Road book: chap.1

Last Alaska.

I finally left one of my comforting cocoons, a pit in my stomach on the road to Fairbanks because this new adventure’s excitement is jeopardized by the financial risk of buying a car. My throat is knotted for a few days… I gaze one last time at landscapes known by heart after so many bleeding emergencies and false departures rides. The scenery is different today though, frozen with first snows. My stay in Fairbanks lingers a bit more than I would like for paperwork reasons: DMV, oil change, false alarm and real relief… However, my road trip may start now.

I start small, I start close, following the Angel Rocks trail in Chena River State Park. As I was flying to Ruby a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t believe the Yukon River could freeze during cold seasons, yet running so many winter iced ponds in my window, I realize I was told the truth… It is still unreal to think streams as powerful as Yukon River can slow their pulse as much as bears to completely ice their enthusiasm. It is still fascinating this apparently peaceful and silent life stopping for a few months when its invisible depth races.
Snow has this amazing talent to create silence. And I must confess this silence that I utterly love gives me chill for a second when I stop the car for my hike. I am alone again, in unknown lands, at the other end of the world, and this quiet and foreign snow worries me a bit, revealing my journey’s foly. Following Chena River’s dancing current, I start my angel hike. Such a strange name that I don’t completely understand. Even though those huge snowed rocks might be some gigantic wings of angels that reached Earth and gaze from above at human kind living their fragile and mortal life. Going down angels’ feathers one after the other, I can’t find their haloes though. Thankfully, down to earth again, as my look embrace the bigger picture, those few snowed rocky mounts definitely hide some devine figures.

Lost in my hazy thoughts, my steps still in the snow, I question loving messages I have received for the last few days, loving messages talking about courage. I don’t refuse this welcome support, especially now that my trip changes its shape, nor act modest; I nonetheless don’t feel brave. And I am definitely not. Being courageous doesn’t mean being fearless, being courageous means being afraid and overcoming your fears. And, usually full of fears, I am not afraid of this journey. People who softly talk to me about courage actually speak about how brave and free they wish they were; as for me, struggling with my emotional fears, I would be brave differently. I would be brave if I tried again, I would be brave if I gave a chance to ordinary and daily life. I actually admire them and their simple courage: open hearts, accepting ordinary days, building a life despite fate’s traps. I slowly kick my simple challenges’ asses and take over my fear, this is my courage. Courage is a bit like everything else in the end, it is only a mater of opinion.

On the drive back, I look at those funny multiple mail boxes that already popped up earlier on the side of the road. Probably so many because private drive ways are unreachable in winter time. And my compas blows East, I drive towards Delta, passing by North Pole way too southern, pretending to be Santa Clause ‘s home. I drive quicker than night and those white skies days help, so bright mountains are opaque and disappear. I follow gigantic Tenana River. It is amazingly flat, not frozen yet, only white where snow resisted. So flat I might get a better view from the sky. From time to time, scenery is revealed to my wheels though, in frozen blue twilight, madly watched by the night lynx.

And I chose town’s lights to welcome my first night in the car on this foreign land.