Tag Archives: Alaska

Dear Alaska: It’s Not Me, It’s You

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How do you break up with someone that you love dearly, but you know no longer loves you?

It is hard, after near on three decades of life together to come to the conclusion that you are no longer loved. What once was a beautiful relationship, so full of light and promise has slowly, over the years degraded into a cruel, abusive, one-sided love.

Alaska no longer loves me, and I’m afraid I am going to have to break up with her.

This place, this great land that once held me so very captivated, so enthralled at every turn, she has turned her back on me, and while she was once so very good to me, she now assaults me daily with her cold barbs, dry and arid humor, and her sharp and crusty edginess.

Now SHE may say I’m just being a whiny baby.

SHE may say I’m a wimp.

But here’s the thing: I’ve put in time and heart and soul loving her.

I’ve given her a fair shake and the best of me; over half of a lifetime I’ve been hopelessly devoted to her, in fact.

When we moved here in 1997, everything about this place was dreamy. Even the winters. Mountainscapes at every corner, trees for miles and miles, vast swaths of ocean and quietness…I never wanted to leave Alaska. I knew I had found home. My husband and I had chosen the right place, I just knew it.

Once our children started to come along, we became even more sure that we were right. Our roots sunk deep into the ground of Alaska that grows only weeds and houses oil, but the soil of our faith and the family we’d created was rich.

And now, some twenty years later, to find that this place that once held me so sure and solidly has turned her back on me…it’s a betrayal.

I have defended you, Alaska!

I have taken up for you, and bragged on you, and told of all your virtues and beauties, and I’ve invited people I love to come rest in the bosom of your greatness.

I scoffed at people we knew who’d leave you during the cold months, thinking of them as not TRUE Alaskans, but old and soft, lukewarm northerners in their need to eschew your harsh, dark winters, all while thinking of ourselves as rugged and devout, willing to sustain the long months of short days and deep snow and temperatures dipping below zero for weeks at a time.

The trade-off I told myself, for roughing it, was the reward of the sudden blast of summer, endless sunshine, temperate days that ended around a campfire dinner at who knows what time. Was it 6 pm or nearly eleven? The onslaught of midnight sun bringing bursts of energy lasting twelve beautiful weeks, after which we’d once again see the stars we’d so missed as darkness began to slowly return to us; a sky full of lights burning on a vast and endless tapestry of space and we’d watch in amazement as though it was the first time we’d seen those familiar constellations and aurora borealis that make the skies dance at every turn.

I have loved you, Alaska, with every fiber of my heart and my body and my soul.

I have raised a family here, and animals here, and purchased plots of your land so that our family may always have a home here, a tiny chunk of your majesty to carry into generations ahead.

And now…now that middle age is firmly upon me, now that my family is almost raised, now that my children belong to you and love you with ever fiber of them, making your landscapes their huge hometown of a state that has spoiled them for any other place on earth, you turn your back on me and have made your once-perfect climate now uninhabitable for this body that carries me around.

You have gotten cold.’

You have gotten cruel.

You have gotten mean and hard and hurtful to my very bones.

Alaska, you have made me want to break up with you.

Now you might say, as only a scorned lover will, that it’s MY fault.

That I was the one who stepped out on you, not the other way around.

That I am the mean-spirited one who pursued other lands and slowly came to love that other one more than I love you.

I will admit, though not with shame, that yes, I indeed did seek out the warmth of climates more temperate.

That I did join those ranks of people I was once cynical of as I began to leave your bosom during the coldest parts of your winters.

Yes, I do admit that.

But you see, Alaska, it was YOU who drove me out.

It was YOU who continued with your relentless, driving force of your climate that wears a body down, year after year, winter after winter, until one day, after all the kids are grown and a decade and a half of farming has passed, that a young woman wakes up to find herself round about the fiftieth year and discover she is freezing.

She discovers she is sick and tired of walking in the crunching ice and deep snow all while having to wear closed-toed shoes that make her feet feel constrained and straightjacketed outside of their preferred footwear of flipflops.

She realizes that she will never, ever, not in a million years obtain enough Vitamin D from you to reach the bottom of the recommended range, let alone an acceptable midrange amount to keep her body functioning and happy. Not even when she supplements heavily.

