The German drinks many beers. More than I can. He sits in a booth and I sit in another. He is surrounded by fat Americans. They tell him things about American politics and he listens patiently, with a look in his eyes. He is not here. He is still snowmobiling. But the Americans do not care, they are speaking and what they are saying cannot be stopped. They vomit words and if there are no ears for the words to find a home in that is fine, the floor can take many more.
I drink my coffee, it is too early in the morning for me to drink, because I am not on vacation. It is cold in this town. Cold in Alaska is usually very very cold. This year has been warm. So now I find twelve below Celsius to be cold. My breath catches the air outside and spreads as the warmth that was in my body tries to give itself to the cold. The cold takes it and stretches the heat until it is nothing.
My steel toed boots are freezing against me and after a while my feet feel foreign and dammit all, what am I doing working when it is colder than 0 degrees? I told myself I never would. But there is work to be done and when there is and you are a worker it doesn’t matter what you promised yourself. The work will not do itself.
The snow here is old. The dry climate has taken its water and the crystals that are left do nothing for you but make you sink far down until you touch the ground. The man I am working with operates equipment and he is someone who tries too hard. Some people recognize this and take advantage of him. He burns out too quickly in the season and after a while is useless for morale. After he sees his children he becomes agreeable again.
We do our work here and finish. We are just waiting for the plane to arrive to take us home. It is an old plane, left over from the days of McCarthyism and “I like Ike” stickers. I do not enjoy flying. Some people do and those people are brave to me.
I try to ignore the Americans and cannot. I finish my coffee and leave to sit outside in a bench made of wood and poorly. The lodge owner is a nice enough man. But he is what we call an “Outsider.” He moved to Alaska from Massachusetts three years ago. He hardly knows much and talks many words without saying anything. He knows this and carries a foot long knife. It is strapped to his thigh. This is to encourage the guests that he is an Alaskan, but it is silly to look at and impossible to use. This is why he has a pocket knife also.
In the real world I would call him a scam artist. The illusion he paints for his guests is obvious and I wonder if they know and of course they do. But when one pays too much money to do a thing they must partake in the illusion; the truth is too heartbreaking to admit.
They ride their snowmobiles and the German greets me.
Guten Morgen.
I return the greeting and he leaves to begin another daring, expensive snowmobile adventure. The owner’s dog goes with them. It runs ahead of the machines.
The plane arrives. We board and make our connecting flight with little trouble. But my hands hurt from clenching anyway.
As we fly in the safer bigger jet the pilot speaks to us. She tells us we can see Denali on the right. Denali is a better name than Mount McKinley. McKinley was the mountain’s old name. It was named after a President from Ohio who never did anything but manage to be assassinated. He didn’t even manage to visit Alaska and daringly ride on a snowmobile.
Before the white men named it McKinley, however, the mountain’s name was simply Denali. It means “The Great One.” And as I see it jut up through the carpet of clouds it is obvious that it was aptly named. The sun is setting and in the orange glow the silhouette of the mountain is the most frightening, beautiful thing in the world.
We pass it and the woman next to me asks me my name, because we shared this moment, you see. I tell her.
She begins to vomit words.
Storied By Josh 