I’m in love.

The west coast has always been special to me, although I never knew why. Now that I live here, I finally understand it.

If you’re from New England, you’ll be able to imagine Alaska. All you have to do is make a few basic changes to the east coast.

First, you’ll want to replace all the pine trees with spruce trees. Pine trees have soft needles and wandering trunks. Spruce trees don’t tolerate any of this frippery. The tall straight brushes give structure to the landscape and tree line.

There are so many treees, Kenai is technically a rainforest. Clouds from dawn to dusk, and constant rain drizzling. We’re getting sun for the first time in forever here today.

Next, put horsetail everywhere. This little herb grows like grass. Where there isn’t grass, there’s horsetail. And where there isn’t horsetail, there’s crushed black rock. (Volcanic? Glacial?)

Maine water is black when not reflecting the sky. But Alaskan water—at least down in the fjords—is teal. (The photo on the left hasn’t been color edited.)

The Kenai Peninsula is famous for its glaciers. (I saw my first one a couple days ago.) As the glacier moves slowly across the landscape, it grinds stones into dust called “rock flour.” The rock flour adds a magical pale blue tint to the water. In the dark, the water is a deep green, and in direct sunlight it looks like the pale blue walls of a Russian cathedral.

Next, add mountains. Maine has some mountains, but due to their formation they are often more like tall hills, round and sloping.

Jagged Alaskan mountains really make you feel tiny. When I was looking at photos of Anchorage before moving, I thought the size of the mountains must be a camera trick. I mean, if you use a telephoto lens and stand far enough away, you can make things look as big as you want.

You can imagine my surprise when I realized how big the mountains here actually are.

Lastly, make everything expensive. Double the cost of food. A lot of people want to move here to get “the Alaskan stipend.” Getting a monthly check from the government sounds like a perk, but the unromantic truth is that it just disappears into the cost of living. I went shopping at Safeway yesterday for the first time, and two small paper bags of groceries totaled $79—and that’s with the club card discount.

In addition to the cost of groceries, gas prices are the highest I’ve ever seen. $3.50/gal is the lowest price on the board at Chevron. Since the only way to get most grocery goods (produce, name brand items etc.) is by shipping it, the prices are horrendous.

A big chunk of that stipend check will also go towards traveling around. Flying from Anchorage to Utqiagvik (at the top of the state) will cost you $200 one way, and you have to fly since there are no roads between many settlements. To put that number in perspective, it cost me $350 to fly four thousand miles, from Maine to Anchorage.

So what the heck am I doing here?

I’m a boat washer at a tour company. Someone said with my Mandarin skills I could probably get an office job that pays more, but honestly, if I never have an office job again that will be OK. This is exactly what I wanted—hard work, lots of time to think, lots of fresh rainforest air to breath, and the chance to go to bed exhausted every night. Why would I trade all that in to sit in a box in a box for eight hours a day, only to blow my money on food and entertainment on the weekends in an attempt to recover my psyche? No thanks. I’d rather be a salty boat washer any day of the week than an office babe feeding on drama and doughnuts. (I did that before, so I’m allowed to be judgmental about it.)

Since the marina is right in the fjord, we have towering mountains on both sides. Little seagulls, prettier and quieter than the ones in Maine, fly close to the boats and weave among the masts. I work in boots and a raincoat from dinner time to midnight, and I couldn’t be happier.

Why did I leave Maine, someone might ask? Well, my inspiration—for art, writing, and life in general—dried up after nine months at home. I knew it was time for a change, and Alaska was the first door that opened up. I packed everything up, got a ukulele, and got on that plane to the last frontier.

Something about traveling, stepping out into nothing, and trusting that it will all work out in the end, always gives me a sense of Faith that’s lacking when I spend too long in one place. I can’t describe how grateful I am to be out in the wild world again.