She wakes up one day just plumb exhausted with the cold and the dark, and the knowing that there are still months of it ahead.

It was you, Alaska.

It was you who made me love the journeys I’ve been able to take to my other land, that place that welcomes me with tradewinds and warm sand and blue-green water that feels like a bath even on the cold days.

It was you who woke me up to the realization that the other place leaves me rejuvenated and fresh and feeling young again, almost like I could once and for all throw the thyroid medications in the trash and overcome the metabolism slump that has taken over my mid-life years.

It was you who made me realize how dry my skin and nails and hair all are when I winter in your climate, and how vibrant and healthy they are when I am in that other place.

It was you, Alaska, and now, now that I have realized all of this, I am stuck figuring out how I can break up with someone I have loved for as long as I have loved you.

How do I divorce and split custody of myself between you and my warm, tropical mistress?

How do I forget thirty years of never wanting another place and come to love a place outside of you as fiercely as I’ve loved you?

How do I leave you behind?

Can I maybe have you both?

Would you agree to sharing my heart? Would you be alright if I thought of her when I closed my eyes? Would it wound your bigness if I spoke of her once in awhile, and shared some of the aloha and sunshine she has given me, sprinkling it amongst your people here?

Would it be okay if the people I’ve met there become just as dear to me as the people you’ve given me here?

Those flipflop-wearing peaceful ones like our Jeep friend who hugs us and calls us Bro and picks us up and shuttles us around and treats us so much like Ohana that I send leftover groceries home for him and the kids and wife I’ve never met, but who are all like family?

Or those we’ve come to worship with, that group that meets in an open barn, birds flitting in and out with the music, praise raising the roof while the tradewinds blow in the scent of plumeria?

And would it please you to hear that we speak of you often, Alaska? That as we come across folks who share of their home states, your name will eventually come up, and even then, even as we soak up the sun and the heat that you don’t provide us, we speak of our love for you, of your majesty and your mountains and your wide open wildness that is so much like that warmer place.

See, Alaska, it isn’t that I hate you.

I’m quite fond of you still, really.

I brag on you wherever I go.

I quietly delight with pride how people react when we mention our ties to you. How they look at us a little bit differently because we know you.

A bit like a relative of a celebrity, we raise a bit higher in status just because we bear your name.

And once, that was enough to make me so proud to be yours.

But that was long ago before my bones got cold and before menopause took over my life and before my hair started to thin.

I don’t want to leave you, Alaska.

I just want you to be a little bit more like that other land.

I want you to let me wear flipflops every day.

I want you to be kind, and gentle, and breezy and not so cold-hearted and mean.

I want you to be more like her.

I know I am asking a lot of you, dear Great Land.

And I know your quiet, patient mountains sit and wait for me to take in their glory like I used to before your long, dark winters wore me down.

I know your history and I love and have so much deep respect for your eons of stoic, strong presence, holding up this end of the nation with such reverence and regard to all of those who came before us.

I really do love you, Alaska.

I just have to figure out how this can work, me loving both of you, because see, I am an all-in kind of gal, and I don’t like to split my heart in two.

I want to love you with my whole heart like I once did so many years ago.

I don’t want to think of any other place that I might love just as much, or surprisingly, even more than you.

So I have come to the realization that you and I need to break up, or at least take some time apart.

I have decided that if I can’t love you as I once did, I am left only to love your people.

Much like our Jeep friend, much like our tropical church family, and much like all of those we meet who, like us are just chasing down some extra Vitamin D to get through the winter, I have people here I cherish too.

Those people who started as friends and quickly became family.

Those folks who anchor us, who tie us here on those days where we might just be inclined to fly away and let the tradewinds blow us toward the winter sunshine.

Those brothers and sisters and neighbors and friends and children…those who have all become so much part of our hearts that to leave them would be like ripping those hearts out of our cold and shivering bodies.

I have to think of them now, Alaska, and not so much you.

For the sake of our relationship, that is what I have to do.

And for them, I’ll stay with you.

I will check back in with you after we’ve had a little mental space.

Around about May, Alaska, I promise that I will look up from my work; I will glance out the window, I will turn my head once again toward your mountains and your seas, and maybe, just maybe…

I will decide that we should stay together after all.

