Know Me By Name

My name is Lindsey and this Alaskan shrub is known as Willow.

Familiarity is such a creature comfort, and not just for human creatures.  In the animal kingdom, creatures base their lives on familiar routines, environments, and relationships.  It is life ecology.  Animals adapt to their habitat through repetition over long periods of time to establish their niches for dwelling, traveling, eating, and reproducing.  Some animals become extremely specific in their routines, like the Giant Panda that eats ONLY bamboo, or Koalas that eat and live ONLY in eucalyptus trees, or the Bachmann’s Sparrow that lives ONLY in the branches of a pine tree recently affected by fire.  Home, even for animals, is a place of predictable circumstances, a mini-world of givens, where risk and uncertainty is minimized to create stability.  Comfort in the familiar is a universal instinct.

 

I married this man named Peter and we once sat next to an Alaskan river named the Little Susitna.

In the wild, a robin doesn’t simply up and decide one day, “Y’know, I don’t really feel like migrating this spring.  I’m gonna stay in Mexico this summer.  And while I’m at it, I’m sick of worms.  I’m going vegetarian and eating just berries.”  This change in familiar routine would have a huge ripple effect: imagine no robin song synonymous with misty spring mornings; picture robins ravaging the berry bushes rather than plucking worms out of the lawn; and consider the competition created between the robin and other berry-eating creatures (not to mention the population explosion of worms going uneaten).  Only humans make such decisions that utterly change our routines and habits so completely.  Some have even evolved a persistent nagging for change.  Routine of the daily variety is really not their thing.  But, deep down, on a primal level, they still crave something familiar amidst the newness.

 

Peter and I named our dog Samson, because we thought he would be strong,
 and our first kitten was named Nina, because she was a nincompoop.

I am one such human who has a penchant for change and has taken an opportunity to relocate to a completely foreign territory, where I am trying to carve out a new niche.  I’m a hitchhiker, a transplant, and an ex-patriot.  I am 3,000 long miles from the place I was born and raised, and from where I birthed and raised my own offspring.  I can count my lineage in the Alaskan ecosystem by generations, so the feeling of utter disconnection from my home habitat is overwhelming.  The thoughts Why did I come here? and What am I going to do? make for unsettling bedfellows each night when I close my eyes.  So, how do I learn to thrive in an unfamiliar habitat?  How do I ever feel comfort or familiarity again?

 

Our son we named Izak, which means laughter.

The only thing that keeps me grounded, makes me feel like I’m still on the same planet, is my family and the outdoors.  As for the outdoors, birds, butterflies, plants, and sunshine are my comfort food.  Food (especially fatty and starchy stuff) is also my comfort food - but that’s another blog.  Anyway, when I’m feeling the most out-of-sorts, I retreat to nature.  Maybe because it was my coping mechanism as a child, but the infinite intrigue and complexity of a wilderness always makes me feel better.  There is a certain kind of perfection in how all the elements of a forest work together and survive that makes me feel that everything is going to be okay.  There is predictability to the organization and occurrence of living organisms in a known ecosystem.  For instance, in the woods back home, I know I can find paper birch, quaking aspen, and white spruce growing out of an almost impenetrable tangle of grasses, wild roses, currents, horsetail, and 50 other shrub-sized plants vying for the endless summer sunlight.  I know that walking in the woods in Alaska requires a trail, or scratch-resistant pants (not to mention a good dose of mosquito dope). The composition of my northern woods feels right to me; it's predictable.  When my life doesn’t make sense, I go for a walk and am encouraged by the persistence and beauty of living things that I can call by name.  I think to myself, If that foxtail grass can grow out of poor soil and add its graceful splendor to the world with only the will to survive and adapt, then so can I.  

 

This is my favorite Alaskan place to explore, and it goes by the name Hatcher Pass.

But my new environment is not at all predictable to me. In Alaska, I know that if you want to see the stars, you need a down parka.  Consider this.  I grew up knowing that the sun never totally sets during the warm summer months.  Likewise, darkness goes together with cold winter temperatures - lots of dark and lots of cold.  Stargazing in Alaska, therefore, is an extreme winter sport, and only half the constellations could ever be learned. 

