The first time I ever thought I could write a book was when I was in Alaska. It wasn’t my idea. It came from this idiot kid from New England who wanted everyone to know he was from New England. “I’m a writer,” he told the group of us hanging around Jayme and Paul’s apartment, “and I’m here to collect experiences and write a book.” He was probably 19, the same as me.
I didn’t connect with him on any level; I didn’t relate my copious pourings into my notebook to his “collecting experiences.” I certainly wasn’t telling anyone that I was a college student in the second most expensive private college in the country, and I was never going to announce to a group of strangers that I was a writer. Besides, he was a pompous ass who had no idea how hard it was to write a book. I joined in the derision poured upon him. “Are you using us?” he was asked. “Do you want us to fake a fight or something?” “Are you gay?
“C’mon,” I said. “It’s none of our business even if he were.” Is that what I said? I don’t remember. I hope so; it’s what I feel when I remember this day. This was in 1990, when it still felt unacceptable to challenge someone’s idea or position by attacking the person himself.
He finally left the apartment, and I was left at the kitchen table, looking out onto Whittier and the Prince William Sound. The hummingbirds were hovering at the window again and Jayme and Paul sat down to play rummy for the third time that day. I opened up my notebook on my lap, and started to leaf through what I had written.
There was the drive from New York to Seattle, three days of non-stop movement, copied cassettes of the Pixies, Michelle Shocked, Tracy Chapman playing one after another, an endless blurry loop. I hadn’t written about climbing the cliffs on the side of the highway in Montana, the same ones I later found out Adam had fallen from before being forced to drive himself to the hospital with broken ribs, but I spent a lot of time writing about my mother’s cousins in Seattle, the walking of the docks, seeing Lori off on a fishing boat we hoped would make it to Anchorage, Chris, Carol and I starting off for what would be a seven day drive to Alaska.
There was the rope swing on the side of the road hanging teasingly over the crystal blue glacial lake, my reckless jump and crash down on the rocks. The emergency room visit in Anchorage when my knee was still purple and swollen several days later. The potholes so deep and numerous that one day we couldn’t drive more than fifteen miles an hour, the back window of the Chevrolet rattling itself out of its frame so that we had to hold it in with duct tape. The day that the road disappeared under six feet of water luckily coinciding with the only town we’d seen which had more than a gas station to its name.
The gorgeous days with Chris’s family, and night walking and photographing porcupines in the marsh parks along the coast. Painting the house among swarms of Alaska’s state birds, the mosquito, the angry swollen bites covering every exposed patch of skin on my body. Getting the jobs in Whittier, and driving to the train. Entering a land like none other I’d seen, bursting forth from the darkness of the mountain tunnel into meadows of wildflowers and snow capped peaks. The first day at Great Pacific Seafoods, gearing up in head to toe rubber, pitching our campsite at the base of the glacier. The journal entry from our second or third night, at three am when we were flooded out of our tent in icy deep water, the rain pouring endlessly from the cold gray sky, shivering and terrified in the barely dark air, nowhere to go, no one to call, nothing to save us. The way we just lay there, soaking and crying.
The laundry room which became our haven, the apartment Bobbie gave us with no electricity but hot running water, Paul and Jayme. Playing cards while waiting for the salmon to come in. My journal almost always in my hands, recording, observing, critiquing, wondering. I was 19 years old and sitting at the table reading my own journal, realizing that I was collecting experiences, too, like the other kid from New England. I was writing a book.
I told no one. And I still haven’t written it.
everywhere tints childrening 
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