Upstream

We reached Alaska last night. 

It was raining and grey as we passed through customs at the border and we pulled over not too long after to boil water for tea and make something warm to eat under the watchful eyes of the boreal forest. We pulled into the Fairbanks Walmart parking lot in the 10pm gloaming and rolled into the back of the truck, falling asleep to the sounds of city life.

Our journey so far has been marked by long days of driving since leaving Seattle ten days ago and life has been a whirlwind since leaving California. But we expected this, planned for it, braced for it. We set our sights on the Brooks Range before it froze solid and knew we’d have to fly past places we yearned to stop if we wanted to make it in time. 

There have been the hiccups of any good adventure. We reached the Alaskan Highway in Dawson Creek, British Columbia in the midst of choking wildfire smoke only to learn that the road into the Yukon was closed due to fire. So we backtracked the eight hours to the only alternative route and were rewarded with our first breaths of clean air in a week and a stunning drive up the Cassiar Highway. We’ve slept in crowded and noisy city parks and Walmarts, but we also followed a winding and rutted dirt road down to a lake that meant waking up to the sounds of loons calling and a place to spread my yoga mat and work out a few of the driving kinks. 

I admit to looking forward to slowing down after we reach Coldfoot tomorrow, to putting into practice our three-night-minimum-stay rule and having a chance to look more closely at these environments so foreign and wild. The goal all along was to race north and then meander south towards Denali and Lake Clark and Kenai as weather dictated. We’re almost there.

But a couple of days ago, I stood by the roar of Rearguard Falls on the Fraser River. As the ground hummed with the force of thousands of CFS of water pouring over the falls, I watched as enormous crimson salmon fought their way up the pounding water. They would suddenly fly out of the frothing mass of white water and, through Herculean effort and will, battle their way into the only slightly less challenging pools between the drops. I’ve seen photographs and specials on television, but nothing even remotely prepared me for the power of witnessing this in person. I couldn’t breathe as I watched them, the wonder and the tears clogged my throat and I couldn’t tear myself away. 

Those salmon were 800 miles into their journey from the Pacific, trusting an instinct they don’t understand, giving themselves over to a trial that may kill them as they brawl with current and predator and exhaustion. They didn’t stop to ask whether they were worthy, whether they were enough. They didn’t seek the approval of others and weren’t comparing their leap up the falls to that of their counterparts. They’d never survive, never reach those spawning grounds, with those kinds of distractions, with that kind of self-doubt.

We all take our upstream journeys, and if we’re lucky and we work crazy hard and we keep the distractions at bay, we touch our deepest instincts for a moment, the intuition and the wild within us, the parts down deep where our primal forces can guide us toward truth, toward the place where the dreams and potential we hold inside us can be born.

Along the way predators drop from the sky and we choose channels that are too shallow or get sidetracked into a side stream and lose the main current. There are naysayers and people who try to steal our energy and our time. We make mistakes and have to backtrack, find our way back to a path that we simply have to take on trust is there.  And along the way there is death. Our excuses, our rationalizations, the fears we’ve held close- they have to be left behind, their weight scraped off on the rocks if we are to have any hope of making it up the falls that wait upstream. The versions of ourselves that accept less than we know to be true, that accept the lies our own inner naysayer feeds us, won’t- can’t- survive the journey. 

I stood next to roaring water and learned lessons from salmon about who I want to be, about how I want to live. If I take nothing else from this time, I will come away glad for the freezing nights huddled in sleeping bags and the dinners cooked while rain drips in a chilly stream down my neck in exchange for this lesson alone.

Adventures aren’t supposed to be comfortable. They’re not meant to be easy. They are, by design, supposed to be a challenge, an opportunity to grow. What makes an adventure an adventure and not simply an ordeal is that rewards are scattered throughout if we are paying attention. Sometimes in the form of salmon. Or a conversation with a stranger that makes us feel connected. Or a sunset over a lake that catches us off guard and grabs our soul for a second.  

So far, this has been one incredible adventure. And I’m looking forward to what waits upstream.

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Thank you so much for your patience with my unreliability...another few weeks and I will be back to posting like clockwork, I promise! In the meantime, here's a little bit of photographic recap in case you're interested...

Leaving California, complete with truckstop meals, on our way to storing Kippee outside of Seattle...

Crossing the border into Canada and into beautiful British Columbia...

Rearguard Falls on the Fraser River...

Wildfire smoke making 2:00 in the afternoon look like dusk, and a not-so-glamorous "campsite" in a pullout next to the highway in the haze of smoke...

Finally breathing easy in the beauty of the Cassiar Highway...

The sign forest of Watson Lake and the beginning of our time on the Alaskan Highway (the cyclists remind me that I have nothing to complain about when I feel dirty or cold- so hardcore!)...

Waiting out some rain in the back of the truck...