This is a Valentine's Day contest story. Please vote.
Sarah Palin, Sex & Valentine's Day
The Alaskan ex-governor and a writer make a love connection on Valentine's Day.
For the record, I'm not a serial killer in the way that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was or a survivalist living in the forest by Walden Pond in the way of Henry David Thoreau. I'm not even a hunter or adventurer. Having no pretenses of hoping to be another Jack London and writing another Call of the Wild or White Fang, I'm just a writer, a mere scribe, who moved to the end of civilization to be alone with my thoughts. Never in a million years did I think I'd be spending all my holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve, and now today, Valentine's Day, alone
I moved to Alaska to write the great American novel about the last wilderness on Earth, the Alaskan rainforest. Only, before the winter set in, I needed a job to earn money to survive, while writing. Having saved some money to get by, until I found work, I needed a job that would earn me enough money to pay my rent and buy the food and supplies that I needed to lock myself away in a cabin for six months through the cold, harsh winter, while writing my manuscript.
From taking a job as a lumberjack, a fisherman, a miner, and a store clerk, I made and saved enough money to begin my writing adventure. Taking the advice from the famous writer, Jonathan Franzen, by locking myself away in the way that he does to write his masterpieces, I figured the more hardship I had to endure the better my book. Other than Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Haiti, where else on Earth could I endure such a hardship, than in the Alaskan wilderness during the long, cold winter?
True, I could have pulled a Forrester, as in Finding Forrester, and stayed in some New York ghetto, but I needed peace and quiet to write the book that I needed to write. I can't write with car alarms, police, fire, and ambulance sirens, and gunfire. To be honest, I felt safer out here in the dense forest with the occasional bear and wolf than I did in New York with all the two legged predators.
Only, I didn't realize, the cabin that I took was more akin to Ted Kaczynski's or Henry David Thoreau's cabin than it was to Jonathan Franzen's sanctuary. For sure, I could have done better with a few more comfort items, basic necessities, actually. Yet, if my intent was to rough it and to cause myself misery and pain, by surviving life in the rainforest during the winter, that I needed to experience to write my masterpiece, then I couldn't have chosen a better cabin.
Even though the price was right, with no running water and electricity, I should have known there was something wrong with this cabin. Cabin? It's more an oversized outhouse than it was a living quarters. A one room, four sided, hunters' blind, at least it had a door and windows that made it feel not as claustrophobic as solitary confinement in a prison cell.
Twenty feet by twenty feet, the living space was a four hundred foot square. A typical apartment sized space in Japan and in some New York buildings, my cabin was the size of most living rooms or master bedrooms in many American homes. Still, it was bigger than the prison cell that it sometimes felt it was, especially when there was a raging storm outside and I was snowbound for days with snowdrifts taller than my cabin. Well constructed to survive the Alaskan winters, constructed in the way of a very, small log cabin, I was glad that it had a fireplace. This would have been a palace compared to how Alaskan settlers lived not that long ago.
Unfortunately, it was the only accommodations that I could afford on my meager budget. No phone and no Internet, what was I thinking? Yet, one day, I'll look back and laugh, that is, if I survive my ordeal. If nothing else, the quiet alone time helped me to think and gave me insight into things that I normally wouldn't have considered, had I still had to endure the interruptions I had, when living in the city and working a full-time, nine to five job.
Just having to endure my daily commute in gridlock, bumper-to-bumper traffic put me in such a foul mood that, when I finally arrived home, I couldn't do anything but flop in front of the television, while eating my TV dinner. Forget about exercising and eating right. I was too tired and stressed from the aggravation of my day. Unable to keep a thought in my head, even though I wanted to write, I couldn't. I was never in the mood. Then, with all the errands that I needed to do in the little free time that I had to do them, even weekends were full of stress and aggravation, instead of fun.
Franzen doesn't use the Internet when he writes, so I won't either. Although Franzen has a toilet, a sink, a shower, a refrigerator, a stove, a telephone, and a television, no doubt. If I miss anything, I miss my television and my computer. I miss unconsciously turning on an overhead light, instead of having to light my lantern or read by the fire. Sometimes feeling a bit like Abraham Lincoln, I can do without anything else but I wish I had more light.
