Anchorage, Pt. 4

Realizations:

Sled dog packs are made up of motley crews of skinny little yappers.



There are 71 teams that start in the Iditarod. They take off from the start line one at a time, two minutes apart. Which means listening to hundreds of skinny little yappers for hours on end.



It's not that cold, but it's pretty cold. My butt is the first thing to freeze, which is odd considering that's where I store most of my whale blubber. I thought that was supposed to keep one warm.



You didn't think I was going to show you a picture of my butt, did you?

I'm not sure how I feel about all this fur being sold, or these dogs, in their booties, in their little cages, taken out only to be mushed all around town on top of fake, trucked-in snow, pulling sleds filled with bundled-up dignitaries. I'm just not sure.

Anchorage, Pt. 3

A walking tour:



A shot of the inlet, which I mistakenly referred to as a "bay" earlier (oops). Not sure what's up with the glove. I took my hand out of my own mitten for 30 seconds to shoot this picture and nearly lost a finger to frostbite. That morning wind is no joke.



I don't think there's any sort of definitive architectural style in Anchorage. It's part Soviet-bloc, part Western frontier, part Scandinavian-modern. The Scandinavian parts remind me of my visits to Sweden, where everything is brightly colored and lit, presumably so that people don't go off the deep end during those endless winter months. All I can say is that if E. would let me put these awesome circles on our house, I would.



Who are these dudes? Why are they on the side of a building? One looks like a Star Trek captain; another like Ted Stevens. Weird.



A very, very good $5.00 lunch. Tomato noodle soup and handmade bread. And some good reading for after.



Followed by the most brilliant invention ever: drinking chocolate. This is not hot chocolate, nor is it hot fudge. It's kind of like both, but a thousand times better. Sweet Jesus in a cup.



And here's me, very happy in my new, bright red, extra-cozy hat.

Anchorage, Pt. 2

A friend called me the other day feeling worried and sad about everything going on in the world. "It's just so sad," she said. "I'm so worried about the world."

God, no kidding. I mean, the economy, poverty, disease, food, global warming, inept and corrupt politicians, and that's the short list. These earthquakes: Haiti, Chile, Taiwan. Some say the Oregon coast is next. The earth moves and moves.

I was watching Alaska TV last night (well, mostly I was watching this A&E reality show about catching fugitives, but during the commericals I would switch back to Alaska TV). Alaska TV is one of those schlocky chamber of commerce channels that gives you tours of local shops and restaurants and tour outfitters. In a weird bit of vintagey marketing, they also showed footage from the massive 1964 Good Friday earthquake, which quite literally ripped Anchorage to pieces.

Oh my, I thought. Wouldn't that be just the thing. For a minute, my departure Tuesday seemed very far away. Suddenly, my very tall hotel didn't seem so great.



"We're in a time of great shifts," my Nia teacher says. Another spiritual teacher reminds me and my fellow students, "Yes, there is great suffering in the world, and our hearts break with compassion and sorrow over it. But also, these are opportunities for great leaps in consciousness. There is never only the breaking."

It's hard to remember that when we are being swallowed by the earth, when our little ones have disappeared, when we are surrounded by collapse. But what else is there? What else is there but to climb out the wreckage, and then to turn back and help others climb out too, and to remember and live on?

From Colin Beavan's book No Impact Man (which is sooo good, really. I'd like to recommend it to you most heartily). At the end of the book, which is really a reflection on figuring out what matters, he writes about his Uncle Bing, who committed suicide, his brother David, who died in his crib, and his wife Michelle, who has suffered a miscarriage:

I understand now about Bing and David. Everyone loses Bing and David. Some people lose them at the beginning of their lives and some in the middle and some at the end. Some will lose their children and some their siblings. Michelle lost her unborn child at age thirty-nine. David stopped breathing in his crib when I was four. And you? And you? This it the root of my religious belief: we are not separate.

It's terrible and it's wonderful, but it's true: we're all in the same boat. That's the consolation. It's not just me who's scared and lonely and worried and isn't sure how to help myself. We don't know how to help ourselves, but there is one thing we do know how to do. We know how to help each other.

There is only one thing that makes sense, Pema [Chodron] said.

Can I help? Do I help?

Anchorage, Pt. 1

One of the sad, comforting things about traveling to major U.S. cities is that they feel a whole lot like one another. Sure, New York has the New York thing and D.C. is D.C. and Chicago, Chicago. But on every corner are the same big-box stores and the same locals rushing to work and the same tourists. Same same same. This makes it possible for me to board planes with nothing more than my boarding pass and a hotel address and know that when I touch down I'll have no problem getting where I'm going and everything will be quite predictable.

Not so true for Alaska.

The plane ride was different, for one thing. It was a rowdy, individualistic group, with men fighting the flight attendants over what could and could not go underneath the seats in front of them, and lots and lots of fancy camo-designed clothing and outdoor gear. Everyone looked slightly defensive, as if preparing for an onslaught. There were medical emergencies on both flights. And for both legs of the flight, I sat next to a very, very nice, loquacious older man who knew Sarah Palin's family very well and thought she was a "good girl" but felt mad as hell that she had abandoned Alaska the way she had. He later gave me a ride to my hotel room, which looks to be in the tallest building in the city.



You can see a humongous J.C. Penney from my hotel room, but you can also see (not visible in the picture above becaue of the morning fog) amazing views of magnificent mountains and ranges (including Denali and Chugatch), rising up like an admonition in the distance. The stores below are in high gear, selling Alaskan souvenirs and a lot of fur, for the ongoing Fur Rondy.

There's one thing most Alaskans I've talked to so far (and I've talked to a bunch, because they are in fact very friendly, and I've set my intention to get to know lots of new people here) agree on, and that's global warming. This is the last weekend of the Fur Rondy, a huge dogsled race and community fair of sorts that kicks off the Iditarod, which begins tomorrow. Usually there is a "start" for the race in downtown Anchorage, right below my hotel window, and then a "restart" outside of town in Wasilla or Willow, where the snow is more even and plentiful.

This year, as they have in recent years past, they are trucking in huge amounts of snow to the city for the start. Though it is cloudy and cold outside, and little flurries descend here and there, there is almost no accumulation here in Anchorage. At the beginning of March. I don't know Alaska, and I know not to conflate weather with climate. But the locals are pretty bothered by this particular fact, and they believe they see big changes, so I try also to listen to them and respect their memories.

The locals shake their heads at the bare ground, without shame or confusion or malice, and comment that this is the fact of global warming in Alaska. And then they continue to vote Republican, for all matter of other reasons, I guess, probably mostly having to do with energy politics and guns. It's pretty heartbreaking.

It's 8am now, and my coffee is almost gone, so I suppose I'll shower and head out in search of some food.