By the time this paper hits the stores, I’ll be on a plane to my family home in Salt Lake City for the holidays. But unlike last year, I won’t be coming back to Wrangell in January. Instead, I’ll be making a leap from the oldest continuously published newspaper in Alaska to the oldest continuously published periodical in the United States — Harper’s Magazine, in New York City.
According to Marilynne Robinson, one of my favorite authors, “a character or a place is inexhaustible and will always reward further attention.” For the past year and a half, my job as a Sentinel reporter has required that I pay close attention to this little island town.
I’ve attended every borough assembly meeting and sat in on the deliberations of countless committees, commissions, forums and boards. During my interviews with community members, I’ve glimpsed the wealth of historical, artistic and environmental knowledge the town holds. Wrangell may be small, but it is inexhaustible, and the attention I’ve paid to it has been richly rewarded.
I’ve learned the difference between a troller and a trawler. I’ve learned how to fall safely and elegantly on the thick ice sheet that accumulates on the sidewalk on my way to work. I’ve learned how to shoot a gun and operate a landline phone — both equally frightening.
I’ve learned, through painful experience, how difficult it is to ride a bike up the back of Nemo Loop or find food in Wrangell on a Sunday after 8 p.m. I’ve learned that the standard for the quality of potluck dishes is high and the standard for formal attire is low.
I’ve learned, now that I have friends who fish, that buying a big bag of frozen shrimp from the store is a loser move. I’ve learned that sometimes, under sufficient emotional duress, a $15 Sweet Tides burrito is worth the price to soothe my soul. I’ve learned that I’m a cat person.
I’ve also developed deep respect for the people who plant themselves and their families here permanently, who dedicate their lives to repairing the power lines, nurturing the children, baking the bread, manning the cash registers, taking the calls, pouring the drinks and suctioning out the sewer lines in this small but extremely important part of the world.
The tireless efforts of borough staff and municipal workers, for example, become visible in times of crisis, like the aftermath of the Nov. 20 landslide. But their work is going on all the time, always essential and often unremarked.
I’m grateful to the public employees of Wrangell for fielding my frantic phone calls and emails during my tenure at the Sentinel. This town probably has more reporters per capita than most major cities, so I imagine that the press burden on the borough can be a strain.
I am equally grateful to the workers who kept the lights on, the water running and the sewage underground while I lived here.
I’m also grateful for the professional guidance and frightening work ethic of my publisher, Larry Persily, the warmth and efficiency of our office manager, Amber Armstrong-Hillberry, and the comradery of my former co-reporter, Marc Lutz. I look forward to reading stories by my new/former co-reporter, Mark Robinson.
After 17 months, I’m overwhelmed by the amount I still don’t know about life in this town. I haven’t spoken to the majority of its roughly 2,000 residents. Many of my close friends didn’t grow up here, so I have no experience with the kind of decades-long — or in the case of the Tlingit community, millennia-long — relationships that people have with this place.
The bike trail along Zimovia Highway, the organized chaos of my desk at the Sentinel and the blue couch in my roommate’s house are all imbued with over a year’s worth of memories. Sometimes, I try to imagine what it would feel like to have multiple generation’s worth and I can’t.
Reporters come and go every couple of years, using the Sentinel as a steppingstone to bigger publications in bigger cities — just like I’m doing. I recognize that for Sentinel readers, this is a routine goodbye. But for me, the Sentinel will always be the paper that allowed me to become a professional reporter.
Before the sunny August afternoon that I touched down in town, I never could have imagined life in a place like this and I doubt I’ll ever experience anything like it again. For me, there is nothing routine about this goodbye.
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