Howl

Huge moon rising above jagged doug fir. Howl, howl, howl till I'm shaking, howl, howl till I can't see. Shaking arms god i'm stronger than this but no I'm not and this is release and I don't want to crash the car and I pull over. Arms straight over the steering wheel and head down I release it all. Screaming rage, high keening wail. This is no serenade to the rising moon. This is animal misery. It is the timeless keening of a woman left alone. It is a death chant with no death but the one that occurs between two people. It is an ululation and a tribute to what is still wild in me. Somewhere between the screaming and the long piercing howl there is indeed acknowledgment of the full rising moon. Not like before - before him - where I found all my magic alone in rivers and moons and canyons. Somewhere between his arms and the rope I've shared with so many climbing partners, the long beeeep of a 457 mHz transceiver first turning on before a day on the snow slopes my joy and exaltation in the natural world has become a shared thing. Even when skiing and climbing with others I would share it with him, wherever we had both flung ourselves to that day, then pick it apart with him. I have loved his sharp mind like I've loved his big warm sturdy body - consistently throughout the entire time I've known him. I brought my stories back and we would pick them apart, as we did with his, laughing at the ridiculous, snarling at the inane. I understood my dynamic with all my friends and climbing partners. I would analyze what I had and hadn't done right. There was clarity and what felt like no compromise.

But here I am, keening to a cold moon over Elma alone at the helm of my chariot, red. Big and red and long and lean, the best damn pickup you've ever seen, T-Rizzle, T-Red, Toyota T-100, camper shell white (a huge camper shell procured for a hundred bucks). Tires ridiculously aggressive. Engine rebuilt and ready to roll. Later this night one of our mutual friends will say of my momentary lamentation of my rootlessness: 'at least you can still have a a truck.' At least. What I mourn this night is the loss of my heart. I'm not so tough that I can do this alone, no mother, no guiding siblings, no best friend stopping by to check - the lack of these have been near-constants, but now no lover. No lover. He is down in his new city and I am alone with the dulled steel knifepoint of my curiosity and drive in a town full of arrogant fishermen and tweakers. Meth and crack. Cut down trees and diminished returns. Where's the honest day's work in sawing a log that doesn't exist? In catching a crab that isn't there?

I hope the crab are there, I've staked my winter on it. Hung my hope head-high on the hooks in the galley so it can dry from the hard and constant Westport rain. I hate the town the way I hated Valdez. It's an industrial fishing town with the same seedy bars, politics and hangers-on as Valdez, with nothing to recommend it in the way of mountains or nightlife or a way to keep from drinking too much and saying or doing something I regret with a less than nice young man out of sheer loneliness. Yet here I am, stubborn solo female deckhand, lining up for the last scratches of a once-booming crab industry. Why? Because it is hard, and I can make money. The kind of money that doesn't make sense - a thousand dollars or more a day, in a couple of hours. If the crab are there. Just need to keep strong, unhurt and awake while lifting heavy things and letting the Pacific brutalize my delicate, aching, sturdy body. I fish because I like money and hate the nine to five. I fish because I can't rationalize getting paid 9.50 an hour to pull rich gapers off the ski hill or answer phones and wish I was a heli-ski guide. The service industry knows I disdain it by now, so every time I get sick of working with racists and meatheads (and the occasional, as this crew is turning out to be during gear work, straight up guys) big ego yahoos and god's gift to the industrialized ocean harvest I turn my hopeful, fresh-scrubbed face back to them. But there's fish slime behind my ears and critical, humorous disdain behind my tight pressed smiley lips, just oozing out. People know that. People know I'm not the type to lick ass to get the good trip or the good acclaim amongst my fellow workers. In the outdoor industry the fact that you get to go to work on a ski lift is, in the eyes of resort and business owners, payment enough. Anything else is a bonus. This means that without family money, investments, a lucrative off-season job, or the willingness to live in a dorm or your vehicle with no health insurance and bad teeth you're gonna be eligible for food stamps. Will you take them, surrounded by a culture of wealth and play? Will you 'grow up', go back to grad school and get a real job? Will you become management? You come here because you loved skiing (climbing, rafting, etc). Resort culture, it's fun, it's a big party but - what happened? When did your love of nature and the sports you played in that arena become something you had to sell to survive?

Survive. I observe the tops of trees from the platform of my outstretched arms, over the steering wheel. Fucking angry. Going crabbing. Not sure if I miss a man or a mountain more. It's all mixed up in this heart and I am poised to jump away from gear work into the Rockies and climb ice. To crab. But it's not what I want and a taste is not enough. Tears fall until I shudder them finished with a long sigh. I drive.

props to allen ginsberg, the dead dude who let me steal his cool title