Alaska breathes back life after a trip away and a period of hesitation

As the Thanksgiving visit was winding to a close, my dad said several times that it had been a wonderful visit and he would miss us. The full two weeks we had stayed there were great, he told my husband and me at dinner. He was sad it was coming to an end.

We thanked him, of course, and (mostly) agreed. But later on, in the privacy of my overstuffed and too-warm childhood bedroom, we also agreed that two weeks in Framingham, Massachusetts, was way too long.

Unfortunately, even though we were happy to leave, the pull back to Alaska also didn’t feel terribly strong. I looked at the weather app on my phone and confirmed it was still in the negative temps with no sign of easing up. In the past, I would have been excited about those kinds of extremes. After all, isn’t that exactly why I moved up north? It wasn’t exactly for balmy beach weather.

So, fleeing suburbia — which looks like 14 hours of travel, mostly sitting with short bouts of sweaty hustling and schlepping between airport gates — felt only kind of good. I was happy to get out of Framingham, but felt dread about where I was heading.

What happened?! 2020 happened. I won’t dwell here, because enough has been said about these past two years, but a fully isolated COVID-19 winter trapped in the scenic snowglobe that is Alaska really put the nail in the coffin of my feeling of choice in living here. I felt stuck, which is kryptonite for someone like me.

And I’ve repeated that narrative over and over, to anyone who would listen. I repeated it many times to friends and family back east. “COVID killed my relationship with Alaska,” I said. “I’m over it.”

Narratives tend to gain their own momentum. They feed themselves, gathering supporting evidence anywhere and everywhere. As we landed in Anchorage, I looked out my window seat at the floating spheres of ice cast placidly across inky blue Cook Inlet; at the orange and pink hues on Susitna and, faintly, Denali. “I’m over it” echoed in my brain, harmonizing with “yep, looks cold out there.”

No awe. No pull. Just a detached, removed noticing of detail coupled with a prediction about how the air would feel when I stepped outside.

And, sure enough, outside briefly froze the insides of my nose shut. Anchorage was shrouded in an icy mist. The roads were slippery. Fred Meyer was Fred Meyer.

We drove the hour north to our home. Pulling into our driveway in the dark, I felt a sinking feeling. Here we were, arriving at the rest of our winter. How would we do this all over again, after last year?

We lugged our groceries and luggage to the door, kicked the snow off our shoes, and pulled open the door to get everything inside. I flicked a light on and looked around.

It’s peaceful at our house. It’s clean and curated; spare but cozy. It’s ours.

I had my first sigh of relief, after having spent two weeks in the claustrophobic suburbs of Massachusetts.

I looked outside. The trees loomed tall and snow-laden in the soft light cast from our windows. I remembered looking across the street to another set of houses and a sidewalk. Right now, what I was looking at was basically a Christmas card.

My husband got the wood stove fired up while I unpacked and put away groceries. Pretty soon, we called it a night.

The rest of the weekend back, we clicked into routines. I remarked to my husband that it felt easier to work and focus from home than it did back in Framingham. It felt like there was room for thinking here. We decided to make the run to get our Christmas tree; we did the Alaskan thing of heading into the woods to find one.

It was on day two of being home that it finally clicked for me while being out on a run on my normal route: I have been repeating the same story to myself over and over to the point that it’s become a prediction of my future. I’m doing the thing I say I don’t want to do; I’m striving for something other than where I am. Some striving is good, because it motivates growth and change. But my entire perspective has been shifted into an other — a place I want to be other than Alaska — to the point that it’s starting to rob me of my presence right here.

The wind had finally picked up during this run after weeks away, and it started to strip the trees of snow. My default feeling about this was dread because it meant likely discomfort of having wind and snow on my face. But as I actually ran through it, I saw puffs of snow picked up and swirled by the wind ahead of me. I saw snowball sized bits of packed snow from trees carried by the wind across the street and toward me. And yes, I got trapped in a whirlwind of snow whipping on my face and totally obscuring everything around me. I stopped running, but felt it. I smiled. This was Alaska; this was being alive. This wouldn’t happen in Framingham.

It turns out that while my visit back east was surprisingly uncomfortable, it also catalyzed a needed change in my relationship to Alaska. So thank you, Massachusetts. I think I’m set up much better for winter here than I was a month ago.