Can you believe the smell?

When I was in London, I used to walk around thinking “I can’t believe I live here.” I used to do the same thing in Superior, but the thought carried an entirely different tone. Amazingly enough, I haven’t had that thought at all in Alaska.

When I was little, I imagined Alaska to be this vast stretch of snow fields, perfect for dog mushing. In second grade, or whenever it was that I first learned about the Iditarod, I heard of places like Juneau and Anchorage and would think “I can’t imagine anyone living there.”

What would I have thought if I had known then that I would one day live in Alaska, and not even in one of the bigger cities? If someone had told me that, I would have simply said, “I don’t believe you.”

The interesting thing about being here is that it doesn’t feel that far away. I was looking at the Kenai Peninsula on Google maps the other day and scrolled a little to the left and got a real sense of how close Russia actually is. And you all thought Sarah was crazy. When I think about it that way, I think, “Wow, how did I get so far away?” But then I scrolled a little farther left and got to Europe. That’s close enough to home. At least it feels that way after having spent a semester there.

It’s like when you are driving home and it only requires two turns. Even though you still have most of the journey to go after you make the first turn, you can’t help but think “I’m halfway there.” When scrolling over the Earth, I can get to England from Russia, and from England I know what it takes to get home. It’s only a six-hour flight. That’s not bad. That’s not far from home…

I keep smelling the air here and am reminded of something. It’s so cold here most of the time that your snot freezes when you inhale. That always makes me think of ski club in high school, which produced some of the best memories of my Albany childhood. It was a time of inside jokes, throwing 360s off of big tabletops and not traversing down Ace of Spades or Whitetail. As my friend Zach once put it, “Ski Club is like a party on the mountain.” We were totally free.

I can remember many times popping out of my skis right before dinner at the summit lodge of Jiminy. Through frozen snot I’d breathe the smell of onion rings and burgers and fries cooking from inside the warm hut. It might actually be a disgusting smell, but my memories of ski club and its unbridled independence make me smile whenever it comes back to me.

It comes back to me a lot here. That smell of unbridled independence.

fire

hospital memorial

Comments welcome,

Andrew