This week, we’re hearing from Bret Connor in Anchorage. Connor designs and sells his own line of clothing called Hulin Alaskan Design.
CONNOR: You hop in your car for like 20 minutes and you basically can walk over one little row of peaks and it feels like you’re in the middle of uncharted territory.
When I was a kid actually, honestly, what I wanted to do was leave Alaska, because, you know, as a kid you want more. I wanted to live in the biggest city I could. I remember it was some time, because I just hadn’t experienced that.
And now I feel like being in Anchorage really is— you’re not really in Alaska like most people say, but for me it’s perfect, because I really like how we’re getting more and more and more of this sort of city feeling to it, which I like, and at the same time we’re so close to everything else that we’ve got.
I grew up up on the upper hillside area and I’d end up going home every afternoon— almost every afternoon with my really good friends and they lived way up there on the residential part by Flattop. So we’d just go up there all afternoon and just snowboard out in the backcountry and building a jump or whatever. Just kids playing around doing whatever. And then evening time comes and I’d just be like, well, time to go home and instead of like getting a ride and I didn’t yet have a car or anything it was like well, just hike one little peak back, ride down the backside of the Flattop little valley, end up on like Canyon Road, and then ride down that down Upper De Armoun and then I’d basically snowboard home. And back then it just seemed normal, but now I look back and I’m like, man that was pretty cool I get to just like use my snowboard as a means of transportation. It’s pretty cool.
We’d go out on these canoe trips with my mom and dad. My sister and I didn’t always totally love every moment of it, but honestly looking back it’s like the best thing that ever happened, because I’ve come to have a really really strong appreciation for all that kind of stuff.
What I’ve really always have loved to do is like the back country kind of snowboarding stuff and eventually turned that into like split boarding and getting out there. And then mountain biking in the increasingly awesome mountain biking stuff that we have just around town. And then, you know, some of the out of town trips, but like you know, down toward Seward. Just our little surrounding areas, like nothing too crazy extreme, but just kind of like utilizing all the awesome stuff that we have right at our finger tips.
Now with the family and with our little daughter who is turning four in a month, now we’ve kind of altered those activities to be all inclusive for all of us, so it kind of turns into hiking with the baby backpack on the Winner Creek Trail in Girdwood or taking the mountain bike with the chariot hookup thing to tow the little one out on the coastal trail or I get to take an afternoon and run up Flattop, so that’s kind of the thing now.
Ammon Swenson is Alaska Public Media’s Audio Media Content Producer. He was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He graduated from UAA in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and integrated media. He’s previously worked for KRUA radio, the Anchorage Press, and The Northern Light.
