For me, 2020 was not for writing, reading, or traveling.

2020 was for…

• living up my 3rd season at Cape Shirreff. If only I could be there right now.
• seeing new places in Antarctica! The ship had permission to spend most of a day at Deception Island before continuing south to Palmer Station.
• missing out on my planned hike in Torres del Paine. Until I hike the ‘O,’ that will always sting.
• visiting the emergency room in the wee hours of one morning in early April. My body had decided that my first ~10 days in Fairbanks hadn’t been exciting enough, so it gave me a kidney stone. Naturally this was early in the pandemic when I really did NOT want to go to the hospital.
• figuring out how to live in civilization, but not society. Honestly, I’ve been fighting the idea of living somewhere for a few years; I can’t deny that I’ve been wanting more connections. Unfortunately, being forced into staying put for 9 months and having zero social life has not exactly put “town life” in a fair light.
• determining what kind of job I could enjoy in a town setting. (Fieldwork was basically all canceled for summer.) Answer: I’ve been baking at a local restaurant in Fairbanks since June. Working at 04:00 means I have no social life because I have the bedtime of a 5-year-old, but there’s no social life to be had anyway. I guess it’s the perfect year for this type of job.
• grieving the loss of my New Zealand farmer/island mom months after her passing. I learned about it in a pathetic way – through a suspiciously sad Facebook post in which she had been tagged – and then searched to find the sad truth about what had happened while I was offline in Antarctica. I then spent the next few days in unexpected bouts of tears.
• living the dream for 3 weeks at my family’s cabin on Lake Superior… biking, running, cooking/baking, picking blueberries, relaxing in the hammock, SUPing (on a board that my brother and I went in on), visiting with extended family, and taking saunas!
• eating fresh fruit for as long as possible from spring-fall.
• starting to sponsor a boy in Tanzania through Compassion International. Aretasi is 7 years old and shares a birthday with my man Kirk Cousins.
• learning how to buy, own, and operate a car in the United States. New Zealand is the only place I’d ever owned a motorized vehicle until this year. Forcing my stubborn, independent thoughts of “just bike all winter” away, the time between deciding to buy a car and actually buying a car was about 6 days. It’s handy when you find out you have friends selling a Subaru for a great price!
• finding a place of my own to call “home” in Fairbanks. When I was suddenly thrust northward from Chile, I was adopted into a new home in Fairbanks from late March to mid-May. For the summer, I was back at Scott’s – apart from my 5.5 weeks in Michigan. Upon returning to Fairbanks and acknowledging I likely had another 6+ months in town, I knew it was time to give up the couchsurfing/spare room life. A cabin hunt began, and I moved into a dry cabin in early October. It’s beyond the end of a dead end road, and the landlords have chickens, a garden, and 2 chocolate labs. Ham and Loki are lifesavers. The humans are pretty great, too.
• closing the storage unit I’d opened in September 2012. Back then I didn’t realize I was actually about to start living the dream of working seasonally and living out of a storage unit. I never thought the majority of my possessions would live there for 8 years! With adequate space in the cabin and in a covered storage area next to the cabin, spending the money to keep my extraordinarily well located unit at the facility did not make sense. RIP unit 149.
• suffering through election season, the time when both the politicians and people of the U.S. turn into their worst selves. (If COVID hadn’t happened, my plan had been to work a summer field job and then flee to NZ for a few months. Sigh.)
• cycling. I put roughly 1,835 miles on my mountain bike in Alaska and my road bike in Michigan. I call that winning.
• running. A benefit of being stuck in civilization was being able to run consistently! I’ve known for years that low-drop shoes allow me to run without shin splints, but I’ve never been able to ramp up my distances and train for something. In October I ran my first half marathon, the HooDoo (Brewing) Half. With the race being virtual, the organizers decided not to include a finisher’s pint glass in the swag. What a bummer. I ran roughly 377 miles this year.
• connecting with a small group through church. Unfortunately, we meet at 18:30, and I leave to head home for bed by 19:45, which is already after my bedtime.
• looking into online dating and realizing there’s no point because (a) I’m introverted, (b) half of this town is military, and (c) I’m hoping to flee civilization again anyway.
• re-listening to the “Harry Potter” audiobooks. Right now the Battle of Hogwarts is raging, meaning I’m in the final hours. The books have been my background noise since moving into the cabin, and I’ll miss the company once I’m done listening.
• watching the TV series “Smallville.” Because when you’re not supposed to have a life, it’s handy to have someone attractive to watch. I’m now convinced Clark Kent could have stopped COVID-19 from spreading.