When I first started making noises about moving to Alaska, it seemed like everyone had a Last Frontier story to tell—a cousin who’d come up to work in Denali for a summer and never left, a cruise or RV trip taken by a grandparent, a piece of Palin trivia, that sort of thing.
Continue reading “North to the Future! (In which I experience a quarter-life crisis, Alaska-style)”
A slamming car door jolts me from sleep. Light is flooding in the windows, despite my meticulous arrangement of towels and sweatshirts in an effort to keep it out. A few hours ago, I could hardly keep my eyes open; now I can hardly wait to get on the road.
“Good morning,” a groggy Bix greets me. “Aren’t you glad I arranged our stay at the luxurious Hotel Subaru for our anniversary?”
Continue reading “Return to the North: My Alaskan Odyssey, Part 3.”
It is three o’clock on a deceptively sunny Wisconsin afternoon, and I am sitting on a rock at the edge of Devil’s Lake with a lit American Spirit in one shaky hand and a can of Coors in the other. The skies directly above the lake have cleared and the brilliant post-thunderstorm sunlight is bouncing off the glassy surface of the lake. Just offshore, an assembly of hungry mallards dives for tiny fishes, stirred to the surface by the frenzied rain.
A crack of thunder draws my attention to the bluffs high above the west side of the lake, from which we have just descended. I count—one, one thousand; two, one thousand; three, one thousand—until I get to ten. Lightning flashes in the distance; the storm has retreated and we are, for the moment, safe.
Continue reading “Adventures in Quartzite: A dirtbag’s visit to Devil’s Lake”
The idea of home is one that has given me some trouble in recent years. It’s sort of intangible, the assemblage of places and people and feelings that make up a home. It’s hard for me to come to grips with things I can’t fully define. Perhaps that’s why I stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy at the age of three or so and, rather than really committing to my inclination toward atheism, have remained stoutly agnostic in my adult life, mostly abstaining from attributing things to any sort of god but occasionally feeling swayed by beautiful scenery and heartwarming human interest pieces.
But I digress, as I usually do when faced with a notion I find challenging.
Continue reading ““Home is the nicest word there is.” –Laura Ingalls Wilder”
Kids at work ask me all the time where I live. I always point at my little Kelty two-man tent, and they almost never believe me.
“No way, Miss!” they exclaim in a tone of mixed disbelief and curiosity. I must seem almost crazy enough for it to be true. The tents we set up for kids will sleep ten in a pinch; my tiny two-man (which is for one person, really) looks to them far too small to sleep even one adult human. Often, a kid will ask if it’s a tent for dogs. They want to know if I have a TV in there.
my alaskan odyssey 