Slice of Good Ol Boy Life

“Cool story buddy, but I think you got it backwards.”

Zac had made the trek across the border too — the other way.

“Plenty of older Americans do too…my folks included,” he told me. “Prices for medications in the States is ridiculous.”

The scene had shifted north to Alaska as Zac and I shared stories of our adventures prior to arriving in the land of the midnight sun. We were bunkmates inside a canvas-walled cabin nestled along the banks of the Kenai River. It was early May and there was still patches of snow clumped along the roadside and atop the mountains.

We were there to help open a fishing lodge, both serving as base camp drivers. With David’s blessing, I signed a four-month contract to work the summer season in the tiny town of Cooper Landing on the Kenai Peninsula, about a two hour drive south of Anchorage.

I was excited about the gig, recalling how much fun the summers in the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone had been. Previously, Zac and I worked together in Glacier National Park and he recently spent some time driving big tanker trucks around Oregon and northern California, while I toiled away in the warehouse of smiles.

Zac prepared me for Alaska’s cold conditions, advising I invest in a good insulated sleeping bag. That recommendation turned into a life saver as the temperature dropped to 33 degrees on our first night in the cabin.

“How’d you sleep, John?” one of the guys asked the next morning at the employee mess hall. “Nice and toasty,” I replied. Yes, I was pretty much the meat of a sleeping bag sandwich. Sort of like a nice toasty BLT…or was it LGBT? Heh. All jokes aside, I’m not quite sure I understood the living arrangements when signing up for this gig. Housing was indeed free — but it was outside.

Most of the workers were college aged or recent graduates. Some came here to study the environment, others to celebrate their freedom far away from home. The story of Christopher McCandless — from the nonfiction book and film, Into the Wild, was bandied about from time to time. Ironically, my resemblence to McCandless was one of the last messages I got from Will, a former editor and loyal friend from my days at the Panama City newspaper.

“It’s remarkable how much you look like that guy,” he wrote in one of his last Facebook messages to me. Will died a few years ago from brain cancer. Taken way too early. His death shook me and I miss him a lot.

In some ways, my story was similar to McCandless in that I did not have a clear exit strategy. There were a lot of “returnees” at the lodge. Alaska needs workers for its busy summer season when tourists arrive en mass to gasp at the glaciers, hook a salmon and bask in the long daylight hours of this beautiful state.

Zac had been up here before, working out of Denali. While he didn’t let on, I’m pretty sure he was amused at my naivete of the Alaskan experience.

“Let’s go see Nome,” I gleefully proposed.

“That’ll be a long drive,” he said.

Little did I know, Nome was not accessible by car — only by air, sea or dogsled.

That’s the great thing about traveling and learning new customs, cultures and ways of living. In Alaska, I would come to find out, in order to survive year-round here, one must adapt to communal — dare I say, tribal — living. That lifestyle, not the cold, would be my biggest challenge.