Migrating (Where the river is windin'... big Nuggets they're findin')

Who needs leprechauns at the end of a rainbow, or a guardian angel, when you have a one of these as a personal guide? Or maybe this is just what you start hallucinating after being lost in the woods for a few months. From the front cover of Alaska-Yukon Magazine (1909), dug up on one of my formerly frequent forays into the archives of the Alaska & Polar Regions Collection section of the UAF library. As of late we've been catching a slew of documentaries on the history of Alaska on a local Maine Public Broadcasting station here on Mount Desert Island. Which has been contributing to a creeping thaw of nostalgia and homesickness (except for the whole subzero temperatures and eternal darkness part). But this inspirational image is a metaphor for the motivation that is always simmering away on the mental back-burners. Or maybe it's just a tripping sourdough.

Call it a remix on the Homesick Alaskan (and the Homesick Southerner): while taking a break from that residency gig I doodled this out while sitting on a bench at Seawall in Acadia, in between staring wistfully out over the ocean being a poseur. Then, when I made a call on the cellphone, I noticed there was a message waiting. Turned out to be from the g-friend - it looks like we will officially be pulling up stakes and migrating back North.

Tentatively slated to hit the highway in early March. From Alaska to Maine to Georgia, then back to Maine, and now... back to Alaska. If there's a theme here, it's best summed up by Wash:

 We'll be in the Anchorage area, so a little bit closer to the Interior, and nearby a whole new world of previously unexplored vistas. Seems to have been a most fortuitous serendipity to add coastal lexicon to the mental mulch-pile, which will surely come full circle into Pacific coastal cartoons. Having mastered lobsters and lighthouses, I suppose next up on the drawing board will be Dungies and dredges.
In all seriousness, it has been a simply awesome year here in Maine, full of incredible experiences and opportunities, and making some good friends and great connections. At least now my memoir is already written, or at least the chapter about Down East.