“Oh? You’re working with the summer league up there?” a broadcaster asked.
“No, I’m just … going there,” I said.
Oh. Fairbanks?
Beyond – to Bettles, pop. 12 on Wikipedia and 7 in reality. It’s a village 35 miles north of the Arctic Circle. In the summer I went to sell beer to moose hunters and national park interns.
Back to Alaska. It had been five years since I’d spent five summers working in fishing lodges in the state, but now I had a Master’s degree in creative non-fiction. Between 2009 and 2012 I wrote while working but worried my stories would cost me friends and employment.
Then my job offer was rescinded after I insisted on a sexual harassment policy, and the next place I worked, in 2013, reeked of harassment and far, far more booze. I wrote about it all for my thesis. Sure enough, I lost a few friends. But I had stories, and my photographs got better and better.
But now I had a Master’s, and – I was going back to seasonal work?
I joked with clients that I needed time after living in the library, reading Henry James (who I actually liked), and William Faulkner (who I didn’t). Really, I didn’t know what else to do, and seasonal work pays well if you travel far enough. My assistantship ended in May, so two weeks after graduation I flew to Alaska.
No baseball.
But that was okay. In school I’d taken photos of the team:
and the AA club in the same town,
and sometimes a college summer league, too, and I found myself like a Berenstain Bear: only, instead of too much birthday for Sister Bear, it was too much baseball for me.
Of course, I didn’t get paid.
But it became a job to me.
I couldn’t attend a game without a camera, even though no one made me. Eventually I couldn’t think of essay topics. I spent more time on my photo portfolio and this site than I did on my classes and assistantship. I still made the same grades.
In June, a day after photographing Yadier Molina’s rehab stint in Springfield, I left for the Arctic for four months.
Then I wanted to see if I could handle the winter, so I returned in December to guide people outside and point out northern lights.
I decided I’d cross-country ski as long as it remained warmer than -30, and did.
Yesterday I skied for three hours, but it was 15 degrees. In a month I’ll be home and wondering what to do next.
Last night I was thinking of the top stories of these eight months.
One
Was it when I flew in a 4-passenger Cessna 180 and the window blew out? We circled back and landed in the native village, the four of us looking for cardboard and duct tape to cover the hole. Two native kids motored up on dirt bikes, carrying the window, which had landed in a river where they were fishing.
Two
Was it when three colleagues were fired within 5 days? My favorite one, who gave me spirulina chlorella supplements and organized a birthday party for me, left two notes before leaving. They were hexes, placed on two co-workers, and written on paper torn from mini yellow legal pads.
Three
Or, was it when a neighbor dog ran into the team of 12 sled dogs and limped away dripping blood from gashes? His owner refused to take the dog to the vet in Fairbanks, but called to tell me that if the dog died he’d “do something that would get (him) thrown in jail.” Oh, and “My advice to you is to get on the next plane out of town,” he helpfully added.
Is it any wonder, then, that the crack of the bat on a ball instead a skull sounds so sweet?
I saw a photo on Instagram of a player. It was someone I’d photographed before, but he played somewhere else now.
Perhaps he has a story I could tell. Who else might be coming up through the minors? How do these guys live on these salaries that mimic graduate assistant stipends but without the graduate degrees? And these college kids. It’s so quiet at those stadiums. I used to love hearing the thump of spikes hitting the dirt. I remembered it last night.
You see, there’s still so much snow here.
by 