The Final Ride

                                          The Final Ride

    I am ready.  I feel good.  I know I can do this.  The master carefully unloaded me from the truck.   What I don’t understand is, why does he keep piling more stuff on me?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m up for the task, but did I see him stuff a “twelver” of beer into the yellow bag?   And what’s that a rubber raft?

    You know,  he never got around to replacing my right handle but he did dry me out for two whole weeks in his garage (I lost four pounds...mostly water weight.)

     The first mile was a good test for me;  main beams... strong, top rails... holding, gussets and axles... solid.  Oh, and did I mention he bought me brand new tires?  Amazon I think.  The new rubber under me bolsters my confidence even more!  I am a lucky girl and he is a good master, but why are we stopping?  

    He’s throwing rocks.  Miss.  Miss.  Hit.  For some reason he’s left the comforts of this nice trail and has returned with this strange, flopping, white and brown bird.  Why is he smiling?  Oooh it’s dripping blood on me now.  Stay focused.  

    We made it far that first day.  He set up camp as the sun was setting over the Western mountain ridges.  Peculiar; The click-clack of some weird hoofed animal ran past us in the pitch of darkness this night.  It passed by the master’s tent within ten feet!  I thought I heard sleigh bells, but that might just be my overactive imagination.  I get carried away sometimes.

    The next day we would double our efforts in mileage, but it seemed like much more because now the hills were against us.  Nearly horizontal, the master would dig in the balls of his feet to drive me upward.  He was breathing hard, and we would stop often.   Up and up we went.   The rare sun and heat of the day (for September that is) kept my humidity levels stable but I think it distracted the master from his duties.  Often he would linger on rest breaks to “look” around.  I forgave him for he is a good and true master, and over time I have learned patients.

    Day three was a trying one indeed and it was one I will never forget.  After cresting several (what I thought were) large hills we stopped for rest.  From here the trail had taken us to the bottom of a mountain.  There was no place else to go but up.  Sure enough the trail cut into the hillside at a steep incline.  “This is going to be tough on him.”, I thought.  We took a longer break here and I appreciated it.  I think the master did too because he spent about twenty minutes sitting on a nearby hill that was infested with some small blue circular fruit.  He was stuffing them into his mouth as fast as he could and had a giant smile on his face.  What a pig!   But, with stained blue lips and a bounce in his step, he seemed to have a new lease-on-life.   He gripped my lone handle with his left hand and stiff-armed me with his right on my transom railing and up we went.

      Several hours later, and after many rest breaks, we crested the last of the hills.  We made it!  My work here was almost done.  Over the hill we went.  He even jogged a little on a downhill stretch (I know I can be difficult to control on the downhills, I blame it on the master for not installing brakes.)

     Is this it? Have I reached the final resting grounds?  He’s setting up his tent.  He’s cooking his food.  Oh here he comes.  He’s removing my wheels!  He’s breaking my beams to remove my axles.  He’s cutting my crossbeams with his camp saw.

    And now like I’ve dreamed about all these lonely years, I can clearly see he’s starting a fire.  Oh my, what’s that in the bottom of the firepit?   There,  frosted over and completely rusted, are the remnants of my kindred brethren.  The iron fasteners of my long lost lineage!  My wood grains want to tear-up but my relative humidity is too low.  I am emotional nonetheless.
     I know it will sting a little at the beginning but I am fully prepared for this.  Long have I lusted for my passage to the undying lands.  Today I burn.  

The Inaugural Running of Kesugi Ridge Traverse

“ I do not always run ultra marathons, but when I do, I prefer Kasugi Ridge”

    Captain Paul -Chaplin active duty JBER

  Paul, Nate, and I were taking up the rear.  Anyone that was going to drop from the race had already done so at the Ermine hill trail intersection.  Essentially the halfway point of the race, there was still another fifteen miles to go.  We were the last of the Mohicans.  Never having met before, Paul and Nate soon discovered that they both grew up in Pennsylvania.  Down the trail we jogged, hiked and shared stories.  We all realized that the miles passed a little easier with each others company.

     It’s true the thought of bailing out at Ermine had crossed my mind.  By then my legs were already barking at me, but when I found out that I’d made the cut-off time (by a margin of five whole minutes!) I had to keep going.

     I quickly realized that If I’d gone down at Ermine,  I wouldn't have been able to let it go.  It would have festered in me ( much like the blister that formed on my left foot), and in a couple of months it would have even gone-so-far as to bother me and before too long I would have had to commit myself to coming back to try again.   A few hours of physical suffering now is better than months of self-loathing later.  Know thyself.

