Tag: Fairbanks

Beyond Alaska

birgitsarrimanolis7 Comments

Helen, my youngest child, sits at the kitchen table on a Sunday evening, college applications spread out, fan-like, in front of her.  She turns to look at me, doubt clouding over. “What if they don’t accept me?” She has worked on her personal essay for days now, reshaping, rephrasing, trying to convey in a mere 650 words to an admission board the worth of her life.

I want to smile and hug her.  Of course they will, I want to tell her. You have excelled in your classes and scored highly on the SAT test.  You will tell them your story and win them over in an interview. You are young and strong. The world is beckoning to you.

Soon it will be her turn to leave.  She is ready to go, to the Lower 48 States, not because she doesn’t love Alaska, but because of practicalities. Fairbanks has yielded to her everything it could. She has tapped into every academic resource that living in a small town on the edge of wilderness could offer.  Her competitive soccer playing has dwindled, as players “age out” and teams to play against grow scarcer, far away, in Wasilla or in Palmer or in Anchorage.  She is brimming for more, she explains.  Proximity to the urban bustle of some larger city.  The cultural enrichment of museums and musical performances.  The social amenities of shopping malls and clubs and restaurants. A college or university that will offer her fresh courses, diverse topics, a new challenge. The opportunity to live on her own, resourceful and independent.

I share her excitement, smiling at her exuberance, encouraging her to go.  At the same time, I swallow. When has time started to gallop so?

“I should tell them about Alaska, don’t you think?” she asks aloud, even though the essay she has written follows a different prompt.

I nod.  It is the place that shaped you.

A Last Frontier, but she and the other kids, growing up, didn’t really know what that meant.  It is something visitors to the Far North said, something that is etched onto the license plates of cars. For them, Alaska meant waiting at snowy school bus stops and sledding down steep driveways. It meant looking out for the northern lights on dark winter nights, whenever they remembered to do so.  In the summer months it meant campers parked on gravel bars, and fishing for salmon in swift rivers, and going to the Tanana Valley Fair.  It meant combing the hillsides for blueberries in the fall and walking with dogs through the boreal forest. The usual. A typical childhood for them.

This time next year, in the fall, she will be honing her own path, wherever she finds herself.  In time, perhaps, after the exuberance of cities and universities become commonplace and their novelty tapers, she will remember again the land she left behind, bountiful in landscape and wildlife and adventure, the place she had given little thought to while she was growing up in it.  One day she might, even, return north.

 

 

 

Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks, Alaska

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I was filled with nervous energy.  I had hardly slept the night before, checking the running gear I had laid out, again and again.  Moisture wicking layers, running tights, headphones, number bib, Stinger lemon wafers for fuel.  I had signed up to run the Equinox Marathon in its entirety this year, in an effort to raise funds for leukemia research with the Fairbanks Chapter of Team in Training. We had trained for the whole summer together, building up to our longer runs, supporting each other with every new milestone.  All of a sudden, I wondered about the sagacity of this decision.  Did I really have a marathon in these legs of mine?

On the morning of the race, September 21, fog hung low and a cold drizzle blanketed the starting line on the campus of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.  The atmosphere was charged, however, brimming with excitement that could not be dampened by the weather.  Runners wore gloves and headbands and rain repellent jackets over their running gear. These warriors were eager to take on one of the most challenging marathon courses of the world, a brutal course, mostly on trails and gravel roads, through woods, up Ester Dome with an elevation gain of 3,285 feet, along an “out and back” on the top, down a steep “chute” on the other side, then back to town.

When the sound of a cannon resounded, I was caught up in the start among hundreds of others, all charging up a steep hill that, a few weeks later, university students would sled down.  I was out of breath immediately.  I looked around for teammates in purple clothing, familiar faces. We were soon scattered apart in the crowd.  I would find them down the trail, I thought, as I headed into the woods.  We ran along muddy, softened, slippery trails, feet sliding, catching our balance, in the steady rain.  Roots and rocks were slick, ready to trip us.  It would be a hard course today. Where was the beautiful autumn day, birches turned crimson and yellow, sky bright blue, air dry and crisp, that I had hoped for?

Despite the dismal weather, bundled up spectators stood alongside, cheering, ready with “high fives” and encouraging hugs, braving the cold, and I was reminded again of the reason I love Fairbanks.  There were water stations every few miles, with volunteers handing us cups of water or Gatorade.  On the trail, tables were set up, offering beef jerky, salty snacks, coconut cookies, grapes, even beer.  We look out for each other.  Maybe it is what Alaska is all about.

Eight miles later, approaching the first relay changeover, I anxiously peered towards Ester Dome.  Its summit was shrouded in greyness, a premonition of the snow that had been predicted.  The climb up the dome is arduous even in the best of conditions.  Today, when we finally emerged from the woods onto the road that leads to the top, biting wind and sleet came at us at an angle.  Within moments, my layers were drenched, my fingers numb, my confidence bottomed out.  I hadn’t even made it to the halfway mark yet!

But then, just as I was seriously considering dropping out of the race, I made it to the Team in Training tent at the top.  There, amid coaches who helped me find dry socks and new layers, who offered hand warmers and hot water to drink, I felt bolstered again.  I would take on the “out and back”, that deceiving portion of the course that descends from the top, only to make us turn around and climb back up again.  I was encouraged by volunteers even there, near mile sixteen, huddled together at a water stop, next to a fire they had made to keep warm.

“You’ve got this!” they shouted.  “Just the chute.  It’s all downhill now!”.

I scrambled and slid down the steep descent, hoping to not break a leg in the process, trying not to think of the pain in my quads.  As I hobbled down the Alder trail, somewhat more level, with six miles to go, I channeled into my mind the mantra on our training jersey: “We don’t know how strong we are until being strong is the only choice we have.”

And I understood, suddenly, what this race was all about.  It was not about me.  It was about the camaraderie that the participants implicitly developed, all faced with the same challenges that day. It was about the volunteers that had come out to support us, despite mud and rain and sleet, shouting out our names, staying until the last of us had passed.  It was about the coaches, who gave their time over and over again to help us achieve our goal. I felt strong, then, knowing they had my back, that we were all in this together.  We had all defeated the weather.  We were stoic and determined and strong-willed.  And we would all cross that finish line.