This week we’re hearing from Stephanie Seber in McCarthy. Seber is a massage therapist who moved to McCarthy in 2009 from Colorado.
SEBER: It was I guess tragedy actually that got me here. The bottom falling out of life. It just seemed like the right time to make a move.
I did some rambling through the Lower 48, mostly to the mountain states: Montana, Idaho, I spent a little time in Vermont. And I feel like it was always just kind of in the plan to come to Alaska. It just felt like the direction my life was moving.
I ended up driving up the Alcan in the very beginning of March, I believe, in a Jetta. A fully loaded Jetta. So it was an adventure to get here, couple snowstorms. I found myself in McCarthy, Alaska, which was this great little net, and felt like a warm hug for my soul.
My first winter was awesome. I actually got to stay in my neighbor’s cabin, because it was before I built mine. And so it was still like living out of a duffel, which I had done for years. But it was great. It was cold. The Northern Lights that winter were off the charts. McCarthy in general has a pretty strong sense of camaraderie, and I think that in the wintertime, it’s just exemplified even further.
I may wish that all my water was hauled, but I actually have to go and do that: haul the buckets, clean the buckets. There’s steps here to living that aren’t like other places.
It was great to be able to just slow down and to read a book for an entire day maybe, or go cut some trees down for an entire day, without the thought of, “Oh. I have this to do tomorrow.” Again, this cumulative list of things to do doesn’t really exist here in my mind. It’s just doing.
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.
Erin McKinstry is Alaska Public Media's 2018 summer intern. She has an M.A. from the University of Missouri's School of Journalism and a B.A. from Knox College. She's reported stories for The Trace, The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, Harvest Public Media, the IRE Radio Podcast, KBIA and The Columbia Missourian.