    We dropped down the backside of Ermine down a steep slope  losing much of the elevation that we’d gained. From there we had a few miles of winding through swampy, muddy lowlands.  At least a mile of it we traveled on the tops of two-by-sixes.  The plank walkways were built by the park service rangers and crew and it was a nice break from the drudgery of trekking through the soupy glop of the muddy trail.

     Finally we began to climb out of the brushy lowlands and onto some of most remarkable terrain that I've ever encountered.  I followed the trail to where it seemed to end at the base of a giant smooth granite formation.  It was like a colossal granite UFO had been pushed up from the earth somehow.  The next cairn trail marker was near the top of it. Up we went.  From there we could see that we were only on the first of a whole series of these things.  To call them boulders would be to disregard their enormity.  We walked along the tops and sides of these wondrous geologic formations for almost a mile.  Up and over and along the smooth rounded surfaces we went.  “Wow, I should have brought my skateboard”  I remarked, earning only modest chuckles from my equally exhausted companions.  

   

    “Kasugi ridge was named by Shem Pete.”  Dave Johnston told us.  He was on hand at the beginning of the race to give us a brief history of the trail.  Dave, who was instrumental in building most of the trails in Denali State park in his rangering days,  is a local treasure and has a wealth of geographic and cultural knowledge of the area.  “It means the ancient one in the native tongue of the Tanaina”.  Ironically, ancient is exactly how I felt in the days after as I hobbled and winced with muscle soreness. I digress.

    “There are two things to be thankful of today while you are running the Kasugi trail.  The first one is that you can thank Brian Okonek for dissuading me from putting the trail on the tops of those peaks.  That would have been an additional 1,500 vertical feet for you to climb today.”  The race course as it stands gains around 4,500 vertical feet of elevation gain over the course of the whole race.  Another 1,500 would be the equivalent of climbing Pioneer Peak located just outside of Palmer, a formidable climb.

     “The other thing to be thankful for is that at one time there was a proposal to put a road from the Princess lodge area, up onto the ridge running it’s entire length.  Luckily it didn't come to pass.”

     Dave was right, that is something to be thankful-for indeed.  The thought of bulldozers carving and scarring their way through the alpine tundra to make way for the inevitable barrage of vehicular traffic is an abhorrent one.  To punch a road into the park would be to trivialize it.  I am reminded of a passage in Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire: “A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.”  Abbey, referred to once as the most prickly of American conservationists was an ardent defender of the wild lands and outspoken critic of what he called industrial tourism.  

   Kesugi Ridge forms the backbone of Denali State Park and as it stands today remains a wild passageway through a ruggedly beautiful place that has yet to be tainted by the progress of Abbey’s industrial tourism.  A handful of artfully worked trails gracefully meander along its length.  The touch of man here is visibly and otherwise unnoticeable.  It’s the overwhelming brushstroke of the alpine biome swirling with the wet tundra meadows, paper birch forest and rugged geology that overcomes the senses here,  as it should be.

    As for the inaugural running of the Kesugi ridge traverse my hat goes off in a windy gale to race organizers Dave and his son David Johnston (Yes, there were three Dave Johnstons.  I know it’s confusing)  and mama Andrea Hambach.  Many other volunteers (whose names elude me- I was too tired!) brilliantly pulled it all together for us in the drizzling rain.

   And, as for myself, I was happy for the opportunity to experience the expanse of Kasugi’s ridges and to fill-in the blanks of my geographic sense-of-place alongside such excellent people.  Excellent people who apparently share my affinity for Alaska’s wild places.

Last Rites of an Old Warhorse.

     

    I was busy decomposing on the edge of the driveway and had fully accepted that I would become part of the dirt when the impossible happened.  It’s true that I had lost hope and that I was feeling sorry for myself.  I had just settled into the soggy funk of the wet Autumn rot when he appeared from around the woodshed.  He had two tires in his hands.  Suddenly there was light where before there was only dark and it felt like I just might make it.

         The master has always had a hard time throwing things away plus I think he’s alway liked me.  I over-heard him say that I might make a good planter to his wife.  Planter? Really?  Luckily the wife begged to differ.  In fact she begged to differ on whether I should be kept at all but the master stuck up for me!  I knew he wouldn’t let it happen;  After all I have yet to fulfill my destiny and I think at some level he’s always known that too.  So, over the years, I migrated further and further away from the family, from sight, and most regrettably from my calling.

