“There’s no human form of justice.”

(Excerpt from the book: The Mountain Moved Me, by: Vanessa Wishstar) 

“There’s no human form of justice”, my husband sighs. 

It’s what I want, what I keep on searching for, the voice to speak up about this injustice. A living (thanks to God) testament that what is happening is unjust. 

We’re being *forced to evict ourselves. This is beyond insane of a human request. And on top of it we’ll have to watch another repossess our lives as if we failed to live our Alaskan dream. 

Am I too safe? 

Am I too fragile to live in this state?

Am I scared? But, did I not run out of my home into the belly of the dragon as she was being ripped limb by limb? But, did I not plan on living life in the woods at Battery Point trail because I thought all of town was buried since all I could see was a 25-foot-mud-tree stacked wall in front of us blocking our exit. I grabbed ‘what I thought then’ was essentials – bone broth and my period panties, as I knew I’d probably get my period due to this shock in my body.  The bone broth could sustain others, I believed, who might be living with us in the woods in early December filled with rain and snow, drenched in an old growth forest. This was my survivor mentality when knee deep in trauma.

I call bluff on the system that holds us down, covering our mouths. Enough with the closed eyes and ears of monkey antics. That was permissible when the slide happened, when we had to live through a living hell, not knowing if we were indeed alive. Much like being in the trenches, our fellow warriors’ pupils were stunned into more flight than fight just like ours, but there was no place to run to, when the mountain turned us into an island with 150 foot cliffs to get to the icy water. 

“Oh it wasn’t that bad”, says the squawkers who didn’t live through it first hand, stretching out of the red zone into yellow. “Alaskan’s are tough”, we convince ourselves of this, and yeah we are, but the smart ones are conscious of life’s fragility. Along with the consciousness of losing ourselves. We can’t control what happens to us, but to act, as if it’s only our life, purely an ego entrapment.  

We don’t live in a body, just for us. Each of us, as human beings, play a necessary part of being here. And no matter who you are, the time you’re allotted isn’t completely self possessed. Yes, you still have to live it for yourself, but your actions, your choices, do affect others in the most intricate of ways. And living in this land of brute singularity due to its investment in recollecting what feels good, can also perpetrate the very crack in the mountain that harbors more threat than beauty. It’s lonely winning alone. 

We must reset the system in understanding that we are a valuable placement. Even if we live on a mountain top, disconnected from all two leggeds, we’re still of value. All of nature is not just living for our enjoyment but also the reflection of living through us.

My friend shared an ad from REI, an excursions package deal, adventuring through Haines, AK. It cost a pretty penny, but in my opinion well worth every cent for those looking to explore more than cruise ship drop offs.  Until I saw, Battery Point trailhead was the first stop on the trekking map. Not to mention they’ll be crossing the landslide graveyard, unaware of what’s looming above, threatening life, come earthquake, rain storm, or chance encounter. I’m sure that wouldn’t be advisable to advertise, but are they even aware of what they’re trekking through? 

I might look bitter. I might look like someone trying to keep her house and not let it go. If I look like this, it sure seems it’s through another’s eyes, not my own. 

I’m not fighting to keep my house. I’m not fighting to live on that land. I’m not fighting for money. 

I’m fighting for awareness in this INJUSTICE.

It’s as if the government said, “folks we’re going to need everyone in this Haines town to remove yourself from your houses. As we’re a state of consciousness, and it’s our understanding that it’s not safe to live there, (nor was it ever living on that northern mountain slope, ask a native local), so we’ll need you to pack up your stuff (even though it’s been months of it being frozen and molded) and shove it into storage, if you can find one big enough (because any Alaskan that doesn’t own ‘stuff’ isn’t here for long). I’m sorry for this inconvenience, this is your ‘welcome to Alaska’ certificate, eh? We know housing is going to be hard to come by, but remember it was you who chose to live here.” This would be not only harrowing, but unfair to ask any human, let alone an entire town. What happens to one, happens to all. 

