Moving to Alaska

[Shish-kabob-Forrest]

MOVING TO ALASKA

As requested i am telling my story of my move back up to Alaska.

ALASKA IN THE PAST.
I was born somewhat nomadic. That is to say my family happened to be moving allot at the time. To make a long story short, my uncle died shortly after i was born and my grandfather took a job with the phone company, setting up the power grid in Alaska. My parents were invited to come along and they accepted. Believenit or not, i have a random memory. Somethings disappear immediately, other memories remain pristine my entire life. So i still remember some things from this early on as if they only happened a month or year ago. This includes being at the hospital in California in child care while my mother went to see her brother for the last time. But my memories interestingly didn't start to really stick until we landed in Anchor Point, Alaska back in the late 70s when i was still a baby.

1980s Alaska was tough in allot of ways. For one, i learned to see the northern lights; not as a beautiful phenomenon but as an angel of death, coming to claim us in the dark, cold abyss. And i had a powerful childhood fear of bears and there were some sights of the landscape that most find beautiful which horrified me because of their connection to grizzly bears.

But there were more good things. There were no major societal issues, the untamed wilderness was sometimes very.....how should i put it.....romantic, there were endless fun outdoor activities and the list goes on.

But it all came to an end. 1986 proved a very eventful year and not in a good way. First, Mt. St. Augustine erupted and the kenai peninsula was covered in dark smoke. I personally found it cool but that was just one. Second, the challenger exploded that year and there was allot of doom and gloom among the adults that didn't make life especially enjoyable, at least to me. But the real pivotal event that year is that; after all the doom and gloom earlier that year, my grandfather had a heart attack. He survived the heart attack only to be killed by medicine he was allergic to. It was the first time i had ever seen a grown woman (my grandmother) collaps and scream bloody murder.

Not long after my grandfather died, my grandmother moved back to California to care for her aging mother. The following summer my mother (now separated from my father) moved us back to south lake Tahoe, California, where we lived until the late 90s.

CHANGING CALIFORNIA

Moving to California was a big shock. At first we were psyched by the lower prices and big cities. But that didn't even take 2 weeks to wear off and the big mistake of moving back was to show itself. For one, we were treated like backwood racist hicks, even though to this day Alaska is the only place i've spent any real time in that had no racism. While on racism, i actually witnessed racism for the first time in 1987 but i was the victim of it, not the purp.
But the first couple years in California were still ok. Although i had been scratch building models since the age of 3, i started building kit models for the first time during this period, got a nintendo and that is even when my interest in history began.

But right about the time of the Rodney King riots everything changed for the worst. Mexican families were moving to Tahoe to get their kids away from gangs and their kids brought the gangs with them. So we ended up with this strong concentration of gang activity in this relatively small mountain city. And the rest of the state fared little better. When we visited Sacramento there was always news of drive by shootings, gang activity was open and everywhere and you couldn't even go to a shopping mall without worrying you would be caught in the middle of a gang confrontation. There was even a point when NOT being a gang member was heavily looked down upon.

California never recovered. The gang wars simmered down but the culture never recovered. By the time i left, many of the "social alphas" of my high school days were druggies and riff raff living house to house while many of the drivers of the gang wars were now political activists leading the state into ruin.

THE CHOICE TO LEAVE

I had an uninterrupted death wish since the age of 6. There were literally over a thousand instances from the moment we moved to California to the day i graduated high school when the uncertainty of afterlife was the only thing that kept me from taking my own life. But things got especially bad as the second decade of the century took off. I came to the realization that i could not fall in love and was quickly starting to turn gray-asexual. I had suffered an abscess tooth that nearly killed me, and severe back pain. Both so bad i had actually passed out from the pain and learned what it was like to be unconscious and still in severe pain. I was barely making ends meet for the entire decade (up until the middle of this year) had gotten to where i couldn't stand being around many members of my family and; save for one family of Ukrainian immigrants and a tiny few friends here and there, was being back stabbed by everyone. The overwhelming negativity was making life unbearable.

I originally planned on making a move back to Alaska early on. Around 2011 or 2012. And a dream of all things convinced me not to. It's hard to explain why. I just had no drive to go after i woke up. A few years later i noticed that an entire year had gone by without a day in which i didn't struggle to not shoot myself in the head upon waking up (first hour after waking up was especially difficult). It was then that i decided; as a last ditch effort, to move somewhere else, buy land and build everything from ground up once and for all. Being as i had recently been having allot of medical problems and made more trips to the hospital in the previous 3 years than i had in my life prior, i knew the next move would have to be my last and my deteriorating health would not allow me to build my life from ground up again after that.

