I felt the right size

by Becky Lam

"I have something else I need to tell you.” Emboldened and angry, her voice rose, “I’m running away. I'm moving to the forest and I'm never coming back and I am never participating in this society anymore! So there.”

Once again, silence fell on the other end of the line. A few beats passed before her mother calmly replied, “Okay. Well, wherever you go, make sure there's room for me because I'll be coming." Then she offered a bit of unexpected wisdom as only mothers can do: "Take this moment to think. You will never again be in this moment of life. This is the only time in your life you will have just graduated from college… If there is an opportunity that you would like to cash in at this moment, this is it, toots. You don't get this moment later. So run away, but maybe think about the opportunities you're only going to have right now." Then she hung up on her daughter.

Weeks later, Kelly arrived in Haines, Alaska. Having just spent the last four years in Santa Barbara, she hadn’t packed the appropriate clothes or gear to survive this remote new terrain. But it didn’t matter. She was passionate and determined. Kelly was the proud new unpaid intern at The Hammer Museum—broke, fresh out of college, and ready to sleep in the back of the main building, where the museum was providing her housing. While she was preparing to depart for Alaska, Kelly thought that it would be wise to invest in at least one article of clothing that would sustain her in the rugged outdoors.

“So I literally took out every dollar in my bank account and I bought a Patagonia fleece because I had convinced myself—I had never owned anything like that before that cost that much or was that quality or was technical—but I'm going to Alaska, so I have to have something technical! And that's how clearly [naive I was]. I had spent my whole life outside, but didn't know about ‘Outdoors’.”

Throughout her childhood, Kelly’s parents had made a concerted effort to raise her and her sisters with ample access to outside spaces. Their front door was always open and it was routine for the family to venture on outdoor excursions together. To her parents, it was important for their children to know that being outside also meant being in a place where they could feel comfortable and be themselves. They were a tight-knit family with the natural world as a dominant backdrop in their lives, and it is still the case today. “I’m so indebted to them for that. Because as an adult, I realize how hard they worked, but as a kid, you don't realize how hard your parents are working.” And growing up in the Bay Area, there were plenty of wild places to visit from the beaches to the mountains. Kelly doesn’t remember a single birthday in her childhood that wasn’t spent outside frolicking and laughing with the other kids. So when the opportunity came for her to go to Alaska, she felt like she could handle it.  

This bold move came at a time when Kelly was feeling a significant sense of dislocation. Going to Alaska was a decision that culminated out of her experience in college. “When I chose to go to college, [I thought], ‘I live in the state of California, I've gone to public school my whole life, and there are amazing public schools here. So I'm gonna fill out one application to the UC system and I'm gonna check every box. And I'm gonna go to college!’ So that's all I did.” The decision seemed simple enough. Kelly ultimately chose to attend UC Santa Barbara because her family had spent a lot of time there when she was young. Santa Barbara was like a second home, especially during the time when her eldest sister, Sarah, lived in a group home there that provided a program designed for young adults with physical and developmental disabilities. “My family decided that was most important, that it was the right program for her. It was going to be the best experience anyone could provide for her at that point in her life and they would make as many sacrifices as they could to make that happen.” They spent many weekends driving down from the Bay Area to be together as a family as often as they could. She recalls a lot of fond memories walking outside on the coastal front lands and beaches. Given her familial ties to the place, it was a no-brainer for Kelly when it became an option for college.

But her time there as a student turned out to be much more trying. Throughout her college years in Santa Barbara, Kelly felt disconnected from the place itself. She had grown up instilled with a respect for the natural world and an inherent sense of connection between landscape and community, but it didn’t seem to exist around the college environment she found herself in. Parties from the night before were routinely left buried in the sand and the names of strangers were clumsily etched into ancient rock. Being in the midst of a cohort of peers who raged through their first taste of freedom and frequently abused the nature that surrounded them was a direct challenge to Kelly’s values.

It also made it difficult for her to find like-minded people to connect with. “I learned that the beauty of a place and the values and the structure of the community that lives in that place don't always match. As a child, within the safety and security of my family and my family values and my sister, I had fallen in love with this landscape. And then as a young adult, living within the community there, I learned that those two things didn't match with me. That I could be in love with a landscape, but entirely miserable within a community.” Determined to get through college, she wrestled with self-care and her first experience with depression. Her struggle to find a place within the community while trying to find herself as a young adult was deeply disheartening. It fed a continued sense of dislocation and ultimately, apathy. As she was nearing graduation, Kelly’s depression and apathy had shifted into anger.

