On these floors: interconnected crannies that end abruptly in RESTRICTED signs, twelve barf bag stations, jigsaw puzzles strewn half-completed on diner booths, 4-month-old rural Alaskan newspapers, a hidden movie theatre with room for 40 and advertising Coco, the smell of dust and cigarette smoke and petroleum and sea salt, and of course, recently bathed and excited and adventurous people who intentionally or necessarily opted for the ferry, and not the cruise ships. One is Roberta, a Tlingit cashier who grins and refuses to explain why her nametag reads "Trouble." Another is Ted, who has named the bears that visit the mine where he works 26 weeks a year for $120 grand.
Outside these floors: an incredible (in-credible) glassy expanse of what seems like nothing, below which dances the teeming life of the clean, temperate inside Pacific. Colors and textures that exist nowhere else in the galaxy. Orcas, herring roe, salmon, kelp forests that giggle at the size of the Amazon. Things I haven't endeavored to know much about, by virtue of my bipedalism.
Beyond the expanse: forests and mountains and glaciers that the next generation will be the last to witness. I give up scaling them because it's like counting sand grains, but I'm told this green and blue continues as designated wilderness for an area the size of Italy. One of the largest peak-to-seafloor protected areas in the world, as far from modern society as you can get without leaving our atmosphere. Ted the Bear Man tells me Admiralty Island, across the strait from the dock, houses four bears per square-mile.
All of it visible because of the strange sunshine today, which we'll be lucky enough to taste for the rest of our trip. I choose to name it magic.The sun is setting. I walk entirely too fast with my 35-pound backpack during my first 20 minutes on board, feeling my inner kindergartner wanting to point and yell. I look back at the wake of our waves as the sun sets, and for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long, I notice myself smiling, from the inside out. I notice it there, and marvel, and chuckle, for three reasons.
First, this is the kind of smile that decides to appear with no power of mine, that is for no other mortal but me. I love humans and choose to live near and with a lot of them, but part of my smile is a realization that I strain to please them, but now the world is pleasing me. I want to ask it how much it strains to do so.
Second, so much could have gone wrong today, or any day; so much stands between living and thriving. But today, nothing did. Rather, some things did here and everywhere, but I didn't even notice. Most days I put per capita global average human thriving at around 10, and that might be generous%. Right now, I am experiencing that life is nothing but a gift, always.
Third, I renew a commitment I've made again and again since waking up to the importance of active gratitude. I recommit to observing how easily we forget sublimity. How quickly we fall from soaring to sulking, magic to mindlessness. I recommit to basking in the 100%.
