Category: August 2024

On Monday John went on a hike led by a ranger in Denali Park.

John wrote, “I’m back from our hike. I really liked it! We didn’t hike great distance, but we were out there for 6 hours plus over 2 hours on the bus. Weather was great – sunny and warm but high wind in the ridges. I saw moose, but the real highlight were the plants, especially the berries. All of the hiking was off trail bushwacking … but this is the best bushwacking through the brush I’ve ever done. There are branches to contend with but NO scratchy thorns. You can just push your way through. Here are some pics. Denali was out again!”

“This is our group of about ten with ranger on the left.”

“Blueberries! We hiked through so many blueberry bogs. They are everywhere, and they taste great. This is what the bears are eating now. No reason to eat people when you have so many yummy berries.”

He also sent me a photo of his dirty hiking sock, stained with blueberries, but I will spare you.

Here’s several mushroom pictures:

He says, “This is fireweed. You can use it to tell the coming of fall. The higher up the plant it is blooming, the closer you are to fall. This plant says that fall is approaching.”

Ha, to which I replied, “That and the fact that it’s August in Alaska.”

Another fantastic picture of the mountain:

His photos are coming through with weird image numbers. This batch ranged from IMG_0044 to IMG_8554, including some in the 2000’s and some in the 4000’s etc. They should actually all have similar numbers in numerical order (maybe missing a few that he decided to delete). But a range of 8,000? It makes it look like he’s taken 8,000 photos on his phone alone. He says it doesn’t know why that’s happening. But my brain still wants to know.

He also sent a picture of his dinner.

At first glance I thought that was pieces of dried mango softening in rice, which actually could be quite good. There is a Thai desert with mango and rice and sweetened cream or coconut milk. For a moment there I was impressed. But no.

He says, “I’m cooking dinner before my drive to Fairbanks. I call this one chicken-Fritos-rice soup. I am trying to up the salt. I had Raman last night, which was good. There is no salt added in the chicken or rice. I am also adding fresh Fritos for the crunch. 😀”

Uh, I prefer my Fritos crispy, not in soup. And John knows better than to go hiking and camping without salt and electrolytes! At least he didn’t add any of those mushrooms.

That night he was planning to stay at a Holiday Inn in Fairbanks. This sounded like a big improvement over his campsite the previous night, because a train was blowing its horn all night, waking him up repeatedly.

Then he wrote, “I’m at my hotel. I had to change from the Holiday Inn to this cool quirky former BnB called 7 gables inn. It has a detached bath, but the room rate was only $110 (half of what the holiday inn would have charged). They put a glass atrium in front of the building to grow plants. It’s weird in a cool funky sort of way. Here is a pic.”

I asked what he meant by he “had to change”?

“The holiday inn didn’t work because it was on an army base and you need military base access. I was annoyed because there was nothing in the hotel reservation system saying that you need base access to get to the hotel. The hotel looked fine and the rate was cheaper than the other chain hotels ($212), so that’s why I booked it. Then I had to cancel it and scramble to get a new place after arriving in Fairbanks. I really like this quirky hotel, so I will take some pictures. The bathroom for my room is outside the room down some stairs and around a corner. It is supposedly just for this room, and it worked out fine. 😀”

I’m glad he’s happy. Next up – a lake cabin and fishing in the rain. Stay tuned.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

Here is a reprint of an article that I think is important. It’s variously titled, “A Cure for Our Anxious Young People” and “The Best Therapy for Our Anxiety Epidemic”.

This copy-paste reprint includes my own comments in a second section below the article.

The Best Therapy for Our Anxiety Epidemic

Solutions to the mental-health crisis striking young people in particular are within reach. By Arthur C. Brooks

Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.

To note that a mental-health crisis is hitting American adolescents and young adults is hardly news—data to that effect emerge almost every day. The latest confirmation, in April, comes from a survey that I was grateful to help develop: This major survey, sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation and fielded by Gallup, revealed that some 38 percent of respondents aged 12 to 26 had received a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression. That finding broke down by gender as 29 percent of young men and 45 percent of young women. Even among those who have not received a diagnosis, about half say they often feel anxious; a quarter say they often feel depressed.

