Reflections on Alaska
Cold air fills my lungs as I inhale deeply and behold this marvel of geologic time. I feel introspective and insignificant as I imagine my short life span juxtaposed with this ancient, undefiled landscape. I try my best to take a mental snapshot of this moment near the peak, knowing fully well that nothing can ever recreate this moment. Gazing down over the untrodden path that led me here. Imbibing water to replace the icy sweat now soaking my clothes. Savoring a brief reprieve from a steep journey. Noting some clever metaphor. Solving the profound, metaphysical intricacies of life.
My expectations of Alaska were highly romanticized to say the least. In my mind, Alaska was where I would figure everything out: love, career, happiness, and meaning. Many of my preconceived notions were wrong, and truthfully, they nearly ruined my experience. It wasn’t until the end of my stay that I learned to appreciate and grow from my time in Anchorage. It’s easy to share some hollow pictures to convey your experience, but it’s much harder to share how it changed you. Maybe that’s why I’ve been putting this off for a while.
Nothing could have prepared me for the moment that I landed in Anchorage. Reality set in that I was now 4,130 miles from home and not returning anytime soon. Upon exiting the airport, I was greeted by a brisk wind and the soft midnight sunlight. I remember that first night laying in bed asking myself over and over again, “What the hell have I done?”
The first week was one of the longest of my life. With no means of transportation and the house to myself, I had to find various ways to cope with the isolation, loneliness, and boredom. I spent much of that week walking around Anchorage, often seduced by the mountains. The mountains were one of the few things that held true about Alaska. I remember the morning after my flight sitting inside a Burger King for a long time just staring off at the scenery, amazed at how it could transform such a mundane place. I told myself that once the mountains stopped looking so majestic, it would be time for me to leave. By the third week, I stopped noticing them altogether.
A few days after I arrived, my other roommate and fellow intern Jordan showed up at the house. From the look on his face, I could tell that he shared my “now what do we do?” sentiment. I was very grateful for the companionship, knowing that he was going through exactly what I was going through. Things wouldn’t change right away though. Even after we assured each other that things would pick up once work started, they wouldn’t for some time.
As with any internship, work started off painfully slow. I desperately tried to fill my time with projects both to get work experience and keep my mind occupied. For those first couple of weeks, I would find myself feeling hopeless as I counted my days remaining in Anchorage. The calendar reminded me of how far I had to go, and the mountains reminded me of how isolated I was.
After work everyday, Jordan and I would walk to the Transit Center, a low-income blip in the midst of corporate Anchorage. I often saw people in business clothes cross the street to avoid walking next to the bus riders. Most of the people here were Natives donning frayed jeans and work shirts. Some were inebriated. Some were using drugs. Some were even soliciting themselves. Most of them were bussing home from work just like me. Most of them were assimilating, or at least trying to. The Transit Center was just one stop on a journey. Some were heading uptown, but most were heading downtown.
When my father was in high school, he picked cotton in his family’s field. When I was fourteen, I was writing programs. As one of fourteen children, my father never had a chance at going to college. I’m finishing up two degrees. People forget that that kind of mobility in one generation is rare and not based solely on hard work. I spent long days and nights to get where I am, but I can’t deny the factor of environment. There are people with cars, and there are people who have to wait at the Transit Center.
The bus rides home surprisingly made me feel at home. In Austin, I didn’t have a car for my first few years of college, so I was no stranger to public transportation. Also, downtown Anchorage is not unlike downtown Austin. There was a surprisingly large population of young people and transients that often populated the buses. Riding the bus reminded me of class warfare. Although ConocoPhillips pays the bus company to allow their employees to ride for free, I never saw any on the bus. The bus was a symbol of the tension between rich and poor, oil and not-oil. Jordan and I were ambassadors to both sides; both poor college students and corporate employees. I often debated which was my real skin. Was it the tattered concert tee and flip-flops or the business casual button-down? In any case, on the days where we went to the gym after work, I felt substantially less noticed wearing my street clothes.
I stayed up late many nights in Anchorage, often unintentionally. It was common to watch a movie or talk about life and philosophy with my roommates for a while. The days dragged on, but the nights went by very quickly. With the sun still beaming at 10pm, it’s not hard to imagine losing track of time. I suffered from insomnia pretty badly at first. It wasn’t even so much seeing the sunlight, but feeling it. It was as if some vestigial structure in my body was beckoning me to stay awake. During those long, bright nights the mind wanders. Even when I was able to sleep, it was sporadic. I often found myself not being able to tell if I was actually awake or not.
Oil is the product of time and pressure. During those nights, that’s exactly what I had. The pressure of graduation and a long-distance relationship and the time to think about them fueled some potent night terrors.
I think many people shared in my sentiments of sleepless nights, namely those who hadn’t been there long. Alaska is truly a place of extremes: bright nights and dark days, affluence and poverty, mania and depression. During the summer, people are constantly doing outdoor activities as if powered by the sunlight. Most people go hiking or fishing multiple times per week after work. In Alaska, it’s imperative that you keep the mind occupied and the body tired.
My routine continued for some time. Hours turned to days; days to weeks; weeks to a month. Finally, at the start of July, I returned to Austin for a week. It was a pleasant reprieve. Although I feared that it would more or less ruin the progress I had made towards surviving my stay in Alaska, something was different when I returned to Anchorage. I’m not sure if it was my time in Austin or even just the fact that I had managed to make it a month already, but I had a new perspective on the experience. I wanted to make it count.
By the end of my internship, I realized that my homesickness, stress, and loneliness were truly a prison of the mind. I learned the value of friendship and human connections. I felt the power of self-reliance in overcoming such a great obstacle. I hiked mountains, held snow in June, saw unique wildlife, crossed a glacial stream barefoot, and touched the Arctic Ocean. I made close friends and learned a great deal about myself. Looking back, I could have taken a lot more out of the experience with the right mindset starting out, but truthfully, I wouldn’t change anything if I could go back.
It was an ongoing joke that Jordan and I weren’t allowed to watch Into the Wild. That it might just push us over the edge. I suggested that we watch it on our last night in Anchorage. We never got around to it, and that’s probably for the best.
I spent my last night with my closest friends in Anchorage right up until my red eye flight out. I never thought I’d be so sad to leave. I never thought I could build such good friendships and share in such an amazing experience there. I never thought I could change my mind about a place like that. I sat in the terminal waiting for my flight, contemplating my new lease on life. Torn between my friends I was leaving behind and my life in Austin, I felt something indescribable. Looking around at all the people on their own journeys, I thought once more of the Transit Center.