    I was in the beginning stages of losing faith in the mission.  I felt that I was destined to melt into the earth.   I even prayed for more rain.  Everyday he would pass me to do other things. He moved me next to the woodshed last month but it was six months since he’d moved me before then.  His son’s bike leaned on me for nearly a week last spring.  I hated that but not as much as the twenty three times the dog urinated on me between April and November of 02, or the time the tractor carelessly ran into me breaking my right handle off.  (When he burned it in the woodstove; I mourned for a week.)   

    It’s true I’m no spring chicken.  The bright gleam of my doug-fir beams has long been gone.  Instead I am fifty shades of grey.  Alas, my main purpose for the last two years it seemed has been to serve as a framework for the spiders webs and grassy sproutings.  The Rusty Tussock caterpillars have been awful this summer ; I think I’ve got seven cocoons tucked up in my ribs.  Yech!  The grass tries to push me around and the fireweed are incorrigible, but it’s the moss I despise.  The moss have taken root in my lower cracks effectively sealing-in the beginnings of wood-rot from the outside-in.  Less pervasive but equally fowl are the Boletes.   The recent rains have facilitated the transformation of these obtrusive mushrooms near my starboard joist:  Upturned by the rain, the exposed fly-larvae wriggle and writhe in the slimy undergoo of the Bolete caps. I have had a front-row seat to its disintegration coming full-cycle right under my nose.  Lucky me.

      Aside from my pessimistic musings and whimpering tendencies I am not all gloom.  Although my nail and screw heads have rusted badly they still hold and they aren’t complaining.  You won’t hear a peep from my crossbeams either.  My axles are solid and I have benefitted from the addition of extra gussets , so I don’t wobble or creak (much).   I’ll confess that over the years I have taken a beating, it’s true, but I know in my soul of souls that below the rust and the rot,  I can still ride.

     He’s walking closer.  What’s he doing?   The days are getting shorter and he must be getting ready for the hunt.  He’s looking at me.  Oh my laws he’s lifting me onto the trailer, oh my lands it's really happening!  

     “Come on old girl.”  He called me old girl!

     He carefully slid the tires onto my axle and it felt like I was sliding into my favorite pair of slippers. A few washers  and the slide of the cotter pin had me fundamentally operational. He gently flipped me over and escorted me into the garage.  My gracious!  I can’t believe it, I’m going to the show!  Is there a remodel in my future and maybe even a new handle? Criminy, I’m going to the show!

     Thank my lucky stars.  I always knew the master was a good and true master.   Oh wonderful joyous day,  I have been recommissioned.

Warhorse

  

The Legend of Full Moon Rising

The legend of Full Moon Rising

                                   By Steve Harrison

      A man of white beard and brown hair crawled across a barren desert in desperation.  Dune after dune of endless sand lay before him for as far at the eye could see.  Making his last stand, the man committed himself to achieving the top of the next dune; beyond that he wasn’t sure he would be able to continue.  An hour later the man finally crested the top and peered over into the depression below. With the sun blazing in his eyes the man could hardly believe his good fortune; a small wooden structure revealed itself in the duned valley below. Not having eaten in the last four days he found himself clinging to this one bastion of hope.

      The man, with renewed purpose and waning energy set out to reach the structure which, as he got closer, looked more like a shack or a stand of some sort.  “Could it be a food stand?”, he thought to himself.  He allowed himself this thought briefly and then scolded himself for raising his hopes too high.  There appeared to be signage on the front with colors and numbers and pictures of which he could not make out the details.

      Still unable to walk, the man crawled closer and to his delight, discovered that yes it was indeed a food stand, a farmers market specializing in the sale of the humble onion. A large white wooden onion was attached high above the roofline in cartoon caricature. Not believing his own eyes he rubbed them and re-focused affirming his discovery. 

      The man, reared in a small outpost of fertile lands on the other side of the world, had grown up on the onions of his region and had developed a deep seeded love for all variety of Allium Cepa, the common bulb onion.

      “To what deity do I owe my good fortune?”, he thought to himself. “Not only have I discovered my only salvation of food for miles around in this forsaken desert, but they are serving my beloved onion, my best meal. Oh I can almost feel the crisp crunch on my teeth and the clear juice running down my chin. Oh happy day, oh happy day!”

    He crawled forth a little faster now but at his current pace it would still be a good thirty minutes to the shack; His mind turned to all things onion. 

