Power of Words:
Joking about moving to Alaska got me there — Abracadabra!
Though adventurous, there are some things I am the last to try. Marriage, for example — not until age 38 or so. Unsure of the year, no idea of the date. Everyone else was married long ago. Once I’m finally there, I look around & notice many others getting off that ride. My wife & I, watching the trend, start joking that we need to divorce to grasp what our friends are experiencing. Well, sure enough, having been together a few years, certain problems refuse to go away & hell sets in; I start wanting out & find myself threatening to “leave & go to Alaska.” Yes, Alaska — just east of Siberia.
A neighbor planted the idea some years earlier. He’d lived there for 5 years spellbound by the beauty &, having enjoyed mushing teams of dogs, had come back to Atlanta with a dream of returning to Alaska to be the 1st African-American in the annual dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome — the legendary Iditarod.
Another friend had also talked glowingly of her life as a teacher in the native Alaskan village of Kotzebue, a tad above the Arctic Circle & just a stone’s throw across the Bering Strait from Russia.
I love nature & spend countless hours hiking, bouldering, caving, canoeing, photographing, & just being outdoors, so my friends’ accounts of Alaska have…
