One month later

A month ago my family was in Alaska. It was my
 birthday and we were walking in the rain through the Tongass National Forest.

While we were there I was meticulous about taking notes and pictures. I made sure that I was stopping to smell the air, taste the ocean and lake water and listen to the sounds of Sitka. I scrutinized the calls of the ravens and bald eagles, trying to burn the sounds into my brain. I savored every bite of fresh Halibut, every drop of the coffee and every last salmonberry. I spent hours just walking and taking it all in.
But yet I sit here, back in Madison, and I can't seem to recall those sounds, smells or tastes. I have pictures to look at, but they seem like they are from a dream. If not from a dream, from a lifetime ago.
Every day, probably every hour, since we left I have thought of Alaska. I have dreamed of Alaska every night. I have closed my eyes and tried to bring it all back. I even find myself looking around the city, hoping that I will find a warp zone to me back to that place, that "level" of my life.

I felt this way the last time we returned from Alaska too, but I don't remember feeling it this strongly.
It's as if I'm living in that scene from "Donnie Darko", you know the one, where the liquidy spear-like thing is shown coming out of people's chests, leading them to their inevitable futures. I have my own time-spear, tugging at me slowly. I can see that it takes a long and windy path, but it ends in Sitka. I see this path, starting right here in me and ending on a rocky shoreline in the Gulf of Alaska. It's almost like by seeing this path, I can see my future. It seems so real, like destiny.

The only problem is that I don't believe in destiny. I don't believe that life is predetermined.
Yet I can almost see and feel this path, this channel, this destiny, physically  manifesting before me as though it were predetermined. So, if I don't make it there, will it be because by seeing this path now, I have the opportunity to betray my so-called-destiny? Will I sabotage my chances of achieving this dream just to prove to myself that nothing is predetermined? Am I putting way too much thought into this?