“Need help?” Lee says.
Grateful nearly to tears, I run over and give him a big hug of hello. “I’d love some!” I say.
He jumps into the truck with Amelia next to him. “Get on in that boat,” he calls out.
I climb on the back of the truck to jump over onto the bow. The high stern of the Olympic always makes getting on and off a gymnastic feat. I walk with care on the small ledge of the boat cabin before jumping into the back of the boat. Lee and I have put enough boats in the water to know this routine well and don’t have to communicate. I unlock the outboard and lower it into the water, prime the pump on the fuel hose, choke it, cross my fingers, and turn the key. Success at last. We let it warm up for a few minutes, making sure it is operating as it should. Lee gives me a thumbs up, I nod, and he backs up a few more feet. The boat comes off the trailer, gliding backward into the deeper water of the lagoon. The calm day has blessed us with flat water. Knowing Amelia is in good company, I take the boat out in a wide circle, listening for any potential problems. I would rather find them now than with Amelia twenty miles out of town. Satisfied, I circle back to the lagoon and throw out the rear anchor. I pull in sideways to the beach and put the front anchor down on shore. I need the rear of the boat to be close to the beach, so I can pump in gas from the drum in the back of our Dodge. I jump out of the boat and run up to Amelia, who jumps up hoping to get into the boat.
“Hey, Amelia Bedelia, ready to go on a boat ride?”
Amelia jumps up and down in response.
“You gonna be okay out there?” There is a lot more to Lee’s question than one would think. He was close to Dave and knows how hard it will be to go home to an empty house.
“Thanks. We’ll make it work. It’s great to be home.”
He raises his eyebrows. Without my dad here, Lee steps into that role “I know when you’re lying,” he says. “The color of your eyes change depending on if you are happy or sad. Right now, they sure aren’t happy eyes.”
“Seriously,” I continue. “We need to face things. Amelia and I will take our time. If I need anything, I will call.”
Shaking his head he lifts in shoulders in surrender.
“Thank you so much for your help,” I say.
“No sweat,” he says, giving Amelia a kiss on the cheek before hopping back in his own truck to leave.
“Well, Amelia, time to go?” I ask.
Amelia nods her head in excitement.
She plays on the beach picking up rocks as I put our six totes into the boat and pump gas. I load into the boat twenty gallons of gas in jerry jugs for the four-wheeler and generator, a twenty-pound propane tank for our oven, and a heavy thirty-gallon water container. Amelia and I run to the grocery store for a few supplies, like sandwich material and juice for the boat ride home. I also grab perishables I didn’t pack in Fairbanks, including cheese, milk, eggs, and butter. Oh yeah, and bug spray. Getting to the cash register, it rings up at $105.20.
“What?” I ask.
My job as a ramp agent at Warbelow’s Air Service pays fourteen dollars an hour. That bit of food is equivalent to an eight-hour workday. Ouch! I forgot how expensive things are in Kotzebue.
I place Amelia in her boat seat, jump out to grab the front anchor and push the rear end of the boat out, then jump back in to start the outboard to let it warm up again. I run to the back of the boat and pull up on the rear anchor, taking us out to the deeper water. I can now put the lower unit deeper in the water as I angle us toward the bridge that marks the way out of the lagoon and into Kobuk Lake.
Easing forward on the throttle, Amelia and I both yell “Wahoo!” as the boat picks up speed and gets up “on step,” where it glides with the least amount of drag across the water surface.
With a loaded boat, our definition of speed is likely not that fast, but it feels like we are flying a million miles an hour as the adrenaline pours into us both. We are back in our boat, together, and heading toward our home, the place we love more than any other. I don’t allow myself to feel sadness that those we love most in the world are no longer there waiting to greet us, that only their crosses are.
“Wahoo!” I yell out again, smiling big at Amelia.
“Scooby-dooby-doo!” she replies with equal enthusiasm—an enthusiasm that will chase away any ghosts.
