I didn’t see a polar bear. And I didn’t see the northern lights. Actually, that’s not true: on Alaska Airlines flight 52 from Barrow to Fairbanks I saw a thin band of glowing light out the window somewhere around Anaktuvak Pass that I think were the northern lights, albeit in a muted form. I am back in Seattle now. It is warm. I can go outside and pee on things and my wiener will not fall off. Praise Jesus.
Some photos from my last day in Barrow:
Home away from home, sweet home.
View from in front of the Airport Inn facing south.
Air conditioning.
Hypothermia ain’t shit when you got myrrh.
You know when you go to go down the slide and you realize your ass cheeks are literally frozen together? Special feeling.
Chukchi Sea. Miles and miles of desolate wasteland.
A few minutes with the ice scraper and she should be good to drive.
Frozen Chukchi bluffs.
This entry was written by , posted on December 23, 2009 at 8:18 pm, filed under Alaska, Chipotle, Ravenna, alcohol and tagged ak, Alaska, barrow, norther lights. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
So I come to Barrow wanting to see the northern lights. It wasn’t the only reason I came to Barrow, but It was something I really wanted to see. It’s cloudy the first two days, so obviously I’m not going to see them. You can’t see the northern lights in the clouds, just like you can’t see a meteor shower in the clouds. On the last day — the day I’m leaving — I get a break: it’s clear outside. Crystal fucking clear. Not a cloud in the sky. A perfect crescent moon, the big dipper, the whole astrological nine yards. There’s only one problem: my flight leaves at 8:11pm, and the northern lights are best seen at night.
I talk to the woman who runs the hotel where I’m staying, and this is what she tells me: “To see the northern lights best, it’s best to get out of town a bit, away from the lights.” She goes on: “Where we used to live by the beach we’d see ‘em all the time. Just down the road.”
“You mean by Osaka?” I ask, mentioning a restaurant that’s on the beach.
“Exactly,” she says. “Right around there.”
“What time did you usually see them? Because my flight leaves at 8:11pm.”
“Well, I remember looking out the window and seeing them pretty much every night when it was clear, but I don’t remember ever seeing them before about 8 or 9 o’clock.”
(Mark reflects on the bitter irony of the situation and jabs a steak knife into his heart, not unlike the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith*)
But all is not lost! “I’ve seen them from the plane, too,” she mentions casually. Of course! From the fucking plane! What better way to see a natural phenomenon that occurs in the sky than from the fucking sky itself? Which means there’s still hope.
“Well, even if I don’t see them here,” I say, “There’s still Fairbanks.”
“Actually, Fairbanks is the best place to see them,” she says. “When people come to Alaska looking for the northern lights, that’s usually where they go. It’s the best place to see them. The colors are brilliant.”
So there you have it. Sometimes this is how it works with traveling. Sometimes you wait and wait to see something, and then at the last minute it finally shows its face. Show your face, Aurora Borealis!
*This line is directly stolen from Chuck Klosterman
This entry was written by , posted on December 22, 2009 at 10:27 pm, filed under Alaska and tagged airport inn, ak, Alaska, barrow, chuck klosterman, killing yourself to live, northern lights. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Before it was easier. It’s easier to skulk when it’s almost pitch dark outside all day. But now it’s bright outside. It feels like there’s almost daylight. How can I skulk and be unhappy now? I’m forced to go outside and enjoy this shit, be happy about being alive. And plus I have to pee like mad and the toilet is clogged because I hate about six slices too many of greasy-ass Arctic Pizza last night. So I’ll have to go pee outside because I’m too embarrassed to ask for a plunger. But hey, it’s light outside, so I’m happy, right?
This entry was written by , posted on at 5:00 pm, filed under Alaska and tagged ak, Alaska, barrow. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
It is amazing what a little bit of almost daylight can do for the soul. Today is the first clear day since I’ve been here in Barrow. You can see the stars. You can see actual clouds in the sky. You can see a perpetual sunrise/sunset/absence of sun if you look towards the horizon.
Another thing that’s doing wonders for my soul is the fact that I’m leaving today. Any semi-shitty situation can be overcome when you know it’s going to be over soon. But before it’s over I hope one thing happens: I hope the northern lights come out. If there was going to be one day today is it, and I hope that the fact that my flight leaves for Fairbanks at 8:11pm doesn’t mean I’ll be leaving too early to see them. I was blown away when I walked outside this morning and realized it was clear outside. I knew it seemed brighter than normal. And then I pranced all over the city taking pictures and happily kicking snowdrifts, and I almost felt bad that I was so excited to be getting out of Barrow. I thought to myself, “Shit, too bad I’m not staying another night — I’d probably definitely get to see the northern lights if I stayed here through the night.” But then I thought, “Fuck that.”
