I received a call from someone with the Alaska storytelling thing in Fairbanks a few Decembers ago.   They look for people with first person Alaska stories and provide the time and the space to tell them to an audience.  This person had been told I have a story.  

            I said, "I do?"   Because the truth is, I don't.

            I do have a brush-with-death-falling-out-of-a raft-in-rocky-river-rapids story that's exciting and even quite emotional.  I almost died.   It's just the kind of thing they like with the near death and potential stupidity.  But . . .  it didn't happen in Alaska and they're pretty picky about that.  Plus, I wasn't fighting off a bear while I was trapped under the raft so it's pretty much lame.          

            Once though, on Kesugi Ridge, my pack saved my life - or in the least it saved my tail bone and maybe my brain.  But yet again, there was no bear.  It was just me falling over on a bunch of rocks with a pack on my back.  Now you know that story.

            The fact is I never had the Alaska dream.  I arrived in Alaska at the dark end of another dream's road and the stay was meant to be temporary.  It was 1988 and I'd been traveling and working my way around the world-London, Ireland, Hong Kong, China, Japan.  That existence had lost its charm.  Lovely as it was, it had taken a toll on me.  I was headed home to Minnesota ready to settle myself and go on to grad school.  

            I detoured to Fairbanks first at my brother's invitation.  He and his wife were expecting a third child and I'd just finished up my job in Japan.  Could I help them out for a couple months?  Yup.  

            So, I arrived in March just when Fairbanks was at its ugliest - colorless, slushy, dirty with the trash and rocks that emerge from snow melt and more than a month before clean-up day. Every car I rode in had a broken windshield and I noticed that people here didn't say spring.   Instead, they called the season break-up.  How cheery!  Fairbanks looked like I felt; I wasn't smitten. 

            After a few days, I mentioned I needed to have my hair cut.  My sister-in-law perked right up and produced a phone number out of thin air.  They happened to have a friend, who happened to cut hair, who happened to be a guy. 

            Whatever. 

            But I called the number which connected me to the Aurora Hair Forum downtown and I chatted with their friend.  I hung up within minutes saying, "$28 for a haircut?" and went to New Concepts Beauty School over on College Road for a ten-dollar cut. 

            Undeterred, my sister-in-law mentioned that their friend- the one who cuts hair but hadn't cut mine-had seen the idyllic photo I'd sent of myself in a kimono standing next to a cherry blossom tree in the snow in Japan.  He'd offered to show me around Fairbanks.  Did I want her to call him?  

            "No."  I said.  "I'm not interested in meeting anyone here." 

             This was true.  But I was also thinking: Seriously?  Show me Fairbanks?  

            You may recall that I'd been traveling and had seen places - lots and lots of places.  I'd also been paying attention here and had gathered that one of the main attractions in Fairbanks is a giant brown field full of puddles off College Road.  People were pretty excited about the fact that birds would be stopping by that field on their way to somewhere else.  

            Though I felt no affinity for the field, I felt deeply connected to those birds because we were doing the same thing: stopping by an ugly place full of puddles on our way to somewhere else.  To my mind, this was the only rational response to Fairbanks.  

            But two weeks in a house with someone else's small children do inexplicable things to a rational mind.  One day, I heard myself say, "Why don't you call your friend?"

             So, Barry picked me up on a Friday night in April.  He stood when we met, and I realized he's shorter than I am.  Much later, we would tell our children that they all had come within an inch of their lives that night.  If he'd been an inch shorter, or I an inch taller, I'd be a single English professor at a small college in Minnesota living in a cabin on a lake with some dogs and he'd have found someone else to hike through life with.

            But, as it was, we went out.  

            We visited the pipeline, saw a movie at "The Center" and ended the evening listening to a jazz trio at The Pump House.  I learned how a move to Fairbanks had helped him out of his own dark place.  He made me laugh.  We had a nice time and I wasn't opposed to seeing him again, but I didn't have an inkling that one day we would say anything about inches and lives to our children.

            A few weeks later, we hiked Angel Rocks.  By that time, I'd witnessed the wonder of a Fairbanks tree-leafing.  Tiny buds appeared suddenly and just as suddenly burst out full and green transforming Fairbanks with color overnight.

