A hustling bustling time of transition

I haven't written in a whole month this time, which is simply a testament to how insane life has been. The last chunk of the train tourist season has been quite different to the earlier part in a number of ways. Shifts, for me, have become more plentiful. My last two stints of working were both scheduled six day runs, which they aren't really supposed to do to people, but have done to me quite a few times now. Before that, I had 4 days on and a day or two off before and after. Hard to think back that far. That was around the time that all my friends - Caitlin, Hope, Nicole, Matt, Lane and Sherri, went ice-climbing on a glacier without me. I'm still a little upset about that one. I've wanted to try ice-climbing ever since I knew it existed, a discovery I made when I was 12 and visiting Quebec with my French class. I love climbing things in general, and that activity seems especially dangerous, exciting, off-the-beaten-path, epic and fun. And it's not something one can do just anywhere, and Alaska, on a glacier, seems like the ideal spot to give it a go. I wasn't invited because my friends thought I was working that day, although they should have known better, and it wouldn't have been that hard for them to ask. They just sort of forget about me sometimes because I don't live with them, and we are often on divergent schedules, so I am not necessarily included in their logistical plans. This has been mildly frustrating a few times this summer, but the ice incident was by far the most notable. Hope and Caitlin also took a kayak trip a few weeks ago. They invited me, but not until it was too late for me to request those days off from work, so I was scheduled and unable to join them. Oh well. I was better able to shrug that one off. I'll get plenty of other chances to kayak.

I also had to miss what sounds like a very fun and exciting raft-float trip this past Tuesday. This time about 8 of my friends spent the day drinking and riding an inflatable raft down the Little Susitna river. They all look very happy and amused in the pictures they showed me, but it also had a number of downsides as an experience. The trip ended up taking much longer than they expected, and they had to go into survival mode as it got dark and they were all wet and extremely cold. They were rescued by some kindly Alaskans whose door they knocked on when their situation started to seem truly concerning, but they were all completely exhausted these last two days when we were working together (our last ship day!), and they have some lingering concerns about maintaining their temperatures. It sounds like the adventure was well worth the suffering therein (what's an adventure without some unpleasant inconvenience, after all?), but I was once again able to let it slide. I had to work, and I didn't begrudge the hours too much because I just took my longest break of the summer last week, 5 whole days(!), to go home to New England.

Although most of my time during the past several weeks has been spent on the train, I have found a few diversions and ways of getting through it. I was starting to get pretty burnt out on the whole thing in late August, a bit early to be fully mentally and emotionally and physically finished, considering there was still an entire month to survive. But things took a turn for the more bearable. My 4 day run August 24-27 was like a return to the summer camp feeling I had at the beginning of this job. Days one and three were both dead-heads all the way North, so I got to rest and relax and play cards and chat and hang out with my friends who were all on the train with me. I spent a good deal of that Friday trying to make plans for Healy/Denali for that evening. It was a nice sunny day, and we'd rested for most of it, so I felt like the time was ideal for whitewater rafting or rock-climbing, or going into the park for a hike, or SOMETHING. At first it seemed like many people on the train were on the same page, but once we got in, around 5pm, most people's ambitions had retreated. I had also lost my phone in a movie theater a few days earlier, which made coordination trickier. Still, I was determined to venture, regardless of whether people came with me or not.

In the end, I took several different shuttles into an unfamiliar part of Denali National Park (which describes, well, all of it), the final one taking me about 15 miles in, along the Park Road. (There's only one. And the park is 6 million acres. Roughly the size of Massachusetts, I think.) I was at first the only person on the bus at that hour, because it was coming on nightfall and there were only one or two opportunities to come back from my destination, the Savage River, that day. We picked up one more passenger on the way, a girl named Jenna, my age, who was spending the summer working at the Holland America lodge. As I was alone, didn't have a phone, needed to work early the next morning, and hadn't eaten lunch or dinner, I wasn't sure I wanted to hike, I thought I might just take the bus to its terminus, look around at the scenery for a few minutes, and then take it back around 7:30. Otherwise, I would have to wait until 9:30 to head back, which would mean quite a late dinner and return to the Deathstar in Healy.

