Last week we traveled to Juneau for the Alaska Folk Festival, where I received about seven hundred hugs and remembered my true place in the world.
Singing and playing music around the clock, I discovered there’s no such thing as going halfway. “Folk Fest Lite” turned out to be a total farce. I couldn’t seem to restrain my post-surgery self. While my physical vessel is important, it’s not as important to me as my soul. So, if my body has paid a little bit of a price, it’s felt worth it to me.
The concessions I did make, such as taking Uber instead of waking around town, sitting instead of standing when I could, and having my husband carry my guitar through the airports (thank you, dear), did not extend into holding back where the playing of music was concerned. I danced a little — not a lot, but not none at all, either. As a telltale rasp settled into my voice, I watched the sunrise three out of the five mornings we were there. And, I daresay, I came close on the other two.
On Saturday evening I crashed suddenly and hard. Swept up in the fun of the day, I’d forgotten to take my afternoon nerve pain medicine. I hadn’t been sure how this trip was going to go, just six weeks out from a major illness and surgery.
I honestly didn’t even know if the medication was doing much to help, but that soon became clear. For the most part, I did pretty well, until this one moment when I didn’t. Then, shaking and sobbing, my sweet husband Jason tucked me into bed for a nap, kissed me, and to make me feel better about my life, set an alarm for 10:00 at night so I could get up and go see Raising Holy Hell.
The tears were partly from overwhelming pain, and partly from grief. It turns out, I have pathological levels of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Missing a single moment with my friends made me too sad. I felt pissed at my body for making me rest instead of seeing one of Jason’s sets on the main stage, but he reassured me that after a wee nap, I’d be able to rejoin the fun.
Luckily, he was right. When I awoke I felt better, which is a good thing because Sparkle Saturday is a tradition I did not want to miss. I donned my sequined pants and made my way to the Crystal Saloon. There I sat, perched at the edge of the stage in front of the fiddle section all night, while my Sisters In Glitter stood guard around me.
This wall of beauty felt like a living representation of the love I’ve been receiving throughout this whole crazy process: so many cards, letters, delivered meals, worried phone calls, thoughtful gifts, and an astounding number of GoFundMe donations. On Saturday night, all of this transformed into what I came to think of as my Go Fun Me campaign. As usual, the dance floor was like a mosh pit, but this posse of strong women poised around me stood with elbows-out, all night. They understood first hand what I had traveled so far for, and in an act of loving kindness, held literal space around me so that I could participate in my annual Raising Holy Hell experience without harm to my new and tender breasts.
When I had to go to the bathroom, my friend Maeva took my hand and led the way. She is a badass if there ever was one: a strong, compact, very salty commercial fisherwoman who takes no shit.
“Outta the way, look out. Fresh tatas coming through. Move it! Fresh tots, make way.”
The crowd parted.
Yes, this is what love looks like.
“We’re Raising Holy Hell and so are you,” Eric, the guitar player, says into the mic from a very crowded stage. It’s an eleven-person lineup in which my husband is the most junior member. He has only been playing with them for about twenty years, and is a good 30 years younger than several of the founding members — our treasured “geezers.”
Jason plays one of the three fiddles. There are also three mandolins, drums, a banjo, guitar, upright bass, piano, and even a harmonica. This band exists in the center of a Venn diagram where the circles of Old Time string band music, Rock and Roll, and something else transcendent and ineffable all come together. It is uncategorizable. They do not take breaks, and staying the course for four or five hours, the music builds to a crescendo. It’s peppered with sing-along Alaska anthems and becomes trance-like about halfway through the set. It’s then the realization strikes that you’ve joined a really fun cult. And you’re fine with that.
This was our first sober Folk Fest, which set us apart from 99.999% of the other participants. Outside the bathroom that night at the bar, one very non-sober person whom I did not know provided me with a great story:
The stage was a mess of spilled beer by the end of the night, some of which wound up soaking Jason’s pre-amp case.
“Can you go wash this off for me?” he asked after the show, handing me the small back case.