In a search for answers and solutions, Jonathan Haidt’s recent best-selling book, The Anxious Generation, ascribed blame to the overuse of screens and social media. The Gallup/Walton data support his argument: Among adolescents and young adults who spent more than 20 hours a week on social media, 65 percent said they felt anxiety “a lot of the day yesterday” (as opposed to 49 percent of those who spent 20 hours or less so engaged); 49 percent of the heavy social-media users felt sadness for a lot of the day before (versus 26 percent of non-heavy users); and 80 percent of them felt a lot of stress (against 59 percent of those other users).

But I believe a deeper philosophical problem affects the lives of young people today as well, and of many people who are no longer young. Folks lack a sense of meaning; they don’t feel they know the “why” of their lives. Worse, evidence suggests that they’re not even looking for it, nor are we encouraging them to do so. This creates a feeling of hollowness and futility, especially when times are inevitably rough, and that encourages a culture that strives to provide a sense of security that is doomed to prove false and can only make the problem worse. If you see this syndrome taking effect in your life or in the life of someone you love, here is how to apprehend and address it.

Arthur C. Brooks: The meaning of life is surprisingly simple

I have written about the meaning of life, including the way to understand and define it, in a past column. In my research, I often refer to the work of the psychologists Frank Martela and Michael F. Steger, who have defined meaning in life as a combination of three elements: coherence (how events fit together), purpose (having goals and direction), and significance (a sense of the inherent value of one’s existence). I find this conception helpful because it takes a huge, amorphous problem (What is the meaning of life?) and breaks it down into three categories that, though they still require a lot of work, are more manageable. The big question thus becomes three smaller, more specific ones: Why do things happen the way they do? What are my goals in life? Why does it matter that I am alive?

A quite similar version of these questions appears in the Gallup survey, and the answers map powerfully onto the findings about unhappiness, depression, and anxiety. After my team and I investigated the survey’s microdata concerning the 18-to-26-year-olds, we found that 20 percent of them rarely or never felt that “things in my life happen for a reason” (the coherence measure). These young adults were 16 percentage points less likely to say they were “very happy” than their peers who often or always felt things happened for a reason (7 percent versus 23 percent); they were also 11 percentage points more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety or depression (48 percent versus 37 percent). Similar patterns applied among the young adults who answered “rarely” or “never” on the purpose and significance questions.

One explanation for this pattern might be that, for some reason, depressed and anxious young people simply can’t come up with answers for these questions. But it’s also possible that these are the ones who simply aren’t looking. Consider the longitudinal survey data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA showing that, over a 40-year period starting in the mid-1960s and ending in 2006, the percentage of American undergraduate freshmen students that reported that “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” is a “very important” or “essential” personal goal fell from 86 percent to less than 50 percent, where it has remained to this day.

Haidt’s work on the dramatic rise in people’s screen time and internet use shows that the problems began in the mid-2000s, almost certainly making any quest for meaning cognitively harder. Notably, neuroscientists have found that the default-mode network—the set of brain regions that become active when we are mentally at rest—is crucial for finding high-level meaning, memory, future contemplation, and daydreaming. Other studies have demonstrated that this neuro-network exhibits disrupted or abnormal functioning during tasks that require external focused attention, which would surely include heavy internet usage.

Arthur C. Brooks: Three paths toward the meaning of life

One very obvious implication from all of this is that to seek meaning in life in order to lower symptoms of depression and anxiety, we should stop spending so many hours online. But that still leaves unresolved the issue for those who have forgotten how to find meaning—or never learned in the first place—of getting started. How do you search for meaning? Where should you look?

Reframing the problem is a helpful way to begin: Try putting yourself not in the position of the asker but of the asked. This was the technique proposed by the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who wrote the influential Man’s Search for Meaning and created “logotherapy,” a clinical method based on identifying a personal sense of meaning. Frankl’s approach starts by inverting the original question: “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” In other words, put aside your need to find a formula for your own gratification and instead see the world’s need for you to find meaning—so that you can do more with your life and benefit the world.

In that spirit of service, Frankl put forward three practical ways of discovering meaning. First, create something or accomplish a significant task—you will make meaning simply in the process of striving for an accomplishment. Second, experience something fully or love someone deeply, which is to say: Stop thinking about yourself and dive into an external experience or a relationship with another person. Third, adopt an attitude of strength and courage toward unavoidable suffering, and resolve to learn from your pain.

