I went back to Fairbanks Alaska for the weekend because my friend passed away from a brain aneurism while watching over his newborn puppies in his basement.
A few friends offered to buy mileage tickets so everyone could be together. I texted a few friends when I was coming in to see if I could get a ride from the airport. One friend said he was picking up another friend who was flying in a half hour later, so I could hang out at the airport and get a ride with them.
I intermittently suggested getting either a hotel or a car, which each time was met with dismissal to borderline aggression from various friends.
I told my friend whose house I was staying at that I had a ride from the airport, and he said he’d pick me up because it sucks waiting at the airport for half an hour, then he insisted on doing it.
He picked me up with one of his cousins who I found out is related to an aunt of mine, and we became friends.
We went to a high school basketball game. One friend was coaching the boys team, and another the girls team.
I went back and forth from the gym to a bar with some friends as more and more friends arrived and we drank a few beers and shuttled around trying to not be gone for any too long of a period so as to not draw attention to our activity.
At one point I missed one of these trips and decided to walk the five blocks, and the first ninety seconds were fine and then I immediately turned back freezing in the twenty below weather and skidded across the parking lot and thought my face was going to fall off.
More friends had trickled into the game by now, coming from all regions of Alaska and the Lower 48 and I overheard all of them being exceptionally familiar with Alaskan basketball, even the ones who hadn’t lived there in years.
We went to another friend’s house after, and I was supposed to ride with one friend but another friend asked me to ride with him and I agreed even though his car was less desirable.
I decided I would sleep at another friend’s house because he had an extra room and I didn’t want to bother my friends with kids even though they didn’t care. His extra room was actually his own room and when I woke up I told him it was odd how his bed was wider than long, then I realized I slept in it backwards. My other friend was sleeping on the floor, even though he is my friend’s brother so you’d think he’d get priority. He was snoring so I nudged him and he kept going.
I went to eat and had some amazing fried halibut. Two more friends picked me up, one of them had a few drinks and then announced he had to go to work.
We watched our same friends’ teams play basketball and then went to a bar. On the way to the bar, a bartender called my friend to ask where he was because they hadn’t seen him that day and they were worried about him. I ended up talking to one friend and another and having a friendly albeit very short conversation with a girl I’d never met and promptly asked her why a dude in a ponytail with a scar on her face was staring at me. She said it was her cousin and I quickly got the situation and I had to figure out how to politely exit the conversation without starting an altercation, at which point I’m pretty sure there would have been a fight involving this guy and whoever the hell his friends were and the forty odd friends of mine who were there.
We all told stories of our friend and stories of other times and I couldn’t help but notice how often everyone touched each other. The entire time. I walked home with my friend to my other friend’s house and he said my beard was turning to ice and we slept in the same bed and didn’t comment on it being weird because it wasn’t.
We went to the service which was simulcast online and everyone dealt with it in their own way.
We went to a brewery my friend owned and he gave me a tour and we drank some beers and it made me happy to see my friends being happy with each other. One friend asked me when I was moving back.
Some friends brought their babies and after a while everyone left and I asked some friends if I could pass out at their houses because I was so tired from sleeping on couches and being driven around at the mercy of all my friends who kept making excuses to take me with them. They said I was welcome to except their kids would be crawling all over me on their couches so I politely declined and had some more beers and in the morning my friend made a few excuses about why he couldn’t take me to the airport because he wanted me to stay but after one delay I finally got there.
It’s the closeness of a warm place where people are drawn together because it’s so cold. It’s a place you make friends who you miss. For that we are lucky.