
You go for a walk on a Saturday night, when the heavy rain turns to drizzle, a walk that begins with luring your children outside to show them the strong green shoots of the Himalayan Poppy, the only perennial you let yourself buy last year, one of your favorites that you struggled to winter over at you last house in Anchorage, always envious of your neighbor's thriving plant as yours never returned in the spring, never graced your garden bed with its rare ice-blue face.
But here it is, emerging from hibernation, looking solidly rooted in place, giving you hope that months from now it might even bloom.
Your kids aren't nearly as excited as you are, but they come away from their huddle by the propane heater into the grey evening and Elias asks, "Can we walk to the big tree?"
So you follow a trail through the woods, Nick in the lead scouting how to shape the trail for biking, Elias pulling up the rear with his awkward grace.
Olive finds an Artist's Fungus on a wet log, the kind she once called "funky man" and you didn't correct her because you loved hearing her say, "Look, I found another funky man!"

She grabs your hand and swings it, an act she won't do forever, just as she has corrected her terminology "funky-man" becoming "fungus", she will someday stop swinging your arm when you grasp hands if she'll even still hold it.
But tonight, she swings with ease, and says, "Mom, I have an idea, we could have a Fungus Day, like Easter, except we find fungus. And then we could cook with fungus, and eat fungus and draw on the fungus..."
And then you remember, this is why you live here.
As hard as it might be to live in a trailer during a cold soggy end of April, you chose to build a house here because you fell in love with this place, with this coastal rain-forest on the edge of a mountain range-- with the trees and the moss and the smell of decay, the view of Resurrection Bay, the silence, the eagle's nest, the Spruce tips in Spring.
It wasn't a building that called you here to the side of Foundry Peak, it was the land, it was a moment just like this, walking in the woods, hand in hand with your daughter, as she dreams about inviting friends to your place for a great fungus hunt, to make a special day of it, like Easter.
"Lets do it--I think that's a great idea."
You reach The Big Tree, the one that survived the logging of this lands' past, though it lost its top in a storm so how tall it would have been remains a mystery.

Its the first place you considered building, years ago, and spent some time clearing here, which turned into the start of your trail.
The saturated ground loosens its hold on the roots of the standing dead trees, and so you push one over with ease, to Elias's delight, who yanks a Spruce out of the ground roots and all.
"Mom, I thought we weren't gonna get distracted by breaking, " he says, something you say to him a lot when you just want to walk through the woods faster then a snail.
"It alright Bud, we can pull some trees out," you say. "The conditions are kinda perfect."
And so there you are, a family of four, knocking down the dead Alder and Spruce with your bare hands, feeling the satisfaction of breaking shit, of clearing space, of making room for light, of pulling away the old dead trunks so the live trees can grow.
"I did it!" Olive says, with pride, as she holds up a Small Spruce with the roots still attached.
"Mom, did you see me knock that one over?" Elias asks. And you heard it but you didn't see because you were throwing all your weight against a moldy Alder trunk and when it finally cracked and fell you momentarily felt like a god, or at least like someone who can accomplish something, who can break a tree in half with her bare hands. Anything is possible in that moment when the relic succumbs to your strength, to your power, to your stubborn will.
Maybe if you can splinter apart old trees, if you can pull them straight from the ground with the decaying root ball still attached, you can also fix something and make it right, a house perhaps. Maybe the equation doesn't work in reverse but maybe logic isn't always your guide.
Maybe if you can find ways to persevere, when forces seem to fly in the face of your progression, if you can work together and cheer, even when you fall, maybe, just maybe, the sun will return unfiltered, raw, and oh so warm.
Your family breaks and pulls and celebrates as you walk, until the trail leads you back to your driveway, where Elias asks: "Can we check on the neighbors' place?"
You share your driveway with one other neighbor, who lives in Texas most of the year but owns a secluded cabin on a private lagoon with a creek running past that salmon swim up in the fall. Its a magical place and you are privileged to be part of his neighborhood watch crew, checking on the cabin whenever the conditions call for it.
"I don't know," you say, unsure whether to commit to a walk that long past eight at night.
"Please Mom!" Olive says, "I want to go to the beach. We both want to go, please can we walk there, both me and Elias want to, please Mom!"
You make eyes with Nick and nod.
"Alright, " he says.
"Yay," Olive skips ahead and Elias walks with more purpose down the steep driveway.
And this too, is why you live here, where you can be in the mountains, woods, and beach all in a day.

And Resurrection Bay greets you with a low tide, where you all end up scrambling over barnacle-covered rocks, climbing farther than you have before, during a momentary pause in the rain, you walk along the wet slippery rocks, farther than you thought Elias could because he wants to go even farther.



"Can we walk all the way to Tonsina?" he asks.
"Not tonight Bud."
Yes, we can, and farther still.
We will keep putting our roots into this place, even deeper, we will make it through the toughest of winters, we will reach towards the stubborn light and bloom-- in all our brilliant broken glory.
