Winter is a-coming!

 

The first thing anyone thinks about when they think about Alaska is the cold. Second to that, possibly very short days in Winter to compensate the long summer days. Now the cold view of Alaska is deserved, even if the great summers are a little less known.

Since arriving I have braced myself for the winter. I have asked advice from everyone about what to expect and how to plan and importantly what to wear.

Back in the UK, my winter prep would be minimal. I'd use a winter coat which is 3 years old of little use or possibly a water proof coat with changing layers underneath. Winter foot ware was very low on my radar. Why should it be? At worse in Britain it will snow for 2 weeks of the year. If it is really bad - work would accept a snow day off. So I always considered it best to wait until the January Sales to buy winter gear. When the January Sales were upon me - what small tolerance I have for wandering round busy consumer districts has been stripped by Christmas shopping a week earlier. In any case - spring will be here soon and paying £70 for a North Face jacket seemed redundant. 

Now I'm guessing with Alaska - even my sissy southeastern part of Alaska - having snow from November through Feb the following year, Alaska has found a way to work around snow with no need to alert the American version of COBRA - if they even have one. It also is something I have to work through. My winter clothing is no longer a matter of comfort over personal economics. It is now about survival. So last Saturday I spent the most I've ever spent on a coat; $130 (£87). A heavy duty thing which when I tried on in the store - immediately drops of sweat poured over my top lip. It's a heavy canvass, which I'm told is also waterproof - though I'm not convinced about that.

Everything changes over winter. The cruise ships have all left Juneau, and the businesses supported by the cruise ships - most of downtown Juneau, feel this is a good time to shut down also. Who can blame them? This includes a Filipino burger stall called Manila Bay, near the Cruise Ship dock. The owner, I have met. In winter she goes down to San Francisco to look after her other business down there. Definitely who can blame her? 

My base town of Haines, has turned into almost a ghost town. The tourist places which dot 2nd Avenue are redundant. The restaurants are closed - bar a few cosy soft lit havens. Winter is upon us all.

Those who saw Haines in the summer and said they would live there, found a way to before experiencing a winter, are now considering moving on. And it's the movers on who are making me proud of myself - or at least they will make me proud of myself. Because in four months from now, I will puff forward my chest and say I made it through an Alaskan winter. Of course my colleagues in Anchorage would scoff that this could be a source of pride. But for me, it will be something. 

Lets be honest. I am living in two heated houses. Neither are isolated. My commute to work will be changing from the bike to the bus. The bus stop being a 5 minute walk from the house. On Fridays the taxi will pick me up and take me to the ferry - which I'm told chugs up the Lynn Canal to Haines whatever the weather - even if sometimes the ferry gets tossed around like a rag doll (I can occasionally suffer sea sickness). 

However, I see the mountains behind my home in Juneau dusted with snow, and I can see the snow approaching. On my way home from work last week, I saw a rare break in the cloudy Juneau sky, and like a badly photoshopped picture there was this snowier than usual mountain, the mountain overhanging Mendenhall Glacier. It looked unreal. Like those old epic movies where the landscape was obviously just an impressive painting. But it was real, it was winter on its way. What was happening on that mountain, an flurry of wind and snow, will soon be down in the valley where I live.

Winter won't be spent as I imagined it back in the UK; gathering wood for a fire. Feeding the fire all night or waking to Artic temperatures. But I know it will be a new experience and will bring a few stories to tell. I am eagerly awaiting you winter, and I want you to give it your best shot. 

Now all I need is a pair of Tuffs!

 

Life goes on....

I have passed 2 months in the USA and most notable is; I feel I really belong as I have a physical social security card and an actual green card. Getting a green card is often a term used to describe the process of becoming a permanent resident. However, eventually after entering the USA you get the actual green card - and it is actually green in colour.

I remember my first few months of arriving in Bristol in 1995, then London in 2003. I spent so much time looking around and not believing I was really here. And I guess the same is true here. Interesting too, is I have found the adjustment a little easier than adjusting to life in London. Maybe I am older, and not so wide eyed about the world. I realize that wherever I am in the world, I have to get up, put on my trousers and go to work. And that work will probably be an office. In that respect, the USA has been easy.

I may as well list things I miss. Clover Butter Spread is one. There is nothing I've found similar. I live as a single person for 4/7 days of the week and everything seems in large portions. So I either eat too much or nothing. But these are minor things. What do I prefer?