I originally decided to move somewhere else in the country, buy an empty land lot and build my home from scratch and that was it. Everything else was open. I had considered buying land in Nevada, the midwest and even bid on a land lot in Florida out of desparation which i am now glad i lost out on. The very first place i considered was Alaska, as it was the only place i had ever been where i had a shred of happiness. But being cut-off from basically everyone i knew by thousands of miles kept that idea at bay. By a year and a half into the search, i had come to the realization that i was always miserable around my family and that they had become more of a burden than help and what few friends i had in the lower 48 were close enough friends that moving to Alaska wouldn't keep us apart in ways that i couldn't live with. With that, my motivation to stay in the lower 48 was gone and Alaska instantly became the obvious choice.

PLANNING THE MOVE

At first, the biggest problem was somehow getting a car project i was now more than a year into up to Alaska. Most people (who had never been to Alaska) thought it would be pointless to have something like that on Alaska and encouraged me to just drop it. Then again, 9 out of 10 people made it clear they thought i was just blowing steam about moving back to Alaska anyway. By now i had been living in California on and off for over 25 years and it was difficult for anyone to register that i had ever been to Alaska, let alone lived here before. Even on the Alaskan side, i've only run into a few people since i've been back who knew me before.

Anyway, i tried to get the car project done before leaving but a combination of bad neighbors, financial and legal problems made it very slow going. And not long before the move, the doner car itself died and spent the last year rotting away.

To deal with a debt from a relative, i proposed that theycover my finances in the move as best they could until all is settled and we would call it even. Believe it or not, they were reluctant to accept this due to past experiences with other relatives. The relative who was in charge of the debt was concerned i was just going to waste the resources and walk away leaving a big mess in my wake. It wasn't until after i sold everything i couldn't bring with me and moved out that he was willing to shake hands on that deal. In all fairness, his main motivation for being reluctant to shake hands is he cared in was afraid i was going to screw myself over.

I spent the last few months at my parents house. Working for my Ukrainian friends by day, researchung my target neighborhood (Kenai Peninsula) by night. And my research was very thorough. I studied every land lot in detail, used google street view to simulate walking around the neighborhood, identified the businesses and prices, local laws, weather patterns etc. I even recently informed a couple seemingly random locals who are now friends that i had done research on them (due to potential business role they might have played in my plan) before moving up here.

I had devised a 3 year, 5 stage short term plan for buying a lot and building a home followed by a more gradual, several stage 5 year plan. To date, it looks like i will only be a month or 2 late in completing that 3 year plan. The plan is to buy land, build a small cabin to survive the first year, add amenities and pay it off by the end of the 2nd year. Complete the land development and power plant by the end of the 3rd year and have a basic 2 story dwelling complete by that time. So far the order things have been happening is very scattered. Some of the early things incopmplete while later parts are. Most things are incomplete but only just. Several stages of the plan expected to be completed over a year and a half time are promising to be completed between mid april and mid july of 2020. I could have completed many of them in October and November had i known we would go as long as we did without snow.

I originally planned to leave California in early May of 2020 but my parents convinced me to wait an extra month. Even then the project car proved the big logistical challenge. I already lost an aircraft carrier model i spent 5 years and thousands of hours building which i still haven't fully gotten over to this very day. I was unwilling to walk away from this project. I was already close to a thousand hours, $7000 into and even fought and won a legal case over it. My original plan was what any rational person would do in that situation. Strip the body components off the dead doner car and ship them up to Alaska in a box, buy a working doner car after the house is built and life stabilized and complete it in comfort. But it turns out that i was unable to find anyone willing to ship the components in the smallest box possible for less than $10,000. I brainstormed different possibilities and even considered some desparate measures like cutting the body in to tiny sections and sending it up in smaller packages (which turned out to be cheaper but still prohibitively expensive) and i started looking in to getting another doner car, putting the body on and just race to finish the body portion before leaving for Alaska. I asked my mom's commonlaw husband (a personality copy of Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters) and he said he didn't want me doing that on his property. So i started looking for a place to do it. Meanwhile it turns out i had 2 friends who were friends with one and other but didn't know they were friends with me (and i didn't know they were friends) who; through a string of coincidences, descovered all 3 of us were friends and ended up hooking me up with another car to transfer the project to only a couple months before departure. So now i just needed to transfer the body. In addition to the thorough research into Alaskan neighborhoods, i looked desperately for a place to transfer the body. Only a week or so before the move, my mom's spouse asked me why i am not doing the transfer. I told him because he told me he didn't want me doing it on his property. He said, "yeah, but i never said you couldn't." (That's not a cop out. He really thinks like that). And that triggered a mad 3 or 4 day rush to get the body transferred upon which even my mom and brother partook in it. It didn't look that great overall but was a phenomenal achievement for 3 people, 2 of which knew very little about the craft and it should have looked allot worst than it did, given the limited time we had. My mom was a bit bummed out about the overall outcome but told me she was proud of what we accomplished. I agreed but told her that they were going to think i'm a tweaker and will get very little, if any auto body work when i get there. SPOILER, that's exactly what happened.