            Days lengthened.  Puddles dried.  Dirt and garbage were cleared.   Memories of break-up were washed away with the grime washed from cars.  The view through each cracked windshield was clearer, brighter, less repulsive.  As we drove toward Angel Rocks, Barry said the road we were on ended at Chena Hot Springs.  

            Each summer, he participated in an organized bike trip out there.  You signed up at Campbell Sports, paid a fee, got a t-shirt, and then got on your bike to enjoy the ride, the Springs, and a BBQ.   Buses would bring you and your bike back to Fairbanks, but Barry always rode back himself - a total of 120 miles on that one day.  I looked out the window as I listened.  The hills were decked out in fresh leaves and I thought, "I could bring my bike to Fairbanks."

            But first, the hike up Angel Rocks.  I hadn't been much of a hiker in my life; I'd been more of a museum, art gallery, theater-going, book-reading kind of girl.  But that hike to Angel Rocks was lovely.  I caught a glimpse of the real beauty of this place and thought for the first time that it might hold possibilities for me.

            At the top, it began to rain, and we ducked inside a cave to eat the picnic Barry had brought.  The rain produced a wet and muddy trail which my Adidas provided no traction for as we descended.  I was covered with mud when we reached bottom, but I'd had a great time.

            Soon flowers, both wild and cultivated, were everywhere.  There were still weeks before Solstice, but I'd heard about the light summer nights, how you could think it was 8pm and realize it was actually 11:30.  There was talk of a Summer Arts Festival and Cajun food at the Fair.  I decided to stay for an Alaska summer.  The increasing light had begun to penetrate the darkness that had overtaken my road and I wanted to see what might happen along this newly illuminated one.

            So, I got a job.   Then Barry and I got engaged.  Then I went to Minnesota and got my bike.  My family thought I was there for a sanity counseling session, but I felt surprisingly sane.  Barry's family back in New Jersey responded to the news of our engagement with, "Finally!" while my family all just said, "What??"  

            The small wedding was on New Year's Eve day, 1988, in Fairbanks.  Not surprisingly, it was cold and dark.  I'd never had any dreams about my wedding apart from having consistently envisioned it outdoors in a sunny green field full of flowers as I'd seen hippy people do it when I was a little girl.  Anyway, I sewed a tea-length dress of satin and gorgeous lace.  Barry wore black tails and a red bow tie.  The guy who married us wore jeans.  Barry's East-coast mom said, "He's going to change, isn't he?"  And we said, "Ohhh. No, he washed those jeans."  

            If I think too long about the wedding, I feel embarrassed.  I hardly knew anyone here, the flowers were late, the guy in the jeans started the ceremony without me, my nephew-the ring bearer-passed the pillow with the rings on it off to a guest half-way down the aisle, and some other things were weird and awkward.  Really, the cake was the only thing the editors of Brides magazine would have approved: it was three-tiered carrot cake with cream cheese icing decorated all over with delicate icing filigree and then topped with fresh flowers.  Sublime.

            Any need to be embarrassed didn't last long because soon enough, it was the next day, already 1989, and really, who cared about last year's wedding?  

            We got to be newlyweds through the infamous cold snap of ‘89.  People will tell you now that it was sixty below in Fairbanks for three weeks straight that month - even though it wasn't.  The reason they'll tell you that is because it might as well have been.  Ned Rozell, writing for the News Miner in 2011, described it this way: "For many Alaskans, January 1989 is a month that still numbs the mind because of the cold snap that gripped much of the state for two weeks. In Fairbanks, fan belts under the hoods of cars snapped like pretzels; the ice fog was thick and smothering, and the city came as close as it ever comes to a halt, with many people opting to stay home after their vehicles succumbed to the monster cold."

            Yup.  That's how it was - streets littered with fan-belt snakes and ice fog giving everything a surreal glow.  I was oblivious to what ice fog is and thought it a kind of lovely description of tiny ice crystals suspended in air, so I didn't attribute my headache to it.  Our car, along with most, was a frozen useless lump of metal and plastic.  We walked through deserted foggy streets.

            Before that snap, and when it was over, what impressed me most about a Fairbanks winter was the lack of wind.  I loved the way little snow columns built up atop the narrowest of fence posts and how snow rested on branches, staying put once it had fallen.  It wasn't like a Minnesota winter that wails and blows and attacks.  A Fairbanks winter simply existed quietly around me.  As long as I was dressed for it, it would stay outside of me, quietly resting its frigid hand on my shoulder but never fighting to make its way inside my coat.  

