So this is what it was

Some mornings I wake up and wonder where the ache is; the longing for the sound of the waves on the beach, and rain, RAIN on the roof--smell of spruce and alder, and wet leaves underfoot.
It used to be a constant companion, like a toothache, or a broken bone that didn't heal quite right and always reminds you that it really isn't like it used to be.
I have more days without it now, sometimes weeks, but the depth and the intensity has always been a mystery to me. After all, it's the same earth underfoot, and where exactly my feet tread should not matter all that much.

Several weeks ago I found this blog:
http://elisepatkotak.com/
She's a columnist for ADN, and while I don't agree with a lot of her views, I admire her way with words, and oh man is she funny at times!

So, in browsing her blog I came across this: "Many people in the bush are bonded to their land and seas so strongly that to bring them to an urban area is to condemn them to slow death. We have seen time and time again what happens to indigenous people displaced from their lands. They become lost souls who seem to fit in nowhere."

Well, I never thought of myself in that light. I did happen to be born in Alaska, almost in a 172 in the middle of the night, as a matter of fact. There was no doctor in Seldovia at that time, and I chose the middle of the night to make my appearance, so my mom had to wake up the local pilot for a ride to Homer. She said he was more nervous than she was...

It does explain a lot though---I could still tell you HERE are the first nettle shoots in spring, and HERE the first shoots of watermelon berry that taste like cucumber, and HERE the squirrel nesting tree, and HERE the little yellow violets and later the wild geraniums. THIS tree is shelter when the wind blows from the southwest with snow in it.


One word; indigenous.
I never thought it applied to me. I'm white, Hungarian, immigrant blood, child of homesteaders, but indigenous? I guess it fits as well as the rest. And it explains a lot.