Escape: The Birdhouse (Offering 5.1)
A dream job in a wild place
This chapter traces the wild beauty and unraveling edges of a dream job in Homer, Alaska—where I found freedom, nature, art... and the warning signs I wasn’t yet ready to see.
This is Offering 5.1 of Eclosion: An Artist’s Path to Peace and Power. If you’re new here, start at the beginning.
Homer, AK
A Quaint Drinking Village with a Fishing Problem.
The Birdhouse, my tiny cabin on the bluff above Homer, Alaska, had no running water and an outhouse. But it was mine. The first time I lived fully on my own. What it lacked in amenities, it made up for in splendor. The front windows and porch overlooked Kachemak Bay and the Grewingk Glacier. I sat there for hours upon hours that summer, smoking cigarettes and drinking IPAs.
I’d been in Alaska for the past three months, working my dream job as the Senior Naturalist of the Wynn Nature Center for the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies (CACS). The nature center was on the bluff, 5 miles up a long, windy road above Homer, Alaska. It had miles of trails through boreal forests, meadows, and a subalpine bog. In the morning, I would wake up in the loft of the Birdhouse, make coffee and breakfast, shake off my hangover, and walk across the road to the nature center. There, I measured the temperature, windspeed, noting anything about the weather, and carefully recording it in the phenology book. If there weren’t any visitors, sometimes I would lie on the boardwalk and nap in the endless sun. Pure bliss. Other days, I would work with nature camps or take visitors on hikes, sharing stories about the plants and animals that called the Wynn Nature Center home.
One day I was on a hike with three older women. We were walking through a field of scraggly willow, and I was telling them how important the willow is as a food source for moose. The Alaskan moose is the largest moose in the world, and they were plentiful in and around Homer—so plentiful that the Alaska Department of Transportation put up signs on the road saying how many days it had been since the last fatality caused by a driver hitting a moose. As we walked, I told the women that, even though they were plentiful, it was very unlikely we would see a moose on our hike. Just then we rounded a curve on the trail and found ourselves 20 feet from a full-grown female moose. Worse, we were directly between her and her two calves.
People know to be scared when coming face to face with large predators, tending to give them respect, but often fail to realize that large herbivores can be just as deadly. A full-grown moose cow could kill us easily, especially if she thought her calves were in danger.
As soon as I saw the cow and calves, I told the women we needed to retreat. In their excitement at seeing the calves, they were oblivious to their danger and started taking pictures! Eventually, and none too soon, with me practically dragging them, I was able to move us safely away, allowing the calves and their mother to reunite.
One of my tasks that summer was to incorporate art into our programming. This was one of my first opportunities to bring art and science together in a work setting. I designed a 10-week art class with children that focused on creating art from found and natural materials. We used leaves, feathers, cones, sticks, and rocks, in addition to more traditional art materials like paints, plaster, and paper. That was the first summer that I made nature journals with kids. And the first time I took at-risk youth onto the trail to draw and sketch what we found there. It was what I’d been working towards the past few years, and I could hardly believe it was actually happening.
I had big plans of making my own art that summer. The Birdhouse made a perfect artist’s retreat. I set up an easel on my front porch, painted the beginnings of an underwater scene on the old door that served as the table in my cabin, even got permission to paint the outhouse. I had great intentions, but absolutely no follow-through. There was too much in the way.
While this job was a dream come true, my stay in Homer started out rough. My then-partner and I drove my little Toyota Corolla all 2,500 miles of the AlCan Highway, from Olympia, WA to Homer, AK. The drive was incredible, though seven years in, our relationship was toxic, codependent, and falling apart. It wouldn’t last the summer. The day he left was a relief, even as I wasn’t sure how I could live without him. He left me with two requests: Don’t drink and smoke, and don’t touch dead things. I would fail at both. As a naturalist, I was always poking around in animal scat, owl pellets, and bones I’d find. And his plea to not drink? Not likely—I was on my own and could finally drink how I wanted, with no one there to pass judgment.
To celebrate the beginning of my solo adventure, I drove the five miles to town and grabbed a six-pack of beer and a pack of American Spirits, which I thought of as healthy cigarettes. Back at the Birdhouse, I settled in and called my mom to let her know I’d arrived safely. Before I knew it, my six-pack was gone, and I was headed back to the liquor store.
This had become a common occurrence for me that I just couldn’t convince myself was real. I’d tell myself I would just drink a couple of beers or a glass of wine. But once I had that first drink, all bets were off, and I would need more and more.
In the store I was practically seeing double but managed to get my beer and head out to the car. Not a block from the liquor store, my out-of-state plates a beacon, red and blue lights flashed behind me, and a siren sounded.
Shit. This was not happening.
Pulled over for a broken taillight, I spent that night, my first night on my own in Alaska, in the Homer jail. After detoxing in a room so tiny I barely had room to sit, they took my picture and fingerprints along with my shoes. I gave up my one phone call because there was no one within 1,000 miles for me to call.
Alone in my cell, I was mortified, terrified. And so ashamed. I couldn’t believe I’d been caught. After a couple of hours, another woman was thrown in with me, stumbling drunk and raving. I thought, “She obviously belongs here, not me.” I was appalled, and completely unable to see the similarities between us.
My mind raced all night, circling round and round in denial of my situation. In the morning, I was released, got my car out of impound, and headed back up to the Birdhouse. I was scheduled to meet my supervisor for a tour of the nature center, which I went to, exhausted, hung over, and afraid. The cop who booked me said my name would be in the paper—Homer was a small, close-knit community—so I knew I had to tell my supervisor what happened. When I did, I lied, saying that I’d only had one or two drinks when I got pulled over. She was empathetic to my lie, saying that she’d driven after having just one drink before, and the same could’ve happened to her.
That lie became my story. I just had one or two drinks! It totally wasn’t fair! I told this lie to my dad, who paid for my lawyer. I told it to myself. It could’ve happened to anyone.
Instead of taking my night in jail as the warning it was, I got drunk again that night. It was the first of many nights that summer that I drank myself into oblivion, though I didn’t drive drunk again—not in Alaska anyways.
In my memory of Homer, there is a road sign as you enter town that says, “Welcome to Homer! A Quaint Drinking Town with a Fishing Problem.” I’ve learned since that the sign actually says: “Homer Alaska, Halibut Fishing Capital of the World.” Instead, the Quaint Drinking Town statement was plastered on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and plaques at every gift shop, making me feel right at home. There were a lot of other seasonal workers there who were happy to drink as much as I did, so I didn’t always drink alone. Sometimes we’d go out dancing to live music—there were some great bluegrass bands in town. Those nights I would crash at the downtown Center.
Usually though, I’d sit on my porch, smoking and drinking, maybe reading a fantasy novel or talking on the phone, often just looking out at the glacier under the Midnight Sun. I’d drink until I got so drunk, I could forget my inner turmoil, my failing relationship, my intuition that how I drank was not okay, and pass out in the loft of the Birdhouse.
This one was tough to share. I’d be grateful to know what it brings up for you—or simply that you’re walking with me through the dark.
Thank you for sharing this. I have some "the billboard actually said..." memories of my own.