Alaska

View of Lake Superior from the top of Mount Bohemia

It took soooo long to get there. To the Keweenaw Penninsula in Upper Michigan, yeah, that's a long ass drive. But I mean here, to the point where I'd had enough of a break from work and practice and enough time to recover that I felt game for 13 hours in the car for a single weekend devoted to facilitating my man's access to one of his greatest passions: Alpine skiing.

A very happy man

It wasn't easy. Day one's drive went smoothly, but day two, which took us the last 45 miles, was for some reason a trigger for me. I couldn't watch as we drove, I felt scared to death, literally: our impending death felt imminent. That probably sounds dramatic, and it was. I squeezed my eyes shut, tears falling down my face, and then finally managed to muster up the courage to tell my man what was going on. I always fear, when I let him into these spaces, that doing so will cause him to spin out, but I didn't want to be alone with it, either.

Not surprisingly, when we got to Mount Bohemia, I wasn't in a great frame of mind (or body), and being at a ski area where 80% of the runs are way beyond my ability didn't feel great. So I took a few spins down the one manageable blue run and then camped out in the lodge with a book, which felt a lot better than continuing to ski.

To my man's credit, he didn't get triggered. He didn't worry too much about the fact that I wasn't in a great space to enjoy the mountain. He did his thing. I was proud of us for this -- managing to each take care of our own needs.

And then he suggested we bail and go Nordic skiing, during which my mood, and my experience on the trip, turned to experiencing the glory of winter for myself. The snow! The sky! The lake! So, so beautiful.

On Day 3, we returned to Mount Bohemia, and this time I was up to the task of working on my form and skiing in the trees, which was pretty darn magical, if a little bit scary.

This morning on NPR, I heard a story about Maggie Rogers, and about this song in particular, which feels apropos of this journey, both to the U.P.  and to these places within ourselves and each other:

I was walking through icy streams
That took my breath away
Moving slowly through westward water
Over glacial plains
And I walked off you
And I walked off an old me
Oh me oh my I thought it was a dream
So it seemed
And now, breathe deep
I'm inhaling
You and I, there's air in between
Leave me be
I'm exhaling
You and I, there's air in between
You and I, there's air in between
Cut my hair so I could rock back and forth
Without thinking of you
Learned to talk and say
Whatever I wanted to
And I walked off you
And I walked off an old me
Oh me oh my I thought it was a dream
So it seemed
And now, breathe deep
I'm inhaling
You and I, there's air in between
Leave me be
I'm exhaling
You and I, there's air in between
You and I, there's air in between
You and I, there's air in between

Yep, there is. Just enough...