“That anger gave me hope because it was a fire
I hadn't felt in so long. It was motion.”

That’s when Kelly called her mom, declaring her refusal to participate in the school’s graduation ceremony and her fervent intention to run away into the wild. Her mother’s reaction over the phone caught Kelly by surprise, but it did little to abate her anger. After her mom hung up on her, she actively hunted for an opportunity after college that would utilize her degree in art history and museum studies, but more importantly, would also take her as far away from society as possible.

She came across internship positions in upstate New York and one on a rural farm in Decatur, Illinois, but nothing sounded remote enough. Then one day, she saw a last minute listing that just read: "Summer Internship, Haines, Alaska, The Hammer Museum”. With that angry fire, she was dead set on going there. “I remember sitting down and writing the most passionate cover letter I have ever written because I knew I was getting out and I knew that that's where I had to go. I remember sending it in and just waiting. I don't think I've ever been as nervous to get something in my life.” And a couple of weeks later, she received a response that simply stated, “Congratulations. You're our intern.”

Dave Pahl, the founder of The Hammer Museum, said that hers was the most passionate cover letter he’d ever read. So on a clear, early May day, Kelly found herself awestruck on a ferry pulling into an empty terminal in Haines while wearing a pair of tractionless cowboy boots. For the next six and a half months, she was entrusting her livelihood on a complete stranger in this small town in Southeast Alaska. And she was as green as the spring buds. “I was, in retrospect, a total fool. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into… the community in Alaska is what got me through. They were the most phenomenal, kind, open-hearted, empathetic people. They all knew that I was a total fool and that I needed a lot of help. And so they rallied and immediately were willing to support me and help me feel comfortable in this new landscape.”

One of these people was The Hammer Museum’s most recent intern, Susannah, who remained in Haines after her internship had ended. She stopped by to introduce herself to Kelly, who had arrived just a day or two earlier, and to invite her along on her favorite hike in Haines on Mount Ripinski. Because a year ago, she was exactly where Kelly was, Susannah offered to help her settle in. The gesture was touching and Kelly had been on plenty of hikes before, so she thought, why not? But besides the cowboy boots she arrived in, the only other shoes Kelly had brought to Haines were a pair of second-hand Nike track shoes. “Don't know why those were the other pair of shoes that I packed because I don't think I had ever worn them… So I was like, I guess this is what I'm hiking in!”

From the moment she disembarked the ferry to the start of this hike, the landscape was nothing like what Kelly had seen before. The scale of the surrounding mountains, glaciers, and canals were immediately striking.

“The landscape in Haines was so large and so magnificent and felt intangible in its proportion that that was the first time I felt the right size. That I understood the true size of being human.”

And being the first time she was living outside of the familiarity of coastal California, she found herself wildly uncomfortable in this new terrain. It was a beautiful, warm spring day and while they hiked, Susannah explained how they were going to see a grizzly bear at some point that day. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Kelly had never encountered a bear out in the wild before, so Susannah was cautious to not overwhelm her. But since coming across grizzlies was a regular occurrence in and around town, she felt that Kelly needed to be prepared. This only added to the mix of fear and excitement that Kelly was already reeling from on those first few days in Alaska. She was finally jolted awake:

“You are suddenly the right proportion and you know that against nature, you're fucked! It's humbling and, for me, that was such a spiritual experience as well because when I got to Haines, I had just graduated from college and was in, what I now realize, my first experience with depression, and definitely not my last. But looking back, it was that first experience of being so apathetic and so disconnected from the system and the community that I was living in, that it felt like there wasn't any other option. And Alaska was [going to be] the remedy for that.”

Trying to keep her cool, Kelly followed along on the trail while Susannah, with bells and bear spray in tow, explained how the grizzlies always have the right-of-way. (Make noise and keep your distance!) Kelly’s internal dialogue was a running string of self-affirmations, repetitions of Susannah’s assurances, and half-queried statements that it was going to be fine. And it was fine as they chatted and made their way up the slow incline of the mountain. They eventually trekked over a false peak when Kelly spotted snow ahead of them. Second to her fear of encountering grizzly bears was her deep discomfort with navigating snow. “It's something that I don't understand. It seems like a mystery. Where, if you spent your life around snow, you know where the soft pocket is and you know what type of snow feels a different way. I had such a small relationship with snow in my life that it terrified me. And here we are on a beautiful hot May day and there is fucking snow! And the trail is gone, which was the only thing that I felt comfortable following.”

