You Know you Miss Fairbanks When (Kalamazoo)

November 2009

Written to NAEC from Kalamazoo, MI during my senior year of college

You know you miss Fairbanks when…

·       You find yourself the owner of a wardrobe capable of outfitting three people as “lumberjacks” for Halloween.

·       You still compare driving distances based on the Fairbanks to Anchorage commute.

·       You’re continually amazed when your electric stove lights without matches.

·       You chastise your housemates for failing to collect an adequate amount of berries to make it through the “long winter.”

·       You wake up in the middle of the night craving salmon.

·       You go skinny dipping and stay in for 20 minutes longer than everyone else because it is so much warmer than the river below Exit glacier.

·       You still wear “moose goggles” when walking in remotely wooded areas.

·       Your thesis advisor has to drag you inside the library to read with the rest of the student body after discovering you reading about ecofeminism on the frontier while bundled up lying on the ground to re-create proper context and increase your “cold tolerance.”

·       You tell people to get everything from a toothbrush to granola from Freddie’s and Value Village.

·       You read the Daily News Miner more than the required New York Times for your international politics class (as Sarah Palin reminds us, Alaska is practically in Russia).

·       You attempt to cover your room with logs, fireweed, and Mary Shields’ calendar and burn Sitka spruce candles

·       You amazingly still have frozen cranberries savored away in the freezer under three pounds of “not communal..do not eat!” warning tape.

·       You find mentions of “Eskimos living in igloos” irrationally upsetting.

·       You actually miss the sound of howling dog teams at night, and fill the void with enough Robin Dale Ford and Barefoot Bluegrass to drive your housemates insane.

·       You have weekly sauna dates with the two other Alaska-philes just to be around a structure made of wood.

·       You find yourself strangely attracted to port-a-pottys over normal toilets.

·       Everything seems just a little bit smaller.