Be Playful

"Be playful," says Kim Heacox, conversationalist-conservationist. "Be playful with language." That's precisely what I've been thinking my writing lacks. After all, I'm writing about my "search for wildness." I've sought a wilderness experience in Alaska, the state I had until this summer considered a U.S. territory--the land of the freer than I.

I sit in class listening to guest lecturer Heacox wondering when I have taken a moment this summer while in Alaska to be playful. Sure, I've gone on hikes and have socialized with friends (obviously, after we've each climbed to the next camp up our mountain of reading), but have I "introduced levity" to my experience of Alaska?

Auke! Auke! Auke-Auke! My hosts to Juneau, the ravens of Auke Auke! Bay Lake! swoop over head as I sit outside Egan Library at the University of Alaska Southeast looking at a giant welded raven sculpture. They no longer terrify me as they did when I arrived three weeks ago. I want to know what they're saying. Auke! Auke! They welcome me into the conversation, but I plead ignorant and walk away.

Sitting in the gazebo beside Auke Lake, named for the people who once lived here, I wonder--English teacher that I am--at the redundancy of the name: translated, "Lake" Lake. The cartographer must have been listening to the ravens without knowing their destination either.