There isn’t room for death and life in this boat. I have to choose one, and it isn’t any contest (see fig. 39).
Achieve
Fairbanks, Alaska | 2008
We do not write in order to be understood;
we write in order to understand.
—C. Day-Lewis
“Katherine Keith!” The dean of the University of Alaska Fairbanks calls out my name.
My hands clench in nervous anticipation under the folds of my black robe. I keep my head down to ensure my feet go one step in front of the other. The square graduation cap hides my teary eyes from onlookers.
“Recipient of the 2008 Gray S. Tilly Memorial Award and one of eighty nationwide recipients of the Morris K. Udall Foundation Scholarship,” he continues.
We did it. Today, I graduate college. My mom flew up from Minnesota to be here.
The dean continues, “Katherine and her husband built a home and started a family while living a subsistence lifestyle. The deaths of her husband and eldest child turned her life in a different direction. Keith saw global events risking the ecosystem around her, and she wanted to make a difference. She is graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in renewable energy engineering and a minor in computational physics. She plans to pursue a graduate degree in power system engineering and use her education to help create sustainable communities and resolve energy challenges.”
I square up my shoulders, hold my head up high, and look straight toward the podium and my diploma. My stride, no longer hesitant, lengthens. I bounce up the stairs to shake the hand of the dean. Raw joy courses through me. Amelia, five-years-old, isn’t likely to remember this moment. More than any other, walking down this aisle is my biggest achievement. I do this for her. She needs a mom to be proud of and to know that she can do anything she sets her mind to. I bite my lip so as not to cry. Resolve courses through me—the same grit that sustained me every day since I started classes, or rather, every day of my life. Amelia will have a life she can build on and do anything she puts her heart into. Nothing will hold her back. My single-minded determination on this matter has only escalated through the years.
Life took away a lot from us. To fight back, I take it back and give it all to her. That is my purpose now. Damn fate. Amelia will live to the fullest. The choices, love, options, trials, and tribulations—hers for the dreaming, reaching, and even falling. (Less falling preferred.) When she falls, it should be epic. Good falls, worth telling about, always are. She will have me to show her how to stand up again, dream again, and live again. It doesn’t matter where we have been, only that Amelia and I have a future to embark on together.
Resilience
Palmer, Alaska | 2008
When you want something, all the universe
conspires in helping you to achieve it.
—Paulo Coelho
After graduation, my career takes off in a positive direction. Energy engineering work keeps me busy and, through different jobs and ventures, I work on multiple projects all across the state. Grief still follows me home like a lost and hungry puppy. How long does it take to get over loss? Haven’t I resolved this yet? Time to get more proactive about it. I have the attitude to get over it but haven’t done the work. I need to transform grief. Inspiration is easy, but follow-through is a bitch of an uphill climb.
Endurance racing becomes a tool for recovery and helps me to establish healthy goals. Training allows me to say yes to life’s positive opportunities. I can get up and run, bike, or swim and am one step closer to being in charge of life.
Physical chal
lenges reconnect me to my body. I can feel my body instead of remaining mired in the numb hollowness I accept as normal. The exertion that racing demands makes me put one foot in front of the other. I am no longer a passive bystander in my life but an active and driven athlete. The distinction wakes me up and reminds me who I am—I am more than my grief, more than my loss, more than my shame. I race as I do with most things in life: at full speed. I complete my first sprint-distance triathlon in 2008.
As I cross the finish line, I am sold on what a triathlon can do for a healing journey. It fills me with hope again. I next do an Olympic-distance triathlon, then a half-Ironman, until I find my home in the full-distance Ironman.
An assistant professor position with the University of Alaska, running their Renewable Energy Certificate program, brings me to Palmer, Alaska, a small town just outside Anchorage, with a view of the Chugach Mountains. Cindy decides to move back up to Alaska to join us in Palmer. I dream again. Dreaming of new adventures, dog mushing, mountain climbing, camp, and the unexplored wilderness I can now share with Amelia.
