Wanting Alaska.

If you've ever met me or ever read anything I've written you'll know three things;
1) I'm almost always wearing an item of clothing that as a hole in it.
2) I really like salmon.
3) My hero is a man that burnt all his money, kissed goodbye to a life of conventional living and opened his eyes to a world that still remains so unknown to so many.

Maybe it was the day that we sat in a hotel room and my beautiful friend told me who Christopher McCandless was and implored me to find out for myself or the day that my best friend gave the book to me to read or maybe long before either of those things even occurred that I wanted to go to Alaska.

I remember when I'd first arrived in KL, a conversation I'll never forget outside of a Starbucks at 2am about how I'd love to one day make my way to Alaska. I thought to myself "someday, someday I'll know what it feels like to be there."

But a wanting of something isn't ever really enough, Roosevelt pointed this out to me. He asked "what are you going to do to get the things you want?"

My answer wasn't a courageous one. It's scary to deal with, all this wanting.

It wasn't until I took a seat next to a man on a train going from Stockholm to Karlstad that it changed. I still remember his calming, vibrant blue eyes, yellow-grey speckled hair and how he smiled with his eyes.

His name was Beau-Jacobs.

I've tried to write about him so many times in the past but nothing seemed to do him justice.
You see Beau changed how I saw the world like only a stranger can. In those four hours, he taught me more about myself then most people I'd known for years. He was an environmental scientist, he'd recently married the love of his life, he enjoyed his hobby as a carpenter and was building a house in the Swedish country-side with he bare hands.
When he spoke, I believed every word that left his mouth and he seemed to fill me with all the danger that comes with believing in yourself.

"So this Alaska dream," he pauses to give me time to collect my thoughts, "why don't you just go there?"

A hundred reasons scroll through my head like a check list of fears but none of them seem fit enough for me to say a loud. Not to Beau. To anyone else, perhaps but not to the man who had just spent hours teaching me philosophy and all he'd discovered about the world during his own travels.

And "I will," is all that comes out of my mouth. The wanting escalates.

When his stop arrives, he looks me in the eyes, smiles and says something completely unprovoked that still baffles me. "Don't worry Tara, she'll find you," and I can't even talk because my armour is so cracked that it's pushing down on my ribs and he leaves me sitting there filled with confusion and hope and I promise myself something.

The next day I share my first kiss abroad, at 3 am sitting on top of a hill in the country-side. "You're so fucking amazing," she whispers in my ear and because of that memory, I've never felt lonely again.

When Isaac and I ventured to the Grand Canyon, it changed how I saw nature. It made me happy to simply be alive and it washed every other thought from me. Cleansed me.

In exactly one week time, I'll be boarding the flight I thought I'd never have the courage to get on. In an almost taunting way, tonight I can see the Northern Lights from my balcony and any hope that I had of sleep has escaped me because I'm kept awake by my wanting.