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Welcome to this week’s Saturday Stoke, a short inspirational podcast designed to encourage and challenge you on the path ahead—it’s a place where, if I’m doing my job right, I’m spurring us all on toward love and good deeds.
It’s a podcast that sounds like water crashing of a 500 foot cliff, and tastes like fudge brownies . If you're new to the Stoke, welcome! Feel free to poke around my blog The Edges Collective Dot Com.
If you find some inspiration, sign up for my newsletter called Further Up. You’ll get updates when the next episode of The Stoke drops and exclusive articles and community discussions. This week’s stoke looks at a topic that we all wish we had a bit more of: silence. Let’s get to it.
I pulled up at 10:30 p.m. It was a cloudy Alaskan summer day.
“Tim?”
“Yeah, you Seth?”
“Yep. This is my daughter, Ashlynn.”
“Hi Ashlynn.”
She said nothing; just shot me a shy if not wary eight-year-old glance.
“Whelp, we gotta get moving so we can make it out to Lake Clarke before it gets too dark.”
“Right, let’s go.”
I hopped in the back seat, which wasn’t a seat at all. More like a sling topped with a ThermaRest cushion. Seth handed me a headset and showed me where the lap belt was located. He murmured some numbers and said “Niner” at least once, taxied us out to the runway, and then took off.
We climbed to one thousand feet and set a course for Lake Clarke Pass, a high mountain passage that leads to Lake Clarke National Preserve and Port Allsworth, our destination. We continued to climb as we passed Cook Inlet—a splinter of the Pacific Ocean.
“Hey Tim, I think we’re going to take a little detour so we can beat these clouds.”
“Oh, ok. Sounds good.”
Single prop planes cannot fly in clouds. So we took a right over the Blockade Glacier. As we approached the glacier Seth shouted into the headset, “Look! A bear!”
Fifteen-hundred feet below us a brown bear was running out in the open plain that swept up to the glacier. Seth whipped the plane around and dove down. My stomach shot up into my throat. My heart pounded. My mouth stretched ear to ear. We gave the bear a fly-by, banked back toward Blockade, and continued our ascent into the mountains.
The glacier spread out in front of us like the uncoiled tail of a sleeping dragon. It wedged itself between the peaks; its color spiraled within itself—greens, blues, aqua, grey from the fissures, and white covering all. I waited for it to wake up.
We neared Lake Clark Pass. The clouds gathered around the ridge like a phantom gate closing off the pass.
“We’re just going to peek into that hole in the clouds there. If we get through that and down into the pass, we’re good. If not, we’ll have to turn back.”
“Sounds good.” What was I supposed to say?
The clouds covered the surrounding mountains. The snowy grey mountain-scape disappeared slowly. Our hole was closing. We were close. I could see into the hole.
“We’re going for it!”
Up and over, and, whoosh, down under the canopy of clouds. In a moment we descended from the dimming grey of overcast Alaskan twilight into the world beneath the clouds. The white pushed down on all sides, the mountains shot up into the invisible while a streak of glacial blue ribboned beneath us, cutting its way through the valley.
We made it.
Beneath the clouds and into the pass we flew. A deep green covered the base of the mountains like a Christmas tree apron, without the annoying tinsel.
My head swiveled as I tried to take in the rifling grandeur of the mountains, snow, rivers, waterfalls, and the massive lake that covered the valley floor for forty-five miles. This was a land of giants, of gods, and magic. This was where the great myths came to life. Eagles and angels ruled here, patrolling the skies with noble intent. Great Doll Sheep silently guarded the craggy heights, while the moose and bear scouted the outer reaches of the valley floor. I felt as if we’d flown into a parallel dimension; allowed to observe as long as we left the place like we found it.
Finally, we approached the gravel runway. The light was weak, but Seth landed the Stinson with ease.
“Welcome to Port Allsworth,” he said.
I exited the little plane and greeted my friends who waited on ATVs along the runway. The night was still awake, but barely. The smell of pine blew into me faster than I could breathe. The mountains darkened and the clouds drifted low, almost to the lake. I’d arrived in the quiet land and all I could do was smile. No words came. It felt wrong to talk.
“Well, what do you think?” asked my friend Jason, who greeted me on the ATV. I don’t think I responded audibly. But my mind shouted: “Beautiful!”
When I woke after my first night in the Alaskan bush, I found my way from our cabin to the lakefront. The clouds cracked with sunlight and the wind pushed waves into the rocky lakeshore. Though I’d never been to Port Allsworth before, I felt at home. And I have felt this way before.
When I arrived in Reykjavík, Iceland to hike the Landmannalauger Trail.
When I camped just outside of Durango, Colorado beneath the “whale stars.”
When I watched my daughters emerge from their mother.
When I meandered throughout the William Turner collection at the Tate Museum in London.
“But Tim,” you say. “What is all this odd-ball talk of feeling at home in a place that is clearly not your home? Do you mean to say that there are places in this world that possesses special qualities that can make us experience homelike feelings? I mean this all sounds a bit Harry-Potterish don’t you think?”
“Ah yes,” I reply. “And do pardon the Harry-Potterishness of my comments. But I do believe you’ve hit the nail on the head as it were. Not only do certain places possess these qualities, but so do people and experiences and even things or animals.”
You see friends, beauty awakens longing within us. It strikes us deep in our souls and creates an an ache, a longing for a place we can’t quite explain. Almost a kind of melancholy. And why this sadness? Because it reminds us of home.
And this feeling of home we experience in other things and people and places. That feeling when you find yourself on the English countryside and begin to weep because you feel like you’re home. Or when you meet a new person and find yourself talking for hours and feel instant brotherhood. Home leaks into this world of exile we live, shining through experiences of beauty and goodness.
We feel this longing for home even in our sorrow. Why? The sorrow of love lost we feel intensely, because when we love we bring home (heaven) to earth. The loss cuts us because they have moved on, out of exile, and on to home.
~
My week in the Alaskan bush revived me. It was years ago now, but each time I think of that wild and wonderful place, I long for it.
On my last day I hiked to Tanalian Falls with my friends. The violence of the white water created a sound not unlike something described in The Revelation—a voice from heaven, like roaring waters. I found a perch that overlooked the point where the water dove into the valley. The spray coated my jacket. The sound filled my ears. I tried to still myself, and hear the words of God.
And they sounded something like this. Capture this place in your heart. But don’t bottle it up. Explore this great world and experience it for all it is, but remember you were made for another. Love your friends deeply. Never let things go unsaid. And give home away freely through the beautiful grit of a life well lived.
Stay stoked my friends.
The Saturday Stoke #25