Full Circle

When I came to Alaska in 2005, it was because I got a job writing for the Wrangell Sentinel. That’s an easy explanation. I was in New York working at a temp job and looking for something permanent, so I applied for a job I found on craigslist and – poof – a month later I was in Alaska. Fast forward four years and I still don’t know if I’ve ever completely figured out for myself why I moved to Alaska.

Anyway, after two years of happy employment at the Sentinel, the public radio station in town asked me to work for them, and I said yes. All of a sudden, I was a public radio reporter – a job I would have never, in a thousand years, imagine I’d do. It was certainly a struggle getting adjusted, but more times than not, it’s the radio work that I’ve done that I feel most proud of. It allowed me to view storytelling in a completely different way, to appreciate sounds and voices, and to learn that there’s something else I can do well.

I left Wrangell and KSTK for half a year to pursue StoryCorps, an organization I’d wanted to work for since before living in Alaska was even a concept to me. My time above the Arctic Circle in Barrow is a blur to me, a dream. At the time, I may have described it more as a nightmare, but the distance and time have made Barrow and my experience with StoryCorps a lot rosier. When will I ever be able to say that I once lived in a town where polar bears roamed?

When I returned to Wrangell in May of this year, it wasn’t too long until I found my way back to the radio station, not to the same job, but to something similar. I became the part-time morning show host and even more part-time reporter. Essentially I’ve been working 12 hours a week at KSTK and trying to supplement that as much as I can by substituting at the schools. While it hasn’t amounted to a lot of work or income, it was enough.

But when Scott and I made the decision to volunteer independently in Tanzania for a year, my first thought was money – I needed to make more money while I still could. The reporter at the Sentinel had left town a week before Scott and I were offered the volunteer positions, and while I knew the paper was already interviewing people, I called up my old boss and asked if he’d like me to fill in during the interim. He said yes. Before I knew it was juggling the radio, the paper, and subbing, sometimes all within one workday.

So about a month before Scott and I are scheduled to depart Alaska, I find myself back at the paper, the job that brought me here to begin with. The new reporter for the Sentinel arrived yesterday from Colorado. I’ve been asked to help transition her in while also continuing to write. And it’s funny. Meeting her and answering her questions and just having her here brings back so many memories of when I first arrived. They keep pouring in – the memory of my first drive around town, the first morning I woke up in Alaska, the feeling of being completely open to everyone and everything while also feeling lonely and strange. I know it sounds lame and weird, partly because I don’t know this person at all, but I feel excited for her.