Denali!

"Denali" -- The Athabaskan word for "The High One"-- is also the name of the National Park in Alaska containing Mt. McKinley (originally known as "Denali" to the native Athabaskans). I picked it for the name of my blog because at one time not very long ago, I was half-seriously planning a secret escape there, a trip in which I would run away from my desk job to tour the Denali National Park by bus, by foot, by camera, and then return to the southeast, sated with my pictures of giant rock formations and glaciers and moose. I didn't go, for many reasons, including that I never had enough money to justify paying so much for a plane ticket, nor did I have anyone I could have adequately convinced to run away with me to that remote place, and it is not safe to hike or travel alone. I would have traveled alone but then I could not have enjoyed the wilderness quite so well, for fear of bear attacks.

The reason it is a good name for this little page is that it has become emblematic-- very important because I am a dorky English major and those emblems and symbols become very important to me. Anyone who has written page upon page of drying-out commentary about a book they only half-enjoyed knows that one powerful emblem/symbol can carry you for multiple pages as a topic--

("Therefore the reader can see that the national park, otherwise known as "Denali" to several of the main characters of this novel, carries a special significance which is tied not only to the physical outlay of the Alaskan backcountry, which is rugged to say the least, but also to the landscape of the mind of these three characters. Like their minds, this park is full of wilderness, full of empty space, and full in other places with dense evergreen forest. Not insignificantly, this untamed wilderness-of-the-mind also contains many many unruly moose.")

It is a symbol for many reasons. First, I had a few somewhat brief but very formative experiences while hiking in the western part of the continent. Given that I am so very rooted in the eastern seaboard, anywhere that contains tall, jagged peaks that have patches of snow on them even in July, and exotic creatures like honest-to-goodness jackrabbits and mule deer and elk and moose and grizzly bears, is cataloged in one main folder in my mind: "The West." I can see how the earlier explorers got so obsessed with it, and how Manifest Destiny seemed like such a great idea. Escaping from a grimy Industrial Revolution-era packinghouse city to somewhere like Montana, where there *still* aren't tons of people, must have seemed like magic, despite the long, grueling wagon train journeys. And it is true that when you slog your way somewhere by the sweat of your own self, or at least by the sweat of your own oxen which you sweated to buy, I suppose (I have never bought oxen, I am just guessing), you feel a certain entitlement to the land you find at the end of your journey.

But I am digressing.

The area where I hiked, a total of 27 days on two separate occasions, first 6 and then 21 days two years later, was completely foreign and marvelous and wonderful, and was also in New Mexico, which, despite being a full 3500 miles away from good Denali, still shares in my mind something in common with it. There is a certain air of freedom and adventure that is linked to the two places in my mind, and Denali being in Alaksa, and Alaska being SO far away adds even more mystique to it. And whether I have to write it or not, there is a certain magic to any mountain to a girl who was born, raised, and continues to live about 30 feet above sea level.

Of course, it is always possible that the thin air in Cimarron just made me lightheaded for the entire time I was in New Mexico, filling my head with bizarre ideas and associations that could have just as easily been arrived at by standing up too quickly from the couch on a lazy Sunday. But I refuse to accept that explanation because it shoots through my cherished symbol. So there.

This giant mountain and the surrounding relatively-unspoiled landscape is also a useful symbol because at this particular point in my life, it is all about looking forward, and looking up-- I could even say that the original meaning of the word, 'The High One,' could be a pseudo-religious reference, meaning, I am looking up to the High One, looking up to God. Trying desperately to move forward and keep looking up, until I get to the top. And the more I live and work and move around in my sea level city, the more I realize that it is probably better that I did not run away to Alaska right then (although I would still like to make it there sometime), because then it would only be the name of a place where I went, when the plane into Anchorage was late, and the tour bus smelled like old cheese, and the nights were a little too cold, and the days were beautiful, but sour because I knew that I would have to leave again to go back home. This way, it can be, for now, just what it is-- a tall place in a faraway territory, a symbol of pushing and stretching toward whatever is next, and the best name I could come up with to describe my leaping thoughts.

It's a gorgeous day out at the family ranch, and I am trying out my blog feature for the first time. Today is Mother's Day proper, although the holiday has already spanned over two days. I am learning that this is the way to have two families at once, since I have gained an entire clan with my fiance, and his clan is much bigger and less centrally-organized than mine. We are all pretty much part of the same family, or at least were born that way, or married to one.

I was thinking the other day, sort of randomly, about how strange it is how many names a woman can go through in her life. Think of an actress, for instance, who starts out with one name: Mary Jones. Mary Jones then decides that her name is much too blah for showbiz, so she switches it up to something more interesting. Then she gets married, then married again, then married for the last time. She made her name in movies after her first marriage, and her showbiz name has always stuck, but legally, she has had more last names than there is room for on the job application blank that says, "If you have ever been known by a different name, please list here: ___" Meanwhile, her brother, Bill Jones, has had the same name from the time he is a baby until he is an old man. Being a serious man (mostly he refurbishes office buildings and resells them to real estate firms. He makes his best business with state governments eager for more cubicle farms to pen up their well-dressed cattle.), he has hardly even garnered himself a nickname. The kids call him "Dad," the wife calls him "dear," and the telemarketers always start out with the same, "Good evening, Mr. Jones. I'd like to take a minute of your time." (I'd like to take a minute of *your* time, Bill thinks, but he is always polite, as the harried officiousness in their voices reminds him of his own two children, studying in remote universities. He does not even know if they eat well, or if they remember the times he pushed them in their swings when they were just toddlers.)

So the name thing is different for men and women. I am about to trade my name for a different one, and I have a sort of mixed reaction about the whole thing. All of my names mean something-- my first name is the one I unconsciously answer to, my middle name was my grandmother's name, the one I never got to meet because she died before I was born, and my last name is the great Defining Name, the one word that links me to all the other crazy people who sit down around the same Thanksgiving turkey. So which one do I disavow? Do I squish them together? Add them all up? Cut just one, and keep the rest?

An interesting question, and one that I have exactly seven months and nine days to decide.