My last full day in California, i went to say goodbye to my Ukrainian friends and chatted with them at their house for an hour or 2. Unbeknownst to me, i was seeing my friend, Igor (like a second father) for the last time as he would later pass away. That evening i hugged my mother for probably 2 hours straight. I was well aware that i might never see her again and didn't want to leave any regrets behind. Whether because she wasn't taking the situation seriously or was just having trouble staying awake, i don't know.

That same night i took my brother shopping at winco. He bought me several rockstars and granola bars as a going away gift. The next day i came out in the morning and made sure my car was as packed as i could get it. I did as much clean up as i could and did about an hour of final checks. My grandmother was out and about at this time and i told her i was getting ready to leave. She hugged me several times that morning. About an hour or 2 before i left my mom came out telling me she had to leave. I told her i would be gone before she came back and it was now time to say our goodbyes. I seam to remember her being in a hurry to get out and didn't want to talk much, though she did hug and kiss me goodbye.

When i finally left, it seamed eerily casual. Even for me it felt like i was just making a quick trip to the store. Making a trip to a cousin's high school graduation a couple hour's drive 2 years earlier felt more monumental.

MAKING THE TRIP

Believe it or not, the 2 most treacherous parts of the entire 3 and a half thousand mile journey were the mountain pass between California and Oregon and the cliffs going in to the matsu valley (Anchorage) area near Palmer. The rest of the journey was mostly flat, clean highway. There's a section of highway inside Alaska, about the middle point between the Canadian border and Anchorage that's jam packed with frost heaves and the whole highway looks like a big ripple. But i had heard about it before and it wasn't as bad as i expected. Canada was full of natural beauty but it got old fast and the journey was mostly just long and boaring. I was relieved when it was over.

After visiting my cousin and her husband (the only American born couple my generation or younger i've ever known who got it right the first time) as well as their adorable baby, I sent my guns off with Alaska airlines in Washington and picked them up at the Anchorage airport. I brought my ammo through Canada. Big mistake. They treated me like a gun runner and tore my whole car apart looking for contraband. But eventually it was all sorted out and they sent me on my way. I spent less time at the Alaskan border than i usually spend in a drive through getting lunch. Basically they looked at my id, scolded me a little for not having a passport and sent me on my way.

I slept in my car for the first night in Anchorage (Wasilla actually) and met with family friends who were neighbors in Stariski creek back in the 80s. But I had to stay overnight again because it was the weekend and Alaska airline's cargo department was closed. I met an old family friend and her husband at an electric store in Anchorage, treated them to lunch and they invited me to stay the night at their house and i got a badly needed shower. Little did i know i was seeing this childhood friend of mine for the last time as she would die of medical complications a year later.

The next day i collected my guns at the airport and made for the peninsula.

GETTING STARTED

I arrived in Soldotna around noon and met with the realtor. Then i ran out to the land lot i had decided on and looked at it up close to make sure it's what i wanted. A little different than i expected but not in an especially good or bad way. Just different. So i ran back and that's when i discovered the paperwork i was expecting to be ready to sign and get started hadn't even been started on. I ended up sleeping in my car for a few nights as the paperwork situation continued to appear worse and worse. At one point i decided to abandon this land lot and start looking into a rental. But then the owner gave me permission to pitch a tent until the paperwork was all sorted out. I still protested against it as i knew that not getting started with building right away would hurt very bad. While having to wait weeks before i could start building proved devastating for the first couple months as anticipated and almost got me killed at one point, it proved none the less to be the make or break event and i would have not aquired the land lot otherwise. But to make matters worse, the condition of my project car proved a bad mix with the local situation as my new neighborhood had just gone through a string of break ins. And now suddenly there's some weirdo from California, in a "raddle can car" living in a tent nearby. Needless to say, i did not get a warm welcome.