~

In the Caribou Tundra,
in the wild barren land,
on the fierce arctic ice,
where the polar bear stands,
where the trail of the Eskimo Hunter is worn,
this is the country where legends are born.

Where the Northern Lights blaze
above a cold arctic haze
and caribou come to an old shaman’s drum.

In saloons and in dance halls
they talked of the gold,
there were stories of fortune
and stories of cold.

The trail of the weary gold miner is worn,
this is the country where legends are born.

-Jim Varsos, Alaska’s Balladeer, Hobo Jim, This is the Country Where Legends are Born

North to Alaska

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Our July is usually so busy I want to run away when I get to the end of it.

I’m totally overwhelmed, drained of energy, and ready to up and move to a place where there are no farm animals, no fishermen, no motor homes, and no boats.

But every July, on the 27th, I remember…

I chose this place!

It was nineteen years ago today that I rolled into this amazing place that became my new home.

It had been a boyhood dream of my husband’s to move here after high school with his best friend, but meeting me changed all of that.

When, years into our relationship, he told me of his past plans, I chastised him for not telling me sooner and told him I would’ve gone with him.

Thus began the planning and the saving and the letter writing with his friend, who’d long since settled in the land the two of them had talked of.

And when his friend came back for a visit and his folks were planning a haul of goods up the AlCan, we took our dreams and we hit our knees and we asked if now, right now might be the time.

Those good folks were thrilled to have another driver and they packed their goods and they packed my husband and I sent our valuables in the valuable trunk he’d built on our first Christmas. His Daddy shook his hand and told him he always had a home to come back to and we all stood and waved goodbye as the tooley fog lifted off the cornfield that June morning.

the bridge

I talked to him every night, but one afternoon he called in the middle of the day and a call at work meant something big and the big thing was a job and a job was the go ahead for me to give up the steady paycheck that tied us to somewhere secure.

I hung up the phone and went to my boss and gave her my two weeks’ notice and that night I started selling all that was left of our stuff.

I was Alaska bound. Even though he was already there, WE were officially Alaska bound.

On a humid July morning, my mom and I rolled out of the only state I’d ever lived in with my big brown dog and my little tranquilized cat and all I owned on the top of my red four-door sedan.

We rolled into Alaska six days later, and on the night of the 27th, when I’d made it to our new town and stopped at the first gas station I found for a pack of cigarettes and a Diet Coke, I knew I was home. I knew I would never want to leave this place.

And I haven’t.

Oh we’ve flown out a few times for family trips and the occasional vacation, but this place is a place that holds a person. When we think of how much easier it’d be in the Lower 48, how much more affordable it is in other places, how many more people there are for our kids to know…

…we come back to the fact that we’d have to leave Alaska.

I lost the cigarettes and my ability to drive in big cities and freeways.

But I found the Lord.

We came up not knowing one another that well.

But we wrestled our way into being best friends.

The two of us didn’t have any furniture.

But now we have a house full of it because we have all these kids.

We only knew one family and held them close.

But now we know many families who hold US close.

Nineteen years.

Not long at all.

And when I look at my calendar and the crazy amount of writing on all the squares this month, my eyes fall to today’s and I remember that I really don’t want to run away. I already did that nineteen years ago and every day since…

I’m home.

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OCTOBER 2015 360

 

This Shifty Week

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Today is Saturday.

I mean, technically it’s Wednesday, but it’s my Saturday. That’s because yesterday, which was Tuesday, was really my Friday.

But every-other week, Tuesday is my Monday.

If you’re nodding your head right now, you are living and breathing among the wild ranks of shift workers.

If you’re scratching your head right now, you’re a nine-to-fiver.

I once made the mistake of saying out loud to the person I was talking to on the phone that it was Monday. Except the calendar said it was Thursday.

He called me crazy.

That’s okay.

It takes all of us.

And us shifty folks, well, there might be a little truth to the You’re Crazy statement.

Because the crazy truth is, there are a lot of us crazy folks beholden to live life on a schedule of weird and wacky shifts, and it takes just a touch of crazy to make it work smoothly (and yes, I just snorted a little when I wrote “smoothly”).

In spite of the crazy, or maybe because of it, our family is one that has made shift work work for them, and here are some things I’ve learned along the bumpy and every-other-week way.

