After my bath-of-fire, learn quick or die, endurance-testing beginning on the train, my employers have given me a very restful week of recovery. One might even say too restful, but I’m not sure I’m prepared to go that far.
I had last Tuesday and Wednesday off. I took that time to relax and recuperate, and run some necessary errands. I bought myself a bike to make the morning commutes and getting around Anchorage easier and more efficient. I got myself a library card. The Anchorage public library has very quickly become my best friend out here. I visit it almost every day off I have. It makes for a nice little outing, there’s free internet, and now, when I feel like it I can start taking advantage of all the books and movies and CDs. They also have a lovely little lawn with a beautiful fountain/sculpture, and it seems to be an auspicious place for young children and families to congregate and play. I’m lying in the grass there now.
My big brother Adam and his girlfriend Jess had been thinking about coming up to visit this coming week. I went into the rail office on my first day off to talk to one of the bosses about when and how I could get them rides on the train, and if there were any other employee benefits we/they could take advantage of. Unfortunately, I didn’t really know where to start or what questions to ask, and he seemed rather preoccupied and wasn’t very helpful, so we decided to postpone the visit until later in the summer or perhaps another time. I would have loved to see them and explore with them a bit, but I’m so new to this job, it was a bit overwhelming to try to coordinate. Hopefully it will work out that they can come later…
I went back to work Thurs-Fri last week. Apparently the universe really wanted to ease me back into this whole “labor” thing, because my car wasn’t part of the train “consist” on the way up to Fairbanks. It was waiting there, which meant I didn’t have to do any work for the first day. I spent most of the day sleeping, looking at scenery, reading Faulkner, working on my poetry and daydreaming, meanwhile earning an hourly wage for the first 8 hours and time and a half for the other 7. Not a bad deal, as far as I’m concerned. My assigned roommate in Fairbanks wanted to spend time with another friend, so I once again had a room to myself. I hung out and drank a little wine and did a little yoga with my buddies Sarah and Thomas, and also talked religion and spirituality with a server named Tania.
Friday I also had a dead leg for breakfast. By this point, I was so well-rested I couldn’t sleep much more, but I was amused and delighted when I was standing on the open-air platform, looking out at the world and hundreds of butterflies passing by, and both my on-board managers suggested I take a nap. I’m definitely starting to love this job.
Had Saturday and Sunday off as well. Hindsight being what it is, I wish I had arranged my weekend differently. Weather-wise, Saturday was an ideal go-outside-and-bike-and-have-adventures kind of day, and Sunday would have been good for staying in, reading, writing and getting chores done. But I did the opposite. Oh well. I did all my laundry and made myself some food and did other stuff on Saturday, and Sunday I went to the tourist info office, got myself a map of Anchorage to help with navigating my way around and was pointed toward the weekend market. I don’t know if they call it a farmer’s market or not, but that isn’t quite what it is. There were all kinds of vendors selling their wares. There were a couple honey booths, a fudge booth, a woman selling pearls, various Native craftspeople, some food, fried and otherwise, and there was a stage where someone was singing. It was pretty small-scale, but neat. Then I explored some of the many bike paths in town, even though it was rather cold and grey. My first priority was the coastal trail, being the sea-starved ocean-lover that I am.
I had another run Monday-Tuesday. On this one I was joined once again by Hope, Nicole and Caitlin. And I was in for another surprise. Most of the workers and cars were only needed for the first 2/3 of the first day, so we were getting dropped off in a tiny place/depot called Healy, about half an hour past where we drop passengers at Denali National Park, and then being bussed back to Anchorage the next day instead of working on the train. After so many days of relative idleness, this seemed less than ideal. I’m starting to feel pretty lazy and unproductive, and I know I need to start working and earning more. On the other hand, I’m a very go-with-the-flow kind of person, and I love that I never have any idea what’s going to happen to me when I show up for work in the morning. I like the variety and element of surprise to it all. It keeps it from getting boring, predictable or mundane.
