It’s half-past four in the afternoon. I’m sitting in my living room
sipping tawny port and listening to “Grantchester Meadows” and watching the sun
go down. Every day it lengthens its arc
just a bit longer towards Esther Dome; by April it will sail right over Ester,
and by June it will sink into the hills beyond Murphy Dome in a big flaming
pool shortly past midnight.
Today was my 'spa day:' sleep late, eat whatever I want,
enjoy the returning sunshine, take a nice hot shower, read Oprah magazine, have
a drink at sunset, listen to good music.
I still have to pass my comps, and still have to continue
gathering germination data through the microscope, work in the lab 20 hours a
week, train and supervise the student helpers, and get trained myself on other
new tasks. And still find time to water my greenhouse plants, go grocery shopping,
clean my house, and split and stack firewood on the porch on a regular basis so
I can have a warm house each morning.
But none of that counts if I can’t look in the mirror each
day and be OK with who I am and what I’m doing.
The last three months have been more difficult and stressful than I
could ever have imagined. And it’s still not completed. If I am to remain happy in my choices, I have
to forgive myself for the fact that I’m growing older and may not be as swift
as I once was, and not to worry if perhaps that’s what my committee is picking
up on. I know that how you carry yourself is important. It’s as important to a
scientist as it is to an artist or a businessman or a politician. If I act like I know what I’m doing, perhaps I
can convince people it’s true.
Of course the first person I need to convince is me, and
that has really been the one thing I’ve been working (struggling?) with my
whole life.
I may never really know how other people see me, but I can
choose not to care so much. Whenever I see a video of myself I see a person who
is deeply, un-fixably nerdy. And I guess this is a trait that people will either
find endearing and want to be my friend or to help me, or they’ll find it annoying
and either want to avoid me (if they’re normal) or see an opening to be mean
(if they’re mean). The latter could
possibly explain why I feel some people just don’t care for me, or at first
think I’m one way, which they seem to like, but then they change their behavior
and become less friendly.
This morning I stood outside in the sunlight and realized
the sun takes the same path in February as it does in October. Which means
January is the same as November, February is October, March is September, April
is August, and May is July. June is just June.
I stood for a while just looking at the trees. It’s noisy
walking in -25 F snowpack, like walking on Styrofoam, and I don’t enjoy
taking walks in the winter because you can’t really appreciate how silent it
really is if your boots are squeaking all over the place. So I just stood and made like a tree.
I realized that as much as I want to sit there thinking
about daylength, or air temperature, or climate change effects on seedling
germination in the Arctic, it’s only a faint scratch upon the surface of
things. The trees stand as trees have always
stood as long as trees have been trees.
Being in Alaska has allowed me to realize that nature contains a truth
so deep and matter-of-fact, we will probably never get to the bottom of it. We
try to use language to describe nature, but even our words are a feeble attempt
to come to terms with what it really is. That thought gave me comfort, because no
matter how much more we uncover in our studies, the trees and everything else
will always get to retain their mystery. Of course, they don’t care whether
they do or not, and that is why I love them.
