Today is my last day at Toolik.

We leave tomorrow morning, an 8 or 10 hour drive down the haul road to Fairbanks. I will stay the weekend with my employers at their home while I look for apartments. So far I have zero appointments to view apartments. They keep getting rented. It's hard to secure an apartment when you're several hundred miles away and can't beat other potential renters to the punch by getting an earlier appointment. You can only send an email expressing interest and hope they haven't rented by the time you get back to civilization.

On top of it we still have fieldwork to do this afternoon. I'm less than thrilled by that, I was hoping to have a day of relaxation, take care of personal business, do some sketching and such. I have to help finish not only the field measurements but the packing of the rest of the lab. Last night I came back from gathering samples to find everyone in camp playing a lively game of T-ball. I would have loved to join in but couldn't possibly have done that with my employers working away in their lab until 10:30. I've been on the clock a lot here. Sigh. I'm ready to leave and yet kind of sad about it, trying not to beat myself up about whether I could have had more fun instead of keeping my nose to the grindstone and trying to be good.

You only get one chance to do whatever it is you do. So I guess whatever you've done it's best to be OK with the result and move on.

I will miss walking on the spongy, springy, often wet, fragrant tundra. The many hours I've spent on a clear day walking alone through this landscape surrounded by its vastness, happily distracted by its unique and endless detail, were some of the best I've ever known. It's weird, but the other day I went up to one of my favorite spots and told the land how much I love it and how much I will miss it. This is the thing I fell in love with, so dumbly and blindly, with no hope of it ever returning my love.

So now that I've said my goodbyes to my dear tundra, I can't wait to get home and see my dear husband and family. It will be brief, because in a week from now Joe and I say goodbye to our friends and family and drive up to Fairbanks. It seems I've succeeded in figuring out a way to be near my beloved wonderland.

In truth, I'm still scared. But it's OK to be scared and go through with it anyway.