Four More Years

Today marks four years in Alaska.

I can't honestly say that I don't know where the four years have gone. Much has happened.

For example, this time has included a long list of firsts:
- camping (yes, I'd never ever been camping even once!)
- getting nearly run over by a train (nearly tragic)
- ice climbing
- kayaking
- fishing
- gutting and cleaning 70 fish in 3 hours (first and hopefully, last time)
- nearly drowning in a river (these things happen when one goes fishing)
- operating a lawnmower
- clamming
- driving my own car (long story)
- owning my own house
- owning and operating my own powerdrill
- having moose in my yard
- picking wild berries
- picking wild mushrooms
- surviving eating said wild berries and mushrooms
- biking 20 miles
- flying in a float plane
- seeing beluga whales
- eating and cooking wild alaskan salmon
- eating elk
- eating and cooking moose
- eating musk ox
- eating and cooking rabbit
- making bread from an Alaskan sourdough starter
- firing a shotgun (first and hopefully last)
- taiko drumming
- playing the banjo
- teaching cooking classes
- barbecuing on my own
- puffing cigars
- drinking whiskey

Like a long Oscar speech, this list can't possibly include everything because I don't remember everything. It's a hefty set of experiences, for which I am entirely grateful (with the exception of near-death experiences, although those were definitely moments for pause, too). But I am going to be honest.

Sometimes this state kicks my ass. For this reason, I've recently started referring to my favorite place as "this-sometimes-god-forsaken-state."

Well, it's true.

Life here is unparalleled, for better or for worse. The mountains in Alaska make me think I had never seen mountains before moving here. Every day, I stare out into the [currently] icy blue Cook Inlet, and it looks like the edge of both nowhere and forever, all at once. On clear days, I can see McKinley from my office. I have eaten the world's finest salmon and stood in awe in some of the most amazing national parks this country has to offer. I live in what I sometimes think is God's Best-Kept-Secret.

In short, this place has given me multiple Once-In-A-Lifetime-Experiences, one after the other.

At the same time, I am mindful of what I've lost - essentially a past life fostered in the lower 48. Childhood, college, law school - friends from yesteryear whose weddings have become too far to attend. Career choices. And family - the only daughter of a traditional Chinese family, the one who should still be living under her parents' roof, somehow found her way to the farthest reaches of the North - to the Last Frontier.

It is in this manner than sometimes Alaska kicks my ass. Nature here is as severe as it is breathtaking. I haven't, of course, even mentioned the long dark days of winter, the multiple-month stretch that is winter, or the nose-hair-freezing cold temperatures. The emotional cost is something deeper that strikes more at one's fundamental core. I suppose this depth also measures its worth.

For whatever reason, I have been unable to leave this place. I renew my residency like many people here - year by year, seeing how things go. Through these little increments, I've seen others build a lifetime, an eternity.

Perhaps another four more years will tell me if I will join them in eternity.

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