An alternative approach involves breaking down the quest for meaning into the components identified by Martela and Steger. Enquiring into coherence, purpose, and significance naturally elicits serious reflection on life and death—why your limited time on Earth matters and what you’re supposed to do with it. In my own work, I’ve found that this centers on trying to answer these two big questions: Why am I alive? And for what would I give my life? A sustained effort to find answers to those will reveal your life’s coherence, purpose, and significance.

Your search might also illuminate just why you feel so hollow. For example, if your best answer to the first question is “a sperm found an egg,” and to the second you say “nothing,” that could explain why life seems random and trivial to you. If you find yourself in that position, the right strategy might be to decide to live in a way that provides more existentially substantive answers. That, in turn, may well lead you to purposely adopt a set of beliefs to live by. You might, say, decide to live with the conviction that you have the gift of life in order to serve others, and you might also decide that a cause you would die for is your family’s safety and survival.

Of course, these issues are intensely personal and individual, which is why you’ll find no substitute for the deep introspective work you’ll need to do to arrive at your own right answers. And there’s no substitute for using screens and social media responsibly so that you can do that work. But as Frankl taught us, the work itself is an exciting, productive adventure.

Jonathan Haidt: End the phone-based childhood now

One last point I’d make is that having meaning in life can protect you to a degree when suffering inevitably comes your way. A theme that emerges throughout Haidt’s work is a critique of “safetyism,” the belief that safety is a sacred value, and of the trend among parents and schools to elevate this value above others. Safetyism, in his analysis, is a direct consequence of a decline in people’s sense of life’s meaning, because meaning makes sense of suffering—so if you lack meaning to help you cope with suffering, then safetyism is the reflexive response, to try to provide a shield against suffering.

In other words, when pain has no seeming purpose, the only logical course of action is to fight against it. In a doomed effort to forestall suffering, we protect our kids from conflict, danger, and anything that might offend or alarm them. This strategy has proved catastrophic for happiness: It leaves young people ill-prepared for the inevitable threats and challenges that everyone has to face, and for the suffering that is impossible to avoid in our highly complex world. The only reliable way to travel through that world with courage and hope is to do the work to find meaning, and encourage those we love to do so as well.

Arthur Brooks is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the host of the How to Build a Happy Life podcast.

My own comments:

An added observation that the author, Arthur Brooks alluded to, but didn’t come right out and say is this: I think that having the goal of safety causes anxiety. The emotion of anxiety is what our brains use to keep ourselves safe. Anxiety is the rational result of trying to avoid suffering.

It’s not that people in the past liked suffering more than we do. But suffering was more bearable when there seemed to be a reason for it. We need to have something bigger than ourselves that we are willing to suffer for, or else life diminishes to simple avoidance.

Both religion and politics used to play that role of providing meaning. I am loosely defining religion as the belief in something greater than ourselves, with the promise of an afterlife or additional lives, the outcome often dependent on how we lived this life. And I am loosely defining politics as the defense and promotion of one’s own group (home/family/tribe/race/ethic group/regional area/religious group/country).

Politics has failed – promoting one’s own group’s interests over others and their interests causes suffering. In small amounts it causes hurt and unfairness in society. In larger amounts it causes killing and war. As a society we are starting to understand that people aren’t good or bad. People are just people, all of us flawed. Sometimes we hurt each other selfishly and other times we hurt each other accidentally. Many times we hurt each other out of a fundamental ignorance that other people are also people.

Just as politics and war has failed to provide a source of meaning in our current society, the major world religions have failed to keep up with our growing scientific understanding of the physical reality within which we live. The reality of our existence and our universe is not what we thought it was, even when I was a kid. And that wasn’t all that long ago.

With both politics and religion failing to provide the answers we once thought they did, we are at a loss. It’s no wonder that those are the two topics we can’t discuss on Thanksgiving. Their failure to provide a universal source of meaning has been that recent.

Society doesn’t work the way we thought it did, and our own brain and our psyches do not work the way we thought they did either. We once assumed we could directly perceive reality. We now know we can’t. Even free will is being called into question – by both physics and psychology.

The very real, imaginary world of Disneyland in the 1970’s, back when I thought I could learn right from wrong, and real from imaginary.

Our kids and young adults are still trying to learn right from wrong, and real from imaginary. They do not know the details of what science has been teaching us these last few decades (and either do I) because it’s so difficult to understand. I’ve been trying to read some modern quantum physics, astronomy, and cosmology books written by scientists for non-scientists and it’s rough going. It’s very complicated stuff and often not at all in line with what our senses would have us imagine is true. It’s also often well beyond what I was taught in school in the ’70’s and ’80’s. It’s clear that a lot of our common assumptions about reality aren’t very accurate.

