A friend of mine is concerned that, in this economy, clients in need of her services as a psychologist may become scarce. My advice to her: move to Nome. The population of Alaska will assure her of the future of her chosen occupation.
The extremely friendly Alaska Air ticket agent in Nome was as blond-haired, blue-eyed as I am. So I bravely asked (you can assume everyone here carries a large gun without making a you-know-what out of u and me), "How did you end up in this town?" I wisely left out the adjective "God-forsaken" that ran on an unending loop through my mind as I explored Nome. "Well," eyes as blue as a glacier crevice sparkling,"I came up for a weekend about 30 years ago and just never left." "huh." This kind gentleman was fixing a glitch in my non-rev reservation to get me the heck out of this town, so I again wisely withheld my more candid response. This man had just returned from a trip to India; he was helping his mom move back to So Cal after living overseas for several years. His brother lives in Mongolia. So I guess within his family, he would be considered the more mundane.
Repeatedly, others were giving the response, "It's a great small-town feel. Everyone knows everyone, we're like family." I've visited Oregon. I've lived in Nor Cal and So Cal. I've lived in Alabama, Florida, Missouri, and Georgia. There are plenty of small towns, close-knit communities. But without the intensely severe isolation from the rest of society. So why go to this extreme? I could seriously live there myself for several months, only to analyze and marvel at the psyche of those who have chosen to make Nome their home. Also, the whispered rumors of skulking Soviet subs make for good fire-place stories.
There's just something about Nome. There must be, for any population to exist there. The city is about 12 blocks by 7. At least a third of the motorized vehicles were dashboard-deep in snow, out of commission for the winter. So were several boats, cranes, and planes, skeletal limbs akimbo, poking obscenely mechanical angles out of the deep snow banks. It's as if everyone hibernates for 6 months, allows the snow the absorb all semblance of outdoor existence, and waits it out until summer.
The tundra was a fascinating thing. During a few hikes to geocaches, I'd walk across alternating stretches of snow and tundra. The spongy underfooting felt like a pseudo-trampoline; all the energy of your footfall sunk in like a trampoline's surface but instead of rebounding and following the equal/opposite reaction law of thermodynamics, your foot would stall at the bottom of the footstrike. No energy was returned to your step. But it was minor enough you didn't really notice a huge difference. I wondered if I'd been abducted by aliens and placed in an artificially all-natural (jumbo shrimp, military intelligence)environment like an extraterrestrial version of the San Diego zoo. Maybe I was being observed by these aliens, a foreign creature behaving naturally in its own environment. But somehow they couldn't replicate the terra ferma concept; it was authentic enough to keep my brain from acknowledging that I was no longer on Earth, but there was a subliminal warning that the ground wasn't cooperating with my footsteps as it should. That, and the beginning stages of frostbite as I tried unsuccessfully to dig through two feet of snow searching for a cache should have clued me in that I was somewhere un-earthly.
I made this trip last March, and the memories still stir a fascination in me that Fiji can't even conjure. As disparaging towards the state as I may seem, I returned last October, this time to Juneau, and I'm determined to visit at least one more Alaskan town before the passes expire. I'll be employing the services of my shrink friend any day now.
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