Tag: Alaska

An apology to Clarissa Dalloway, among others

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I read Mrs Dalloway in college and thought it was the worst. I knew I should care that Clarissa’s character was a commentary on the sexual and economic repression of women, but unless I was being disagreeable—one bespectacled boy who always sat in the front had lots to say about The Patriarchy and little understanding of his role in it, evidenced by his frequent description of characters as “bitchy”—I didn’t think much of Clarissa. I wasn’t interested in her stupid party, and it went completely over my head that Clarissa totally had the hots for Sally Seton, which might have at least piqued my interest.

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One more season: The odyssey continues

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It’s been a big week.

Upon returning from Spring Break, I got word that my research proposal had been approved by the Institutional Review Board at APU, which means I have a green light to start collecting data for my thesis project. From what I’m told, getting one’s ducks in a row for approval is often a superlative pain in the ass, so I’m glad to have this hurdle out of the way.

Perhaps more importantly, at least in a long-term sense, is my next piece of news: I accepted a job. For next season.

In Alaska.

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“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” –John Muir

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If you didn’t know any better, the pullout at Seward Highway Mile 48 would look like any other makeshift rest area on Alaska’s most dangerous highway. In fact, if not for the half-dozen bumper-stickered Outbacks and Tacomas with toppers, a couple of dirtbags like us might have driven right past it.

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2014: A year for less-is-more.

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I rang in 2014 in a yurt, with a kidney infection. This is one of those stories that requires a little background information, and since I haven’t written much in awhile, I’ll begin with the last time I watched the clock strike midnight, which, in all honesty, was probably the same day in 2013. (That’s not entirely fair. I got up at midnight plenty of times in 2013.)

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Alaska, continued! (A story in which, for better or for worse, I find myself back on the Last Frontier)

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The Farm is identified by this often-driven-by sign, cleverly hidden by vegetation on the side of Farm Loop Road.
The Farm is identified by this often-driven-by sign, cleverly hidden by vegetation on the side of Farm Loop Road.

Spring Creek Farm sits on the outskirts of Palmer, Alaska, a small, rural community about forty miles north of Anchorage. In the mid-1930s, some two hundred-odd Midwesterners, mostly in their late twenties and early thirties, picked up their families and moved to the Last Frontier as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Matanuska Colony has existed in various incarnations since then, and today, the sleepy township of Palmer is home to just under six thousand people and, still, plenty of dairy cows.

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