Visions and Revisions

While I was in New York in mid-July to help Mom and Dad with their packout, being hungry for any and all information on my impending new home, I devoured Lonely Planet's travel guide for Alaska in two days. What it had to say about Fairbanks was not encouraging:

It may not be pretty, but Fairbanks is certainly evocative--and the key is the people. While Fairbanks and its surrounding areas do have some interesting sights and activities --from paddling the mighty Chena River through the bordering-on-bleak downtown area, to heading out to remote hot springs--it's really the frontiersman persona of the locals that makes it a worthwhile stop.

Here you have back-to-landers, businesspeople and bureaucrats, gun-toting conspiracy-theorists and freaked-out survivalists, professors and hygienically challenged students at Alaska's flagship university and, last but not least, the rugged individuals who chose to build their own cabin and grow their own food, living their lives on their own terms 'out there' in log-cabin communities like Fox, Manley, and Ester. It's a place where some escape the strictures of society, never to be found again.

But unfortunately for visitors, the landscape here is simply not as dramatic as other spots in the state. Sure, you have views of the Alaska Range to the south and the White Mountains to the north. But the area around here is hot and buggy in the summer, and freezing cold in the winter, a slightly wrinkled hill country covered with the soft fuzz of birch, spruce, arctic meadows and the occasional granite dome. [...]

A spread-out maze of strip malls, snaking rivers and bleak storefronts, [the city of Fairbanks] holds very little attraction for the independent traveler. [...]

The best part of Fairbanks is generally leaving Fairbanks.

And it's all 100% true. This is the seediest damn town I've ever been to in my life, even counting Wichita Falls.

Fairbanks was founded, very practically, by a trader, when the Chena River grew too shallow for his boat to travel any further. Accordingly, since its inception Fairbanks operated as a trading post for prospectors (the Fort Knox gold mine, about 40 km from town, still produces the shiny stuff in the hundreds of thousands of grams per year), trappers, and homesteaders throughout the Interior.

And Fairbanks still operates as a trading post. Many people come to town every couple of months, buy their supplies, and promptly leave again. The general stores have been replaced with a Wal-Mart, the saloons gave way to McDonald's, and the shiny, standard-issue exteriors of Big Box Highway contrast depressingly with the peeling, dun-colored structures that predate the 1967 flood. The city itself is appallingly ugly; people who inhabit the surrounding hills refer to it appropriately as Bareflanks. It's very nearly impossible to walk anywhere--what with a complete absence of town planning and plenty of room for expansion, the city sprawls over nearly 33 square miles, and walking simply takes too long--which means that even A. Lohrenz has been lately found behind the wheel of a car. (Juddering through stoplights and crawling along at what seems to a confirmed pedestrian a whopping 50 mph, but nonetheless driving.)

The average personally-owned vehicle is approximately the size of a whale and consumes a gallon of gasoline every ten feet. People have more firearms than children. Dress code for every venue, from an art gallery to a Italian restaurant, is muddy Carharrts and a flannel shirt. The front yard of most houses sports a couple of dead cars slowly becoming one with the land (one place was cultivating flowers in the bed of a pickup), heaps of scrap lumber, broken-down household appliances wearing proud coats of rust, children's bicycles, that thing that uncle Joey picked up and the transfer station two Christmases ago, and several barking dogs (at least one dog per firearm, but that is an estimate).

One major tourist attraction ("major" here referring to the percentage of tour buses that stop here, not the total number of tour buses) is a little clearing where people can touch and have their picture taken with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Another is Alaskaland, a tiny "amusement park" built around several dozen salvaged original storefronts, a grounded sternwheeler, and a railcar that President Coolidge once traveled in. (Walking through it reminded me irresistibly of that scene in Shrek when they first enter DuLac. "Where is everybody?")

Sarah Palin is a local hero. (There are comic books!)

The city has a freaking curling club.

And yet, right now I can't think of anyplace I would rather be.


Note: this photo was taken on September 9th. Two weeks later there was an inch of snow on the ground.