1) Your schedule will never be “normal” again. Ever.

Normal, in the M-F, 9-5 rest of the world sense, is gone from your life forever. Oh, you’ll strive for it, and you’ll look curiously at the bankers with their hair all done-up in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, but you my dear, won’t ever know that sense of daily regular, because in the middle of your Tuesday afternoon, you’re either working like a dog for the twelvth day straight, or partying it up like you’re on Hawaiin vacation. Kiss normal good-bye. The sooner the better. Don’t fight it; that will just add angst and turmoil. But more about that later.

 

2) Be prepared for odd looks should you be a) working like a dog for the twelvth day straight or b) partying it up like you’re on a Hawaiin vacation in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.

These odd looks stem from one of two reasons:

a) Tuesday is still early in the week. You should be looking early-week fresh and not like you do: wild and crazy-eyed with all your hair sticking straight up and your FR shirt wrinkled and stained like you’ve been wearing it for 12 straight days (which you have) while your safety glasses frame your nutty mug like a pair of goggles that are permanently affixed to your crazy face (they are). OR…

b) your shuffle through the grocery store for popcorn and jalepeno cheese dip has you wearing your Saturday casual while your sloppy bun frames your slightly puffy, make-up free face…puffy only because you stayed up past ten o’clock the night before which was your Friday (Monday)… and this casual package implies that you’re an unemployed slacker mom who’s mooching off the rest of society, doing nothing but slogging around in pajamas and eating junk food for all your days. I promise you, it’ll happen.

 

 

3) You will very quickly learn all about yourself.

Namely, the depth and level of your strength. Whether you are a mama of littles holding down the fort while your man is on his four-weeks, or whether you’re a hard workin’ husband who hasn’t held his baby’s chubby hand for too many days, or who has gone to sleep without the warm hug of his wife for too many nights, you will soon learn just how strong you can be when you have to be. Something inside of you will take over and the ache of lonliness that once would’ve threatened to crumple and cripple you will become an entity almost separate from yourself and you will only allow yourself to take it out and inspect it in the few quiet moments of the day when there isn’t more work to be done.

It sounds dramatic but it’s true.

You will become strong. Very strong.

4) This strength will serve you well when everything in the whole wide world decides to break down/fall apart/turn to crap as soon as the shift begins.

Oh, it will happen. It’s the law of the shift worker that at least once, -but more often, many, many times- as soon as you go away, everything turns to youknowwhat. This either a) causes the one who is back home to carry a heavier-than-bearable burden, threatening the above-mentioned strength or b) cause you an immeasurable amount of stress as you try to handle break-downs and crises back home between break time and lunch hour at the job job and you’re trying to do your very best to balance both. This part is stressful. Verrrry stressful.

 

 

 

5) Your life will alternate between two conflicting personas.

This ties into Number 1 but it needs more words because this is a definite issue in our home and one that I’m assuming other shift-workers and their families struggle with. This one is the hardest for me.

The on-week, we’re all about nose-to-the-grind…keeping the train on the tracks…workin it to the bone. On the off-week, it’s like one long, constant string of Saturdays, a manic seven days of fun and field trips and projects with nary a routine or schedule. You will relax, you will soar with the family time, you will so enjoy the lazy days…the productive days…the full days…the free days…and then…

BAM.

It’s time for the all-too-quick SNAP back to reality when it’s time for the on-shift to begin again.  No amount of preparation or mental talk has been able to help this transition for me. It can seem like a constant flip-flop, flip-flop, and have a tendency to feel like working two full-time jobs with no weekend in between.

Unless you just let go and run with the party feel. And if you do, the one who’s at home is left with the aftermath of the seven-day/two-week/four-week manic fun-binge, and the one who’s back to the job site starts the hitch tired and hung over on family and fun while EVERYONE reels from the blunt transition to “normal”. It is a constant angst for this family. I’m sure there are folks who navigate the back-and-forth better than I, but after years, every change-out still leaves me a little shaken and trembly as much of my effort goes into making the transition smooth. (There’s that word that makes me laugh again.)

6) You will soon become an expert on things you never knew you would need to know.