            I loved how the light changed daily, how the sky showed blue and periwinkle, yellow and grey and how the shadows shifted through frosted branches across fields of snow.

            And then before long, we were turning our thoughts again toward summer.  The promise of returning light became a sure thing as the wheel of the years began to turn.  

            That next summer we took a trip to Homer, Seward, and Valdez. In Thompson Pass, we camped at Blueberry Lake.  A violent storm blew in after we'd set up the tent and had our dinner.  Barry pulled our Volvo up next to the tent to break the wind and we slept with the storm swirling all around us.   In the morning, all was still and quiet and clear, the colors intense.  We hiked the campground's trails.  For years, I didn't want to go back there because that memory was so idyllic I didn't want to ruin it.  In 2021, we finally camped at Blueberry Lake again.  The idyllic memory came through unscathed and is now enhanced.

            A couple of years later, the midwives of the Alaska Family Health and Birth Center started stopping by to help as three new little humans joined our family.  Aaron arrived in October of '91, then Briana in January of '95, and finally in October again-this time in '97-Cole showed up.   

            During those years, I took an almost three-year-old Aaron on a trip to Minnesota where my friend there delightedly introduced him to darkness after he looked out a window at 9pm in August and said, "What is that?"

            Later, and when I was pregnant with Briana, we spent time down in Hope hiking with a dachshund for bear protection.  We've stepped up our game since then and now have bear spray, a .44, and a schnauzer.

            After Cole arrived, we made a habit of swimming at Hamme Pool each winter Saturday morning.  We almost had the pool to ourselves.  Leaving with wet hair to return home in the cold for soup or cocoa on those frozen days is a persistent warm memory.

            There were story times and summer reading programs at the Noel Wien Library that I liked so much, I became a story time lady there myself in '99 which has connected our lives with a Fairbanks treasure for twenty-five years.

            And the wheel began to turn faster through years.  Light to darkness to light again.  Warm to frigid to warm.  The ugliness of break-up circled back around over and over while Barry complained about it in exactly the same way.

            Every.

            Single.

            Year.

            There were more hikes to Angel Rocks, trips to Chena Hot Springs, doomed family camping trips through long rainy nights, birthday parties and basketball games, Fairbanks Drama Association plays, church picnics, Denali Elementary activities, Lathrop High School sports, art, drama, graduations.  Through all of it there were laughter, tears, snow, clouds, rain, sun, and rainbows arcing across gray skies.  

            Do I have an Alaska story?  Not really.  I just have a simple story of a couple of people who found healing, a new start, a home, and a family in this unique place.  We arrived separately into a dark, cold, ugly place and somehow found light, hope, and beauty here.

            In Fairbanks, seasons speak to us of life's stark contrasts and the continuing return of hope.  We hunker through dark seasons knowing light will return.  And we are thankful that Solstice and Christmas exist in the midst of each year's darkest days.  The solstice reminds us to hang on, to know that it's all turning around again tomorrow and tomorrow, and to understand that the light will indeed return.  The twinkling lights of Christmas brighten streets and homes and point me toward a deeper promise that shines through any darkness. 

            As the monster cold of January descends each year, we are keenly aware with every new slant of light that minute by minute, day by day the wheel of a new year is turning back toward warmth.  It is turning back toward the glorious light of a Midnight Sun.

             But before that happens, the sun will do its work to transform a snowy field off College road into a giant brown one full of puddles.  It's a key Fairbanks attraction you know.  And though I felt no initial affinity for it, the years have taught me to appreciate it.  We have walked at Creamer's countless times:  together, alone, with friends, with our dogs, with our children.  It's a treasure in the heart of this city.  In that field, I've watched cranes and swans dance more beautifully than can be captured on any National Geographic Special and I've heard the sound of powerful wings rising in autumn retreat.   

            Next year, I may be with them.  After all, it is the only rational response to this place.   But I will leave thankful to have had its hand on my shoulder, pulling me in and holding me close for all these years.  I'm thankful to have had the opportunity to adventure in Alaska and to make a life in Fairbanks, a place where a main attraction can be a field full of puddles which holds the promise of beauty and majesty right there on its ugly surface.