     He remembered that his grandfather who had lived to the ripe old age of 100 years old had been quoted in his village ledger, as attributing his long life to two distinct things: Hard daily physical work and eating lots and lots of onions.

    The hard physical labor bit had always made sense to the man.  The regular exercise, he knew increased circulation and was good for his heart. But what was it about the onion? Was it the vitamins and minerals that manifested the fountain of youth in the onion or was it something more, something intangible or maybe mystical? He didn’t know for sure, he just knew that he loved to eat them and if it led to a longer life then it was a good thing. Deep down though, he suspected that even if strong scientific evidence pointed the other way towards the onion leading to cancer or other illness, he would probably eat them anyway; he simply loved them.

      The man had a wonderful childhood growing up in a small agricultural town where his mother and father tended to a bountiful garden yielding everything from rowed corn to melons of water, and of course his beloved onions.  There were no hard times of famine in the man’s early life such as he was experiencing now. He had grown with a wide variety of wondrous foods that were available in season, or put up into jars for winter subsistence.  It was this variety of foods that shaped the diversity of the man’s palate. There was no food the man did not enjoy as a young lad; sans one, the raisin.

      It is not clear the reasoning or logic behind the man’s aversion to the seemingly innocuous chewy brown fruit, but it could very well have been that heredity played a strong role because all three of the man’s children and his seven grandchildren, to this day, avoid the raisin like the black plague of old.

      Prolific since 1490 BC, the raisin at one time in early Roman times was so valuable that two jars of them was the equivalent of one slave in trade.  To the man though, two jars of them would be to insult the jars themselves.

     Fumbling through the pockets of his torn knickers the man found what he searched for, his last gold coin.  And with the coin tucked in his clutches he managed to pull himself upright, however difficult, to a standing position at the counter.   

     There was a lone person unpacking boxes from the back of the onion stand and was unaware entirely of the man’s presence. Unable to speak due to his emaciated state the man waited to be waited on with what patience he had left.  It was then that the man noticed the small cardboard sign propped up on the counter no more than an arm’s length away from him written in what looked like black pen:

  Sorry! N O   M O R E    O N I O N S.

     TODAYS SPECIAL:  RAISINS

   

    The afternoon sun beat down upon the desert without prejudice or preference. A light gust of wind stirred and swirled sand around the bottom of the shack but it was no match for the heat of the sun. The faint creak of a rusty hinge on the shack shutter was followed by a soft, rhythmic knocking of the plywood each time the wind came up.  A small tumbleweed was hung up on the back corner of the shack.  Riding the next gust, it wiggled itself free somehow and continued on its journey.  It rolled by a lone scorpion that appeared to be watching and was seemingly unaffected by sun or wind.

     The Raisin stand attendant, some ten minutes later, made her way up to the front counter to wipe it clean.  There, not at all upright anymore, was the cardboard sign with a ball point pen jousted through the middle like the axel of some strange wheel.  Confused, she looked out to the desert beyond and with a stoic look of oblivion and genuine befuddlement witnessed a man crawling away with a white beard and brown hair. The man was slowly moving back up the sand dune hill adjacent to his own down-tracks; Not at all dead yet, and still of sound mind he made painstaking headway back into the heart of the desert from whence he came.  His knickers were pulled down just far enough to expose his entire backside.

The Gift of the Rotting Biomass

   The Gift of the Rotting Biomass

The rotting fish was a king salmon and it was upturned just below the surface. A fine fuzz had encased it like the seedlings of a dandelion. The next one was still alive. “Look at that ghost” I said. An almost entirely white king was swaying drunkenly in the current, flaps of pale skin washed over it’s back clinging and waving. It was barely alive and was hovering near what looked like a log protruding from the gravel. “Yeah, looks like he wants to hang out with his old buddy”. Tom pointed out. I looked into the water again and noticed that the “log” wasn't a log at all. It was, or at least used-to-be a salmon and was melded to the bottom of the creek bed completely covered, decomposition in full-swing.

