Spring Time In Alaska

Very young Patrick

There is a land far to the north that in many ways seems disconnected from reality.  When you live there it is like living on an island and news from the outside comes in snip-its that leave you at times questioning your involvement with the rest of the world.  It is a magical place and I when I first came to know it,  the largest city was still developing.  Many roads were unpaved.  Television was primitive.  There were only three networks and shows would come up on tapes from Seattle with a two week delay.  Try to avoid a Monday Night Football score for two weeks!  The town was so news starved there were actually two news papers.  How many cities these days can boast that?

The people that lived there were as disconnected as the place.  They seemed to all be running from something and everyone had a different and unique reason for their flight.  Somehow in the self imposed exile there was company among strangers.  Everyone seemed to revel in being different, being the exception. 

Mother and Son

Winter seemed to last forever.  The temperatures would start to dip in September and snow usually arrived by early October.  Darkness and cold was a matter of course until the suns rays finally punctured the northern cold in late April and early May.  We called it break-up.  It was a time when the sheets of ice that covered everything would give way.    I would scrape and chop huge chunks of ice off the driveway piling it into mountains that might last until nearly June.  I would marvel at the tiny rivers of water running down the street and make miniature beaver dams in futile attempts to alter its course.  In the morning the nights cold would refreeze the surface and armed with black rubber boots with red tops dubbed break-up boots, I would dance over the top of them cracking the ice piece by piece.  First it would spider crack and then break like shards of glass as I splashed in the water below.

We endured the cold and at times thrived.  Some children would arrive at school wearing snowmobile suits and hats that covered all but their eyes and mouths.  One friend named Corey seemed to have a perpetual post nasal drip that would congeal on the outside of his mask forming a crusty bridge under his nose.  We wore foam boots called moon boots that seemed to contribute to a universal foot rot as the feet would start to sweat during the day in school.  At one point while delivering papers on my morning route I insulated my face with an arctic mask that looked like something Freddy Kruger would wear.  Tired of slipping and falling with my paper bags surrounding me I strapped crampons on my boots and set out into the dark of night.

4071 MacINNES St. Anchorage, AK

In thirteen years of school I don't remember a single snow day.  Somehow everything just continued to function.  I still don't know how the smokers did it, huddled in little groups outside yet they did.  Even chronic sub zero temperatures were not enough to cure them of their addiction.  Late at night as the snow fell road graders would ply the streets spreading sand and salt in their wake.  In the morning we would pray our cars would start and that we remembered to plug in the engine block heater the night before.  Jumper cables were standard protocol for any motorist.

My father recently forwarded a picture to me taken by a former coworker back home.  It is April in Alaska, and with three inches more they will break a snow fall record.  Oh how South Carolina is a world away. 

April 2012 - Anchorage, Alaska

I left my home for good nearly twenty-five years ago.   I had ventured out from the state on a number of occasions and despite sacrificing my closest friendships I set out to live and thrive in the world outside. My friends that remained became one of the first generations to spend their entire lives on that island so far north and nearly a world away.  In twenty-five years I have only returned once for a class reunion.

As far as class reunions go I won't be back.  The experience made me feel both old and as if I had trod water for past 20 years.  The air of shallowness some 20 years later had still not abated.  It was as if a magical wand had been waved and all the cliques suddenly formed again.  The only difference was that the men and women were fat and the men were bald.  It truth it was vastly more pathetic then when I lived it the first time.  Those I most cared about didn't bother to go and were obviously much more prescient than I.

The total experience however was not without joy.  I rediscovered a friendship with a girl I new in high school and at least with her felt like time had stood still.  I also found my two best friends.  When I left I had twenty years before I toasted our friendship with beer glasses I bought in Europe and ultimately left one with each of them.  When I returned I felt old yet still I had an enormous desire to have them over to my room and with knees aching from being bent far too long, sit on the floor and spend hours playing a game.  Or possibly attending a University of Alaska hockey game where with beers hidden in our socks, we would waddle up to the highest point in the arena and with the lights glaring in our eyes talk about life. Or venturing five minutes out of town into mountains beautiful and pristine.  Mountains that tower ever presently over the city below and seem to form a wall between Anchorage and the world outside.  Or spend weekends as we once did hiking in back country so magnificent it makes my heart flutter to simply imagine it today.

It is hard to define where home is.  Even though I have been gone for 25 years and likely will never return to live there again, for me Alaska will always be home.  Somewhere deep within me the life in the north melded with my blood and became a part of my soul. 

As springtime comes to the northern land the snow melts and the water runs true.  Drip by drip it flows nourishing the land and the oceans it will soon meet.  Land hidden for seven months is revealed once again to welcome the sun and prove that winter is not perpetual.  Small flowers poke up their heads and the summer weeds begin to grow.  My northern home comes back to life and while not there to smell the air and feel the warmth of the sun it always walks with me in a corner of my mind.