Alyssa in Alaska

Hi it's me,

I've been iced into my cabin from winter rains turning to mirror-slick ice on the roadways. Most everyone has been cleared out, but my road is one of the last holdouts until it can be graveled and sanded and made passable again.

That being said, I've had a LOT of free time at home this week.

I live in a dry cabin here in the interior. It's a pretty common way of living in Alaska, and you can find and build them with all different levels of amenities. Some are powered by generator and heated by woodstove, some are on the electrical grid but not wired for internet, and some are just bare bones, woodstove heat, no electric or water.

Mine is pretty luxurious comparatively. I'm not "roughing it" by any means. I have electricity and an oil-drip heater, so I don't have to keep a constant fire going. I have 3 pets, so I want to be sure my house is always warm when I'm not there, and if I'm away from home for awhile, I want to know all my things didn't freeze. -30 is not a good temperature for most electronics.

It's a two-story cabin with a full kitchen, a living room, a loft bedroom space, and a front room that I use as a gear room, dog room, and extra closet. The only thing missing is running water!

I use an outhouse beside my cabin to use the restroom, and really it's not as bad as you'd imagine. The "seat" is foam insulation, so your bootybutt doesn't get cold. You're warmed a second time when you burn your toilet paper in the burn bucket (I know. I know. I was horrified too. But it's kind of nice.).

For cooking, cleaning, drinking, and pets, I haul 14gal of water in 7gal jugs from town. It typically lasts me a week to two weeks unless I try to get funky and do laundry or something. We have these water fill stations that operate like gas pumps, except water comes out. It's something like 3c a gallon. Last winter I had two 5gal jugs-- I had to fill more but they were much more manageable for my weak little arms.

The shower situation is definitely one of the bigger adjustments to dry cabin living. There's a singular public shower about 3mi from my house at the general store, where there's also a laundromat, a weed dispensary, and a bar. What more could you need? Despite the local amenities, I normally drive into town and shower at a very kind friend's place.

Dishes in a dry cabin are the absolute bane of my existence. Never in my life will I complain about emptying the dishwasher ever again. Everyone has a different system; I normally use a two-basin approach-- one with hot, soapy water, and the other with clean water for rinsing. When the clean water gets too soapy, I dump the first basin and fill it with clear water and swap them. It takes forever and my motivation to take care of my dishes is usually gone before I even get the water warmed up on the stove. The process irks me.

Laundry is kind of fun. I take my big items to the laundromat, but a friend of mine generously gifted me a "camper washing machine" this summer that has changed the game for me. I use it for the bottom layer of my clothes that have to be washed more often-- base layers, socks, and undies. It does use a few gallons of water so I have to be prepared for that, but one compartment washes and the other spins the clothes "dry." Obviously they don't come out of there like the Arizona desert, but I am impressed with how dry they get and simply hang everything near my heater until it dries. Last winter I had to go to the laundromat once a week.

Hi, it's me.

My name is Alyssa and I don't know why I'm making this. Maybe to keep myself honest, or check back on my progress, or stay motivated or retain some memory or something. If you're reading this, you're probably either me in the future or my mom. Hey ladies.

Anyway, I moved to Southeast Alaska from North Carolina about two years ago. I got here with the intention of getting into seasonal work for a few months while I got away from a nasty relationship and figured myself out again. I had become a way-too-skinny helpless stranger to myself and sitting behind a desk wasn't really helping me untangle any of that. I was a crunchy little sad shell of who I used to be and I didn't like her at all. Honestly, she was an idiot anyway.

I knew when I was a kid I wouldn't thrive at a desk job. I used to announce that I would "never work at a desk," but whatever I hoped to do instead changed by the day. I abandoned that little girl ideology for awhile, but I'm happy to share that she's back and more obstinate than ever. The fiery little Junie B. Jones girl in me has the wheel once again. God help us all.