I took a quick lesson from Tom on using the air bag to fill the pack raft. We topped off each bladder by mouth, lashed down our packs and pushed off. The pinks, not as far along in their schedule of decay as the kings, were nonetheless a ubiquitous force to be reckoned with. A school of them in varying degrees of disparity moved out of my way as I paddled into the current. Their white and yellow streaked bellies and patchy darkened skin are a dead give away not only to their identity as pinks, but also to the inevitability of their time clock. The male of the species is a curious case. Somewhere along their journey, the males become grotesquely flattened and humped reaching their hideous peak as they near the spawning grounds. Ironically the waters they negotiate here are the shallowest they have encountered. This exposes their humps topside and a likeness is easily made to the movie Jaws (cue music here). The disfigurement is so pronounced it’s almost cartoon- like. It’s hard to believe that this strange evolutionary adaptation could be of any benefit. Maybe in the eyes of the female pinks these humps are a sexy indicator of fertility. Are the flattest males with the largest humps more likely to pass their seed than the ones with the more traditional salmonid shape? Whatever the reason, the pink salmon seem to have stumbled upon a successful formula for procreation. They’re everywhere. As the kings dwindle in numbers, it seems that it’s the humpy that might inherit the earth. With only a few bends of the creek under my belt, I was scrambling to dial-in my rookie level technique on the pack raft. A big school of chum salmon darted out from under the boat. Their green and purple stripes are unmistakable. More humpies mingled on the other side as I maneuvered the raft around a boulder.  

Earning my junior paddlers badge.

I quickly found my rhythm a few bends lower as I dropped into a large pool. Some dark red torpedoes moved under me. These big kings darted up the sweep I’d just conquered without so much as a goodbye kiss or second thought. We wouldn't get a good look at the silvers until lower in the system and they were mixed in with everything else. The last to arrive at the party, the silvers were the brightest of the salmon that day. The waters were alive....at least for now. Without a doubt, the gift of the salmon's return each year plays to the delight of the sport and commercial fishing crowds. Their postmortem gifts in the form of the nutrients they pass is nothing to snub noses at either. Good science tells us that the mass of salmon that push into their natal streams each year have significant impact upon the surrounding riparian flora. These nutrients find their way to the banks and then into the woods proper through a number of delivery systems including the gut of the bear. Birds are also diligent scavengers and account for much of the deposition and distribution of these nutrients. Trees are said to grow up to three times as fast in these areas because of the nutrients from the salmon (primarily nitrogen). That’s a good payoff for the fish because along with the clear, cold waters and clean gravel beds, they need the trees to shade the sun's heat to create ideal spawning conditions. In addition, without their roots systems in place, the streams would likely clog the spawning grounds with sediment washing away from the banks after the rains. Stream health is also enhances by the rot. Salmon that never leave the stream, like my friend the upturned chinook, eventually break-down and distribute carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other micro-nutrients back into the system. It is estimated that 50% of the nutrients consumed by juvenile salmon come from their rotting parents ( and their friends). The complex relationships between the salmon, the forest and the stream has flourished for thousands of years in the Susitna basin and it's only now in our short window of time that it's facing it's greatest threat; The proposed Susitna-Watana dam. If the construction of the dam goes through, the outlook is bleak. Currently there is no shining example to point to in the world of a successfully dammed river that can sustain its wild salmon population. Dams kill salmon. “How many fish do you think we saw yesterday?” I asked Tom after catching up with him at school the next day. Both of us were secretly licking our wounds a bit from the trip. We’re not eighteen anymore. The 11 mile hike and 12 mile paddle is rough on us old boys. In the morning I burned my mouth a little as I washed down my ibuprofen with hot coffee but I wasn't about to admit that out loud either. “ You mean total?” He asked. I could see his wheels turning. Tom’s a math and physics teacher. “ Yeah, what’s your quick estimate of total fish?” The bell rang for the second time and the students were clearing out for their next class. “ Two thousand?” “ Yeah. The biomass is in for sure.”

Summit Day

      Summit Day

The mountains are calling and I must go- John Muir

    

     As we crested the final teensy hill leading to the view overlooking the football field, I didn’t know I could continue.  Every fiber of my being was screaming for a turn-about.  Instead I called for a sit-down.  Brian was near some cool basalt boulders that would be great seats.  I flopped down on the black rock next to him after he reeled-in the rope between us.  I took off my pack and fumbled around with gear adjustments all the while trying to relax;  I had developed a headache.  19,300 feet elevation isn’t for sissies.  After all I was dealing with less than half of the oxygen available at sea level.  The lack-of- atmospheric pressure wasn’t pushing the oxygen into my lungs at the same comfortable level I was used to.

    “ How you doing?”  he asked.

    “ Good.”

  It was a soft lie.  I was the epitome of total exhaustion.  Ever since Denali pass we had progressed in eight pace increments.  Eight paces were followed by a minute to minute-and-a-half-rest.  This was the amount of time it took to fully catch my breath.  This was the amount of time it took for my legs to flush clean from the suffrage of lactic-acidosis.  