The whole peak of the mountain was covered in snow and they were heading straight for it. Kelly steeled herself to follow Susannah up the rest of the way, careful not to stray from the fresh path. It was a heavy slog having worn inappropriate sneakers that were quickly soaked through. By then, the soles of the Nikes had torn open and her wet, slush-covered feet left her freezing. At one point, she just crawled on her hands and knees up through the snow. After what felt like the slowest and most uncomfortable hike in her life, they reached the peak. “I just remember laughing. I think it was the first time I had laughed spontaneously in months! In that moment where you realize that in nature, not only can you feel so humble and proportionate, you can also feel larger than our human form will allow us to and that to me is what feels spiritual about being outside. It’s access to this other place of emotions and strength that sometimes, you need to feel really small and uncomfortable to get to.” She was finally feeling a little confident and relaxed at the top of the mountain, but quickly realized that they also needed to get down.

Looking back down the slope, Kelly braced herself for the slow, cold crawl. The last snowy section of the peak had been approximately one-eighth of the entire trail, but had taken over an hour for her to get through. Still, she embraced her new swath of confidence and delicately made her way down. Ten minutes had gone by and Kelly started to recognize parts of the snow-covered path that they had traversed earlier. This helped boost her morale. “I'm standing up a little taller, I'm not kinda scooting on my bottom anymore and I'm like, ‘You can do this! You are a strong, capable human! You will get down this mountain and you can do snow!’ I was feeling surprised and excited in myself and that's when I stepped in the stream.”

Under a gentle blanket of snow was a mountain runoff. In the late spring, the current was not friendly and with a single step, Kelly was suddenly flat on her back getting carried down the stream. She was terrified. Susannah came running down after her screaming, “Put out your arms and legs!” while Kelly furiously tried to stop herself by grabbing at saplings and flailing her limbs, but it was futile. Drenched in the icy, fast-moving water, her leggings were getting torn up and her shoes were no longer even shoes. Trying to fight back tears from all the big mistakes she had made leading up to this, Kelly came barreling down through the snow. After who knows how long, she spotted the lower section of the mountain where the snow transitioned back to mud and dirt. It was then that she finally saw a tree ahead. This was her chance. 

“I remember having an arm and a leg out and awkwardly hitting into the tree with my leg and sliding into it. My wet pants became mud, the snow had become mud, and then I hear Susannah running after me, ‘Kelly! Kelly! Are you okay!?’ I remember sitting up and the only thing I could do, again, was to laugh. Because I was okay. Minor scratches and bruises, but I was okay. The snow had won that day and I still don't like the snow, but I was OKAY.”

She managed to stand up, feeling totally uncomfortable, strong, and ridiculous at the same time. Susannah got down to where Kelly was while she continued to laugh uncontrollably. Together, they looked down at the switchbacks below them and a hundred feet ahead, in the din of their laughter, Kelly saw her first grizzly bear. It turned out that she had been laughing so hard that the bear had already been alerted to their presence, which allowed the grizzly space and time to move along. “I kept thinking about Susannah saying, ‘Just remember that the bear always has the right-of-way in the forest,’ and I imagine that laughter being a crosswalk and the bear knowing like, Okay, crazy lady over there, I'm just gonna pass through. We let the bear pass and we got to the bottom of the mountain. That was my first hike in Alaska.”

And so went her introduction to the Alaskan wilderness. Throughout the rest of her time there, the magnificence of the landscape and more surprising wild encounters never ceased to have a profound impact on Kelly. Even after the first few days, the outdoors and the people of Haines had already made an outsized impression on her psyche. Thinking back on the power of her experiences there still remind her of how and why she had ended up in Alaska. “This whole other side of me that was waiting to grow grew there in a place where I was the right size, in a place where I was so humble to wake up everyday and feel grateful that I was alive, as opposed to apathetic for the world that I was living in.” Kelly acknowledges that six and a half months in the span of a lifetime doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but the timing was critical to the impact it has had in her life.

She shared many other harrowing stories, but ultimately, Kelly’s stint in Alaska showed her just how important community, landscape, and their connection are to her and the way she interacts with the world. The people she met in Haines and their ways of life was not just a place to draw stories from, but a lesson on what it means for her to be human.