Writing letters…hauling a horse trailer…running an ice auger…eradicating scads of gypsy moth larva sacs with a blow torch…Skyping…cleaning up the vomit/pee/poop…all the things your other half usually does, -or would normally do- those are yours now. You’ll get really good at them too. And one day you’ll quit wondering how it happened that you’re doing all this stuff you never wanted to know how to do. It’s that strength thing again. 

 

7) You will learn how to argue quickly.

Notice I did not say “you will quickly learn how to argue”. While shift work CAN cause an increase in arguing for some folks, I’m talking here about the actual time spent on an arguement. You will get very quick with your disagreements. When it’s on-shift time, work is the priority and could interfere in even the briefest of conversations at any given second, so discussions are short, quick, and to the point. No one wants to hang up mad, so you’ll learn to settle disagreements quickly whether it’s by voice…or by emojis. 🙂

When it’s off-shift time, peace is priority, so discussions/disagreements/arguments/fights need to be put to rest quickly so that the fun can be gotten to. This can make for a little bit of a bipolar-type day, explosions happening one moment, happy schmoozy family times happening the next. When time is short, arguments need to be short too. Ain’t no one got time to let things drag out when there are days-long projects and fun to be had.

8) The one-who-works-away will miss half a life.

This is especially true for those men and women who work off-shore/on the Slope/overseas. Being physically removed from your family means you will not be physically there for your family. It is a simple fact, and for the shift-worker and their family, it is a part of their life that they carry around always. They are very aware of the sacrifice they are making. For the family man, it is a huge sacrifice. Some may call him selfish. Some may wonder why he doesn’t just find a town job or something closer to home. More on that later, but being away half the time cannot be discussed separate from the flip side of the issue.

North Slope photo courtesy Tristin Martinez

North Slope photo courtesy Tristin Martinez

 

Which brings us to number 9…

9) The time off can’t be beat.

Many families here in Alaska work a two-week on/two-week off schedule, referred to as a “2 and 2”. In our family, we’ve done the work week that consists of four, ten-hour shifts (4 tens), the 5-day, 9 to 5 week (town job), the five, ten-hour-shifts week (5 tens), the 7-days of 12-hour shifts (7 twelves), and we’ve done the four weeks on, one week off away from home job (4 and 1, which usually turned into 6/7/8 on but that’s another story).

While being physically gone half the time is hard, there is nothing, no thing, that beats having the family together for long stretches of hours and days and weeks. Nothing.

Having the family together for a long string of days brings such a quality of life and memory-building opportunities, it makes the time away more bearable and understandable. It allows the one-who-works away to immerse him/herself in the day-to-day life of the family in a way that usually isn’t possible with a 9-5, and it lifts the weight of the home management responsibilities off the one-who-stays-home while the whole family carries the load together during the off-hitch.

Vacations can be lengthy, times of rest can actually be restorative, staying up late can actually happen, sleeping in can be a reality. The off time can’t be beat.

 

10) You will be criticized.

Yes, really. People will criticize you for your job choice. People will call you selfish, say you are sacrificing your family for the money, and they will think you are a overtime-hungry, materialistic bachelor-type.

Really.

But just like teachers don’t choose their profession just because of the summers off, or surgeons don’t choose their field for the long hours away from their family, the shift-worker hasn’t chosen their profession just because of the schedule.

My grandfather worked 20 days on/eight days off for over thirty years to raise his children and his grandchildren. My husband’s dad was an over-the-road truck driver for decades, raising six kids on a job that took him away from home for weeks at a time.

Shift work is simply a job.

Shift workers have chosen their profession because it puts food on the table. They’ve chosen their profession because it fits their skill set. They’ve chosen their profession because someone hired them, it’s a career, it’s a way they can provide a living for their family and a resource for their world.

It’s a job.

And to those who think, -even if quietly in their minds- that the shift-worker really should find another job, one that is easier on a family, I’d like to say this:

You go find another job.

How easy would it be for YOU to switch careers?

How long would it take you to put together a resume…scour the help-wanted ads…go through the interview process? How would that look for you to learn a whole new skill set…make a career switch…try to find something outside of what you know or have been trained for? Maybe go back to college to get a degree, or go back to college to update your current degree. How easily would that work for YOU? Especially when you have a good paying job that provides for your family right now.