Because of the astounding advances in science in the last few decades, the gap between what scientists know and the rest of us think has been getting larger. And the disinformation on the internet is getting worse and weirder. And as AI gets more sophisticated, it becomes even harder to guess what is real and what isn’t.

Regardless of where our kids are getting their information, how much of it they understand, and how more or less accurate it is, as a society we are generally aware that our understanding of reality is changing. Therefore, even if our kids don’t know what is true, our kids do know that a lot of what we used to think is true, isn’t true.

If our kids are unable to swallow the ancient metaphor of Grandpa-in-the-Sky over a flat and stationary earth, with heaven above and hell below, infused with the social norms of a group of people in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago, we shouldn’t be surprised. And we should be prepared to help them find a working alternative. We have cut them adrift with nothing to hold onto. No alternative is not a viable alternative.

This photo is of Mark and I, taken by our grandparents, Al and Opal Balogh, in the mid-1970’s. I’m guessing that they told me to smile and wave – at that age I wasn’t socially aware enough to do so without instructions, lol. It’s such a perfectly timed shot, so difficult with those old cameras.

I owe a lot to my grandparents, and I never told them that. They were a huge, positive influence on me. It would be nice to imagine that they know that now. But we don’t know what they know. We don’t know if they still exist in some way. Maybe many Als and Opals exist in some way. We don’t fully understand time and we don’t fully understand existence. We are not even sure that we exist. We don’t know what we think we know, and we don’t know what we don’t know. We can only imagine.

As close as I can tell, our purpose here is to create – something. I don’t know what we’re here to create. I’m not sure if it matters what we create. Or if it does matter, it hardly matters because I’m not sure that we have a lot of choice in the matter. I think our purpose here is to figure out what we can create; individually and together.

I come from a Christian background, and lodged in my brain is a short, beautiful, and very optimistic line from First Corinthians that has always stayed with me, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.“

I would not proclaim it as truth, but it is at least vague enough to approximately fit a variety of truths. And to the extent that you imagine it is true, it provides hope and reassurance against anxiety, and courage to create reality.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

John had an excellent cloud-free view of Denali from the road on Sunday morning. It’s rare to see the mountain, because it’s usually covered in clouds. It’s also blocked from view from the main park, so many tourists never get to see it at all.

He felt quite lucky, as he continues to adjust his itinerary to be one day ahead of the coming rain. He had left the coastline just as the rain came, and the rain is expected inland soon.

Sunday morning John arrived early at the Denali visitor’s center and managed to snag the very last slot for Monday’s guided hike. This hike can only be signed up for in person, the day prior. The guide is a ranger, and it’s a rough hike, including off-trail and through streams. He was very excited to get the last opening available for this adventurous tour.

Then he went on a sightseeing tour of Denali from a small airplane.

Now that is an amazing photo!

After the plane ride was over he wrote, “I’m back from my Denali flight. The scenery was great, but it was oh so turbulent as the pilot banked…tight banking left and right…over the mountains.”

Of course I was like, OMG! And he replied, “Yes, we all held our cookies, but most commented that they were glad we were done. My next activity is to take the Denali bus to see what can be seen from the road.”

Even the bus sounds like too much for me. This is why he sometimes goes on trips without me. It’s better that way!

Here’s what he said about his bus tour, “The bus tour was good because we saw a grizzly bear, a couple of caribou (which I’ve not seen before), and some Dall Sheep.”

I won’t have pictures of the wildlife until he returns. The pictures I’ve been posting here so far are just snapshots from his phone that he has texted to me. The good pictures will be available after he gets home, from his main camera with zoom lenses.

Since I’ve been curious about his lodging, he sent this photo of his campsite Sunday night.

He says, “Here’s my campsite in Denali tonight. Everything in this photo, tent, chair, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, camp stove, cooking supplies, etc. is cheaper than one night hotel almost anywhere in Alaska. It’s shocking how cheap camping gear is relatively to almost all other travel expenses.”

He bought all that camping gear after arriving in Alaska. The campsite actually looks nice. I don’t mind camping. It’s just the cold and approaching rain that could become less than luxurious.

But hopefully the rain will hold off for his big, ranger-led hiking tour today. We are looking forward to hearing how that goes!