The Barrow airfield as the sun inches towards the bottom of the horizon, only to shyly retreat before it ever gets there.
Roof of the Barrow Distribution Center, purveyor of alcohol and jolly times.
I wish so badly that this photo was in focus. Maybe I should consider acquiring a tripod.
I don’t know what happened here, but it’s rad.
Frozen power lines and an elevated view of the city.
Gnarler.
The King Eider Inn. I am not staying here.
The Barrow airfield.
This entry was written by , posted on at 4:39 pm, filed under Alaska and tagged ak, Alaska, alaska airlines, arctic pizza, barrow, barrow distribution center, osaka, pepe's, polar bears, whalers. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Well, here’s the deal: It was fucking disappointing. I walked all over town trying to find a suitable place to pee on a frozen chain link fence, and then when I finally did it two cars still managed to drive past, one of which was a guy delivering pizza to the very hotel where I’m staying (he’s swinging by a medium pepperoni later).
Here’s the thing: the pee didn’t do anything special. I don’t know i thought it would do, but I at least expected it would do something a little more extreme than the snow and frozen things I’ve peed on in the past. But why should it? When I lived in Minnesota, it regularly got this cold, especially with windchill. And I used to pee on things all the time. When you’re a kid, making yellow snow in extremely cold temperatures is one of the most satisfying things you can do. You’re entranced as the steaming hot liquid that was just in your body cuts through the icy snow like a diamond blade cutting through a hunk of soap stone. As an adult, it’s slightly less satisfying. Slightly. We adults seem to enjoy more “intellectual” pursuits, like golf and CNN. Basically, when you become an adult, life gets fucking boring, so it’s your job to do random shit to make it more fun, even if that random shit is often slightly immature and slightly embarrassing. Which is why, tomorrow, I’m going to poop in the middle of the road.
I invite those of you who think I’m lying to buy a ticket up to Barrow, Alaska, for tomorrow and meet me at the intersection of Ahkovak and Okpik streets at 11am. Afterward we can go to Pepe’s. Actually, maybe we should go to Pepe’s beforehand…
This entry was written by , posted on December 21, 2009 at 11:08 pm, filed under Alaska and tagged Alaska, barrow, pepe's north of the border. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Written last night:
Tonight is no night to be walking around Barrow, Alaska. Tonight is cold. Windy and cold. I just walked back from Pepe’s North of the Border Mexican food and the only part of me that was exposed was the area just around my eyes, and that area felt like it was about to fall off by the time I got back to the hotel. It stung, and I was briefly afraid my corneas might freeze.
Pepe’s was, well, an experience. I’m convinced they have two seating areas: one for locals, and one for tourists. I was in a room that looked like it doubled as a storage area but that also had a nice warm fire place and plenty of bull fighters and other typical “Mexican” decor to give it a lively atmosphere. My server was interesting. He sort of reminded me of the guy from the Scary Movie movies who sticks his fingers in the food. He was lanky and wiry with ear-length hair and a red sweatshirt that said something to the effect of, “My doctor recommended I walk a mile a day for exercise. Looks like I need to get another doctor.”
I ordered a beef burrito doused in chili and cheese with a side of sour cream that tasted like it was about two months expired. All around the bottom of the burrito was an 1/8th of an inch layer of grease that gave the whole meal the desired “gut bomb” effect you want when eating “traditional” Mexican cuisine. It was good, though. Don’t want to knock it too hard. I wanted a hearty, filling burrito and that’s exactly what I got. It cost $15.50.
My waiter, the dude with the sweatshirt, told me he was from Auburn but that he hadn’t been back there since the Kingdome got built. I asked him why he came to Barrow and he gave me a response that he was obviously sick of repeating, “Came up here in 1975 wanting to see an igloo and a polar bear. Plane got fogged in and I never left.”
He mentioned somewhat innocuously that a bear and her cubs was sighted yesterday out by the football field four miles down the road. This piqued my interest. He said often times when the wind is blowing out towards the ocean they smell food and come wandering in close to town. Apparently a few years back one actually came INTO town and wandered through the parking lot near the restaurant and walked by a bunch of guys off-loading freight. I guess this is maybe why people don’t walk around. Either that or because it’s fucking freezing.
We also talked about alcohol. He explained to me that Barrow is neither a wet or damp or dry town, but a “restricted” town where you need a personal permit, kind of like a drivers’ license, to be able to buy alcohol. To get one of these you need to live here and you can only use it to buy and consume alcohol yourself; you can’t buy for other people even if they’re 21. Once you have one of these you can go down to the Barrow Distribution Center and buy alcohol that’s been shipped in from Fairbanks for your own personal use. You have to pay taxes and freight and probably a bunch of other fees that make it more or less prohibitively expensive.