 

 

People who work odd shifts are not a special set of folks who secretly yearn to spend their nights away from their family. They are not an elite group of people who have special demands, needs, or desires.

They are simply folks like everyone else who saw a path toward a paycheck, started walking it and ended up in a job that requires round-the-clock employees. Whether that job be a police officer, a nurse, a lineman, an oilfield worker, an airline employee, a bartender, a night custodian, or any of the other hundreds of jobs that call for shifts…it’s a job. It needs doing. The folks who work those jobs are providing a service to people, to their communities and to this world, but most of all, they are serving their family.

It’s a job and jobs are hard to come by, especially in Alaska right now as having hours cut, being sent home, getting laid off, or having positions eliminated are all becoming more of a reality for far too many in our slumping economy.

Shift work is just a job like any other.

And yes, shift workers keep nutty hours and crazy days.

(Getty Images)

And yes, you may get very confused when you talk to them about work schedules and calendars and what day of the week it is.

You may even be a little jealous when they stroll into the bank in their Hawaain shirt and Saturday afternoon attitude when it’s only Wednesday at noon, or irritated when they look like they just rolled out of bed even though it’s 3 p.m.

But the next time you see a gal in a work boots and a high viz parka turn away from you on the airplane and pop her earbuds in, making it clear she doesn’t want to talk to you or anyone else, don’t think the worst of her.

She may be leaving her family behind to go work a weeks-long hitch at a job thousands of miles from her loved ones.

And the next time you see a wild-eyed guy in an untucked FR blue shirt grabbing sandwiches in the deli department at 8 a.m. and he’s got a grimace on his face and a Rockstar in his dirty paw, don’t look at him disapprovingly because he’s not wearing Tide-fresh clothes or his hair isn’t brushed.

Smile at them. Because even though their schedule is different, they’re just like you.

Smile because even though it may be your Friday, it’s really her Monday.

Smile, because today may be his last of twenty-one straight days on twelves.

Smile…because now you know.

Smile…these folks are shift workers.

Every Summer…

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There are times, when nearing July…

a couple yearns for rolling land and sand and grass…

and fireflies.

The song of the Midwest yowls and the people pull and it somehow all begs them…

Just bring the babies to run and laugh and chase.

But then they remember…

Alaska.

The mountains so patient.

The beaches so long.

The trees so tall and the salmon so many…the people so fierce.

Why would we ever think to leave?

And the annual tears fall…

Danger Day and the Gas Station

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We met her on Danger Day.

A Tuesday.

We’d left home on Saturday morning, the tires on the rental crunching the driveway gravel while the kids ran alongside the car and my mom waved from the porch.

The first time in ten years.

A vacation. An actual, real life, bonafide, just the two of us vacation.

Between pregnancies, babies, breastfeeding, and toddlers, vacation wasn’t a word in our vocabulary. And truthfully, even stepping out of those years and well onto the path of homeschooling, one income, and the farm…it could be another ten years.

We let the sun melt the frazzle as the ferry took us across the Sound. That night we puffed into the harbor of sleepy little Valdez, as far away as we dared to go to keep our checking account positive and our kids and home fairly close.

And it was magic.

It rained of course. But we didn’t care.

We fought of course. But we didn’t care.

Because after we figured out how to just be us again, there was no more of that and a quiet peace settled over our time.

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The plan was to relax and explore for a couple of days then take the rest of the time to meander back home. I had our stops all mapped out. Except for Tuesday.

That was, in his words, Danger Day.

“I don’t want a plan. I just wanna go with it.”

When a true and faithful husband wants a little “danger “while his wife is hanging on his arm…you let him go with it.

I smiled at his grin when he pulled us out of the motel, squealing the tires a bit on the Taurus before we put Valdez in the rearview.

And I held his hand across the console and flipped on the radio as we dared off into the wilds of not having a plan.

To say we didn’t know where we were going is not altogether true. Here in Alaska, between towns, there is literally one road. He had an idea of our destination, but by not telling me, and me not asking or fussing over the details…we were dangerous.

We were footloose. Fancy free. Young again and not even thinking about what to make for dinner. Our car could’ve been a cherry red Charger. Or a Harley. Or the big blue Ford truck he picked me up in on our first date.