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

The brief reports and a few texted photos are indicating that all is well with John in Alaska! The first day he flew to Juneau and stayed at a hotel there. Here’s the view out his window.

Not great, but better than sleeping in his car. This was just a brief stop on his way to Anchorage.

He wrote, “I booked an all day kayak trip to Kenai Fjords for tomorrow. The skies are clear right now in Juneau so I think we have a weather window. I might try to go fishing Sunday or drive up to Denali. It depends on whether I can find a fishing charter.”

The next morning he flew to Anchorage, got a rental car, groceries, a sleeping bag, a tent from Walmart, and a camp chair from Fred Meyers. He’s all set!

He has been happily texting me about the amazing sights and his upcoming plans for kayaking and sightseeing.

But I have been fixated on his dubious sleeping arrangements. He assured me, “My car camping went fine. I just slept in the car last night, since that was easiest, but I set up the tent to make sure that was fine.”

And I said, “At a campground?” He replied, “I just boondocked off of a pull out on the road. At the end of the road is the trail to exit glacier.”

He said, “This is my sleeping arrangement inside the car.”

I questioned, “You set up the tent but slept in the car? Was it cold or wet or something?”

He explained, “I just set up the tent to make sure it was going to work. I just set it up behind the car, but it wasn’t super level. It looked like I would have to better night sleep in the car. I will use the tent, however, if I’m at a campground where it’s not practical to sleep on the car.”

Still baffled, I continued, “When wouldn’t it be practical?”

He told me more about his upcoming kayaking trip, but also patiently answered my question, “I wouldn’t sleep in the car if the car is in a parking lot with the tent area removed. There is an official camping area at the end of the road with exit glacier, and that is how that one was set up.”

Still unable to wrap my brain around the sleeping-in-the-car option, I said, “Do you have enough length to sleep flat on your back in the car or only on your side?”

First he again texted more details about his trip itinerary, debating the merits of further kayaking vs. Kenai fjords or heading for Denali. But eventually did admit that, “I can sleep extended because I have the diagonal. For two people it would be harder.”

I ignored his sightseeing plans and continued to doggedly pursue the logistics of where he would be sleeping. “What kind of car?”

“It’s a Chevy Blazer midsize SUV. The rear seats fold to make a flat floor. My feet just extend over the edge on the diagonal if I stretch out fully, but that is still comfortable.”

O-kaay. I’m glad I’m not on this trip. He is a stoic man. And a patient husband with all my detailed questioning about the part of the trip that just doesn’t concern him. He does not care where he sleeps. He’s there to fish and kayak and hike and see the glaciers and wildlife.

If, like John, you are more interested in John’s amazing sights of Alaska than the details of his sleeping arrangements, don’t worry. I expect him to return with hundreds of high quality photos of outdoor adventuring, and I will try to get the best of them posted. Meanwhile, here’s a couple that he’s texted me so far.

Kayaking out of Seward on an all-day kayaking trip in Kenai Fjords:

Ok, I admit, that is impressive.

Here’s the google map view of the area:

Last night, after his all-day kayaking trip, he drove 3.5 hours north to Nancy Lake State Recreation Area. I would have been soooo exhausted.

It’s crazy how light it still was at 10:20 at night.

I’m looking forward to hearing what he decides to do next.

More soon!

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

I was driving home from grocery shopping yesterday when I noticed an old, decrepit car parked about a block from my house. I’ve seen the car there before, with a young man inside. He shoves rags and other pieces of junk into the windows to keep the sun out, and sits there with the car door open so he doesn’t fry in the heat. It is generally over 100ºF in Tucson in the summer, and only getting down to about 80º or so at night. It’s not a fun time to be living in your car.

It was nearly midday when when I drove by. The car was all shut up and the door was not hanging open. At first I assumed he wasn’t there. But as I drove past, I saw a figure in the driver’s seat, sitting a bit slumped, with his head hanging down and forward, like you would if you were asleep on an airplane with no one to lean against.

I assumed the worst and immediately called 911. It is too hot to survive very long in a closed car sitting in the open sunlight in the middle of the day without any shade. I spoke to the police as I drove the final block home and got my groceries out of the car. I had barely finished on the phone when my doorbell rang.

I thought it was the police with follow up questions, but then I could hear a young man talking to my Ring doorbell (which is a video recorder), about a local faith-based gym. I peaked out, and it was a couple of guys in gym-branded T-shirts with fliers, and they seemed legit.