    The view from our perch on the rocks was surreal.  Pillowy clouds filled the North side of the Alaska range far below us.  It’s thick plumage extended to the North as far as the eye could see.  Some of them were beginning to spill over Kahiltna pass.  Mt. Foraker, unimpressed with the barrage of cumilous interlopers stood guard high above,  holding an air of masterful certainty.  

     The south side of the range was bespeckled with a sparse allotment of less ambitious clouds.  Unsure of really what to do,  they hovered nonchalantly and mingled and floated about as only clouds can do.  Mount Hunter standing alone, unbothered by the whims of the clouds sparkled in the sun illuminating it’s cascading hanging-glaciers and precariously perched seracs.  An occasional avalanche thundered from it’s flank, perhaps as a warning or maybe it was like a dog shaking-off excess water after a soaking.

Brian, on the summit, looks towards the cloudy North.

      High above all of this we sat on two charcoal black rocks, two friends on a mission, tired as hell.   We wouldn’t confide until later that night in the tent but both of us had been harboring feelings of doubt and uncertainty.  Neither of us wanted to pull-the-plug so close to our goal, but we were hurting.  We both elected to keep our whinings and whimperings to ourselves.   

    Just then a light breeze cropped up stinging my ungloved hands reminding me of my own frailty.  I put my gloves back on and lifted my pack to my shoulder.

    I looked up at the ominous Pig hill that leads to the summit ridge and didn’t want to continue but I knew something.  I knew that we had been patient this time.  I knew that we had been acclimating slowing over the course of two whole weeks.   We had skinned-up and back country skied over a dozen runs on the way up as a rouse for our acclimation.  It had to work;  This was my third try.

    I knew other things too; I knew that, since my first failed attempt in 2002 I had developed a nagging itch, an itch that worked it’s way into my dreams at night sometimes.  I will finish what I start- an axiom that defines a person at their core wrangled me and prodded at me and taunted me.  I knew I had to get back up there.  This had to be my time.

    “ Let’s go” I uttered with as much enthusiasm as I could manage.   Down we went to the football field making our way over to the dreaded Pig hill.  One surge at a time we inched up the steep hill.  I leaned on my ice axe whenever I could and let my mind wander, hoping that I could escape the agony and trick myself long enough to make it.  And then after what seemed like a small eternity, we were at the top of Pig hill. We had gained the summit ridge!

     I’m going to make it!  The mere thought stirred-up emotion and caught me by surprise.  The moment had played out in my thoughts and dreams for eleven years and now that it was actually happening I was astounded.  The rope between us swung and slithered and slid along the trail one step at a time as we moved slowly along the ridge.  

    The trail snaked along the sharp snowy ridge and led up the backside of a giant overhanging cornice.  The summit itself was perched innocently and quite neatly up and just behind the cornice providing a nice plateau.  

    Brian, having summited on our first trip eleven years ago, gave me way, granting me access to the top first. In a teary mess,  I dropped to all fours as I touched the top, tears joining and freezing to my beard, adding one more icycle.

Advise from a Wizard

                       Advice from a Wizard

    I could tell she was on edge.  Finals week was weighing heavily on her mind along with the pending state Track and Field Championships this weekend.  She would have to miss another two days of school to compete with the state’s best shotput and discus throwers.  A standout volleyball and basketball player already,  she is also the student body president and a member of the National Honor Society.  In my mind, she represents the best of what Susitna Valley High School can be.  

    “You seem a little stressed today Em.”  I opened the field shed door and we both walked into the dimly lit shed.  We joined Coach Gunderson who was already inside gathering the high jump equipment.  Emily was getting the shot puts and I was looking for some batons to practice relays with.  

    “Yeah I guess I am. It’s finals.”

     I asked her about her finals as I rummaged through the shed.  Apparently she had a pretty tough math final coming up along with a debate in history.  Those grades were in-the-balance and depended heavily upon the outcome of her final exams.  I found the white plastic basket of batons near one of the hurdles.

     As I headed out the door I heard Mr. Gunderson’s voice, “Focus on what’s most important Emily...”  

     I lingered in the doorway long enough to hear the conclusion of what I thought was going to be heartfelt advice . His gentle tone spoke of one who cared.  Already resembling Gandalf of the Tolkien tales his wisdom was a matter of course.  The wizards staff he was clutching doubled as a high jump standard.

     Gundalf the Grey, cutting his own sentimentality short, chose a different angle.  “Focus on what’s most important Emily......Shot put.”

    Emily smiled.