Swimming to Alaska

This is probably one of the longer periods in my life when I haven't swam for months except during childhood when it was summers only, although then nearly full-time. Not counting that March night when we Lynchmobbers were thrown out of the Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School Natatorium where our summer swimming friend had invited us. Someone reported us for being out of "township." Imagine!

For a while I've been meaning to talk about haibun. I think I've mentioned them once or twice. I love the form. It's one of those mixed forms, first popularized centuries ago by Basho in his Narrow Road to the Interior.
Basho's book was a travel journal combining description of new places, stories of what happened along the way, and included in each section was at least one haiku. The haiku did not summarize what he said in prose, but extended it or took it in a new direction.

The form appeals to me because I love short prose vignettes, how episodic they are, and how when you do several they make a kind of literary mosaic or puzzle where the reader does the connecting.

I've written about six of them this year. Here's one that Lynx: a Journal of Linking Poets published in February. I dedicate it to Sarah Palin.

Swimming to Alaska

We decide to drive to Alaska. We head through Oregon and Washington, enter British Columbia, and later traverse part of the Yukon. In B.C. the mighty Fraser River’s whitewater pounds below the highway. Beside it, signs advertise fresh apricots. They taste like the air: fresh, sweet, and delicious. Past Edmonton, we finally turn onto the Alaska-Canadian Highway.

Everyday we take side-trips to lakes. After driving, I dive into each, relishing the silky feel of the water. Swimming a modified breaststroke, I stretch and contract my limbs while gazing at the knobbed mountains and pine forests. Some days I stare deep into the turquoise water and discover giant rocks below. Sometimes, after jumping out of the lake, I take a deep breath, and then flipping legs over head, enter again, swimming as far down as I dare go--until my lungs ache, and I must surface again, desperate for air.

I learn the landscape by smelling each new lake’s individual scent and by feeling with my bare feet its black pebbles or grey sand. The locals greet us as though we are neighbors. Little children approach my husband and me and ask for our names.

on lake’s shore children carve sand mountains

But we don’t only swim in lakes. We rush down hills into wild rivers but carefully test their waters before finding quiet eddies or places where we
can ride the current safely downstream. At Liard Hot Springs, we arrive just after a burly grizzly has cleared every pool. But even in the hot springs, I slip my head into its black liquid. The only couple that have remained after the bear-sighting yell excitedly, “Come up! Don’t dare stay under. Bruin may return looking for cooked meat.”

After crossing the border into Alaska, on the highway to Tok, we see signs for one more lake. At this boulder-rimmed cirque, for the first time I force myself to jump in--the air temperature has dropped considerably. But once inside, I feel as though I can stay forever. My skin adjusts to the cold swirling around me. My heart’s rapid beat begins to slow down. The water becomes my liquid skin.

Two weeks later, we fly to Nome. At a beach by the Bering Sea, the Eskimo kids frolic wearing the widest assortment of clothing: gym shorts, dungarees, a flowered dress, t-shirts advertising California Fried Chicken. No one owns a bathing suit. I dive under the waves, then leap out of the sea. Droplets of cold water splatter over my arms, breast and thighs. I spear my body into another wave realizing that this will be the last swim of the year because here a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, we’re already on the cusp of winter.

dog-paddling
in the Bering Sea—
looking for Asia

 
OK, OK that Sarah Palin line was a quip! Really!