know that he’s suffered some pretty intense brain damage from a car accident, but the extent of it wouldn’t reveal itself until after his arrival, when I hide in the back seat and have an odd fellow I’d met a few days earlier pick him up from the airport, and give him an over-the-top, made-up tour of the city. The joke is totally lost on Joey, and backfires when we can’t get the odd fellow to beat it afterwards. He sleeps in nearby bushes, like a snorlax, until the city erects a No Camping sign there.
Joey’s quirks quickly turn people against him
I suspect that he’ll adjust in time. However, after watching him every couple of hours, day after day, ride to the local gas station for a soda, on a kid’s bike that he found, I start to feel differently. This behavior won’t serve him well here. He makes my friends uncomfortable. He calls Tlingits Klingons. He regularly shows up to my work and pounds on the front door until someone lets him in. I take him camping at a secluded beach one evening. Once we get there, the first thing he asks is if there’s a Taco Bell nearby.
I join him on a soda run one evening, where we run into the crazy neighbor lady of ours screaming at a piece of heavy equipment. Joey engages her immediately, singing a profane impromptu song, urging her to stick her thumb up her arse. The next day, my boss finds my camera, two safety vests, and an extra pair of my underwear in the work truck, and indirectly accuses me of holding a gay photo shoot with Joey sometime during work hours.
Joey is relegated to sleeping on a cot, on the deck of the boat, due to making my roommates nervous. I hear a commotion up there early one morning, and discover him having a full-on seizure – the cot having shifted to within an inch from falling off of the side of the boat and into the sea. After receiving treatment, he tells me he forgot to take his medication. I’m frustrated that he never told me about needing to take seizure medication, and concerned about him falling overboard at some point.
I tell him he’s not to come around the boat anymore
He tries sneaking back onto the boat a few times, before the Hell’s Angel takes him under his wing. At this point, I decide that this isn’t the place for him and that I’m unwilling to take the risk of being responsible if something were to happen. I call up his mother and arrange for him to be sent back home. I front them the money, and send him along on the next outbound flight. I watch as he enters the airport building for what would turn out to be the last time that I would ever see him.
Back at work, I’m reprimanded by my boss a second time, after picking up a woman in distress against city policy. He encourages me to go seek treatment again. I feel like he’s got it out for me, and find no basis for any of his accusations. In a few weeks, I’ll fly out to visit Fabienne for the first time in Switzerland, where I plan to propose, before we marry and move back to Juneau. However, I comment to Jim and others close to me, that I might not return from Switzerland after all. Everyone says that they understand and would probably do the same if they were in my shoes.
My sense of attachment to Juneau seems to vanish overnight
On the 4th of July, after the festivities subside, sitting alone on the deck of the boat, a thought occurs. So strong is it, in fact, that it feels divinely inspired. I call my wife-to-be, and tell her that I’m quitting my job to stay with her in her country. “We’ll never make it if we move to Alaska”, I tell her. I assure her that, as a married couple, I’ll never make such one-sided decisions again. With that, I pack up my desk, leave a note, and make like a tree – a maple one at that.