Yet, when it comes right down to basic needs, so long as I have my oversized and relatively comfortable 800 goose down sleeping bag, plenty of firewood for the fire, gallons and gallons of water, and my shelves stocked with canned food, I was fine. Most people living in America are spoiled and unless poor and homeless, without food enough to sustain them, most people living in this country don't know what real hardship is. When I think about so many people living in third world countries, when I think about our own citizens homeless and living on the street, when I think about all those who suffer hardships in prison, especially for crimes they didn't do, they all wish they had it this good.
Seriously, compared to third world countries, being homeless, or being in prison, how bad can living a winter in Alaska be? Okay, it was pretty bad, especially being so alone and especially with that bone chilling, howling wind. My attempt at making myself feel better by comparing my plight to others worse off than me wasn't working. More than once, I wanted to give it all up and go home, but I didn't. I hung in there. Determined to write my book, I needed to prove to myself that I could do what I thought I needed to do to write my bestseller.
I bought the supplies to make my own portable shower, a portable generator to give me electricity, a hotplate to heat water and cook food, a coffeemaker, and a space heater to heat the room. I even bought a portable toilet from one of the locals. Only, I can't use them all at the same time. So long as my water supply doesn't freeze overnight, which happened more than once, comfy and cozy, I was all set. Just as I started to settle in my new writer's lodge, just as I was beginning to appreciate the solitude of my Alaskan rainforest hideaway, and just as I got out my typewriter and my ream of paper and stared at my blank page wondering what the Hell to write now that the pressure was on high to write something, anything, I heard something.
"Hello?"
It sounded like a voice, a woman's voice, but in the distance. Was I hearing things? Was that the wind or a wolf howling? Totally alone, there's no one out here where I am. Alone in the wilderness for months, maybe I'm just hallucinating. Gees, now that I have a woman on my mind, I'm feeling horny, when I should be feeling inspired to write.
Maybe that's the voice of my muse, my main character. Sure, with today being Valentine's Day, I'll write a love story about a man and a woman lost in the Alaskan rainforest, a story about love, romance, and adventure. Finally, I can write the hot sex scene that I always wanted to write. Perfect.
How different it would be to write a Valentine's Day story here, than if I was still in New York? There'd be no way that I could write an Alaskan rainforest Valentine's Day love story living in New York and never having experienced a harsh Alaskan winter. My words would never ring true and my characters, lacking dimension, would be as flat as my page without details. Just as I celebrated all my Valentine's Days in the past, I'd be stuck buying some woman that I really didn't care for flowers and candy just for the hopes of having sex with...
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
There it is again. Definitely, that was a woman's voice and a real voice, not the wind, a wolf, or the voice of my muse. Hoping I wasn't hearing things, hoping I wasn't beginning to lose my mind from being alone for so long, I got up from my chair, and looked out the window, before opening the door. This is bear country, after all, not that my door would be a match for an 800 pound bear or a two legged predator intent on doing me bodily harm and stealing my supplies, it wouldn't, a habit learned living in New York, I'm always cautious when unlocking and opening my door. Instead I looked out my window. Total whiteout, unable to see anything but snow and trees, I was about to sit back down to write again when...
"Hello? Can someone help me?"
There it is again. There's someone out there, a woman and she needs help. I grabbed my jacket, opened and unlocked the door, and walked out on the front porch. I looked straight ahead. I looked to the left. I looked to the right. Back and forth, from left to right, I quickly scanned the area with my eyes. Nothing and no one. Thinking that it was the wind or an animal or just me imagining things, about to go back inside, I heard the voice again.
"Hey! Mister! Hey! Hey, you!"
Rough and tumble, the voice was annoyingly familiar. With a bit of hysteria in her voice, it was one notch down from a shrill. Yeah, for sure, a little of that voice goes a long way. Here I am trying to get away from it all and now there's a hysterical women in the middle of nowhere asking for my help. She sounded a bit like Calamity Jane's character on Deadwood, a bit crazy. She had the kind of grating voice that made me glad she wasn't my wife. Then, I saw her. There in the distance, behind some snow covered bushes, was a woman.
"Hello? What are you doing way out here?" When she didn't answer my question, being the writer that I am, I started firing away more questions. "How'd you get here? Are you lost? Who are you? What's your name?"
