Of all the cool women I met when I lived in Alaska last summer, Greta and Judith stand out the most. Greta moved to Fairbanks to work for the National Park Service several years ago after getting her PhD in biology at Utah State. She worked as a freshwater ecologist and scoured the arctic region parks all summer to sample lakes and test for effects of climate change. I dog-sat for her big mutt Brutus while she flew around in floatplanes and camped in the wilderness for weeks at a time. When she touched down in Fairbanks, she taught me a lot about inflows, outflows and floating phosphorous. We floated the Chena River—which slithers through downtown Fairbanks—hiked, and talked about what drives people north from the Lower 48. While Greta wouldn’t have minded more daylight during the winter, she was afraid if she moved back “South” she wouldn’t be able to handle the groomed trails and regulated wilderness.
Judith is a young architect from D.C. who designs buildings for indigenous villages and is a runner and a licensed pilot. She has long dark red hair that she kept zipped inside a mesh mosquito jacket at the construction site where I met her, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle in a quaint Eskimo community. She also wears Carhartts for her frequent impulses to jump in with a hammer and get her hands dirty. When I asked her if she had plans to move back to the Lower 48 she said, “Why would I?”
In Hal Smith’s article in the spring issue, you meet more women who have chased adventure to the northern reaches. They represent the Alaskan mystique and feminine mystique wrapped up in one. Alaska attracts and shapes women who are unmistakably different, and they know it. Hence the many trucks with bumper sticker explaining “Alaska girls kick ass.”
