Northern Exposure

 

Alaska is just a few hours' drive north of where we've been for the past 3 weeks. The snowline on the mountains almost reaches the edge of town, and we saw a moose on one of our weekend walks. Of course, we were only midway up BC - there are hundreds of miles stretching between Terrace and the Yukon. But we still felt pretty far north.


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Douglas was working on a month-long project in Terrace, and mr. t and I flew up to join him for 3 of those weeks. I had an added incentive to go: I grew up right near there. When my parents immigrated to Canada in the late 1970's, they moved from sub-Saharan Africa to Kitimat, and were greeted by 6 feet of snow. My mom says that as the plane circled the landing strip and she looked at the town below, buried in snow, all she could think was "What have we done...?!"

It all turned out pretty well, of course. And we really enjoyed our time in Terrace. People are friendly. I think I had more conversations in the course of a day there than I do at home, even though most of them are with strangers. The town is small enough that I could walk across it in less than half an hour, but big enough that in 3 weeks I felt I hadn't fully explored it. When Douglas left for work in the morning (a 4-minute drive), we joked about whether he'd hit traffic, and should take an alternate route. Coming from a town of 90-minute commutes, where you can easily be stuck in traffic for an hour, this seemed just a little too good to be true.

Instead of fighting traffic, I spent my time wandering around the town discovering its little quirks. Like the pet tarantula, Maxine, at the library. When I asked if I could take her photo, they pulled out her molt and a huge stuffed spider for added interest.

 

 

The wool shop has an amazing selection of Norwegian wool, pewter buttons embossed with tall ships, and a stern knitting grandma in the back who offered advice about wool. The baker grinds her own flour in-house, in an old-fashioned mill. And at the shoe shop, they have a weaving loom set up next to the all-weather boots, for when business is slow. Crafts, food, and weird pets - I was in heaven.

Of course, the town has its dark side. One afternoon at the library, a middle-aged First Nations man was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. I was reading magazines in a corner window while Theo surfed from chair to chair, and I heard someone whooping and hollering deeper in the stacks. I thought 'Hm, someone's having a good afternoon', and kept reading. But when I was checking out my books, I saw him go by, on the arm of a police officer. He was so drunk that the cop needed help to help him out of the library. Unemployment and addiction, the double whammy.

That wasn't the only police activity we saw, either. Driving back from a weekend in Smithers, we saw about 10 cop cars go screaming past us on the highway, heading in the opposite direction. We didn't think there were that many police in all of Terrace. We heard later that they had closed the highway just behind us. They let a few more drivers through, with instructions to drive straight on, and not stop for any reason at all. And then they closed the highway for 36 hours while they hunted for an armed man in the woods.

We spent the rest of the week happily exploring, remembering what it's like to live in a small town. Terrace is surrounded by mountains - snowy peaks in every cardinal direction, and more in between. It's not far from Prince Rupert, the rainiest city in Canada, and on grey days it can be pretty dismal. It feels a bit like you've been packed into a box full of cotton wool, and someone just put the lid on. Your feet get wet the first time you venture out, and they never dry. But on sunny days, shreds of cloud get stuck on the trees like cotton wool on velcro, and the snow glitters with possibility. It was a good month. Time away from the hurly burly of the city let us get centered. Re-energized.