Above all I like, what I've always liked about Americans and America. The enthusiasm and optimism. This is over all 50 states, but more profound in Alaska. I feel like I am sitting on the shoulders of giants when I think of those who came here 100 years ago. What they did to make Alaskan Territory into the State of Alaska. Living alongside bears. Surviving bitter winters. It's a place where people come not to make it, but to survive. A snowy California I've heard some say. People come from all over the USA to Alaska to discover something new. In California they will probably return, realizing the house on the hill, or beside the beach will never be theirs. In Alaska, they will make it past a winter, feel proud to have done so and stay on forever. Or they find they can never afford to leave. 

This leads me onto another type that stays in Alaska. Those that feel trapped. The vibrant city of Seattle looks so cruelly close. It's an hour or two by plane from Juneau. Yet a most flights cost $500 one way. The ferry to nearby Bellingham is $350, and another $300 if you want a cabin for the 3 day trip. In so many ways, once you are in Alaska you are stuck here. But the isolation brings rewards also. The crap of Washington seems further away. It seems London is more tied to decisions in Washington, than Juneau is. The irony of Alaska is supreme. An independent state, with more in common with Canada than the lower 48. Yet completely dependent on federal handouts. A beautiful snowy or green paradise, mostly untouched by man, but at most risk from jobs effected by green legislation with so much of the state reliant on the energy industry for jobs. 

Mostly I get Alaskans, and they get me it seems. That is because most Alaskans, are not Alaskans by birth. They are those like me who at one point stepped off a plane or ferry, intimidated and excited all at once. Knowing that pride should be left for another year, as for now you need all the help and advice you can get.

This is more profound where I work, with young people from all over the USA. One of our corps members arrived today. No car, just like me. No place, just like me a month ago in Juneau. He is from Mississippi, but he may as well be from Romania. This is all new and exciting for him. 

Life is easier in the USA. It's a service industry country and wherever there is someone available to help, they almost always do it to the best of their ability. With one eye on customer service. I enjoy my day to day routine in Juneau. I rise early, and not really because I have to, I get up with ease at 6:30am. Often waking an hour before me alarm, restless and willing to start the day. I look outside my window and survey the day. I cycle the 2 miles to work, so rain (and Juneau rains a lot) has a bearing on what I will wear. A rainy day brings out the cycling lycra. Yes I'm often a MAMIL. The cycling is my exercise so I say, but really it's so flat, my journey, I don't change gear all week. I arrive about 7:15am at the office and grind the coffee beans for a fresh cup of coffee. I do my best work from then to 11am, my most productive part of the day. 

I work 40 hours over 4 days, and return to Haines by ferry often on Friday mornings. This journey I love. The taxi arrives early, to take me to the ferry terminal. I board and wait until 7am for a ferry breakfast - usually of eggs with biscuits and gravy. Several refills of coffee later, I climb up to the solarium, climb inside my sleeping back. There I read for a bit struggling to keep my arms warm from the crisp air. Then often I drift off to sleep with an hour on the water before I arrive in Haines. Again each week doing this, I find it hard to believe I'm really here.

Sometimes I feel guilty of my present blissful life, and feel so undeserving of happiness - I've been less than a good person. Then I cast my mind back to a dark evening in early 2007. When a bitter voice, stinking of cheap wine, told me I better not sleep, or my pretty throat would get cut. I lay awake, and just prayed to anything that I just get through to morning. I also thought at that point that life has got as low for me as it will ever get. And I measure much since from that point. Then I have other points of measurement too. When I was a young boy - 14 or so, growing up in the drabness of small town Cornwall. Strangled by close-mindedness, and mental dictatorship. At points in my life, I often wanted to go back to that boy and show him, this is what happens. Sometime the ghost from Chris-mas (see what I did there) future flies back from his uni days in Bristol. Passing the course his mother said he was too thick to pass. Show him having fun living in a city for the first time. Showing 14 year old Chris his desk in Canary Wharf tower, his travels around the world. And of course I would show him the last part of his life, in America. Then I'd tell him to take heart, that all those around you, the ones who see you as simple, unworthy. Well you will see them on Facebook (ofcourse this is 1985 so explaining FB may take a while) and they will be still cleaning windows and having nothing but procreation to be proud of. Then again - 14 year old Chris pretty much knew life was going to be eventful anyway. The restless always know this.

Something my restless soul knows is, I identify with Alaskans. And as I identify more with Alaskans, my memories of Britain fade. Yes, after just two months. I always thought I'd keep an interest in Britain, and have British pride. Well I guess I do, a Union Jack flies proudly in my office. But apart from that, I have no idea what is happening on my island? I don't think I will ever voluntarily go back to the UK. Then again, decisions to move are seldom made when life is good. Maybe something will happen that soils paradise. Who knows, good or bad, up or down, life goes on!