Into the Desert

I cut edibles in half and eat honey yogurt directly from the container. I sweat buckets. I pace around the casita, using the cold floor tiles to guide me. At night, my leg cramps, forcing me out of bed and back to my laptop.

My right hand and wrist are in bad shape. Bursitis makes the joints in my hand swell and feel strangely warm, and I alternate between wrapping the wrist tightly and wearing a compression glove. Both get in the way.

My hip aches. I walk slowly.

My knuckles crack and bleed in the dry air, not quite in the place where Troy jokingly checked me for stigmata a few days ago.

I take Advil and wait 15 minutes for it to take effect and dull the pain.

I wear soft clothing and eat soft food. I drink endless mugs of spicy, sweet tea from a spice shop in Seattle.

I sharpen Julie’s knives.

I accidentally spill peppercorns all over the place, twice.

I just want to work. I just want to write. I start at the beginning and pieces fall into place from there. I send chapters to people—Mia and Joee, one of the Matts, Jen and Kirsten. I ask specific questions about our shared childhood and whether I’m striking the right tone. I look up driving distances on my maps app.

I think about what it means to be an Alaskan. How Alaska is its own country. Jen calls my family “real sourdough” and I laugh. Pop was a Sourdough, for sure. He was born in Fairbanks in the 1920s. My mother’s other grandparents lived in Anchorage when it was a tent city (my great-grandmother said it was the best time of her life). These Jewish tailors and Canadian jewelers made their way to an Alaska much harsher than the one I know, and more beautiful.

I remember one of the best compliments I ever received. A chiropractor in Oregon was doing work on my hip during an earlier bursitis flare. She tested my joints one by one and then asked me where I was from. I told her Alaska. She said, “That makes sense. You have one of those old-fashioned bodies that just works the way it’s supposed to—you don’t see that often. But Alaskans are hardy. You have to be, to stay there.”

When I inherited my mother’s genes, I got her strong, straight teeth, and a culture of never airing your family’s dirty laundry. Alaskans are friendly and community-oriented, but we take family secrets to our graves. I wonder if I can ask my mom to just not read this book (unlikely).

My ten-year-old nephew, a sweet and serious fifth-generation Alaskan, wants to talk for hours on video chat, often about death. “It’s sad when people die, Auntie Ashley,” he says solemnly. I say that’s true. His younger sister seems less concerned.

My nephew loves to sew, but he also loves to hunt and fish. I recommend some books he might like and my mother sends pictures of him reading in the backseat of the car.

I feel the tension between Alaskan excellence and Alaskan reticence. There is excellence there, but we are taught to mask it in snowboots. Don’t stand out, don’t be different—it’s not safe. All eyes on me.

(I think about the generational trauma and body horror of Native Alaskans, and wonder if I should tell my stories at all.)

I take hot, brief showers.

The wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour outside.

The Santa Fe desert is beautiful and striking. I take pictures and send them to my family, my spiritual director, my agent.

My sister Lael sets a world record biking across Arizona (again). She obliterates the previous men’s record and carries her bike nearly thirty miles across the Grand Canyon.

In the days leading up to my trip, Troy teased me about my hermitage in the desert. It doesn’t feel like a joke now. I relive some of the worst moments of my life and the words flow out: 300, 1,000, 13,0000.

The adobe walls of the casita are thick and solid enough to contain the work. They feel cool and smooth against my throbbing wrist.

I pace in the beaded sealskin slippers my mom gave me from the Native Hospital.

I write like I’m running out of time. We are all running out of time, right?

I listen to music: Phoebe Bridgers, the Jezabels, Kishi Bashi, The Weakerthans, Lil Nas X, The Clash at Demonhead. I laugh at the weight loss ads that autoplay between songs.

I douse my eggs in hot sauce and add red chili flakes to everything.

Lauren sends me restaurant recommendations.

I back my work up in three places.

I pull up a picture of myself at 11 and stare at it. I love this girl. She has messy hair and crooked bangs and glasses with enormous plastic frames. She is wearing a baggy purple sweatshirt with a local Bible camp’s name printed across the front. Behind her is a timeline that ends at 2000. A large book covers part of her face, but you can see her smiling. And she is reading.

I marvel at the title of the library book in her small hands, Jean Fritz’s Homesick: My Own Story. I loved that book. I download a copy on my kindle and am immediately transported to the yellow Yangtze river, just like I was then. I related to this small American girl, raised by missionaries in China, and her struggle to return to a “home” that is foreign to her.

I remember myself at three: curious about the world and with strong opinions about the Three Billy Goats Gruff. I think I’ve seen this film before. I think about my own horror going over a bridge, and how sexual menace has made the world a smaller and scarier place for me to live.

I keep vampire hours, waking up with the next first sentence.

I open all the doors and turn on all the lights, like I used to do as a child, to banish the dark and my terrifying, vivid nightmares.

I cry.

My forearms bruise after resting on corners to type.

I start to see hallucinations out of the corners of my eyes. I need to sleep, but I’m afraid to.

I stretch out on a teal yoga mat.

I take naps in patches of sunlight.

I look at art made by a fellow Quaker minister. It is a powerful piece, with a red skeleton hand and bones held up like a caution. It says, “if we had listened to our bones.” I try to listen to my bones. I remember tiny details and fill in characters.

“I’m using you as a foil sometimes,” I say to Troy on the phone.

He laughs.

I write.

I hope—that I can finish this—that I can get some of this pain out of my body and onto these pages—that a copy editor won’t take out all of my em dashes this time.

I drink water and pray.

Oh my God, do I pray

I pray every single day.

And I write.