He opened the sun roof and let the hair blow free over his bald spot.

VALDEZ TRIP 329

Danger Day wasn’t the destination. Danger Day was the ride. The mountains.  The snow on my flip flops at the middle of nowhere pull-out. The waterfalls as tall as a hotel. My babies with their grandma. A clean rental car. Sunshine with my love.

The first vacation in ten years.

We do date nights when we can. And once a year we pay a babysitter for a weekend away to celebrate our marriage. But a whole six days? Never. Be still my matrimonial heart.

Five or so hours out, he pulled us into a crossroads gas station. It was like most places in our great state, rugged, homesteady, tough, Alaskan.

That’s where we met her. BJ.

She rung us up and she looked a little like a mother and a little like an aunt and a little like a longtime friend who comes to visit with your mom on Saturday mornings while you watch Looney Toones and listen in from the other room as they talk and smoke Virginia Slims and drink Tab on ice.

Her smile is big behind a rugged worry and her brow furrowed in a way that’s seen on the faces of folks who’ve worked hard and come by things rough all their life. She shines her eyes at us. Tired, but shining.

Her hair looked so pretty in her updo.

By the looks of her little store, we were the only ones who’d been in for hours.

I wanted to stay all day. I wanted to drink a Tab and even though I quit years ago, I wanted to crack a pack of Slims and sit down with her, just our jelly jars of soda with the ice clinking and an ashtray between us while we start up a game of Yahtzee and sit and visit the afternoon away at her little table behind the counter.

Instead I browse the shelves of handmade Alaskana and make small talk.

My dangerous husband perused her display of pamphlets.

“We’re thinking of going to the mine” he tells her.

So that’s where we’re going on Danger Day.

It’s pretty late in the day. You could go halfway in and stay the night with my friend up the road. She’s got a great little B and B. Cabins at the halfway point. I’ll call her and make sure she’s got one open.

She pulls out a paper and starts dialing her phone that’s on the wall behind her counter.

We keep browsing and she keeps talking and its quiet here and her Alaskana is so Alaskan and don’t the most peaceful moments happen when you don’t plan them?

She hangs up and it’s all set. We have reservations if we want them. If my tour guide gets really dangerous and we take another route and sleep in the car, fine. But if not, her friend Kayane will be looking for us later tonight and if we want it, we’ve got a place to rest. If we do come in, just stop at the main house before we go back to the cabin and her friend said she’ll send some bread with us for a snack and isn’t that the Alaskan way?

Everywhere, a friend.

Full up on danger for the day we mosey in slow and take hundreds of pictures along the way and when we arrive late we’re treated to a cabin in the woods and a camp shower by the roaring river. She’s not able to take Visa and just shrugs come payment time.  Happens all the time. She assures me.

Just stop at BJ’s tomorrow on your way back through and leave some cash in an envelope if you want. I’ll pick it up on my next trip in. Or mail me a check when you get back home. Either way.

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And she hands me a loaf of warm homemade cranberry bread. I’m in rugged heaven and we become fast friends with Kayane and her dog, and enjoy her tour of the little storage shed turned gift shop filled with handmade items.

I just keep some here so customers can shop. And then of course BJ lets me put some up at her store too.

That’s really how it is here in this place we call home.

I find steaming hot coffee in a thermos on the porch when we wake in the morning and we pray together and hug as we leave, promising to stay in touch. Then we venture forth, my husband and I, him having claimed a second day now for a Danger Day, and me being just fine with that, well rested, heart full, and loving to see him so relaxed and at ease because we’re not on any set schedule.

Our day is spent exploring the mine, dangerously not taking the tour. We venture on our own, enjoying the old quiet of a place steeped in stories and history and age. It’s just enough to explore and find a bit of copper before starting the long trek back.

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By dinner time we find ourselves back at BJ’s, Danger Day 2 wrapping up and us needing to get back on the meandering path to home.

But I want to leave money for our stay at Kay’s cabin and tell BJ how right she was. That her friend’s place really is a slice of Alaska heaven. Tell her thank you for sending us. Get another Diet Coke for the last long stretch of the day.

