Homeless and Vagabondish...

“A vacation is like love - anticipated with pleasure, experienced with discomfort and remembered with nostalgia” ~~Unknown

Once I had gotten the official word that Antarctica was a go, life moved forward all too quickly. I was ticketed my entire flight as well as sent my itinerary for when I arrived at Christchurch in New Zealand. I could finally plan my last month in the states as I knew it.

If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s planning. When there’s the smell of adventure, I’m all over it like a bear on a honey tree. Hence, this very journey to Antarctica.

I believe that before the official journey begins, there has to be the pre-courser: the preparatory adventure in hopes of getting one’s mind in proper “adventuring” mode.

My month of “vacation,” i.e.: being homeless, started out with an end of season staff trip with all my kayak guide co-workers out to this amazing little hidden gem called “Hideaway Cove.” Hideaway Cove is located in the quaint little community of Halibut Cove just outside of Homer, AK.

Here are a few photos of our time spent there: 

(My bosses: Dave and Wendy)

Once we returned from Homer, we had a day to close the kayak shop up for the season, say our good-byes and hit the road. To Dave and Wendy it must have felt like sending the kids out into the world for the first time. We were no longer their responsibility. The only difference was that they didn’t suffer from empty nest syndrome. Their vacation had begun as well.

I drove to Anchorage and dropped off one of my co-workers at the airport so she could catch a flight to the lower 48. On a whim, I made the jump and dropped $100 on a hotel room for the night. In the air of spontaneity it sounded amazing.

A giant room, a giant bed, a giant TV, and a giant shower with awesome water pressure, after all, it’s the little things that matter.

When you’ve spent an entire summer living in a little cottage that also housed six other people with only one shower, life can get interesting. And this is coming from someone who has lived with seven people in a one bedroom apartment at one point and time.

No, we were not illegal immigrants. We were just vagrant trail crew workers who were only in town for about six days a month.

However, I digress…Back to the quaint little cottage that served as our home as well as business on 3rd St. in Seward, AK.

For one, you get lazy. Showers no longer seem attractive when you have to wait for an hour for the water to get hot again. Two, what good does a 50 second rinse off really do when the water pressure was like a watering can with only three operable holes? It took more effort to try to get clean than it did to just stay dirty.

Needless to say, I was looking forward to that hotel shower. I ended up probably taking one of the longest, hottest showers ever recorded. I’m all about water conservation, but on that day, I let the water run…and run.

I then sprawled, ahem, in nothing but my birthday suit, in the middle of the queen sized bed and stared at the TV. I didn’t move for a good five hours. I didn’t even know what was on. I hadn’t seen a TV or even really watched a full movie in months. I was simply hypnotized by the movement on the screen. I could have sat there with the volume on mute and still be mesmerized. I was like a cat watching a ball on a string bouncing back and forth. My eyes went back and forth...back and forth with each movement on the wide screen.

And then there was blessed sleep. It was the sleep of the dead, the peaceful, and the innocent.

Everyone at the kayak shop, who worked with me, knew that I had been plagued with the same repetitive dream all season long. By the time August had rolled around, it had begun to take its toll. I felt strung out, exhausted from lack of sleep, and overall, just cranky. Not a good combination when you have to work with people all day long and smile.

It was a dream that involved my clients showing up too early for their trip so I would have them fall asleep in my room on the floor. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking that I had overslept because my clients weren’t there; they had left and gone on the trip without me. I’d then frantically paw at the curtain covering my window thinking that I’d look for them. At this point in my dream state, my world would turn around so I was no longer in my room but out in the field and I had hauled my kayaks up onto an unknown beach and fallen asleep, forgetting about them.

A kayak guide’s one major fear is to have their boats wash away on them.  It's embarrassing and a rookie move. In my dream, I’d wake up again, thinking that my boats had disappeared with the incoming tide because I couldn’t find them in my room. On the third round of dream world, the whole process would morph into me paddling with my clients in Pederson Lagoon which is an area we paddle on our extended trips. It was a mother ship trip where we sleep on a retired fishing boat called The Dora. In this dream, Pederson Lagoon had turned into an unfamiliar bay and I couldn’t find my way back to The Dora. We were lost, navigating this long channel that just seemed to go on forever and ever.

This sequence of dreams haunted me on a nightly basis for about a span of five months. I’m not an interpreter of dreams, but it was fairly obvious that work had consumed me...night and day. I was ready for sleep devoid of dreams.

I slept until 10am the next morning. I awoke a new person and ready to start the next leg of my vacation. I was headed up to GlenAllen for a three day backpacking trip in the Wrangell St. Elias with one of my old house mates.

On the return from the Wrangells I was inspired to see as much of Alaska as I could while I was still here. I embarked on another overnight backpacking trip out near Eagle River, AK into this remote area of the Chugach State Park called Ewe Valley. 

Then it was off to Juneau, AK to visit some old friends and wander some old haunts and finally close the last chapter of my life before I moved onto the new.