However, I made acquaintance with Jenna (and the bus driver) on the way out, during which we stopped to peer at a huge bull moose with a huge antler rack, eating just off the side of the road and thus causing a tourist traffic jam. And we were both more interested in hiking with company than without, so I went along with it and we went out and hiked for a while. She'd been there several times before and knew the area. It had turned a bit rainy, cloudy, and cold as we went, but the colors of the brush and trees and mountains were just incredible. And the sunset that greeted us upon our return was alone worth it.



Those will give you some idea, but they certainly don't do it justice.

Not having a better camera and more photography expertise has been one of my greatest regrets this summer. Still, even given perfect tools, it is nearly impossible to capture the magnitude and splendor of the visual displays Alaska regularly puts on.

In any case, it was a great little adventure. I finished it off by going to the Salmon Bake, a restaurant owned by the same fellow who created 49th State in Healy. Both have truly excellent food and lots of good beer and whiskey as well. I scarfed down a halibut taco, and then ran to catch the 11pm shuttle to my sleeping place.

I had the following Sunday and Monday off. Sunday I stayed up all night for one of those crazy nights of Shana-hood. I'm not sure what I was doing. The next day was also sunny and beautiful, so I roamed around Anchorage, treated myself to a tasty brunch at Humpy's, and then went to a local theater, the only one I've discovered that's producing this summer, to see the musical 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I was quite sleepy, but it was wonderful and good for my soul to be in a theater again. The next day I went to the Alaska State Fair with my Seward deckhand friend Jacob. It was an amusing phenomenon, and I floated through it very placidly.

Then I worked another 6 days, which was hard and exhausting. I got almost no dead legs, and I had to work with a rail guide who was quite unpleasant to me for the first two days. But I knew all along I'd get to go home at the end of it, and that helped sustain me.

My last night before heading home, I found myself in Healy again, and this time I enjoyed a bonfire in a dried up glacial riverbed of silt with some other train employees. I saw my first wild caribou that day on the train and a fox in the riverbed that night. The fire was huge and very excellent.

My New England tour was rushed, too rainy, and I didn't get enough quality time with anyone, but it was really nice to get away from work and the train and my crazy sleep-deprived, sleeping in different places every night, living on scraps and mostly spending time alone Alaskan lifestyle. It was wonderful to go to Brown and see many of my friends there. I threw a party my first night in town, drank too much honey whiskey and hungoveredly attended a brunch with friends the next morning. I crammed in as much social time as I could, in the brief 30 hours I was there (after also not sleeping at all on my red-eye flight, and around 12 hours of travelling to get there.) Then I met up with my parents in Boston, drove back to Portland, and was there for Wednesday and Thursday, before heading back to Boston Friday and investing another 12 hours into getting back to Alaska, and heading back to work for 6 more days.

I took care of some important business while I was home. I shopped for a new computer (mine is nearly at the end of its 5 year rope), snuggled with Tiger my cat, ate some wholesome and delicious food, Thai and lobster, mostly, got a criminal background check done for my teaching gig in Canada, and paid off the rest of my college loans. So now I am truly free. And I went through my stuff and attempted to pick out everything I want/need my mother to mail to my new temporary home in BC. Mostly I chose books and old journals.

Going home so close to the end of the season seemed silly to many of my coworkers, but I think it was brilliant. I got through 3 more runs this past week, now I have 3 days to enjoy end of season festivities with the mini-gang, then one more run this coming Monday, a day to pack and one week from today I'll be greeting my class in British Columbia, and trying to figure out a brand new lifestyle, before I have any time to debrief this one. But that's the way I like to live, for the most part, from one great event and adventure to the next.