My husband finds us a Klondike bar and as he looks around I visit with BJ and I suddenly have an urge to buy something from this woman who makes me feel like I’m eight again in footie jams, but who also makes me feel like a grown woman…a mother and an auntie and a proof, a womanly proof that we are all connected no matter where we live or what our job is or where our path in life looked like before or where it’s brought us now.

She makes beauty in her art and she lines her shelves carefully and it shows the people who grace her store that even though life may be rough and the road may be long and friends might be few and far between, there is beauty, always beauty in this world and it is important to take time to make it. Because sometimes, that’s just what a wanderer’s eyes need to see and what a friend’s heart needs to feel.

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I pick up one of her birch bark baskets. I decide. I’m going to take it home. I want to have a piece of this place to remind me of BJ and her homey little gas station gift shop on this side of the state. Remind me of the smile she offers to the strangers-who-are-not that come into her corner of the world.

Alaskan art isn’t cheap but BJ’s got hers priced to sell. Even so, our trip budget is dwindling, and we’ve got one more hotel stay before home.

I expect my husband to remind me of that when he comes to check on me and sees me standing there with her birch bark basket in my hand. I expect him to tell me that I can get one later. I expect him to remind me that I have several friends who do birch bark art and that I could get something exactly like this one back home any day of the year.

But I say it anyway and I say it soft so she won’t hear. And I say it firm.

I want to buy one of BJ’s baskets.

In the pause I hear what I think he’s thinking so I go on.

She makes all this. This is her art. She’s over here in in the middle of nowhere. How many people look at her stuff? I want her to know it’s beautiful. That someone thinks it’s wonderful enough to take home.  I know what it’s like. When no one sees what you made. She creates this. When you create you just want to put a little piece of yourself into someone’s heart ya know? She works hard on this. I want her to know it’s beautiful. I know we don’t have much money left but I’m buying one.

I prepare for his irritation. Except there is none.

“Okay.”

And he helps me choose one we can afford.

It’s a treasure to me before I’ve even reached the cash register.

We get ready to check out. He pulls out his wallet and I pull out my hugs and we tell BJ good-bye.

Thank you for sending us to the cabins. And thank you for this basket. It will always remind me of this trip.

She hugs me tight, smiles that beaming tired smile.

After our goodbyes, I leave my basket and my Diet Coke on the counter, ask BJ if I could use her outhouse before we push on to the next town, tell my husband I’ll meet him back at the car.

The sun frisks the horizon and we pull out, a happy sadness filling the car.

When you look for beauty, you’ll find it every time.

When you set the schedule down, you’ll find yourself doing what you never knew you were wanting to do.

When you allow yourself a little danger, you’ll find safety in the joy of life.

Telling her goodbye reminds me of all that.

I grab my husband’s big hand, smile at the land stretched out before us.

I sure liked BJ.

He pauses and the road hums under us, no cars to be seen anywhere.

“You know babe? I think BJ sure liked you too.”

Yeah. Ya know, I’ll probably never see her again. But I felt like I just made a new friend that I’ve known for a long time.

We’ve not turned the radio on and he’s quiet for another half mile or so.

”I betcha if you look in that bag you’ll see that she feels the same way too.”

What?

I reach in the back seat to find our bag and open it. There, wrapped in tissue and on top of my Diet Coke is the birch bark basket.

Except it’s not one I’d chosen.

It’s one that’s filled with intricate stitching and elaborate caribou hair tufting.

It’s one that would’ve taken her a very long time to make.

It’s one that served as a prime example of her pride in being an Alaskan.

He tells me she’d rung his items up, gotten a bag ready and that she’d gone over to the basket table and placed the one I’d chosen, the one he’d just paid for, back on the shelf and replaced it with this one.

I flipped it over in my hands as my eyes began to water, running my fingers over every inch of soft Alaska…the love…the care…the beauty…the friendship.

The tears touched the corners of my eyes and rivered over when my hand found the price tag she’d forgotten to take off in her rush.

She’d chosen one for me that cost three times as much as the one we picked to fit our budget.

She’d chosen one for me that was from the most expensive on her shelf.

“I think BJ really liked you too honey.”

The tears fall down my chin and slide into my lap.

And the glow of the midnight sun shined into the rearview and straight through my heart.

BJ’s basket sits on the window ledge in my kitchen to remind me.

It really is true.

Everywhere, a friend.

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