Land of the Midnight Sun. The Last Frontier. Seward’s Folly. All of these statements describe one place: Alaska.
This time of year, when we are frequently getting wind chill factors of 20+ degrees below zero, I hear people comparing Iowa to Alaska. Amazingly, the weather in Anchorage in the winter can often be warmer than it is here in Iowa.
And how do I know this about Alaska? My husband and I moved to Anchorage in 2001 with our two young daughters and lived there for four years. We had lived in Polk City, Iowa (just outside of Des Moines) for seven years and felt that it was time to move to a new place.
People are often in shock that we would choose Alaska of all places, but my husband was born there and lived there until he was 10. He had always wanted to return and when the opportunity came up to transfer offices within his company, we decided that this was the right time for our family to move to the 49th state.
We left Iowa in October after an unusually warm autumn and flew into Anchorage to find snow already on the ground. My husband quickly assured me, based on his memories of 20 years ago, that it would melt and we would be able to have a little break before winter really hit. The snow did melt…..in May. We shivered for two weeks in windbreakers until the barge holding our moving container made it to the Port of Anchorage with our furniture and boxes.
People always ask me what it was like to live in Alaska. I always say that it was interesting. Of course it was wonderful to be surrounded by majestic landscapes and wildlife, but it was tricky to live in an area where half the year you are dealing with darkness 18 hours of the day and the other half you are only having dusk conditions six hours of the day. And these facts are exacerbated when you have young children.
We did what we do whenever we move to a new location. We dove right in to explore Anchorage and the surrounding areas, learn the history of the area, get to know our neighbors, visit our local library frequently, and find all the free events and attractions that we could attend. We got a pass to the Alaska Zoo, which was open year round, and went there often. Interestingly, in the winter visitors bring sleds instead of strollers for transporting children.
Right away we noticed that storms bringing 4 — 8 inches of snow happened frequently, instead of being a big event as we had been accustomed to in Iowa. And with all that snow, we found that we really missed the Iowa DOT and our local city crew in Polk City. No longer did we see clean asphalt after a storm or get salt sprayed onto the roads. The assumption was that everyone had studded tires and four wheel drive (we had neither), so they would only clear the top layer off and call it good. Salt wasn’t used because moose would want to go and lick it off the roads and then cause crashes.
And speaking of moose, they are almost as common around town in Anchorage as our squirrels are in Mount Vernon. We had shrubs in our yard that we never pruned because moose would come by and do the job without eating the leaves and branches down to the nubs. Often our daughters would come home from school and tell us that recess had been moved indoors because moose had come onto the playground and so the children weren’t allowed outside.
I realized just how unique Alaska is when we were preparing to move in 2005 to Washington State. Our daughters said to me, “Now we are going to live in the United States!” This sums up how proud Alaskans are to be living in The Last Frontier, often referring to the contiguous 48 states as “The Outside.”
I’m grateful that the land of glaciers, wilderness, and wild life could be our home for a time. It was an amazing opportunity to live there and to experience the area first hand. As I have lived all over this great nation of ours, I have discovered that every place is wonderful, if you will just embrace it and make it yours for the time that you live there.
The Player family at Seward, Alaska, one of the port cities in Alaska.