smalltown, alaska
Originally posted October 2018.
“Have you driven up West Creek Road lately, Josette?”
Always followed by a chuckle. Always followed by a wink.
It’s been months since I got my truck stuck in the snow near the top of West Creek outside Skagway, Alaska, and the whole town still gets a tickle or two from the debacle. Who can blame them; the phone tree circled around town two or three times that weekend, wrangling man- and machine-power to get my vehicle (plus the “rescue” truck and two ATVs that fell along the wayside) out of a sugar-crystal snowbank. But my 1995 Tacoma would probably still be buried out there if my co-worker hadn’t called her husband, who called his buddy, who happened to have an ATV and who knew a guy who had another truck we could use, and whose wife had just seen tow straps at the firehall. These folks had plenty of other things to do that weekend but spent it freezing off their extremities and shoveling snow. How often do you find that?
But sometimes, living in Smalltown, Alaska, can get the best of you. Once a week, food arrives on the barge. Shipped up from Seattle, most of the “fresh” food can be past its prime by the time it arrives. Milk and eggs are absent for the shelves for the three days prior to Barge Day, every week, without fail. Despite the fact that the grocery store knows how many people there will be in town every week, they’re undersupplied – or, in this week’s case, simply forget to order dry good because the manager was out of town. I can’t tell you the last time I saw yogurt, much less a mango, on the shelves.
The next closest grocery store? Canada. Two hours away. If someone makes a mistake here (forgets to order food, a ferry breaks down, all the volunteer firefighters turn off their pages for the night) it can be catastrophic. You can’t drive to the pharmacy in the next town over at midnight when your child is sick, because the next Alaskan town is six hours by car and crosses the Canadian border, twice. You can’t Grubhub your dinner when you’re ten miles out of town with no cell service or internet. You also just can’t Grubhub, period.
Welcome to Smalltown, Alaska. Sometimes it’s not pretty. Sometimes you’re trapped, hunkered down while the weather rips signs off of buildings and planes are grounded; when fifteen-foot seas and avalanches shut down both water and land routes, and there’s nowhere to go but your own house. Sometimes your Amazon package takes three days to arrive; sometimes, it takes three months. Sometimes the biggest news in town is the landslide that moved a cruise ship to a new port, and sometimes it’s the new lager at the bar. These are the challenges we try to embrace, but mostly just roll our eyes about. What else would you expect in a small town?
So why would we live here year-round, suffering through miserable weather with the same four hundred people who all leave from Thanksgiving to February 1? This is why: The dog and I strolled along the edge of the road last night, in the waning light of the only sun I’ve seen for two weeks. The last few weeks have been shrouded in fog and low-hanging clouds that serve as blankets between the mountains of the fjord, even in the heart of summer. As we walked, I waved to no less than five cars that zipped around the corner that turns State Street into the Klondike Highway. We also met up with two puppies from the same litter of a pup we snuggled for two weeks while her humans were out backpacking in the Arctic. I waved to three of my coworkers biking past me to dinner. We sauntered past houses where we knew all the residents and strolled past cars whose owners I know by face, if not by name. We meandered through short cuts down back alleys and under bridges to the park, where Champ ran up to his favorite tree and peed in the exact same place he always chooses. We waved to the other dog parents running their pups around by the gurgling river bank and tromped through trees that were just beginning to turn gold and auburn.
We walked into the grocery store, where I left Champ tied to the bike rack (a bold move) and made it to the second aisle with only three conversations about whether or not I’d stay the winter again. Or if I could dogsit someone’s pup. Or watch their house. I said yes to all three.
It’s amazing, the pride you can have for a place you didn’t realize you call home until you start to brag about it to other people. Skagway is the kind of place where people pay thousands of dollars to visit, as well as the kind of place where people trust each other. Unapologetically. Me saying I never lock my truck shocks most visitors, but I don’t even think about it.
Because it’s Smalltown, Alaska.
Don’t worry, I still have moments where I wonder if small-town life is truly a wise decision. Just 40 minutes ago, I drove past the bar where my boss was playing cornhole, and because he saw my truck, he called to ask me to drop off a lost-and-found item to one of the ships; four minutes ago, our other boss called to ask me if I was with one of our guides because he had just seen the two of us chatting in front of the grocery store. Work quite literally follows you everywhere. You’d think it’d be an easy task to be an introvert in a small Alaskan town, but it’s really not. You’re continuously surrounded by folks who not just know of you, but know exactly who are where you.
In small towns, everyone’s window is pointed right into everyone else’s life. Worth it? I think so. Being in everyone’s business lends itself to a sense of security, knowing that others will notice when your life is out of balance. I appreciate that.
This is Smalltown, Alaska, where relative strangers will lay down their afternoon to drag that truck from the mud or plan a benefit for an injured friend. This is a place where you can find surrogate families, priests, therapists, handymen, mechanics, or whoever you may need because we’ve all sacrificed to live in this remote town. We all yearn for the simplicity of a modern-day Mayberry. I just happened to find it in Alaska. (It helps that our Police Chief is a sassy Andy Griffith.)
Where you make camp says a lot, and means even more. It’s a monumental decision, choosing where to make your next home. I can’t say I’m ready to give up mine in Skagway quite yet. I like my Smalltown, Alaska.