On a mildly warm evening in early October, we were ordering craft beer, seated on a patio in Portland, Oregon. The waiter asked for our I.D.s. There were six of us. After reading Florida, New York and Missouri licenses, he gave us a sceptical look. No, they were not fake.
Five months earlier, we were strangers. We were each on a journey back to our respective states from a magical place that had brought us together. On this day, though, we were companions and best friends, each in love with wandering and spending time with free-spirited people, enjoying the final meal we would spend together following our adventure in Skagway, Alaska.
When I turned 25, I had a quarter-life crisis. I was in a panic over my inability to stop time and a wealth of student loan debt looming over my head. There was so much world out there that I had not yet explored. I didn’t even have a passport. I felt as if I was never going to travel like I had always dreamed.
After months of soul searching, I pulled myself out of my pit of hopelessness and started looking for a solution. I decided to research some jobs far from my home. I have lived in the Southern United States my entire life, so I started my job search in the Rocky Mountains. Somehow, I stumbled across a seasonal job opening in Skagway, Alaska. Whatever possessed me to apply, be it destiny or chance, paid off. After a few interviews and much anticipation, I landed the job.
I learned as much as I could about Skagway from the Internet. Skagway is a very small town at the end of the Lynn Canal in southeast Alaska. In the late 19th Century, it was a safe-haven for gold diggers headed for the Alaskan wilderness. This was all I knew before deciding to live there for the next five months. I couldn’t predict the lasting mark the town would leave on my heart when I accepted the job.
By the time I was boarding my flight from Atlanta, it felt as if gymnasts were cartwheeling in my stomach. I had waved goodbye to everything familiar (most recently, my mother at airport security) and my mind teeter-tottered from feelings of worry to those of unabashed excitement for the journey ahead.
Skagway at the beginning
When you’re young, people warn you never to talk to strangers. Some people even advised me of this prior to my solo trip across the country. However I could also recall the phrase, “speak when you are spoken to.” When I took the middle seat on the flight, I met the first two strangers of my journey who soon became friends and we swapped stories. The two 9-5 working men were intrigued with my endeavour and I was saddened to say goodbye to my new friends by the end of the flight.
On the connecting flight from Seattle to Juneau I met a man named Dennis who was going to Skagway for his 14th summer season. Dennis told me more about the town than the Internet ever could and I appreciated the insider information. When the plane descended below the clouds and I saw the Alaskan mountains for the first time, tears welled up in my eyes.
At this point, I had spoken with several people who had been to Alaska before and fallen in love. Their eyes illuminated with a sense of wonder when they spoke of the place. One woman even approached me in the airport to let me know that she heard my story and had done the same thing I was doing, just 35 years earlier. She loved it so much that she ended up making Alaska her home. Even though I had stepped far outside of my comfort zone, with a few confident nudges from strangers, I was gaining trust in the direction my personal compass had led me.
During my overnight layover in Juneau, I decided to venture downtown and explore. It took a lot for me to even consider leaving the room. My anxieties were calmed once I was walking about the tourist shops and marvelling at the local artwork. When I sat down at a bar at the famous Red Dog Cafe, I was kindly greeted by a couple of Australians seated next to me. We discussed politics and education in our countries. They educated me on Tasmania and I told them about Florida.
The next day, I awoke before the sun was out and walked to the airport. There was little to no security to go through and this struck me as odd, having left from one of the largest international airports in the world. Then, I got to sit directly behind the pilot who, much to my amazement, asked us which route we preferred. I learned more about the town I would be living in from the locals on the 12-passenger plane and met a fellow tour guide who would be spending the summer there for the first time, too. He looked just as wary as I about the unknowns ahead and I was comforted by our silently shared apprehension.
I realized that with each new encounter, I was not only learning about new people, but growing as an individual too. I quickly realized that there was far more out there than I had ever imagined even though my trip had barely begun.
Skagway on arrival
When I finally arrived in Skagway, my new boss picked me up from the apartment-sized airport and drove me around the four block wide and mile-long town. This was just before the start of the summer season and many of the town’s shops were boarded up and people were cleaning along the main street. Broadway is only about seven blocks long, lined with colourful, vintage buildings and a wooden boardwalk. Tourists escaping their cruise ships for a few hours flood this street nearly every day throughout summertime.
