Earlier this week, it hit me like a slap in the face that today would be my final blog post. This is nothing to get too effusively philosophical about, but it occurs to me that a yearlong project deserves some sort of special closure.
I’ll start by saying what a great time I’ve had doing this. There are certain things that I’ve always intended to experience around here but just never got around to until I had cause to make time for them. Having said that, there’s still a list of “I meant to-s” that didn’t happen this year for one reason or another. Some of the things on my must-photograph in the land of the midnight sun and the noon moon list that I didn’t get around to are taking a dip in the hot springs at 20 below (or colder), ice fishing, visiting a trap line, extreme ultrasport races like the White Mountains 100, certainly more of our abundant yet elusive wildlife, such as brown bears, wolves, otters and eagles, a Fairbanks Grizzlies football game, the antique car museum, and seeing areas of the Interior I haven’t been to yet, like Circle and Central. My plan is to take one more year to fill in the gaps, and also take my time with some of the things that I did get around to but had to rush through, to get better quality pictures. (I am an amateur in the field of photography in every sense of the word!) I’ve got a long way to go with it, but I guess 365 days is a pretty good start.
Moving on, I’d like to do a quick and dirty summarization of my view of year round life here, since after all that is what I’ve been talking about all this time. I can’t really depict anything much as ugly here, so we’ll just stick with the good and the bad. Here’s the balance sheet:
Good: The geography (incredibly stunning scenery), the summer, the winter (skiing, snowmachining, guaranteed white Christmas, etc.), the extreme climate (great summers, nice dry air), the extended daylight (you can fish all night!), the people, the isolation (I hate crowds and traffic), the hunting and fishing, the lack of readily available chain shopping venues (more stores mean more crowds and traffic), all the outdoor activities
Bad: The geography (it takes an arctic voyage just to get anywhere), the winter (do I really have to elaborate?), the extreme climate (bone chilling cold, damn dry air, smoky forest fires in the summer, etc.), the extended daylight (makes it very hard to get a good night’s sleep), the depressing extended darkness, (a few of) the people, the isolation (it costs how much to ship that here?), the roads, the general high cost of living, the lack of readily available chain shopping venues, the extra difficulty associated with pretty much everything
When you look at these lists you notice two things. First, several of my points are on both lists. That’s because, obviously, there are both good and bad things about them, and you can read through the blog to find out why. The second thing you notice is that there are more things on the bad list than the good one. So why, you ask, the hell do we want to live here? The answer to that question would depend on what kind of day I’m having when you ask it, but any day of the week I can tell you that the things on the good list, fewer as they are, must be fairly incredibly good to make up for the discrepancy of equipoise. I can also tell you that living here is not for everyone. If anything on the bad list is a deal breaker for you, meaning that anything on the good list could not ever make up for it, then you would probably not be happy here. It takes a certain mindset to efficaciously be a Sourdough.
The truth is we take it day by day. No one that lives here all year likes every minute of it, but we endure the harsh times so that we can revel in the glorious ones. We may never leave, or we may wake up a month from now and say “I’ve had it! Let’s sell the house and look for property someplace warm!” Either way, we’re lucky and will have been better people for the time we have spent here in the heart of the last great frontier.
I believe it was William James who said “The soul is stronger than its surroundings.” In our case, I’d say the soul is stronger because of them.
Please visit my Year in the Interior photo album on Flickr. I will be adding to it as time allows, and you'll see hundreds of photos from this past year that didn't show up in the blog.
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