Alaska in the Rear View Mirror- Reflections on Returning

August 27, 2014

The writer Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again. Although I never considered Alaska home, like so many newcomers who arrive and feel like they have “finally come home”, it was my home for almost five years. Five long tough years. Five long cold, dark winters and manic sun lit summers.


My family arrived in the twilight of a January afternoon. Fresh off the plane from Washington, DC after two plus years in Los Angeles. Anchorage was in the midst of a January thaw. Temperatures were in the forties. I climbed out of the plane and into my husband's new office in an old long wool coat, heavy sweater, corduroy pants, gloves, hat, and boots. The locals were running around in lightweight jackets. Great first impression for my husband's co-workers.


I'd like to say that Alaska worked its magic on me. It didn't. The “deal” I made with my husband when he got offered the transfer was, staying one year, two at the most. I knew I wasn't really a cold weather person. What I didn't know was that I wasn't a dark day person either. Who knew? I was a night person. My favorite time of day was twilight and then being alone late at night. What I hadn't realized was that I can appreciate the night, only after soaking up the daylight. Contrast was important for me apparently.


We stayed for five years. It wasn't easy for my husband to job hunt that far from the “Lower 48”. He thrived on the winter sports and camaraderie among his young co-workers. I got by homeschooling our daughter and spending two years as a part time pastor to a church. Our daughter had great unique experiences, but Alaska ultimately got to be too much for her too. When we finally packed up the camper to make the drive down the Alaska Highway and out of Alaska, well, it couldn't happen fast enough for me!


Back in Maryland, I said I'd never go back. I felt that I had finally escaped and could get on with my life. It was about five years after we left before the “good” memories tempered the bad, and I began to contemplate the idea of one day just going back for a visit. Eighteen years after we left, my husband and I went back. Funny how our now grown daughter didn't say she wished she could go with us!


I contemplated for years the lessons learned from my time in Alaska. Just because something proves difficult doesn't mean it should be avoided or forgotten. I knew by now that I wouldn't have traded my time there for an easier life. Somehow I felt that I needed to make peace with Alaska. Aging does that to you. I wasn't sure what I expected to happen, I just felt that once I got there it would unfold.


I think I expected to go back, re-connect with people that we had minimally kept up with long distance, go to the old haunts, visit the places we never got to, and somehow in the midst of it all have big, shiny revelations that would change me. Of course, my husband was with me and didn't have the same need to reconsider his Alaska experience. He left Alaska because his family was unhappy, not because he was. He visited again to please his wife, not resolve any deep-seated issues.


Alaska proved to be...disturbing. I think I realized that somehow over the years I had already made peace with my time there. Too much over-analyzing left me thinking there was more psychological work to do. Fairly quickly we both realized that our Alaska experience was frozen in time and the people and places we knew had moved on. Our tentative feelers to old friends and co-workers were met with tepid or no response. Alaskans experience complete turnovers of friends every few years due to the transitional nature of the residents, and we were very old news. It's a way to shield their hearts. When we first arrived years ago I had a woman tell me, “We've lived here twenty years, and gone through four or five completely new sets of friends who have all moved away. I just can't make new friends anymore!”


We decided not to try to connect with anyone and just play tourist. But, that was hard to do. We knew what Alaska used to be like. We knew an Anchorage frozen in time. We were unprepared for the changes. Alaska's isolation has always guaranteed that the population would only grow to a certain limit. As the oil fields were winding down, the distance from the Lower 48, and limited job opportunities kept the population capped. Military bases were consolidating, and the harsh climate discouraged growth. Although people still came to Alaska looking for unlimited opportunities even when we lived there, the Last Frontier was no longer the land of second chances.


Every place changes and most places grow, but we were in shock as we drove into Anchorage. Quickly we lost our bearings. Many old landmarks were still there, but hidden in the jumble of newness. Some were gone. The city was spreading out. Big box stores and chain businesses were everywhere. We witnessed the first ones to come to Anchorage when we lived there. Walmart and K-Mart opened the door for all the others. Anchorage's uniqueness was gone. You could be in any city in the US based on the stores. Our old neighborhood was more changed than we would have expected in two decades. It was run down, junky, and the open space around it was filled with apartments and townhouses. I expect the moose do not freely wander the streets there anymore.