I did the whole "thing" you're supposed to do-- went to school, graduated on time-ish, rented my own place, got a big girl job and set to work typing my big girl emails. And then I typed more. And more. And eventually every day I would come to work, chip away at my emails, give some tours, and go home. Sometimes I'd get to do it from home, what a treat. Emails from the comfort of my living room until my (now ex)boyfriend moved in and then I was relegated to emails from my bedroom. I lived paycheck to paycheck supporting us both, even for awhile after we broke up, and I moved that man out of my house by myself (his shoulder was broken, wah) on the day that my grandmother died. He borrowed his other girlfriend's car to pick his stuff up and didn't bother taking out any of hers before letting me load up his. "This is my boss's car, I swear" (it was not.) Everything was like that. No wound unsalted.

While I wish that would've been the end to that nightmare, it, at the very least, served as a good motivator to work on getting both the hell and the fuck out of there. It took me a couple of months, but i finally balls'd up and started interviewing for seasonal work around the country. My first job in Alaska told me I could bring my dog and wouldn't have a roommate. Easy sell for me. I accepted the job a week and a half before starting, gave my almost two-weeks notice, moved out of my apartment, and came to Alaska with nothing but a single suitcase, a backpack, and my Labrador in a crate. Fuck it.

It's been almost two years now, and hell yeah to that. A couple of months into my summer job, I started applying to winter work. The first job I was offered was to coordinate tours for a dogsled kennel in the interior. Winter in Interior Alaska, why not.

I loved it, I took up cross country skiing, I learned how to drive in the snow and then how to drive a dog team, why not.

I've found that people have so much more grit here. They are so much more capable and self sufficient and live in stark contrast to the culture of abundance and over-convenience I came from. I realized I don't know anything about anything, actually, and I'd like to become much more self sufficient, especially in light of our current political climate. I'd like to homestead one day and I'll need to learn a ton of new skills before I can.

I used to think there was a lot I just wasn't capable of. Stuff I didn't understand and that nobody was going to teach me. But when I first came to Alaska I found a totally different perspective of women. I met the first man in my life who ever assumed that I was capable of something. He invited me along to chop wood with him and I brought a book, thinking I was just there for good company. Ha. Back home, I've seen men raise their eyebrows at me upon learning I could drive a side by side down a flat dirt trail or build a fire (even literally with a lighter). To say my book stayed in the truck is an understatement. This man handed me a pair of earplugs and a fucking CHAINSAW. "I don't know how to use a chainsaw," "Yeah, I'm going to teach you."

This is not a love story about the chainsaw boy. It's a love story about me and my own damn self. I chainsawed my little heart out, and when I was handed an axe to break up the rounds we'd just made, I chopped my little heart out too. We stayed at it for hours. I didn't complain but I didn't move fast either. I couldn't even walk the next day. It was the first time anyone ever assumed I could before they assumed I couldn't. I believed him and then proved him right, and myself wrong. It was earth-shattering to me to remember that whatever I don't know how to do, I can just learn. I know that sounds so dumb. But at that point in my life, I really believed I wasn't capable of much at all.

Now, all that is to say that I'm on a mission. I want to learn as much as I can and become as self-sufficient as I can become. Politically, this country is pretty fucking scary right now and I'd like to be reliant on less conveniences. I want to learn how to grow my own food. Raise chickens. Maintain a property. Buy a 4-Wheeler. Do I want to give up my Nespresso? No, not at all, and I don't plan to. And if you told my dad that I was going to learn all of this as an act of resistance or in pursuit of proving men wrong one day, he'd probably tell you that's the only reason I do anything. Maybe that's true.

There's somewhere between Manicured Nespresso Lover and Barefoot Crunchy Witch Woman that I want to land in. I don't want to be alt-anything, I believe in vaccines and science and getting shit done yourself if you can, and if you're qualified. I also believe that in this country, right now, it can't hurt to be skilled and self sufficient.

I'm renting a dry cabin (no running water, outhouse girlie!) in a pretty populated area, so there is certainly a limit to the projects I can take on, but someday I'll have the land to fuck shit up much worse, so I have plenty of time to nail down some basics. After all, I just learned how to check my heating oil levels in my house and that felt like some pretty big stuff to me. Baby steps.