We left last week Thursday to travel to another land. A place we’ve both been before. They say you can never go home. They’re wrong.
We left here over a year ago. Not much has changed. Not that I expected much would in such a short period of time. After getting out and about these past few days, the overall vibe of this place, a place HW and I called home for the better part of thirty five years, has a palpable desperateness to it, but I feel like that impression might reveal a confirmation bias in me. Like, “Phew, honey, looks like we got out at just the right time.” But like midnight sun, sometimes you can’t tell dusk from dawn. There may be economic activity underway or in the works here that may turn the city’s fortune around. For instance, I read there’s tens of millions of dollars in federal infrastructure money just waiting to be spent here statewide. Not so much in terms of new private capital investment, so far as I can tell, but attracting that kind of investment has been a struggle here for quite a long time. It’s just so far away from the economic centers of lower-48 America, and on top of that there’s no commercially viable road system connecting the two. One thing that hasn’t changed is our love of the unique natural beauty here. And we’ve enjoyed re-connecting with friends who still live here. That’s priceless
