- don't breath in too deeply
- steam and exhaust don't rise or evaporate away
- put Vaseline under your eyes
- wear more than one hat
- potatoes freeze on the bottom shelf
- bacon fat congeals even on the shelf over the stove
- soup is revered
- the diesel pumps break
- the water pump fails
- the ravens are fine
- we look out for each other
- -30 feels pretty nice
Once again, some twists and turns have found me nestled in a 70s wood-paneled former construction trailer, flipping eggs and skiing in the Arctic. While I had been looking forward to living on my own for the first time in a while, dipping back into city life, reading physical copies of newspapers, swimming at a pool, meeting more than eight people every six months, a good reason to delay came along.
Instead of moving to Anchorage, I visited just long enough to haphazardly dig my car out from three feet of snow and sell it, then packed my things, and fled north to wait out the 60 days until I can legally return to France. The country has long exerted a pull on me -- wine, over 1,000 kinds of cheese, myriad buttery sauces, Romantic classical piano, chivalric legend, the Norman invasion, tongue kissing -- and now one of its fine citizens has invited me to live there. Ah, mais oui.
