In Angoon, Alaska, water meets land. There are boats, trucks, people dogs and bears, and we are here, breathing with them. Here, the dirt turns over, and the grass bows forward under the weight of morning rain. Shadows run parallel to folds and bends in the form of waves.
Tonight is my last night in Angoon. I think about my time here in pieces of days, like I’ve taken my long reel of memory film over the course of the week, and snipped it and re-arranged it according to words and colors and feelings. Here is one piece:
I’m looking at Frosty behind a folded green leaf and it’s wet outside. He’s telling me to try the raspberries, but I don’t want to because some of them are gray and dirty and I feel ashamed to tell him the reason for my hesitation. But then in silence he tells me its okay by turning his face towards me and plucking red bundles into his mouth. My heart soars at his teaching because I can only hope that we have done the same for him in our actions. I am excited, looking at his eyes and smelling the water-breeze and hearing the dogs barking because this all tells me that Frosty from Angoon is a great work of God yet to be completed.
Then the film skips to Tamara and her smile and her very blue eyes which I like better later when they are brown because she is more real without her colored contacts, and I don’t have to go through as many layers of otherness to get to her. Then she’s sharing her heart with me about her parents and her experienced abuse with sharp chain links. I want to scream because I am so enraged for her and her childhood and for her right now.
Then I see the back of a small dark head – it is baby Luke. Tamara is 21 years old, she is my age, and she might adopt him so that she can perhaps give him better and more. This is beautiful, I think to myself, but I also think she is too young. I love her and her love for baby Luke. My heart breaks for her and for the baby in her carriage.
Today I saw a bald eagle. Today I saw a bear. Today I saw a puppet show. Oh my God, it has been 1 week and I love them. How much more is your love for them, you who has known them outside of time, and utterly in full? So much of the broken beach’s pieces will be covered, immersed. All that will be left behind is the forgiveness of water until, again, more pieces roll forward in dirt and grime. Then, once again, forgiveness.
For the first time in my life, my heart feels no pull towards the distant mountains because I am where I am and I am full and it is good. Tomorrow, I know, the water will brim to the lips of the sea basin.
Some came and listened, some did not come at all, and some came but were not present. But every person, including myself, were in some way restless, and in this kind of readiness, there comes either trouble making, or the great decision to follow.
When we landed, where water meets land, we were tired, wet, and confused. But we all felt one word moving through the tops of trees, straight to the depths beneath our feet – restoration, restoration, restoration. In the morning, I sensed a static movement of the people beyond the docks. And yet, behind them, ahead of them, and through them, I felt You in us: the breathing and the pulsing of something other than reflections of darkness. Shadows left behind themselves and instead became the tangible contrast of the space between Your air and our faces. This is what came to be.
This morning I decided to run because my body felt full of sleep. I ran past homes with windows and blinds and plants. Nearby, there was the deck that stretches over the water like a long wooden arm pointing to the boats sleeping next to mountains. I stood on the deck, breathing with the wind, which then moved into me and then through me, past my lips, down through the floorboards, to the rocks and shells and the reflections below. It was beautiful and wonder-filling.
Some dogs moved like guards of the dust. They saw us, and smelling waves greater than ourselves, ran into the mist. Then, when I heard how even the clouds were silenced, I realized that everywhere, not just in Angoon, there awaits a fog so deep and dense, that it longs to descend on the streets and through the windows, enveloping in full, those who want to and therefore decide to, and therefore feel compelled to cry out.
And here is my prayer:
That the Tlingut voices will be heard from so far away, that the sound will be difficult to distinguish from shouts of thunder.
