Detours Ahead
We’re up on a job in here in Alaska putting glass in a fire station headquarters and another in a University of Alaska Science Building. We’ve run into some obstacles, some not worth mentioning and some that would have been potentially fatal to the project. Or me personally. Except … we’re in Alaska. These folks don’t shrug their shoulders and say good luck. They don’t cite union rules or insurance liabilities as excuses to help. They don’t see just their part in the big scheme. Naw, they say ‘we’ll get her done.’
I hate to extrapolate from a couple of incidents the entire ethos of the North Star state. But I’m going to hazard a guess that living on the frontier in a frozen tundra with a winter that must seem endlessly dark makes these folks as communal as an Inuit on a lot of levels. It’s like the South End that way — we’re all in this together even as we treasure our independent pioneer ways. We’re connected.
I had a neighbor once, a second father really, who would drop whatever he was doing when my truck broke down or my outhouse needed repairs or the firewood ran low. Me, I was just a wet behind the ears pup who thought he could go in-country and make a fresh start. Any interruption in MY day was a major annoyance, but Eddie, he’d flow out of his current task knee deep into my dilemma. Life wasn’t some straight line serious drive to go from A to B ASAP, it was all those turns and wiggles, those surprises and setbacks, those detours and backroads.
Eddie taught me that B wasn’t the destination at all. B just made any change of plans a total aggravation instead of the natural meanderings of a happy and curious traveler in this world. When Eddie died years ago, I would’ve liked him to know that he made a huge difference, no doubt to more folks than just me.
So when folks need help now, I hope there’s nothing I’m doing that’s more important, nothing that can’t wait until we fix whatever problem needs fixing. The best trips by far are the ones that go astray often. The best lives are too.
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