My dear Ketchifriend sits on my kitchen stool. It’s the best stool of the 4, if you ask me.
She unfolds this story like a palette of knives, one right after the other.
Her roommate and friend left today, she took him to the airport.
Brother is going to hike from (and I say Brother euphemistically, soul-infused) Ketchikan to Haines and throughout Canada to go back home to some cold snowy state like Minnesota or Wisconsin.
She told me he looked at her and said he’s very sad to leave. I could see she was sad. I think he cares for her.
But he wants to go chase down his girlfriend, without a cell phone, I mean this Brother little refuses to own a cell phone but also wants to show up at her door in Haines and surprise her to see if they can make it work.
Say what you want about social media stalking, this is a new level.
But I pictured this precious guy, and he is precious, literally hitchhiking across Alaska. But also, without a phone. To surprise his ex-girlfriend. Maybe bordering on nuts.
I feel like our generation is an odd resurgence of hippies. We are concerned more for social justice than for pointless infrastructure. But vagabonds will always exist. Vagabonds are only people who take full advantage of their feet. But my friends at home who think I am wild just have no idea.
Ketchifriend says “I need you to think with your body. It’s going to be Canada, it’s going to be cold. You aren’t going to find rides for stretches and stretches. You can’t think with your heart, or your mind. You have to think with your body.”
I think it’s how understated she is in the telling of this friend, like it’s another day in the life. Oh my friend who is hitchhiking across Canada. Oh my friend who is taking a ferry to wherever-the-hell.
“Do you hope you will see him again?” This question, this is like the little chime echoing through this town, the seven words “Would you want to see them again?”
She says “Yes, I hope I do.”
Dude. I hope this Brother makes it through Canada in the winter.
But let me now say that MAYHAPS he is brazen enough to seek out what we all want. Love in the first degree: no phones, no distance no space between to churn the doubt and bend your emotions in kaleidoscopic fashion. The kind of connection that chaps your lips and burns it’s so close but at least you went, at least you sought it out. Thumbs up, kid. Be good. Or don’t be. But try to survive. And buy a freakin’ phone.