It was good to get out tonight and have some human interaction, albeit with a dude that scared me. There’s only so much I can take of sitting in this chair watching Dexter and listening to music. Tomorrow is another day in Barrow, another day of splendor. Maybe I’ll see a polar bear. Or maybe I’ll see a polar bear drinking Jack Daniels. With a permit, of course.
Update: So far it HAS been another day of splendor. Today I walked to the grocery store and the wind was blowing so hard into my face across the frozen lake where I was walking that my right actually almost froze shut. It was fucking terrifying. I stopped in the post office for refuge after I got across the lake even though there was absolutely nothing I needed to do in the post office.
Have I mentioned, people, that it’s cold here?
This entry was written by , posted on at 7:25 pm, filed under Alaska, alcohol and tagged Alaska, alcohol, barrow, barrow distribution center, jack daniels, north slope, polar bears. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Disclaimer: Cooped up in my hotel room all day with total darkness outside I’m sort of starting to go out of my mind, and it’s affecting my ability to write in an engaging manner. If you don’t want to slog through a bunch of mediocre anecdotes about me not being able to buy a tooth brush I suggest you just skip to the last paragraph, which contains all I really wanted to say in the first place.
I’ve done a lot today. I started by forcing myself out of bed just before 9am despite the fact that it was still dark outside and I felt like I could’ve slept for another three years. It’s always dark in Barrow (Side note: I’m actually sort of lying here: from about 12pm to 2pm today it was sort of bright outside, kind of what it’s like just after sunset in Seattle, and I was fucking ecstatic), and I’m just going to have to accept this. Then I ate a standard continental breakfast of poppy-seed muffin bread and Raisin Bran, and got ready to seize the day.
Seizing the day in Barrow requires, if you don’t have a car, putting on about 15-20 layers. After donning my down jacket and a complimentary layer of chain mail just in case I ran into a polar bear or a dragon, I made my way over to the Alaska Airlines terminal where I asked if I might be able to get off this desolate stretch of snowy rock a day earlier than scheduled and not have to stop in Fairbanks on the way home (the only other time I’ve been to Fairbanks my friends from my summer job in Cooper Landing and I spent a good portion of the time drinking lukewarm beers in a Fred Meyer parking lot and talking about which of our mildly attractive coworkers we wanted to bang). But it wasn’t happening; I’m not getting out of here any earlier, and I WILL have to go through Fairbanks. After the airport, determined to make the best of my time here (I did come here by choice, after all) I danced for five minutes to the song “Mundian to Bach Ke” in my hotel room by myself. Then I tried to watch another episode of Dexter, cooked a Banquet chicken nugget and macaroni dinner, and went for another walk.
On this second walk I was much more determined to get to an actual destination, and this actual destination was Arctic Grocery, which was closed. At Arctic grocery I hoped to purchase a tooth brush (which I forget 75 percent of the time I travel) and some accompanying tooth paste. On the way back I was picked up by an elderly man who was born in Barrow and has more or less lived here his whole life. He was seemed somewhat perplexed by the fact that I was walking. Since I arrived here I’ve seen very few people walking the streets. It’s almost like the people of Barrow don’t want anyone to walk, but as I have no car and no snowmobile, there’s not much choice.
(Side paragraph: Speaking of walking, yesterday I spent 15 dollars yesterday on a jug of orange juice. I thought it cost seven dollars but didn’t notice I was wrong until after I had already walked the mile-and-a-half back to my hotel room in -15 degree weather. I should have realized that something was off when the cashier rang me up and my order [which consisted of almost nothing apart from the OJ] cost just under 30 dollars. However, I rarely question the price a cashier quotes me, and this time was no different. When I later told my friend Jasmine about the mistake she said, “That’s going to be the best orange juice you’ve ever had in your life.” And you know what? She was fucking right).
But how IS Barrow? you may wonder. Barrow is exotic. Along with Cuba and Morocco, it’s probably in the top three most exotic places I’ve ever been in my life. This is because it’s different. It’s isolated. It’s dark. It’s cold. When you walk the streets you get the feeling that no one else lives in this town, save the occasional whine of a snowmobile in the distance. Then all of the sudden you walk through a door, and you’re sitting in a restaurant just like anywhere else in America, except for the fact that you feel like you don’t really belong there and most of all, like the restaurant itself somehow doesn’t belong there. It’s like Barrow exists in some sort of parallel universe where people come when they want to get away from the real version of the universe, and what they have constructed here to resemble the real version of the universe is almost convincing, but there’s something not quite right that you just can’t put your finger on. At first this, along with the fact that I got chased by a dog on the walk to my hotel from the airport, was kind of freaking me out. More than anything it was the lack of people in the streets, and the fact that everything here is literally frozen, caked with a kind of snow that looks like the frosting traditionally put on ginger snaps. But now that I’ve been here a little bit, and had some (semi) actual conversations with actual people, I’m a little less freaked out. It is a different place, but it’s 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle, so it’s bound to be a different place. And, after all, I came here looking for something different. Something unique. So if I need to get bit by a dog or wrestle a polar bear or pay 15 dollars for some juice, so be it.