I train for my first full Ironman event, the Silverman in Henderson, Nevada, held on the six-year anniversary of Dave’s death. I sign up for the race with the clear intention of turning away from being a victim of circumstance and toward seizing control over what I want to do with my future.
Training for this race is a way for me to process my grief. The two years of intense physical training leading up to the Silverman support a lot of emotional healing. Past finishers report the event to be brutal, with severe hills and intense heat that includes a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run.
It is difficult to train for an Ironman as a single parent. I spend five hours a day on the stationary bike inside the house watching movies with Amelia and take long runs on a treadmill close by her so we can talk. Most mornings I wake up early to keep my training from interfering with family life. Every Ironman athlete knows that separating our training regime from daily life and family is impossible. Ironman training requires tremendous sacrifice of families. It influences life year-round, dictating everything—what you eat, what you do for fun, what you want to talk about, and what you want to wear. Even days when you’re not training are active rest days where you focus on recovery. We like to talk about heart rates, nutrition, the latest gear, and our training plan for the week. Our poor families.
Ironman training regimens consume an average of thirty hours each week. On top of which is food preparation, traveling to train, and other organizational activities. I begin with books that talk about training routines, and I sketch out my training plans. I make a lot of mistakes. My regular program includes running four days a week, biking four days a week, swimming three days a week, and one strength session.
The uninterrupted time, lost in thought, is voluntary for me. I distract myself through audiobooks and podcasts if I don’t want to be in my head. But I enjoy my company enough that the meditational space endurance activities provide gives me a lot of balance to check in on my inner world.
Traveling to the Silverman racecourse includes a bizarre juxtaposition flying into Las Vegas from Alaska, then traveling to the scenic Lake Mead National Recreational Area. The swim begins at Boulder Beach and the warm water is crystal clear. I manage the swim without inhaling gallons of water and arrive at T1, the first transition area, in good spirits.
The bike section is notorious for its hills, but I have been training for this. Still, I am unprepared for the 8,500 feet of total elevation gain. The course follows along the west and north shores of Lake Mead before heading back into Henderson. On the bike, I am so nauseous from heat and exertion that I can’t eat my race-day nutrition, leaving me weak. Nothing is flat. All I can focus on is getting to the next aid station where I can pour water over my head, hoping to cool down. There is no shade out on this high desert, and the temperatures are rising close to ninety degrees Fahrenheit. I cry in frustration over my discomfort and my inability to thrive. The tears transition to those of anger, shame, and grief over having my loved ones ripped away from me so soon. Suffering is universal; what differs is the trigger. I take the anger and pour it into my legs, driving away my soul’s pain with every climb.
By the time I reach the bike transition area, T2, my body spasms in pain. My neck aches from the bike handlebars, welts on my neck are raw from my wetsuit and sunburn, and sand makes it into my bike shoes, creating blisters on my feet. My quads and hamstrings are jelly. It is time to put on my sneakers to start a 26.2-mile run. I fall off the bike, and I can’t walk.
The crowd cheers me on, shouting out encouragement. “You can do this! You got this! Keep it up! You’re my hero!”
Meanwhile, I waddle like an elderly Donald Duck. But the words penetrate through the pain in both my body and my soul. I absorb the crowd’s support, and it fuels my legs to take one foot and put it in front of the other—one baby-step at a time, like the previous six years.
This crawling, hesitant pace isn’t enough for me anymore—not for this race, not for my life. Instead, I want to live. Putting one foot in front of the other isn’t enough. I want to fly. I run. It does not look like flying—still more like a Donald Duck shuffle—but inside I soar free. I leave behind my broken heart and replace it with the encouraging words of random strangers.
Mile after mile I recall, for the first time ever, happy memories of Dave and Madi—times when we were all together, and times when Amelia, Dave, Alan, and I were out in the boat, exploring the world with nothing but time and each other. These memories replace the tragedy. The running gives me the resilience to feel the joy of these memories rather than the pain of their absence.