During this time my mother, who learned of the sudden change for the worst, frantically started contacting churches and for a few days i was getting visits left and right. I never asked them for anything and told them i would make things work. If my mother's reports are accurate, most of them mistook me for the usual senseless dreamer who comes up here, realizes they bit off more than they can chew and runs off with their tail between their legs and told her they would get me a bus ticket to Anchorage to fly out. I personally decided long before i left that i would make it work or die trying and i was dead serious about it and proved it over that first couple months. At one point near the end of it, just after i had secured the land and could legally build on it, i built a small temporary dwelling to keep out of the rain and stash my belongings in until i could get a proper house built. And that's when i got a knock on my door from a uniformed firefighter. I answered, worried i was going to get crap for building this dwelling as is commonplace in California. The man said he's from the church of Jesus Christ and Later day saints. It turns out my mom and aunt sent him there with a box of groceries. Him and i still chat now and then.

By this point family and friends were sending a little cash here and there. It wasn't much per person but combined was just barely enough to get by.

The solution to that ordeal came unexpectedly. Despite several attempts to contact them and say goodbye while in California, some very close family friends had never heard a whisper about even my interest in moving back up here until after i got here. I don't know the whole story but if i remember and interpreted it right, it started when my mom started working with them for a brief period, sent me their number and i started sending them moose pictures. This apparently triggered some behind the scenes discussion and they told my mom they would help me a little with the situation. I heard this and assumed it was the usual few bucks here and there that i had been getting. In stead they ordered a small house built during which i agreed to pay small installments and PFD (Alaska dividend) checks over time. After doing the math, i figured out that the total bill is less than what came out of their pockets. At the time of this writing, there's only a little bit left to go.

Unfortunately the floor was not insulated and that meant the house was a moisture magnet the first winter and almost everything made of steel was covered in rust and it was frustratingly cold from the first night in the tent till some time in November when i got a real mattress and some extra comforters so i could at least stay warm while sleeping.

MAKING FRIENDS

Within my first 2 months i made some of the best friends i've had since i've been back. But they were very much stand alone. Most people were very reluctant to have anything to do with me until the second winter began. I guess going through one winter here and still not being afraid to go theough another has an impression on people. The second half of the first winter was actually pretty cozy and after i got the floor insulated the following summer, freezing was no longer a concern. Winter time has been consistently getting less and less harsh and more and more fun. I was being tested for non-24 (brain not being able to respond to day and night cycles) before leaving California which may explain why; apart from snow and ice being everywhere, i couldn't care less if it's winter or summer (dark or light) and; while many of my friends are showing symptoms of SADS, i am walking around with my tongue hanging out the side of my mouth like a happy dog. That has apparently proven one of my valued social traits and people often ask me to visit them when they're down, hoping to be cheered up.

CONCLUSION

Alaska has become a different place than in the 1980s. It has always been a very easy place to survive compared to the lower 48 and much more now than in the 80s. But it has also lost allot of that romantic frontier atmosphere in exchange for bad apples coming up from the lower 48 with chips on their shoulders looking to get rich off the locals or riff raff come to get free money (the PFD) and people who are both heartless and brainless enough to journey to Alaska for one or 2 thousand dollers in october can't be good for the health of your community. Fortunately Alaskans are fighting back and it looks like they're having some success. I didn't mind being distrusted by the decent folks when i arrived. I believe trust is a valuable commodity that must be earned and maintained. Once you earn the trust and respect of the locals, they treat you as family. And that's what i moved here for.

I have been back for almost 3 years now. Yet i've only been fishing once (and didn't catch anything) and have not been hunting at all. I haven't been out on a boat or taken any nature hikes. I had camp fires but only out of necessity and i have gone out of my way to avoid any adventures. So why move here you ask?

I didn't move to the Alaska of TV shows and rumors. I moved back to the real Alaska. I came back for the cool weather, lax legal system, slow but steady life, family oriented community and the opportunity to be incontrol of my own life and responsible for no one else's. Those are the real perks of living in Alaska. Physically, moving back here was the toughest trial of my life, but i never once regretted it. During my darkest days back in Alaska i was still happier than my brightest days anywhere else on earth. And i plan to live here happily till the day i die.