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.
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.
Today I booked my hotel in Barrow, Alaska for the nights of December 19th, 20th, and the 21st. The woman on the phone sounded like she was from Alabama. When I asked her how Decembers were in Barrow she told me to “dress warm.” That’s literally the only advice she gave me. Not “Barrow has the lowest average temperature in the United States” or “There’s a 67% chance you will be greeted off the plane by the open jaws of a narwhal, just “Dress warm.”
When I booked the trip to Barrow the amount I would be spending there seemed horribly short — about three days — but the more I think about it it’s starting to sound like an eternity. For three days, I will not see the sun rise. When I go to sleep, it will be dark; when I wake up, it will be dark; when I eat lunch, it will be dark; when I have afternoon tea, it will be dark; when I have dinner, it will be dark; and when I go back to the Airport Inn where I’m staying to beat my head against the wall in desperation, it will be dark. It will be very interesting to see what kind of effect this darkness will have on me (though I think I touched on it). I already complain about there not being enough sunlight in Seattle, running to the quad every time there’s a few minutes of sun so I can soak up as much precious vitamin D as possible, so what will happen when this sun ceases to exist altogether? Will I survive?
I’m so excited for this trip to Barrow. I’m so excited to travel. I want to travel as much as possible for the rest of my days. This winter break it’s Barrow, and maybe also Southern California after Christmas and before New Years. Then I want to go somewhere in January, and also February. I’m thinking Vegas, Hawaii, or Nashville. Then for Spring Break I want to get fucking gnarly. I want to road trip through Northern Mexico or go to Mexico City or maybe the Deep South. Then in the summer I want to get even gnarlier. I want to go to Finland and Russia and maybe, like I’ve mentioned before, study French in Quebec. I also for some reason have a strong urge to go the Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, etc.). I think part of me is convinced I’ll meet Ellen Page in Nova Scotia and settle down with her and live a quiet yet extremely happy domesticated life in the far Northeastern reaches of Canada.
But anyway. The point is that I’m excited to travel. I’m excited for Barrow. I’m excited for winter. I’m excited for cold. I’m excited for it all.
This entry was written by , posted on December 9, 2009 at 3:02 am, filed under Alaska and tagged aeromexico, airport inn, Alaska, barrow, canada, el DF, ellen paige, mexico city, seviglius. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.