"Such sights as this are reserved for those who will suffer to behold them."
A young Eric Sevareid penned this thought on his epic canoe trip from Minnesota to Hudson Bay. As recent high school graduates, he and his friend set out an journey to do something very few people had done and when they reached a body of water north of Lake Winnipeg that was accurately named God's Lake, this was his way of putting on paper what he saw with his eyes.
I have stood ammo watch in the middle of a Kuwaiti dessert and looked towards Heaven to take in a night sky filled with more stars then you could ever imagine. That cold and lonely night will live with me forever. I suffered many long days, nights, months and years away from my family and friends while I served in Uncle Sam's Marine Corps. And I would go through it all again to take in that one star filled night with 3 of the country's finest young men standing there right beside me.
"Such sights as this are reserved for those who will suffer to behold them."
If you've followed along you might know that this journey to the Northwest Arctic of Alaska has been a series of conflicting emotions. One minute it seems as if I'm living the dream. To a casual onlooker or an outsider, pulling trout and salmon from an Arctic river is understandably the Alaskan dream that so many of us clung to as young Wilderness Explorers. But to those that can read between the lines - that can see through the pictures of wild game and breath taking scenery - that know that I wrestle daily with separation and depression, exhaustion and doubt - they know that I am "suffering" from time to time but that I am strong. I can do this. I have more good days than bad. But still this is a difficult place to live, to teach, and to be. And yet...
"Such sights as this are reserved for those who will suffer to behold them."
I left Senior Housing at 7:00 pm tonight for my second walk since ending volleyball practice. Although this morning was wildly successful in my classroom, the afternoon was equally disastrous. And so I stepped it out - not once - but twice to let go of any negative thoughts that desperately try to tear me apart. I was stepping it out and looking to the west as the oranges, pinks and yellows ate up the last remaining blues of daylight. At my midway point of the runway I decided not to turn towards the mountains but to about face and retrace my steps along the westward side. And then I saw this...
The Full Moon rising over the Brooks Range. To the west, the Sun said goodbye to a Tuesday on the Chukchi Sea and to the east, the moon snuck up on me over the peaks of the Brooks Range. A photo or a creative essay will never be able to do this justice...you wouldn't believe me anyway.
"Such sights as this are reserved for those who will suffer to behold them."
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