The cool thing about ending up in Healy is that theoretically one can get a shuttle into Denali and take advantage of some of our crazy employee benefits, which include being able to do any kind of tour for next to nothing. There are helicopter and plane rides over the big mountain or to the tops of glaciers, there are four-wheeler tours of the park, covered wagon and bus tours, white-water rafting trips. Basically anything you can think of, it’s there and we can approach the lodges or vendors, tell them we work for the train, and generally, if there’s free space, we can tag along and just tip the trip leaders nicely and we’re golden. Nicole was gung-ho about trying to do one of these activities, and I was ready to join her. As it turned out, the only thing that worked with our schedule and was available that night was going to the Denali lodge dinner theatre musical. So we did that. It was hokey and cheesy and silly, but the food was pretty good, and it was fun to get out and do something, and I always like being in the vicinity of theatre, even when it’s not brilliant or moving. I’m not expecting much of that from my summer in Alaska anyway. And it was awesome to see the park a little closer up than from the dome of the train (which, as bartender, I am basically never able to leave.) It’s gorgeous.
The next day we learned once again to expect the unexpected. A couple hours into our 5-hour bus ride home, one of our tires blew out. Our driver pulled over to the side of the road. We were in the middle of nowhere, and didn’t have much in the way of cell phone signals. So an hour or more elapsed before we were rescued by another HAP bus that was passing through without passengers. We train folks kept our cool and used the time to sing songs in a circle around one of the crew who had brought a guitar along. This was one of the moments when I began to feel like I had secretly signed up for summer camp rather than a job. I also read my friends a couple pages of my thesis, since I had it with me, and we had time. :)
Tuesday afternoon-Wednesday night was one extended social solstice celebratory extravaganza. Hope, Nicole and Caitlin were hosting a party at their house in Wasilla. I went back around 4 with Caitlin and she and I chatted and drank tea and decompressed for a few hours. Then we went grocery shopping and began to prepare for the party. We were inexplicably sleepy, but we managed to shower and concoct a 2-pound pasta salad, a delicious lemon zest pound cake, and sparkling sangria before the rest of the small party crowd rolled in, around 10:30. The party was low-key, which is generally my favorite kind. I got a chance to get to know some of the train people a bit better, and to catch up with my older friends. We had a fire pit outside. We stayed up to watch the sky darken, in the 12-1:30 am vicinity, and by 2 it was getting lighter again. I went to sleep close to 4. We all had a massive sleepover, taking up couches and beds throughout the house.
The next morning we gradually roused, drank coffee, and watched the creative photo-video project of one of the returning rail guides, named Lane. His video was really cool, he had some amazing footage from hikes and kayak and ice-climbing trips he’s taken in past summers. Definitely got my blood stirring for some more Alaskan expeditions of my own. We hung out in the house playing a group game for a few hours, played outside on Nicole’s new slack-line for a bit, and then finally, around 5:30 pm a few of us decided to go out for a hike. This is one of the great advantages of the thousand-hour days out here. It’s never too late to start your day.
The hike was a wonderful experience and served as the culmination of me catching on to why all the people here are in love with/obsessed with Alaska, which has gradually been happening over the past few days. We went to a place called Hatcher’s Pass. The mountains were huge and impressive and easy to climb because they were covered in tundra moss. So we made a b-line straight up to the top, and then slid on our butts most of the way down, to go scope out the glacial lake that was awaiting us there. On the way up and at the peak, Nicole and I taught our companions a couple of sea shanties. It was an incredible feeling, being way up there, towering above the world, singing and yodeling, clearly audible to those below me. Alaska is like one giant playground, full of wilderness, animals, dangerous and awesome challenges to scale, and barely anyone else getting in your way. It seems we are perfect for each other. It’s just a matter of finding ways to get out and see and do more of it.
So I’m out in a big playground, hoping to do some camping, hiking, biking, kayaking and swimming, surrounded by people around my age who also want to do those things, when they aren’t singing around campfires, or doing their various crafts. Some of them make paper cranes, others knit, or do photography. The job itself is also a good place for picking up new skills—public speaking, mixing drinks, cutting fruit for garnishes, plus cooking for absolute beginners on off-hours. Not to mention all the romantic intrigue that goes on between this contained group slapped together for the duration of the short season. If I had gone to more summer camps as a kid, I could swear I’d just found a way to extend that experience into my post-college life. It’s very silly, and I’m excited to see where things go from here. I suspect that if I want to walk away from the summer with any substantial kind of profit, I’m going to need to start picking up more extra shifts. Because for the past week or so it seems like I’ve barely worked at all. For now, I’m just taking each day as it comes and trying to enjoy it.
Also, today was the first day EVER that me and my three roommates were all in our house at the same time. I’ve decided to call it a solstice miracle.
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