It's been quite a while since my last post... I don't dare to go back and look. After talking with some people close to me I realized I haven't posted in a long time, and I guess its something that's been missed. So here it goes.
This last year has flown by. In November last year I was offered an internship working for another gold mine in Alaska! I was caught completely off guard by the answer, especially as I had only handed them my resume. I never applied for the job, but I'm sure glad they called me. After being asked how I felt working around bears during my interview, I laughed and said "well, we have bears in Colorado... I've never dealt with one but I understand the protocol." Little did I realize how many bears there actually were in Alaska.
As soon as I accepted their offer I set to work figuring my summer out. I played with the idea of living with a friend while I was there, but when that idea didn't pan out, I had to figure something out. While I first thought that I was required to have housing in town, it became less of an obligation and more of something I was determined to do. After all, if I was going to Alaska for three months, I might as well make the most of it. In the end I was very fortunate to have landed an excellent housemate - a woman with a new condo. She was a teacher and she was a bit older than me, but she had the same spirit and spunk I did. It was like she was young at heart. But wait, I have to describe how I got there...
Well, after determining that I was renting a room in town, I then had to figure out how to get to Alaska. Immediately I told my parents that I was going to drive there and immediately the response was "you are NOT driving the car to Alaska!! That's so dangerous and so far away!" Really it wasn't much farther than a road trip I had done the summer before, so after some bargaining I got my wish.
Then, a week after I got home from school, my father and I set off for Alaska. It was a long trip - we took six days, but we enjoyed ourselves the whole way there. My favorite location of all was Banff and Jasper. The mountain ranges there are more spectacular than any I've ever seen.
But despite some mild car trouble, we got to Skagway, and then ferried the car over to Juneau. Juneau is only accessible by sea or plane. People talk about how remote Alaska is, and I've read things and heard plenty of stories, but I was never prepared for what I saw when we got there. The road into Skagway was filled with beautiful tundra landscapes and amazingly green canyons. Juneau itself had forests so thick that they were a part of the city. You could step out of your backyard and into a rainforest. Oh, and there were bears. On my first day of work as I drove to the parking lot where I would catch a bus, (then a boat, then another bus to get to work) I saw a black bear browsing someone's lawn. In Alaska the wilderness still has the upper hand rather than people. There are constant reminders there that the forest and its creatures were there first, and that we are truly the intruders.
But besides Alaska being my new favorite place ever and the place I want to live for the rest of eternity... I had an excellent summer. I learned a lot of very practical skills at this internship like core logging and exploration. I had the opportunity to do so many things that not many people my age can say they've ever done, and I feel so lucky and so blessed. I will never regret my decision to drive there (no matter how much of a hassle it was) or rent a place. I learned more about myself all at once this summer than I ever have before, and I found my passion in geology. And while I know I still have a lot of experiences ahead of me and that I still have lots to learn, this one was the best yet.
Thank you to my family for making this trip a reality. Thank you also to my friends in Juneau and elsewhere for teaching me and helping me grow.
What a beautiful world we are privileged to live in.
To see more photos of my adventures, please click here and be sure to follow me: https://www.instagram.com/meadowsparrow77/