 

This is Alaska in Winter, which is not my favorite season, because there is too much of that white stuff called snow.

Now that I’m in California, it’s a whole different ball game.  On a recent camping trip with Chrysalis Charter School (my new employer), our middle-school science teacher gave a late-night astronomy lesson that blew my mind!  Up on the slopes of Mount Lassen, without the detriment of light pollution, the Milky Way materialized before my eyes with at least a dozen constellations I’d never seen before.  And I didn’t even need to wear a jacket or hold my breath to prevent the ice fog from obscuring my view.  Kids lay in the scrubby grass on their backs all around me and identified the circumpolar constellations that rotate around the North Star like the hour hand of a clock: Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Draco, and the Swan (or Northern Cross).  I watched Scorpio and his Red Giant “heart” rise like the sun over the silhouetted tops of Lodgepole Pine trees as Leo the Lion chased the moon along the same elliptical path behind the opposite horizon. This knowledge made the night sky over California more familiar to me.  I felt comforted.

 

This is familiar Alaskan weather, which I can't do anything about.

Naming everything new to me is one way I’ve tried to discover my niche and find familiarity.  We need names to communicate and to relate to objects in our environment.  Native names of natural landmarks are often adopted by incoming cultures in order to speed familiarity.  I also seek to learn the local knowledge, to adopt it, and thereby feel more at home. Guided walks with the California Native Plant Society provide me with just the kind of knowledge that I desire.  The surprising bonus is that I meet other people like me who are making this place their new home and are also looking for ways to connect.

 

Here I am in Northern California, next to Cliff Lake, trying to learn the names of new plants.

 Naming is like claiming.  If I can identify something by name, I own that knowledge and somehow it allows me to take the thing into myself and make it a part of me.   By giving something a name, I own it.  Did you ever bring home a stray animal and hear your parent’s say, “Don’t name it, because you aren’t keeping it.”  They knew that if you put a name on something, you were responsible for it.  Family is like that, too.  We give our children names that we hope will imbue our greatest desires into their lives.  We look backward to past family members to glean characteristics from their names and nicknames.  We cling lovingly to all that is familiar - and familial.  Don't these two words have the same root?  We learn about our history through family, and sometimes we understand ourselves and the paths we've chosen better because of knowing them.

This is part of me.  My paternal grandmother claimed Fairbanks
as her home when she was still called by her maiden name in,
Mary Siebenthaler, in the 1920's.

So, now I'm claiming responsibility for the path I've named for myself and for the new environment I'm adapting to.  I'm owning up to my choices and doing my best to act natural.  I'm following in the footsteps of my adventurous ancestors.  However, it is still foreign to me and more than a bit scary.  I know I've left ripples in the wake of leaving my familiar niche, like a bird erupting from a lake to take flight, but I've committed to this adventure for a reason and I aim to see where it leads.

My maternal grandmother, Ellen, was a brave woman who learned to call Alaska home.  Here she holds a King salmon and looks natural doing it!

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to make such a departure from the familiar.  In fact, the genesis of my deep-rooted familiarity with Alaska began with exactly this kind of journey to a foreign land.  If my maternal grandpa had never mustered the guts to leave his home (and, temporarily, his family) in Colorado, then I never would have known Alaska.  He, like me, took a job in a far-away place for a year before moving his whole family up north together.  Their homestead adventure must have been fraught with uncertainty and challenges, but it endowed a rich legacy of independence and camaraderie in their descendants.  I am grateful for my grandpa's bravery and adventurous spirit.  My dad's parents also made the same journey to Alaska, though they did it separately, before they met, and about three decade's earlier.  Had any one of those people opted to shy away from the risk of a grand adventure, my parents would never had met and I would not exist.  I feel privileged to have some of my grandparents' intrepid spirit running through my veins and I'm choosing to honor it.  My name is Lindsey and I am a highly-adaptable creature with long migratory routes scoping out a new habitat.  Now that you've begun to get to know me, let's go on this adventure together!

This journey into Alaska belongs to my grandparents.  My journey continues from here.