This entry was written by , posted on December 20, 2009 at 10:09 pm, filed under Alaska, Travels and tagged airport inn, Alaska, alaska airlines, barrow, north slope, pepe's north of the border, things to do in barrow. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
When I have a layover in a airport, I almost never leave the terminal due to the hassle of having to go through security again and a sinking fear that for some insane reason they won’t let me back in. “Excuse me, Sir, but you already went through security back in Seattle. You can’t go through it again. You’re going to have to stay here in Anchorage for the rest of your life and get married to a moose.”
But today I left the terminal, and it was glorious. Zero degrees Fahrenheit glorious. I haven’t felt this kind of cold since I lived in Minnesota, when after swimming at the local pool my hair would freeze before even getting back to the car. Here I blew my nose and a few seconds later felt the snot was frozen in my beard. If it wasn’t for the down Holden jacket my friend Pete so generously loaned me I would most surely be dead in the parking lot right now. This is not a joke. Tomorrow the front page of the Anchorage Daily News would read, “Stupid-ass tourist dead in parking lot for being an idiot.” It’s fucking cold here.
Snow nipple
Well, one more flight and I’m in Barrow. I have already braved the zero degree weather here in Anchorage, so I’m now more confident I’ll survive the two block walk from the airport to my hotel. I’m not sure about the darkness, though. I’m really not sure about the darkness. I’m surprised by how light it is in Anchorage right now. Except for all the snow on the ground this could easily be Seattle. I assumed after working this summer in Cooper Landing that it would get as dark during the winter as it was light in the summer, i.e, perpetually hover between darkness and a sort of penumbral gloom. This, I am glad to note, is not the case. Things are happy here in Anchorage. Cold, but happy. The light is stronger than the dark.
Puffy Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on December 19, 2009 at 5:20 pm, filed under Alaska, Travels and tagged anchorage, barrow, freezing, holden outerwear, party, ted stevens. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
It’s good to be humbled when you travel. Unless you’re a complete asshole, it’s hard not to be. Wherever you go, not matter how remote, no matter how exotic, no matter how “oh my God, we were totally, like, the only white people there” “crazy”, these are places where people have lived their entire lives, and in most cases, where people have lived their entire lives for thousands of years. Unless you’re huddled amongst a troupe of emperor penguins in Antarctica or dining on mollusks at the bottom of Lake Baikal, you’re really not that special. People have done what you’re doing before, and people will do what you’re doing after you.
A few minutes ago here in the Seattle airport a husband and wife walked by wearing “Ukpeagvik Wrestling” and “Barrow Whalers” sweatshirts. This instantly humbled me and infuriated me. Firstly, I thought I was the only one going to Barrow. I thought I was special. Secondly, I thought this was a big deal. I thought this was a desolate, foreboding place where only the strongest of the strong survive. A place where you need to be able to kill a polar bear with a jackknife in order to keep yourself from becoming lunch. A place where the sure footing to dodge a deranged musk ox might be the only thing between you and death.
Now I feel sort of like I’m going to a girls U-12 soccer tournament in Issaquah.
HOWEVER, there is something that will always remain special no matter how many people have gone to a place before you. Unless you’re taking body shots off the stomach of an emaciated sorority girl in Cabo San Lucas (and hell, EVEN if you’re taking body shots of the stomach of an emaciated sorority girl in Cabo San Lucas) the way you experience any given destination will always be special. Sure, people have seen what you’ve seen and done what you’ve done before, but no one has seen it exactly the way you saw it, or felt exactly the way you felt. And no one will feel exactly the way you felt ever again.
So, as I sit here and try to figure out how the hell I can conclude this little reflection with some kind of profound summary statement, I’m struck by the reality that my flight to Anchorage leaves in less than 20 minutes, and I really need to get moving.
Barrow!!!
This entry was written by , posted on at 10:43 am, filed under Alaska, Travels and tagged Alaska, barrow, north slope, prudhoe bay, traveling. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Poster: Seviglius
Photo: G. Miller
This entry was written by , posted on December 13, 2009 at 2:22 am, filed under Alaska. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.