“I’m not a typical seasonal.” I tell Jack. He is a local who moved here from New York three years ago. He spent his first winter here last year. Originally from Wisconsin, my theory is that those Cold-Country Midwesterners are stronger against the gray days because they grew up trudging through 10 feet of snow. I grew up in Florida where I was swimming at the Pebble Creek pool on Thanksgiving.

“Why do you say that?”

He is cooking halibut, baking brussel sprouts.

I say this as a complaint, a grief, a burden: “Because I’m a roots person!”

Well why can’t you be a roots person and a seasonal?

“Because I’m happiest when I am building community somewhere! I don’t just want to take the revolving door, fly in and out of this place like the shifty sunshine.”

“But what’s more, I’m like a homebody living in a seasonal’s life path. I keep thinking something will compel me to stay, but nothing has so far.”

He listens with understanding eyes, earnest eyes. I recommend that brand if you’re in the market.

“It’s just that my life continues running in very weird episodes and

This morning, my last in Ketchikan, I turn right onto Carlanna Lake off of Tongass Avenue. As I turn, I see the mint green and black jeep, Joe at the Helm and Suzanne Starboard Side, her head tilted back sipping from her morning Contigo.

“Ah!” I audibly bellow-gleed with surprise, happiness and satisfaction. On my last morning, just before going to the airport, I got to pass Joe and Suzanne driving to work. Boss: My Ketchikan Hallmark, my dear sweet friend. This instantly demonstrated and validated the ties of familiarity I feel with Ketchikan. I swelled with pride, even, and happiness.

That’s one of so many visuals I have of Su- tilting her back deliberately for the cocoa bean drip of fortitude. It was a moment for myself, only. They wouldn’t see me or know to look for me in that car. I’d already passed them and I wasn’t gonna honk at 6am.

The day before, my “LAST DAY” commence the Wagnerian underscore, I drove Eric the Red to a friend’s house to watch football. I offered him a ride. He said they live on Anderson. I said “Oh yeah!” And drove up to that street without direction. Ketchikan is not exactly a megalopolis, a paved paradise, but I am not one for navigation. Eric’s lived here something like 11 years and I knew a street by name that he didn’t?

Familiarity. With that comes the vibrations of a small town, your own words echoing around you and your whereabouts broadcast from passerby to passerby. The other day my alarm clock didn’t go off and have of Alaska saw me later that day and said “You’re alive!” I got a text from Eric: “They don’t know where you are. Get your shit together.”

It’s like, literally, so tiny sometimes here.

But I FEEL MY GUT URGING ME TO LAY A FOUNDATION IN A SEASONAL LIFE. I am one for setting down roots, establishing relationship, recurring coffee dates and meeting people’s cats (Sarah). I don’t want to talk about the weather, the salmon coming in. I want to know what people do here when it pours for months and they can’t get outside. Merek likes running in the rain, it doesn’t bother him. Sarah takes up quilting and she’s really fast at it. She’s got fabric for centuries and so many projects to finish. She feeds worms to her Mexican salamander, Samos.

Ketchikan’s nickname is “The Rock.” It’s hard to set roots on a rock, even if it’s a forest.
Especially because it has set root inside me.