I’m actually here!

This has been a couple of busy…and to some degree, very stressful weeks for me.  Trying to do a refinance on the house, getting the trailer ready, doing some of my ebay work, dreaming up some neon and plasma art projects, all while trying to make ends meet and going to work at a job….along with all the other aspects of life too numerous to list and too familiar to all to bother reiterating here and now anyway.  To say that I feel like I am behind on everything would be an understatement.

In spite of all this, something has been thought about and reflected upon this week.

“Wow!  I’m in Alaska!  I’m actually here!”

Well.  Yes.  Those who know me know that this is not new news, I have been up here quite a while.  Not a long time, but a while.  Just over 23 years, to be more exact.  Long enough to have caught the tail end of the “old Alaska” and heard many of the stories first hand and even participated in a couple of them myself.  The story of how I came to move here is one of those things that falls into place in such a way that most wouldn’t believe it possible and I am often told it is a story worth telling.  I am still working on mentally organizing my thoughts on how to best go about that task and it may still be a while before I am ready to commit the notes and photos and memories to print in a coherent fashion…..so, in short…ok, VERY short:    At the behest of a friend of a friend of a friend who had a tour related business in Barrow (and who later got run out of town for being a crook) I procured and drove a limousine from Houston, Texas to Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay) Alaska.  This entailed driving across the US, up the ALCAN, and finally up the “Haul-Road” (aka Dalton Hwy) –a “road” used only for truck and equipment traffic in support of the North Slope oil fields and which was not even open to general public use at the time.  After a falling out with those who wanted it, I drove it back to Fairbanks and took a different job within 24 hours of my arrival.  There is a lot more to this story.  But for now we can just say that I arrived in Fairbanks penniless and was fortunate to run into someone who allowed me to stay in their old, engineless, damaged RV until a space in my new employer’s company housing opened up that I could move in to.  There is more than one reason they call Fairbanks the golden heart city.

So…..sometime around the 25th or 26th of August of that year I had been at my new job about a week and was lying down to sleep in the falling apart RV, no heat, no power, no water, etc–a leaky and drafty dump by any reasonable standard….and yet one I was most grateful for……staring up at the ceiling, watching my breath as I exhaled to the chilled air from beneath the 1950 vintage feather sleeping bag I had brought up with me……and thinking about my trip, what had happened, who I had met along the way, the disasters, and the lucky breaks I had gotten when they were most needed along the way…..and found myself almost in amazed disbelief as I said to myself:  “Wow!  I’m in Alaska!  I’m actually here!”

Other jobs and other adventures have taken me to many other places, and now we are preparing for another adventure of a different sort……but…in spite of all that…..I still feel the same way about it as I did 23 years ago:  “Wow!  I’m in Alaska!  I’m actually here!”