The Clouds in the Sky

I remember walking down the small hill from Lathrop Hall to the Patty Center and looking to my left, just above the top of the stunted black spruce and thinking that I loved Alaska. I was 19 and a freshman in college. The skies were vast with splashes of pink among the stretched out white clouds and it almost looked like I was walking on the top of the world and could see the earth’s curve. It was spring and there was a freshness in the air that signaled the awakening of the world to new possibilities.

I have been noticing the clouds since I got back up here. The sky really does open up and when I sit and look at it I feel like I am a part of the universe and I feel my place and insignificance. I never feel this is in the city. In the city I catch myself looking up and feeling like I am part of the world community – a member of the human race. But it is different here. Everything has a different slant and perception. Nothing is the same.

I wonder whether I was in love with Alaska as much as I loved the feeling of starting a life for myself and finding the path I wanted to take. I don’t know. I think I loved Alaska at the time. What I do know is the wide, bright, and unending sky signaled to me the opening possibilities of what I can do and who I can become. The big sky today, while still beautiful, reminds me of my inability to escape. It is so large, so beyond my understanding of spatial depth, that it acts as a metaphor for what I can’t reach while I am here. The things I cannot see because I am standing on the top of the world under the baffling heavens.