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.
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