We were getting cranky with each other as we drove and we argued about where to turn. It was difficult to find our old haunts. We finished our chores, spent the night in the new Cabela's parking lot, and left town after shopping at our old neighborhood Carr's grocery store that's no longer a local chain but swallowed up by Safeway. The road out of town took us to Girdwood, the funky, little ski resort town where I pastored an equally funky church. The church building was gone, the resort had grown and the ski resort McMansions had arrived. The congregation had built a new church and seemed to be thriving, so that was evidence of the lasting affect of my efforts for God's work in Girdwood. Sorta brought tears to my eyes. We sought refuge in the still running Bake Shop. The cinnamon buns and sourdough pancakes, being good food, had survived the onslaught of change. We searched the customers for familiar faces and then realized that the kids working there hadn't even been born when we moved away!


We spent most of the rest of our time playing tourist and going to new places. My husband's work left us no time in the summers, his busy season, for vacationing, so it was good to visit places we wanted to see for the first time. But, we did re-visit some old places, and found that the crowds and changes had arrived there too. Seward, the sleepy little town that hosted our amazing boat cruise to see whales and sea life many years ago, was mobbed and overbuilt. Homer was maxed out and the Spit looked like a boardwalk at an East Coast beach. Soldotna was also crazy with traffic and development. Driving to Wasilla on the way to Denali left us frustrated at the huge amount of commercial development along the main road, and all obviously done without any civic planning. Welcome to Alaska! We don't plan!


We managed to have some good experiences once we went to new places, and tried to forget what used to be. Tourism has grown so large in Alaska, good for the economy, but bad for a wilderness experience. The roads, oh my, the roads are so greatly improved, but that means more traffic, higher speeds, less time to absorb the views, and less wildlife. When wildlife has the choice of thousands of acres of undeveloped land, why hang out by the busy roads? They don't care about tourists seeing them!


The one thing that cannot be changed is the dramatic landscape and no matter where you go outside of the developed areas, Alaska does not disappoint. We breathed in the beauty, (and the black flies and mosquitoes!) After three weeks, we were ready to move on. There is no going back, and our life doesn't call us to settle there again. Tourists leave, winter arrives and as Alaska is blanketed with snow and the nights get long and the days short, the frenzy slows down. I was glad to go. Glad to know that I didn't need to dread another Alaskan winter and the isolation from the “real “ world and family and friends.


I think I have healed and made peace with that wild place, that crazy, frozen in time experience. I can look back and let that period of my life exist in isolation from the rest of my life. It existed and still exists as a time of darkness and growth. I don't need healing, only recalling brief flashes of perfect memories. There are times, frozen, that I can remember with fondness, overlaid with new memories of Alaska.


Just as Humphrey Bogart said, “We'll always have Paris”, I'll always have Alaska. I was privileged to live there, in the midst of difficulty and splendor. Yes, I spent days feeling “squirreley” in the dead of winter. I know now that I was chronically depressed a good part of the time. But, those experiences only bring the amazing experiences into heightened relief. I remember being up late at night, the moon on the snow making it almost as bright as day and looking next door to see a moose curled up sleeping against the neighbor's house. One summer solstice evening we spent in a hot tub on the Hillside with good friends, drinking wine at 11 pm and watching the lights of Anchorage coming on while looking 200 miles down across Cook Inlet to the snow covered volcanoes of the Alaska Range, then back the other way to see Mount McKinley equally far off. I remember leading the Christmas Eve service for the town of Girdwood and standing outside at the base of the snow covered ski slope facing the crowd stretched along the lodge, everyone singing “Silent Night” while their candles illuminated their faces and the snow. There was our near perfect 70 degree, calm day, on a boat in the Kenai Fjords with my husband's co-workers, sailing around, viewing whales and sea life and glaciers caving, our young daughter lying on her stomach on the deck with a friend, soaking up the sunshine and peering out the anchor holes. Sunday mornings in the darkness or light driving to church in Girdwood along the Seward Highway, surrounded by the most astounding beauty and wildlife along Turnigan Arm. There were whales, Dall Sheep, moose, and bald eagles. I worshiped on that drive before I preached. That same church welcomed me as an answer to their prayers and were willing to try any new crazy idea for worship I came up with and gave me the grace to preach as long as the Spirit moved me.


Going back to Alaska allowed me to re-claim those memories, and seal them up in a bubble to be treasured. I don't have to dwell on the tough times. I've wrung all the truth I can out of those. The lessons are learned and hopefully applied, and I can move on from Alaska with the confidence that I don't need to go back again. I suppose it really is now forever in my rear view mirror.