This week we’re hearing from Brittney Anderson in McGrath. Anderson moved to McGrath in January of 2016.
ANDERSON: I don’t know what my first impression was. There were a lot of people out and I thought there was an awful lot of activity for such a small town. Between commercial flights and the little planes, we probably have a dozen planes that come and go everyday. It didn’t quite jive with my impression of an isolated little village in the middle of nowhere.
I lived in a really little community growing up. That was one of those places where if you’re not born there and your parents are born there and your grandparents were born there, you’re still from outside after 20 years. And so, I kinda expected that and I haven’t really had that experience here. People have been friendly and welcoming. Right from the start, they’d invite us for barbecue or, you know, down to the bar for a beer. Just really nice.
When we moved here, we brought one miniature poodle with us. She’s 10 years old now. A couple months went by and we got a sled dog, and then a few more months went by and a friend asked if we wanted some more sled dogs. And so in the process of getting more dogs, we had to move. We started off in a little apartment. Then we moved to a little house right in the middle of town. And then we moved again uptown when we had six dogs. And then we got four more dogs last winter, and started running sled dogs last winter.
Learning to manage a team of dogs was a new experience for me. I didn’t expect them to be very personable. From having little dogs, I’m accustomed to them being really affectionate. But I just kinda thought sled dogs were halfway to wolves; they didn’t have that really wonderful personality. So that’s been a really cool part of it.
Anne Hillman is the healthy communities editor at Alaska Public Media and a host of Hometown, Alaska. Reach her atahillman@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Annehere.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
