Can Someone Give Me Loppers to Prune Back My Life?

Kachemak Bay Diaries

My husband, two daughters, and I spent the day sweeping off the porch, pressure washing the roof, connecting the water lines, and getting the cabin ready for its owners.

We were bound by the tide.

The day was measured by when we could get into the back lagoon on the high tide with our boat, and then the other hours when the water retreated, and it smelled like mud and seaweed baking in the sun. There was not enough water to float back out for several hours, so we were tethered to the chores at the cabin where my husband is the caretaker.

My technical skill has always been minimal, but I’m generally willing to help with grunt work.

In Alaska, vegetation grows at warp speed. The sun knows no moderation in the summer months, and as a result, plants and undergrowth have little respect for decks, porches, or trails.

So I found a set of loppers in the tool shed and got to work.

The cabin is surrounded by blueberry bushes. They are precious and already have little flowers determined to turn into fruit. However, I reasoned that by midsummer, they would overtake the deck.

So I began lopping.

My husband walked by me, muttering to myself. “Are you apologizing to the blueberries?” he asked. Well, yes. I felt bad for setting a boundary to their abundance.

After sufficiently trimming back the growth around the deck, I turned to the trail, which has narrowed in the past few years — encroached by spindly spruce, stink berries, blueberries, and long tree branches tangled together.

I felt no shame in widening the path for myself.

Lop.

Beside me, the trees tried to push me aside and scraped my sweatshirt as I passed.

Lop.

I tripped on a root.

Lop.

I cut and stacked until the bramble of cuttings towered over my head.

And I kept going, satisfied with my work. Cut. Lop. Cut. The moss under my feet was soft: I held no grudge toward it and tried to stay on the trail and not cause it any harm. My hat was like Velcro to the moss, dead twigs, and a tree lichen called “old man’s beard.”

I pruned and scissored my way down the path until there was finally room to move, until I could breathe deeply and not feel trapped by the life around me, until the tide had come in. Then I sat on the deck eating a cold piece of pizza and thought about possibility, about how I wish the rest of my life could be so easily pruned, about how the trail is always beneath our feet; it’s just sometimes hard to see it.

I thought about what it would take for me to feel confident on the trail I am walking on.

My father-in-law motored up in a skiff to see if I wanted a ride back to our cabin. Yes. I put away the loppers, gathered my backpack and kids, and put away deeper thoughts until I might find a moment to write.

My husband spent his childhood summers in a remote place on Kachemak Bay, only accessible by boat. During the pandemic, he built a cabin near his parent’s cabin while I homeschooled the kids, and now we spend part of our summers letting our kids run wild in the woods. This summer, in an effort to “keep writing,” I plan to post diary-like snapshots of our life there.