the ugly earring

I have no idea what it looks, tastes or smells like. But, I imagine myself in long Willie Nelson braids and faux fur boots walking through snow and pitch blackness in the middle of the day. I hear it is lovely–a nature buff’s refuge and commune. There are towns untouched by greedy corporations, and a small population continues to live off the land–farmers, fishermen, herders. Once during a desert hike through the Superstition Mountains, a friend spoke of a time in the seascape city of Sitka, Alaska and a woman we’ll call her Mary.

The beautiful Mary had abandoned her cosmopolitan, bougie life in San Francisco and moved to Sitka where she married her husband and birthed a colony of sheep and geese. She and her husband were farmers and lived in a rat-tat house of wood and steel. For income, she set sail as the cook on a fisherman’s ship. There’s a picture of Mary and her pet pig–her long blonde/gray hair in pigtail braids, her pants rolled up and revealing bright green rubber boots. I asked  if she was happy trading her old life for something more….rural. The response was yes.

But, that wasn’t the whole story according to the photograph and the look in her eyes. Was it regret that forced the contrived smile? No. She wore her green boots and hugged the pig proudly. The answer was in the background–in the small house with the firewood cut and waiting by the front door. Her eyes revealed a claustrophobic feeling, the cramped living conditions she shared with her husband in that little wooden shed. Mary didn’t enjoy the marriage part–being landlocked and responsible, silenced and cooperative. After all, she discovered her love was the sea. It was a betrayal sleeping next to her husband, but longing for that watery mass. She drifted away remembering how she had fallen asleep to the music of the ocean’s current; had mixed her tears and sickness with salt water; and threw away wishes into the celestial curtain of the Northern Lights. Mary, you conquered the fear of being swallowed by something larger, a Moby Dick, a black sea. Mary, you uncovered the secret that paradise exists in the whale’s dark belly.

I wonder about her today and the many bearded fisherman hanging around the Gulf of Alaska. What will happen to them now that the Senate voted to permit oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Surely big business will move in, tourist attractions and strip malls will appear. Fast food everywhere! Satellite televisions to compensate for the 24 hour blackness!

Mary, Mary where will you run when all these streetlights and traffic replace the sun?

Why must “they” ruin everything? Jack Kerouac in Gap Commercials and on the movie screen. Republicans inciting George Orwell’s 1984 doctrine. Vintage Indian wrap skirts from the 1960s now in Vogue, as well as big sunglasses and turquoise. Hippy communes crumbling to dust.

Mr. Eisenhower, you set aside this plot of land for protection in 1960. You must have had something optimistic and tranquil in mind. Tell us around the campfire. Your secret wishes that you had planned. Your dreams, they have come to a close.

Mine have ended too.

“….The GOP argued that the refuge eventually would produce one million barrels a day and help ease America’s growing dependence on foreign oil. Democrats said that the measure would despoil one of the most pristine areas in the hemisphere and that conservation and use of alternative fuels would do a better job of easing the U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.”