While scrubbing it with soap and water in the sink, a man came out of the bathroom and peered over my shoulder.
“Ooooh! Are you making Top Ramen?”
I had no idea what to say. Perhaps I should have offered him some, or asked if he’d ordered the pork or the chicken. Every year, something equally insane seems to happen. I’m not sure what exactly this guy was on, but I was glad I wasn’t! I was bewildered, laughed out loud and went backstage.
That’s when my friend held out the ruby slippers and asked if they were mine.
“Are you serious right now?!” I was overcome with joy that the Universe, in the form of this friend, was offering me such a long sought after bit of magic.
“I just found them sitting over there,” Conor explained, a bit taken aback by my crying out.
“I mean I wish they were! But no, not mine. Maybe I could just put them on and click the heels a few times.” (The magic wand I found last summer came to mind.)
With or without help from the shoes, I was so happy to have found myself transported to the motherland. Alaska is such a big state, and each region has very different defining characteristics. I have bonded most with the southeastern part of the state during folk fest, and in travels with my husband to rural communities, where we have spent a lot of time over the years teaching kids music together.
In Juneau, epic mountains rise steeply right up from the ocean. As channelized and protected as it is, the seawater weaves between masses of land, nestles into coves, and runs almost like rivers in straits throughout Southeast Alaska. Sometimes the salty waters lie deep and still, nearly unmoving. It’s a nautical place with dramatic weather. But in places, on a rare, calm day, you can throw a rock into the ocean and see rings rippling out across the water, it’s so placid. Below the surface, it teems with life: fish, aquatic mammals, octopus, crab, and all other manner of psychedelic creature.
I’ve decided I’ll be getting an octopus tattoo to cover my mastectomy and belly scars once I’m healed and the final stage of this surgical ordeal is behind me. Next year, maybe. I’ve long felt kindred with these tender, mysterious creatures. Their sensitivity and chameleon-esque ability to blend into and be a part of their environment, along with their emotional intelligence enthralls me. Their somatosensory system is baffling. They are such curious souls, and old ones, having been around since before the dinosaurs.
I want to create some kind of new art to make sense of my now chopped-up belly tattoo. The rendition of Hokusai’s Great Wave that lived there for the last few decades has been repurposed into blue nipples and such. The two orange koi fish are gone now, swallowed into an abyss where a big, long scar runs roughshod across my lower belly. A new design with an oceanic theme seems called for, in order to integrate the random bits of wave that now lie scattered across my body.
After the festival, which was one for the books (as they all are!), I flew north to spend an extra day in Anchorage. I got to see my son, which did my heart good. I’m amazed to see what a solid adult he’s become. He’s turning (gasp!) thirty this summer, which is something I can barely wrap my head around. He’s scrapped his way into a chef job at the fanciest restaurant in Anchorage, all on his own volition, and works in a position most people attend culinary school in order to hold. I am a proud, proud mom.
I also got to see my midwifery mentor-turned dear friend. We are close in the way two people can only be when they’ve spent as much time in the trenches together as we have. It was food for my soul to spend the afternoon with her. Talking for five hours about the real stuff of life felt like just a few fleeting minutes that slipped through my fingers too quickly. Then, buckled in for a red-eye, rising above the Chugach mountains, I drank in one last vision of home before I closed my eyes on the darkening skies.
Home. It’s such a fraught word for me. It seems I’ve been searching for it my whole life, one way or the other, and it’s been especially hard to define lately.
I traveled back alone. Jason went separately, to help his dad fly a small plane (a Cessna 180) from Anchorage to Texas, where he and my step-mom in-law have recently purchased a summer home. Jason’s family, like him, are aviators; his dad was the chief pilot for the Iditarod for many years. It’s commonplace in Alaska for kids to learn to fly before they even learn to drive, and Jason was no exception. I’m so happy for him that he gets to remember the bush pilot-side of his personality, and connect with his dad this way. Since coming to “America” so that he could learn to fly jets, we’ve been so lost from ourselves, living in such a foreign land as the Deep South.
