February 23, 2008
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Opening a Big Can of Wyrms
From time to time someone on Xanga asks me where the hell I live or what brought me so far out in the boonies or why I stay here on the edge of the fringe of the backside of beyond. That’s all a matter of perception, actually. This isn’t that far off the beaten track, at least not by Alaskan standards. This is the Railbelt, a strip of varying width about 470 miles long, encompassing most of Alaska’s paved roads and the tracks of the Alaska Railroad.More than nine-tenths of the state’s population lives along this strip. This isn’t the Bush, where a few people live in little villages scattered on the coastline or along the river courses throughout a vast wilderness. A road runs by the end of our driveway, and when the snow gets deep the state’s snowplow comes around and clears it out to give us access to the main highway. Many of my nearby neighbors don’t live on a state maintained road, and have to either plow their own snow or depend throughout winter on snowmobiles, dog sleds or ski planes if they want to go anywhere.
In October, 2002, I wrote about why I came to Alaska. One of my favorite memoir segments is the story of how I got here. On a number of occasions, the latest of them only ten days ago, I have responded to questions about why I stay here. After I wrote that one, my spouse, soulmate and partner in crime, Greyfox, pointed out that I had referred only in passing to one of the most important factors in my having chosen to live on the edge of the back of beyond: people. That such a big matter would so easily slip my mind is an indication of the effectiveness of this tactic. If I was in a city, there’s no way I could forget or ignore the effect that great crowds of humans have on my psyche.
I’m empathic. Life in a city is maddening to me: too much input from too many sources all at once. Even here, I often grow uneasy when a neighbor is ill or injured, or when there is interpersonal conflict going on nearby. Several things amplify what I pick up: physical proximity to the source, number of separate sources radiating similar feelings, intensity of the feelings, etc. I could have been on the top of Denali when Katrina hit New Orleans or the big tsunami hit Indonesia, and I would have known that something big and awful was going on somewhere. I felt something similar to those events when my friend Ray was pulling his snowmachine out of the back of his truck, dropped it on himself, and broke his leg. Stuff like this hits me in my gut with a nausea unlike either food poisoning, seasickness or morning sickness, but just as unpleasant.
Often, it takes a while for me to track down, through news sources or the local grapevine, the source of my sensations. Sometimes, if I’m more attuned to the source, I can sense or envision what’s going on. The things I pick up empathically are not always traumatic. Other kinds of excitement come through loud and clear, such as that of last summer’s Live Earth concerts.
I have never been a sports fan, and still am not, with one notable and obvious exception: sled dog racing. When I moved from Anchorage to this valley, in 1983, I knew about the Iditarod, had seen a few mushers on TV news or local talk shows. Then I started meeting some of them at the lodge or at the spring when they were loading up water for their dogs. Out working in my garden, I could hear the yapping coming from several points around me when it was feeding time in the mushers’ dog yards.
I was aware of the psychic undercurrent of excitement every year when race time came around, and by the time Libby Riddles became the first woman to win an Iditarod, in ’87, and then Susan Butcher began her winning streak that made the men start wondering if one of them would ever win it again, I had given up all efforts to ignore it, and let myself get swept up in Iditarod fever. I can feel it building right now. Next weekend, on Saturday city crews will haul some of the snow they’ve plowed from Anchorage streets back to a few blocks of Fourth Avenue for the Ceremonial Start. After a short run through town, teams will be loaded back into their hay-lined boxes on trucks and hauled almost this far up this valley, for the real start, the “restart” on Sunday in Willow.
I will follow it on radio and through websites as well as with the empathic sensations of fear when some team gets off the trail and out of contact, grief if a dog dies, gloom and doom when the trail is rough, or triumph when everything goes right. And I will pass the news along, share it with Xanga, and enjoy the responses of the mushing fans and those of you who will be discovering the sport through me. You can see a video bird’s eye view of an airlift flight carrying supplies to checkpoints along the trail, HERE, and find more videos, the announcement of 4-time champion Doug Swingley’s retirement, plus other info, on the official Iditarod website.
Just in case my title and illustration seem off-topic or obscure, I’ll share with you my quirky chain of associations. “Can” is an English corruption of Gaelic ceann, meaning head. Empathy — mind, brain, head, can — psychic crap that lots of people believe is either nonexistent or evil — can of worms, wyrms, dragons, green/good dragons, red/evil dragons, gorgons, snakes, worms, and back around to wyrms and dragons again — if you don’t get the picture by now, just give it up. It’s silly anyway. BTW, I neither speak nor read Gaelic. I happen to know “ceann” because I am descended from Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, Malcolm Canmore (Ceann Mór), first king of the House of Dunkeld.
And that’s enough of that. I must wind this up and post. Today, being Saturday, Doug has another regularly scheduled D&D session online, and I need to nag him into completing a few tasks around here before he becomes immersed in a different world for the rest of the day. I’ll probably get around tomorrow to read some blogs on Xanga. If some of the rest of Doug’s gang don’t show up for the session and it has to be canceled, I might be around later today.
You’re highly reactive, energetic, and super charged.
If the occasion calls for it, you can go from 0 to 60 in a split second.
But you don’t harness your energy unless you truly need to.
And because of this, people are often surprised by what you are capable of.Why you would be a good superhero: You have the stamina to fight enemies for days.
Your biggest problem as a superhero: As with your normal life, people would continue to underestimate you.
Your Mind is Green 
You are able to see all sides to most problems and are a good problem solver.
You need time to work out your thoughts, but you don’t get stuck in bad thinking patterns.You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the future, philosophy, and relationships (both personal and intellectual).
Comments (6)
I had visions of you cut off from civilization until I’d read your blog a while. You’ve introduced me to a whole different vision of life in Alaska.
You must have a difficult time in places like hospitals with all of those energies…..
Ah, Kathy…you and I are so much alike. I even followed your quirky chain of association. And I came up with the same super powers and mind color as you. Except, I could not live as you do on the edge of the fringe of the backside of beyond. I’m a city girl, through and through.
I remember GreyFox telling me about your empathy when I naively asked that question.
I understood
.
When you got sick I followed along, silently knowing how difficult it must have been for you to go to the ER, mentally cheering you on, resolved that it would all happened the way it should, despite my hope for you to get stronger…
and when you wrote how GF thought he had lost you, I silently nodded to myself that I felt that same way…
*hugs*
i love your iditarod coverage.
if not for you, i’d still be looking at is at “that sled race in alaska.”
never in a derisive manner, mind you, but not as captivated as i am when reading your blogs.
and on a totally different subject…if you think of it and if you are so inclined…my brother [your fellow virgo] is having his surgery tuesday early in the morning. he asks only for good thoughts, perhaps a candle, and some words to gaea guide him though it. i figure if anyone can toss a good word out to the right entities, it’d be you.
and yes, you know i’m being my typical stoic self.
defenses up and armed.
Susu. I have a personal question and, perhaps, I’m boundary crossing. Clinical social workers, such as myself, have been known to nudge a little in areas where they shouldn’t be. But I digress. I’m curious, after all these years, if you still consider yourself romantically involved with greyfox. Is the spark still there? And if there’s a spark, how would you describe it?