when you are a novice traveler, London feels like Papua New Guinea. Compounding this sensation in Anchorage was the fact that the only regular pollution is light pollution. Though “pollution” is a little harsh. Anchorage at night is “movie dark,” a perpetual dusk in which the cameras have to capture the actors’ faces even though it’s supposed to be midnight.
For the first time I understood why people come back from Alaska with fifty pictures of glaciers or return from a honeymoon in Tahiti with fifty pictures of the same sunset. The world is so beautiful in these places, it is impossible to register that there will be more, more, more. Surely this is it. Negotiate with your ailing camera battery. How can it not stay alive for this? How can you believe that twenty minutes from now there will be an even taller forest, an even wider waterfall? We are only as good as our most extreme experiences.
WHEN THE BRIDAL PARTY ARRIVED, WE WERE LESS of a “party” and more of a bunch of separate people flying in from different locations. Still, April insisted on making trip after trip to retrieve us from the airport, scoffing at the idea of taxi services. This gesture seemed saintly by New York standards. Until I realized that it’s generally warmer in one’s car than anywhere else and there is no real traffic in Anchorage. Even if there was, I wouldn’t have minded waiting. The Anchorage airport is a pleasant place to visit. While you can’t eat off the floor, you can drop your scarf on it without hesitating to wrap it back around your neck. Which is more than I can say for JFK. Plus, the Anchorage airport has a gift shop called “Moosellaneous.” And a fiber-optic starry night on the baggage-claim ceiling, which one finds particularly hypnotic after a long flight. As I came down one of the escalators, there was a person in a polar-bear plushy suit, wearing a Native American headdress on top and handing out flyers. As he wordlessly pointed me toward the exit, I thought, Where is David Lynch when you need him?
I was the last to arrive. When April and I walked through her front door, there were clear signs that merriment had gone on without me. Around her condo were scattered open greeting cards with miniature lace dresses glued to the covers, stained wineglasses, and slicks of soft cheese on a plate in the sink. Everyone was asleep, and all the beds were claimed. April showed me to my room, a cot in the laundry room with a sleeping bag unfurled on top. She reemerged with a second sleeping bag.
“Oh, I already have one.” I pointed to the cot.
“I know.” She also pointed to the cot.
A frigid blast came through a crack in the window and knocked the paper brides on their faces.
IT IS THE NEXT MORNING, AND JEFF HAS GRACIOUSLY agreed to spend his last day of bachelordom driving his fiancée and five of her girlfriends down the coast. Part of me thinks this is the least he can do, as all of us have flown past Canada to get here. This is a common observation among our group, a default fascination triggered by the sight of one’s breath or the glare of the sun at night: Dude, we’re above Canada.
The state of Alaska itself is like one big whale. Chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island exist like barnacles. They could detach from a glacier up north and no one would notice. During my time there, no fewer than three people explained to me that if you took the outline of Alaska and superimposed it over the continental United States, it would stretch across the country end to end. They must teach this in elementary school up there, because it had the same delivery I like to employ for “Well, you know, yellow’s a primary color” and “A tomato is actually a fruit.” It makes sense to imagine Alaska in this way, as a giant sheet of shadow pulled over our cities and hills. It is a dwarfing place. It manages to be both roughly lumbering and quietly graceful, light about twenty hours a
For the first time I understood why people come back from Alaska with fifty pictures of glaciers or return from a honeymoon in Tahiti with fifty pictures of the same sunset. The world is so beautiful in these places, it is impossible to register that there will be more, more, more. Surely this is it. Negotiate with your ailing camera battery. How can it not stay alive for this? How can you believe that twenty minutes from now there will be an even taller forest, an even wider waterfall? We are only as good as our most extreme experiences.
WHEN THE BRIDAL PARTY ARRIVED, WE WERE LESS of a “party” and more of a bunch of separate people flying in from different locations. Still, April insisted on making trip after trip to retrieve us from the airport, scoffing at the idea of taxi services. This gesture seemed saintly by New York standards. Until I realized that it’s generally warmer in one’s car than anywhere else and there is no real traffic in Anchorage. Even if there was, I wouldn’t have minded waiting. The Anchorage airport is a pleasant place to visit. While you can’t eat off the floor, you can drop your scarf on it without hesitating to wrap it back around your neck. Which is more than I can say for JFK. Plus, the Anchorage airport has a gift shop called “Moosellaneous.” And a fiber-optic starry night on the baggage-claim ceiling, which one finds particularly hypnotic after a long flight. As I came down one of the escalators, there was a person in a polar-bear plushy suit, wearing a Native American headdress on top and handing out flyers. As he wordlessly pointed me toward the exit, I thought, Where is David Lynch when you need him?
I was the last to arrive. When April and I walked through her front door, there were clear signs that merriment had gone on without me. Around her condo were scattered open greeting cards with miniature lace dresses glued to the covers, stained wineglasses, and slicks of soft cheese on a plate in the sink. Everyone was asleep, and all the beds were claimed. April showed me to my room, a cot in the laundry room with a sleeping bag unfurled on top. She reemerged with a second sleeping bag.
“Oh, I already have one.” I pointed to the cot.
“I know.” She also pointed to the cot.
A frigid blast came through a crack in the window and knocked the paper brides on their faces.
IT IS THE NEXT MORNING, AND JEFF HAS GRACIOUSLY agreed to spend his last day of bachelordom driving his fiancée and five of her girlfriends down the coast. Part of me thinks this is the least he can do, as all of us have flown past Canada to get here. This is a common observation among our group, a default fascination triggered by the sight of one’s breath or the glare of the sun at night: Dude, we’re above Canada.
The state of Alaska itself is like one big whale. Chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island exist like barnacles. They could detach from a glacier up north and no one would notice. During my time there, no fewer than three people explained to me that if you took the outline of Alaska and superimposed it over the continental United States, it would stretch across the country end to end. They must teach this in elementary school up there, because it had the same delivery I like to employ for “Well, you know, yellow’s a primary color” and “A tomato is actually a fruit.” It makes sense to imagine Alaska in this way, as a giant sheet of shadow pulled over our cities and hills. It is a dwarfing place. It manages to be both roughly lumbering and quietly graceful, light about twenty hours a
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