Unfortunately, as I write this, Jason and his dad have gotten stuck in Kansas on the wrong side of some weather. Tornadoes are in the area, and thunderstorms, and there’s nothing for them to do but wait it out. It’s funny what a theme that has become on this trip. It seems a bit ironic, given the ruby slipper incident. The day before we left, we had to dodge fallen trees and power lines when we drove to the neighboring town of Opelousas to drop our dogs off with the folks who take care of them for us during our travels. They said a tornado had gone right over their house that morning. The town was a mess, and they wound up being without power for a few days.
My post-festival depression (or PFD) has been the worst this year. Part of it is not being able to travel home together, and now isolating because it turns out- big surprise- that I was exposed to Covid on my travels. Getting hundreds of kisses on the mouth will do that. But more so, I think these blues are about being displaced Alaskans living in South Louisiana. We feel more confused than ever about our place in the world.
Yes, we’ve done what we always do: a good job of building community and making friends easily wherever we go. Music has always helped to make us welcome, and we are lucky that way. Lafayette is a friendly place, full of kindhearted souls who have truly embraced us.
But Alaska ruins you. The beauty there is unparalleled, and the band of weirdos we call Our People, with whom we gather en masse knows no substitute. It’s a place where misfits unite, and where, owing to the far flung geographical position of the state, people create chosen families the way most folks make friends.
The Lesser 48 were right where I left them. True to form, after a grueling series of flights and four airports, Louisiana greeted me like dog breath to the face, warm and heavy.
It’s not that this place doesn’t possess a certain beauty — it does. I love the huge centennial oaks, the cypress trees, the bird life, and aligators. Amid the oppressive humidity and heat, the thick scent of magnolias just bursting into bloom floats on the air. Bright red cardinals dart around the yard and mourning doves coo outside my window. The roses are in full bloom. Caught between such different homes, I listen to these sounds and think about the strange character of Alaska’s ravens, bigger than our small dog. Something is just so trickster-ish about them. I spent some time communing with them on my travels. Their black, beady eyes seemed to peer right through me like a window to the other side. Their haunting voices bridge from reality to I’m-not-sure-what.
While it’s quite a different culture here in Lafayette, it’s a very interesting one. No matter how long we wind up staying, I’ll always be glad for the experience of living in this place, and for the friendships with great folks we’ve gotten to know here. I am quite drawn in by the Cajun and Creole story, the music, and the well-deserved pride that surrounds all of it.
When one very special new friend here heard about the surgery I was to have and what would happen to my tattoo, she made me a quilt to commemorate it. It is a work of art I will treasure forever. This is not the kind of thing a surface acquaintance would do — she is a real friend. As are so many others that showed up in my hour of need, to drive me around, cook me food, check on me, donate to our cause, and show authentic concern for us. We are rich in love here, as we are in Alaska. It’s just a newer love, less tested, but already showing us that we’ve made a place for ourselves.
Someday I’ll buy myself a bonafide pair of ruby slippers and knock my heels together, but for now, to support my husband in his career pursuits so that he can follow his dreams, I’m settling in to listen to the cicadas, say yes ma’am and no ma’am, practice my French and wipe sweat from my brow along with my fellow southern neighbors. I’m satisfied knowing that our dynamic Alaskan home will always have a place waiting for us.
Here are some snapshots of what getting funned looked like (it’s a verb):
I’m terrible at taking photos and videos when things are happening around me. So here’s a Bearfoot song that seems apropos for this piece, recorded way back when the band members were about 19-20 years old. I have always loved this song, written by one of the founding members, Angela Oudean. She, along with Jason, was there until the end, when the band finally dissolved in 2012. Enjoy!
Your post really lifts my soul. My wife and I are geezers-in-training, and it's been a bit bumpy with health of late. But seeing you guys in your element--good on you! Love the pics, pulling us in; I'm thinking, road trip! You show us how to do life--go fun me indeed! grateful Stella!! 🙏❤️ ps: lovely song 🎵
it's like you lived a lifetime in a few days.