A couple of miles from the finish, I run by a little girl who shouts out, “You are an Ironwoman!”
Her words persist through my physical discomfort.
As I cross the finish line, the announcers say, “Katherine, you are an Ironman!”
My body may be battered, but I am still flying.
There was no turning back, and I commit to race one Ironman per year to help me keep that focus and keep me saying “Yes!” I choose every day to live to the fullest. Resilience is power, is freedom (see fig. 40).
Buddha and the Sky
Kotzebue, Alaska | 2012
Nowhere else in nature—not in the comings and goings
of the birds, the blossoming of trees, nor the arrival of the
rains—do we find a more reliable environmental reality in
which to frame the drama of life than the celestial backdrop.
—Anthony Aveni,
Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico
I enjoy visiting Kotzebue during long stays out at camp and am eager to move back home. I have barriers to moving—practical ones as well as psychological ones. Kotzebue has taken a lot from me, although it has given back. Part of me doesn’t want Amelia back there, exposed to the risks of life above the Arctic Circle. Overall, I fear the ultimate cost of reinvesting in a life there.
Despite my reticence, Kotzebue was, and is, my home. I’ve been working as an energy engineer for a design firm, WHPacific, and the company has me establish a local office in Kotzebue. Amelia is in third grade when we move back to Kotzebue in March 2012. Cindy comes up to to work for a while.
In Kotzebue, there is no swimming pool for Ironman training, only one road to run, and no roads to ride a triathlon bike on. My training will be all indoors. On weekends, Cindy, Amelia, and I cruise out to camp whenever weather permits.
I want to dream again. Time to change, even if it seems like a step forward over a cliff when I know I can’t fly. Restless, I walk down the beach and gaze at the moon. The universe reveals a lesson. The moon has a beautiful rainbow halo, adding a touch of intrigue and harmony to the black beyond. Clouds blanket the sky, and my heart falls at the lack of stars. Within the hour, cloud cover shifts to the west, revealing the moon while dissipating the rainbow h
alo. The stunning halo needs cloud cover to contrast its loveliness.
I want my heart, body, and spirit to be whole—to be free from suffering, as I once hoped for out in the dog yard of the Itens. I want to come full circle to be a bodhisattva. How can I ever help anybody else if I am lost? I have earmarked many Thich Nhat Hanh books. The breathing meditations he offers give hope that the worst mental cancer can improve through simple and dedicated practice. “Breathing in, I smile. Breathing out, I release. Breathing in, dwelling in the present moment. Breathing out, it is a wonderful moment.” Yes, Thich Nhat Hanh, thanks to you, it is a wonderful moment.
I look to a night sky full of magic. The moon, above the horizon, circles twenty-four hours a day. The clear night sky brings alive the mysteries of the stars. Our ancient ancestors looked to the stars for their source of truth. I see truth in stars in the present moment. Judgment of right or wrong doesn’t exist when you bare your soul in total vulnerability to look, full of wonder, up at the stars. I find refuge in the night sky. Wake up heart!
The celestial spheres intrigued eons of civilizations with their mystery, beauty, and power. Shamans, chiefs, and kings leveraged their connection to the sky above us to rise over their circumstances, raise the stature of their people, and connect to the afterlife. My fascination with the ancient sky reaches back twenty years. As a child sitting at the campfire with my dad toasting marshmallows, we would look up to talk about the constellations. The lights we see and the skies we watch create a window to the gods. The stage that the sky sets, with its many layers, weaves a story so complex yet so simple we humans can’t help but be in utter awe. From Mesoamerica, to the Forbidden City of Beijing, to ancient Egypt, to the Celts of Ireland, the ancient peoples all knew a common supernatural truth. We are not islands unto ourselves. We are part of a greater mystery called life. That our strand in the web of life is but one part of a beautiful whole. The light I shine is one among a tapestry of stars. The stars own my adoration and respect.
Epic Solitude Page 22