About five weeks ago, when I was sitting in the single clear space on my bedroom floor, trying to figure out how to fit all those sweaters and wool socks and extra toiletries into my two bags, I had a thought.
I crawled through the chaos to the hall closet and dug my trusty ace bandage out of a basket of braces, wraps, and tape. It’s not that my family is generally prone to injury; they’re just the athletic, active kind of people who play sports aggressively and lift heavy things and display their wounds with stoic pride.
I was not exactly cut from the family cloth. I walk into door frames and furniture so often that I’m never sure where the newest bruise came from. I have raised goose eggs on my nose more than once from walking directly into solid objects, such as a giant marble column. And my attempts to become more athletic generally end badly. Bike crashes, pulled muscles, tendonitis, sprained ankles–it’s really anyone’s guess how I haven’t broken anything yet.
So I brought my ace bandage with me to Nome, thinking that maybe the fates would be kinder to me if I had it. There are so many outdoorsy activities here, and maybe if I prepared myself for injury, it wouldn’t really happen.
But it was only a matter of time. It was a beautiful Saturday, so we decided to go on a hike to Dorothy Falls. We sang Taylor Swift loudly to scare off bears as we walked through the yellowing willows. We waded across a river in boots and barefoot (you know, if you’re me and only have hiking shoes). We climbed up a ridge. We admired the view and picked some lingering blueberries. We could just see the falls at the bottom of the ridge when I announced that I felt like I might turn my ankle if we kept walking sideways downhill. And then I did.
In that moment, lying on a ridge, facing a one-and-a-half mile hike back to the road, and trying really hard to seem tougher than I am in front of the other volunteers, I was grateful for my natural clumsiness. It meant that I had done all this before, only worse and with my dad to hold my hand. I knew immediately what had happened, and I knew that I could get back to the car by walking carefully and leaning on Francesca’s arm in the particularly boggy, downhill parts.
Of course, there weren’t many other options, and I really didn’t want to be carried. But I’m choosing to take the positive spin here. Some people talk about coming here to lose yourself, but that’s never sat well with me. I don’t want to throw everything out and reclaim the essentials. I want to slowly chip off the nonessentials, and uncover those diamonds that are too hard to break.
We walked back slowly. Francesca let me chatter away about Eskimo Stories and Legends, the program I’m responsible for at the station. I got home, found my ace bandage, and propped my leg up with a bag of ice. It wasn’t the afternoon I’d been expecting, but I didn’t cry or complain. I didn’t even let it stop me from reciting my favorite poem for the bears in the willows, or smiling when when everyone got water in their boots crossing the river again.
That day I was tougher than I expected myself to be. So I’m going to call this one a victory.
