Will all else pale in comparison?

Early June may be the cruelest time to have to leave Alaska. The trees have burst into joyful green, the waterfalls cascade down the mountainsides with thundering announcement, the wetlands are alive with green and sandpiper and the call of Canadian geese, the mossy forest whispers a thousand names for spring. This is the time of year when Alaskans develop amnesia about the long winter. This is the time of year when light lingers in the sky so long we forget to put children to bed; we linger on our sidewalks talking to neighbors in an 11 p.m. dusk. This is the time of year when all the world -- even the unmovable mountains themselves -- affirms life, life, life! It seems the sky was never dark with rain or grief.

But it is nearly June, and I have sent most of our belongings south on a great wide barge. At night, I lie awake and think of the way the Pacific Ocean's waves must make TK's plastic pastel-colored kitchen and our boxes sway, shift. In TK's room, duffle bags hold our clothing, waiting for June 4, when an Alaska Airlines airplane will carry us away from Alaska, along the coast of British Columbia to Seattle. We'll board another plane to Denver, Colorado.

It's time to go. Our family waits, their arms open, ready to love us daily instead of just on our long visits from the north. Waiting, too, is sunshine, and warmth, and a saner kind of life.

I've lived here ten years -- first in Anchorage, then in Juneau - and I never did become an Alaskan, really. I never loved the manic-depressive quality of living here, the way people are held hostage by sunny days because they are so infrequent, the way people hibernate in the winter and then run themselves ragged in the long days of summer. I never loved wearing mittens and long underwear for most of the year. I never loved the danger lurking in the wilderness: the brown bear that could be in the willows at the bend of the trail, the sudden white caps that could overturn a kayak, the crumbling cliffs that awaited an unwise hiker. A friend who lives in Fairbanks (actually a childhood friend of mine from Iowa) mused the other day as we hiked up a valley in Juneau, "Living in Alaska is hard. It's not for everyone."

I wanted it to be for me, I think -- and for TK. Maybe it could have been, if I hadn't had this increasing ache in my heart that told me I needed to move closer to our family, that this joyful child needs to be raised in the midst of a larger support system than just me, that my own soul maybe requires a steadier and more predictable kind of life. So I'm leaving. I know that in Colorado, we'll find some of what I love about Alaska: mountains, the enormity of landscape that humbles the observant human being, a belief in an outdoor lifestyle. Add that we'll gain thunderstorms, roads that stretch to other communities instead of to dead-ends, an aunt and uncle, grandparents, cousins. But it will not be Alaska.

What will TK remember of this far-north place, in which she spent the first three years of her life in the United States? I imagine her in preschool in Colorado, surprised that her peers do not see glaciers every day, or that they do not go watch bears pull enormous salmon from a creek for entertainment with their parents. I know she will be surprised immediately that the sun goes to sleep earlier in Colorado this time of year; I know she will be surprised to be so hot; I know she will be overwhelmed by all the people and cars and options. Or maybe that will just be her mama being overwhelmed.

I originally titled this blog "Musings of an Alaskan Mama". What has been Alaskan about my parenting of TK? Mostly, my willingness (and hers) to go outside no matter the weather: to bundle up in raincoat, rainpants, rainboots; to fiercely love the outdoors no matter the temperature or the precipitation. Also, my grudging acceptance of the rhythm of life here: we spent many of our winter days in our pajamas, creating art in lamps lit against the darkness outside; now, in spring, we fling open the door and refuse to come inside until our eyes are bleary with exhaustion. Alaska teaches one to live in constant connection with the natural world. It will not be ignored. So says the bear who snoops in our trash most evenings.

I'm not changing the title to "Musings of a Colorado Mama," though -- I'm just a mama, now. I'm really an Iowan farmgirl, trying to transplant herself in some place in which her heart and soul will thrive. I've tried England, New Mexico, D.C., Alaska -- and now Colorado. My little daughter, meanwhile, transplanted all the way from Ethiopia, looks up at me with her wide brown eyes -- and trusts me entirely.

Am I right to go? The dear friend with whom I traveled to Alaska in the first place quotes John Muir: "One should not come up to Alaska too early in life, as all else pales by comparison." Will it be true? Will everything beyond here seem too tame? Alaska. It is grander and wilder and scarier than I ever imagined it would be. . . and it exhausts me. I love it fiercely, and I am tired. Give me sunshine, a garden, roads that go somewhere, a gentler place to raise my child, my family nearby again. I want to rest.

But I love you, Alaska. You humbled me. I couldn't conquer peaks here; I was infinitely small, swept forward in a rushing river with Denali and her attendant peaks gazing impassively forward. Here, I had to submit to the rules of extreme latitude, to the whims of extreme climate. I did not matter here, no more than the bear or the unfurling fiddlehead fern or the incessant rain matters. And so I understood for the first time how much I mattered.

I am just a mama. But I whisper Alaska, Alaska, Alaska in my daughter's ear. Be humbled, be in love with the enormity and unpredictability of the natural world, be bold enough to explore it all -- even if the adventure requires mittens and Xtratuff boots and potential danger in the willows.

But I will also whisper this to my child: after awhile, return. Return to those outstretched arms of family, return to rest.

That's where I'm heading in a week. Alaska will continue her manic summer, and I hope to be cultivating kale and tomatoes in Fort Collins, Colorado. . . my little daughter playing in the sunshine nearby.