In Conclusion…
And suddenly, I’m home.
(Except not so suddenly anymore, as I’ve now been home for a few days. But the transition still seems sudden, waking up in Talkeetna one day, with things pretty much the same as they have been for the past five months, then waking up the next day in Denver, where everything is different from Talkeetna, and yet, everything is the same as when I left.)
I felt the need to somehow conclude this blog, because I started it to document my time in Alaska, which is over. But what happens to a blog like this? I suppose it’s obsolete now, but I imagine it will sit around for a while collecting dust, because I don’t really want to delete it.
I thought about shoving everything I felt I failed to cover thoroughly enough into this post. Things like how incredible Mt. Mickinley is, really, how massive and picturesque it always looks (when it’s visible, that is), how extra impressive it is because it seems to rise out of nothing - as if someone sheared one of the Rockies off at the bottom and dropped it somewhere in eastern Colorado, in the middle of the plains.
Or how nice the river looked when it was steaming, before it froze.
Or how nice the sunset was (like, midafternoon) on my drive down to Anchorage with my mom in late December.
So maybe this post is just becoming a repository for photos I intended to put up but never did.
Either way, now I’m home, wearing shorts, even though it’s not really quite warm enough for shorts yet. I sort of feel like my moving to Alaska for the winter was a bit like going on a road trip. You expect it to be sort of epic, to change you, to maybe help you become the person you want to be or could be or something like that. But then you do it, and change is imperceptible. Maybe I’ve changed, but I can’t tell, and I guess I wouldn’t really expect to be able to tell right away. I don’t really know why I went to Alaska, and I don’t really know what I’ve gained, but I don’t regret it at all. I don’t think I’ll ever run the Iditarod myself, but I’m glad to have the experience. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned about dogs and people and Alaska and how to stay warm. I’ve learned a lot about how to manage or not manage a business or employees, about communication and a lack thereof. And I’ve learned a lot of smaller harder to explain things, things that I hope will stay with me. And eventually, maybe, I’ll grasp the full magnitude of how this experience has affected me. Or maybe I never will, and that will be okay too.
Thanks for reading.