I wanted to ask them if their gym was gay-friendly. Not that I really care, because I’m very happy with the local gym that I go to with my lesbian friend and her wife. It’s a perfectly fine gym, a few blocks from my house. I bicycle there, even in the heat.

I never thought I’d enjoy going to a gym (I do not like the noise and all the people and movement, and some of the vibes can get competitive or worse, pick-up bar-ish). But it makes a world of difference to have a calm, knowledgable, no-nonsense gym buddy to help me with the machines and free weights.

I would have been interested in asking those guys if their faith-based gym was gay-friendly because some Christian groups are, and some aren’t. And if they weren’t, I would be curious as to how they would phrase that politely. Would they say something about how God loves us all and Jesus died for our sins, and none of us are perfect here on earth (with the implication that gayness is wrong but we tolerate sin in each other because Jesus did)? Or would they say something vague and dodgy, like a gym isn’t a dating venue? Anything but a strong affirmation of gay friendliness would be suspect in my mind.

But instead of indulging my curiosity, I thought about the poor young man slumped in the car in the heat, and I asked them to go with me to make sure the homeless guy was ok. To their credit, they agreed to walk down there. As we turned the corner, we could see that the police had already arrived. Reassured, I went back inside to put away my groceries, and the faith-based gym missionaries went back to their door knocking.

Soon the police called me. Apparently the guy was claiming he lived at the house on the corner near where he parked, and the police wanted to know how much I knew about him and his situation. I was relieved to hear he was alive. I doubted he lived at the house, but I didn’t actually know for sure. I told them that I had seen him sitting in that car before, but I didn’t know any more than that. I felt bad for being the cause of his undoubtably unwelcome police encounter, but I didn’t want to do nothing if he was dying of heat stroke while tripping in his car.

When I looked out later, the door-knockers were gone, the police were gone, and the guy in the car was also gone. I hope he does ok.

A pick-up truck trolled slowly into view. It pulled a trailer heavily loaded with choice items gleaned from the piles of junk some neighbors have already started to set out for the City’s Brush and Bulky trash collection next week.

Soon the junk collector was also gone, leaving only the silent heat and the slowly building thunderclouds in the distance.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

John left for Alaska this morning. I am happy that he gets to go, and I am sad that he is going to be gone for 9 days.

I didn’t go with him, because the kind of adventure he wants to have is the kind of adventure that does not sound fun to me. I would enjoy a lodge in the woods with a water view and an on-site restaurant. I would enjoy 1-hour kayak excursions in flat water, and 2-hour hiking excursions along sun-dappled trails, soft with pine needles. That’s not what John is going to be doing.

Originally, John had joined a kayaking and camping tour. The group would kayak for a few hours each day and then camp on the beach. It sounded fun, but still too difficult for me. I encouraged him to sign up for the trip. Unfortunately, the tour did not get enough people signed up, so they canceled it and refunded his money. John had already bought his plane tickets and had his heart set on an Alaska trip, so he decided to go anyway.

I hoped he would get a room in a nice lodge and sign up for fishing and kayaking day trips. But no. For some reason, he has decided to rent an SUV when he arrives, and car camp. He has not even reserved campsites. He plans to just wing it, living out of a car for 9 days, hiking in the woods alone in Alaska with the grizzly bears. I am less happy with this idea, but he wants an adventure.

I have never fully understood what he means by adventure, but I gather it includes a certain amount of difficulty and not knowing exactly how it’s all going to turn out. Life is not hard enough as it is?

He has only a rough itinerary. He is flying to Juneau tonight and then up to Anchorage in the morning. He may ferry to Kodiak Island and back, and then drive up to Denali State Park or possibly the other way around. He says he may see Kenai Fjords from either Homer or Seward, before or after Denali. He might do an all-day kayak trip in Kenai Fjords instead of the ferry to Kodiak Island. The reason for the vagueness is he is trying to optimize for weather – he may be getting a lot of rain.

I tried to tell him that in that part of the country, when it rains, it rains everywhere, for days at a time. It’s not like the desert where you can drive half a mile out of the downpour and not get a single drop of rain. I also tried to tell him all about grizzly bears. And moose! He has been very patient with all my objections.

Now it’s evening and he just arrived in Juneau.

The bits of pink in the above weather map is light wind, not precipitation.

Here’s to a great trip!

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals