I miss Alaska

I've briefly touched on how much I miss living in Alaska in the last month or so, but realized that I haven't really given much reason as to why. Last night, as I was sifting through photos of the last year, I changed my Facebook status :

Karen misses Alaska. A lot.

To this I get a few replies, some from my Alaskan friends saying they miss me too. And one from my mother-in-law, whom is so terrified that I'm going to drag her son back to Alaska and never return. ((His parents and mine have the idea that we're someday soon going to move back to the Midwest--which is becoming less and less our ultimate goal.)) So I decided to finally think and write up the reasons why I miss Alaska.

1. The obvious : the familiarity of it all, knowing the back way to the store, and once I get there, I know exactly where to find the green curry paste and make a quick in-and-out for just one thing. My friends. All my running routes. My job. and the Fairbanks Community Band.

2. I miss having seasons. And anticipating that something new happening. February in Fairbanks was really exciting because the sun was up a full three more hours each day since the winter solstice. Here, the high temperatures vary from 50F in the winter to 60F in the summer. Great for running, but no real change at all. I need to settle somewhere permanently that has the full four seasons.

3. I miss drinking coffee to stay awake through the dark winter. I know I could drink it here regardless, but I miss the NEED to do it to function. I'd usually calm down my running schedule for the winter too, and I didn't this year, because I didn't HAVE TO. I think I really benefited from the lighter load to recharge my batteries. I miss the hibernation period where I sit inside and read books and crochet.

4. I miss the aurora. One night as Matt and I sat in our hot tub, looking up at the stars, a faint glow of light pollution from town snuck up from the horizon. I have to keep myself from doing a double-take, thinking it's the aurora. It never is.

5. The nearby hiking here sucks. Nearly all trails here are less than three miles. It's fine if I want an easy, day hike, but if I want to trail run, it's pretty much impossible unless I want the killer Headwaters Trail. Fairbanks had lots and lots of trail options that I became spoiled by the choices I had. Also, there were bike paths to run on, here it's only the slanted shoulder of the road. There are trails a full two hours away, but I'm talking more about the daily afternoon runs, where Matt doesn't have time to get off of work, drive, run, and drive some more before it gets dark.

6. If you can actually believe it, it's more expensive living here than it is in Fairbanks. And Matt gets no COLA (extra pay for high living costs) here. Our gas costs more and food does too. And people say that SFO is expensive, we make sure to fill up on our way out because Eureka is always about $.35/gal. more. WTF. And we thought Alaska gas was high.

7. I miss the open, miles and miles of driving through nothingness. Just me and the mountains. Nobody else there. Camping where I felt like it.

8. California has a lot of rules. Alaska pretty much operates following Darwin's ways, Natural Selection, mere guidelines of common sense to dictate what I can and can't do. Just weeds out the dummies. Here, I'm always afraid that exploring somewhere new and unmarked will get me arrested. It sucks.

9. I miss running in the winter, the crunch of frozen snow under foot. The running club has really great weekly races all winter (free ones!), to keep the runners motivated. We didn't ever run for time, but more to have someone else completely nuts to run with us. I miss having wild and crazy winter runners in my life. We ran in so many layers that I could recognize people by their outfit and voice. Come summer, I'd finally get to see their face.

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So the plan is to take a few years, get good and sick of running at full-throttle with four marathons a year, and then go settle somewhere new forever. Buy a treadmill, run outside when I feel like it, run inside when I don't.

I'm not saying that Alaska is definitely where I want to settle down, but I know that it's not crossed off the list. When we moved from Oklahoma, I was certain that it would be. When I moved from Michigan, I was about 90% certain it would be. But Alaska? a totally different story.