I was enamoured with the surrounding mountains jutting far above the buildings. They were still snow-capped and decorated with bald trees upon my arrival. Within weeks, blankets of the greenest leaves covered their rocky faces and wildflowers sprouted up from every patch of grass in town. Flowers like white yarrow, purple fireweed and yellow butter and eggs speckled the fields with colour. Rather than being the winter wonderland many of my friends and family envisioned, the weather most often felt like a perfect spring day back home.
The tides change drastically and often in this part of the world and this ebb and flow symbolized something within me. My heart was the moon and I was being drawn into this place, yet my yearning for travel kept me from ever wanting to settle. My emotions were as dramatic as the ocean’s movements.
Being in the mountains had me realizing characteristics about myself that would never have come to my attention had I not broken my barriers down. I was exploring new pieces of my personality because I no longer had the crutch of familiar faces expecting me to be who I had always been. I had become like the fireweed, a flower that gets its name from its tendency to sprout from the ashy earth after a forest fire. This resonated with me and somewhat defined the purpose for my journey. The abundance of the flower in this place was a reminder that despite my past experiences, there are always opportunities to grow.
The community in Skagway
Skagway is home to some of the biggest personalities I have ever met. The people who come to work here are a breed all their own. I was never shy to introduce myself to a new face. No one was a stranger because they were sharing with me the quirkiness of this place; a refuge for the extroverted and adventurous. I spent very little time staring blankly at television or computer screens because there was always someone to start a conversation with or something new to see.
Being here was like taking a giant step back in time. There were “prostitutes” roaming the streets by day, hollering out of second story windows at tourists passing through the shops. The boardwalk emptied after 9 p.m. and the only people around were those I recognized from working at the ship docks.
By night, those of us who had come to cash in on the modern-day gold rush would gather together at one of the three local bars to relax after a hard day’s digging.
The three radio stations played NPR and a small number of locally produced shows, often asking if anyone had seen the earring that Cheryl had misplaced somewhere between 2nd and 5th Avenue. If found, the earring would probably be hung from the bulletin board at the entrance of the grocery store, accompanying lonely gloves separated from their partner, placed next to an ad in search of a VHS rewinder. I wished to find Cheryl’s earring, simply to solidify my small place in the community.
The conversations went deep here, too. We only had a short time to get to know one another since the end of the season loomed ahead. Five months seemed an eternity when I began this journey. However, once I started getting to know people, that time felt stiflingly short. We often engaged in conversations about society, travelling, our pasts or our dreams. We bonded over both our similarities and differences. What would have been a debate with many of my friends and family back home, was often supported by new friends. My distaste for routine and conformity was shared.
We were nomads, hippies and wanderers. It was as if all of us were on a working vacation. By midseason, the town began to feel like a real-life episode of Cheers. I never went out without seeing a familiar face. Be it the bar, the grocery store or the post office, somebody knew me by name. Before I knew it, I was dreading the day in September when I would inevitably leave all of the beautiful spirits behind that I had met here.
Lessons from Skagway
Skagway taught me that home was not necessarily as simple as being the place you grew up…it’s more of a feeling than an actual place. No matter the location, I am now capable of taking a deep breath and feeling secure in the fact that my journey is my home.
Venturing out on my own was a difficult decision, mostly because I had no way of telling that it was the right one. But after moving so far from home, I realized I had actually chosen this path a long time ago. I had been mesmerized by the yellow painted lines melting into the windshield as I drove down roads; hypnotized by mobility. This was no impulsive decision to ‘get away from it all.’ Instead, this was a culmination of every urge I ever had to just go; of thoughts like, “What if I just kept driving?” Succumbing to this urge to explore was the most awakening leap of faith I have ever taken.
I am lucky enough now to have an amazing group of friends spread out across the United States and even a few exploring other countries. I acquired a passport over the summer and am anticipating many a stamp on the pages. This adventure was like dipping a toe into the water and, without hesitation, cannonballing into the deep end.
I have been humbled, inspired, excited and ultimately, drowned in wanderlust…all thanks to a summer in Skagway.
Have you spent time in Skagway? Tell us in the comments below about your experiences so other travellers can enjoy!