“My experience there totally transformed my heart and part of the choices I make everyday - in my relationships, in my community, how I engage in my community, how I see nature and landscape, and being outdoors.”

Today, she is a teacher at a forest school in San Francisco where one hundred percent of their instruction is outside in the Presidio. She guides pre-school aged children in their early childhood learning and credits her motivation for pursuing outdoor education to her family. Kelly recognizes how much of a privilege she’s had to build a relationship with the natural world as a child and to be encouraged by her parents to do so. That’s why she wants to pay it forward through her work with children at the forest school and by sharing and acknowledging how nature has helped her through her own difficulties.

Much of Kelly’s identity is rooted in a personal connection with the natural world. She describes herself as someone who finds comfort and spirituality when she is outside, thanks in large part to her parents. “I’m so grateful that one of their goals for all of us (me and my sisters) was that we find that community and that shared sense of value and that connection to something larger for ourselves. They had no interest in choosing that for us, so growing up, they were incredibly flexible. We didn't go to church or temple or synagogue and that was never part of our life, but a questioning of religion and a questioning of spirituality always was.” This left an open field for Kelly to explore ideas and religions on her own terms, whether it was taking part in bat and bar mitzvah ceremonies or going to church with her friends. But over the years, nothing seemed to fit quite right. It was in high school during a youth group service that it struck her: “I realized that the place that I felt deeply grounded and the place that I felt safe to question myself and question human nature and the place that I felt most connected to family and friends and most alive was in nature, when I was outside.” 

It made sense that after all those years of her parents’ hard work to get their daughters outdoors, something would stick. Kelly not only felt comfortable outside, but she also saw it as a safe space to reflect alone or come together. And over the years, being outside had become her family’s ritual. “It seems so simple to me and such a fact. Now, whenever my family and I gather, whether that be to celebrate or whether that be to think or whether that be to mourn, we always meet in nature. It's our place of connectedness.” One of the most powerful moments in Kelly’s life where this rung most true was the day her sister, Sarah, had died. Sarah had been born with developmental disabilities based on chromosomal deletion, so her body did not have a full set of DNA. But though her physical self was incomplete, her spirit and soul were full and free. “There was not a single moment in the day where she was not herself. It was just magic.” Kelly was very close with her sister and that summer, they knew that it was her body’s time. The day Sarah passed, Kelly met her parents on the beach near their home in Half Moon Bay, each of them quietly knowing that this was the right way to begin their process of mourning:

“We didn't talk necessarily, but we knew that the place to start this journey of celebrating this life and light that was integral to the best parts of us… was outside together in the place where you can always be reminded that you're the right size and it's the right time… [it was] with the spirit of time and the spirit of nature that is the truest form of loss and death and regeneration and I think that moment will always remind me of why I have no interest in spending a life inside. That's what the outdoors is really about—is everything connected, everything in a circle, everything in cycle, at least for me in the question of spirituality. And Sarah's ashes are outdoors for always because it was exactly the place where life transitions and knowing that, by leaving Sarah's body outdoors, so many more bodies would grow from that. My family and I still gather frequently in that place to see what's growing.”

The loss of her sister was a life-altering event. Much like her journey in Alaska, it was profound beyond words and colored the world anew for her in countless ways. The immediate imagery that came to mind as she struggled through the feelings of loss was a redwood tree in the forest. Kelly describes herself as one that has split into two trunks: the first being her fully developed identity prior to that day on the beach and the second being a completely different side inspired and challenged by her grief. Though they’re characteristically distinct, both sides live in symbiosis and continue to grow each day. “I’m balancing out more and more and it's not about height, but more about substance and in diameter and realizing that so much of my personal identity may be [what] other people don't see… A large part of my identity at this moment is that growth that is coming out of grief.” Finding these types of images in nature that were analogous to how she was feeling helped Kelly to navigate the complex process of mourning. 

Now four years later, Kelly sees that second trunk as a thicker, stabler anchor of her tree. The hard work that she’s done to grow that side has enabled her to accept grief as part of her identity and to continue living fearlessly as her sister had taught her. Her experiences outside have been the backbone for an emotional growth that resonates in every corner of her life. Whether it’s in her compassionate conversation with three year olds about why trees fall or her candid description of grappling with depression after the loss of her sister, Kelly is the kind of person who can’t help but see the forest for the trees. She emanates a combination of warmth and groundedness that is rare for someone her age, but she would be the first to admit that she is, in fact, still growing.