Landslides happen, it’s part of the package deal in Alaska. We take our risks, and it’s our responsibility to take precautions in sustaining life on all accounts. It could look as if we take more chances here and yes that might be true, but it’s not without thought, we just don’t let fear paralyze us. Given our awareness, we also fall victim to narrowed arteries, hardening our heart’s channel believing that rules inflict upon our freedoms to live freely. And they do for the most part, but injustice of the system affects us all no matter who is paying into it. This landslide with its continuing instability isn’t our distant past. It happened to wake us up, to help us MOVE MOUNTAINS in a pyramid of ravenous ownership.

No matter how the cards were dealt, we’re locked into a system. This is evident because some are just fine, while others are barely surviving. There is so much injustice here, it is just like everywhere else. Yet, we brag about our tiny little town, even though we’re barely polticing our own severed landslide limb of a leg, hoping nature’s fur/fir will over grow the pain witnessed, which shattered us into weakness. Are we lame? Do we need to be put down? Or can we use the medicine of community to break apart the glaciality of a system that infects bacteria into our unattended laceration – the crack in the mountain? What is it then? Am I really your neighbor or is that just a hashtag?

Does it have to happen to everyone? This loss? This insanity? What is being asked of us? To activate an outrageous response to saying, ‘enough’! Or is my existence a threat to raising your tax dollars? This must be what Inuit people felt like ever since *1741 in Alaska. I hang my head again, in sorrow. Maybe I’m reliving this now as a white woman, a step closer to the keys into the castle while I purposely drop them into the deep waters. 

We’re being treated as if this were our problem. 

We’re being treated as if this were a choice!

How is this a choice when there’s a guillotine looming overhead playing roulette with how many lives we have left?

How do you replace what we’ve lost, trying to find some type of equivalent in a housing community crisis? There’s no other town to ‘Zillow’ for 148 miles and that’s in a different country! We don’t have the luxury of moving. Does one know the expense of moving what it takes to move here? How about moving out of here? But we don’t want to move. How’s that for a twist?

We are being silently asked to do the most inhumane forms of modern day survival. Asked to live this impossible nightmare and not complain, to figure it out solo, even though we’re incredibly, economically, responsible community members that any town would be lucky to have. And I don’t say this with a drop of bravado, I say this because what we’ve been chugging away ‘trying’ to save humanity from itself has been emptying our pockets. It’s not greedy to want to have something of your own, within the context of your own dream. It’s greedy when it’s imbalanced. 

We’ve been groomed to sell our home in this instability of an environment. And once any insurance finds out, they’ll drop the new homeowner like a hot potato. So the house will probably sell, ‘as is’, cheaply attracting the lack that festers here in the wet shoes of those trekking for an ‘adventure’. Given we’re the ‘adventure capital of Alaska’, they’ll get that in spades. 

Our hands tied together, every step we take forward is off a cliff.

What do we want? What everyone really wants – a safe home that meets our needs. This isn’t flamboyant. And for those who feel it is, I’d like to see your stuff taken away from you, and you try and ‘make it work’ with nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

We want this mountain of a loss to be balanced with possibilities opening to us, instead we’re going through foreclosure and bankruptcy all at the same time, even a chance that we’d be sued for not paying our mortgage even though the house sits in an environment unsuitable for living. It’s that one fact that seems so easily forgotten, the REASON of why we aren’t living there. Some still do live there, quietly, and do you think they would if they had an equal opportunity of moving on, respectfully balancing their loss? 

“Sell your house”, they preach. Outsiders shifting it to another’s problem. But how in good consciousness can we sell, with a crack that looms above another’s destiny? What about the rest of that mountain? How narrowed our thinking is. We had two different individuals luring us into selling our home. Finally giving in, confused by the Universe’s asking, we surrendered to entertain the buyers’ desires. Only to then have it fall apart over and over again, something always blocking us from moving forward, besides I was convinced they have a death wish. 

We are not holding on. We are not holding onto a house in hopes we can live there again. That’s ridiculous. We made our bed. But it seems no matter how precise our hospital corners are, how diligent we were in planning, moving, orchestrating, and creatively envisioning what the future could be, it seemed to hold no weight in the end. Just like my ‘bug out’ bag(s), completely useless for this life emergency, nothing is in control. The downfall of ‘trying’, feeling whipped, the bleeding lashes across our backs for out-living this. It’s incredibly hard to be thankful to be alive when everything roots against your survival it seems.

I always wanted to practice law. I guess, I am, the law of humanity.