❄️ 🏴 ❄️
Boss: We need a project manager for a temporary assignment in Anchorage. We’d like you to go.
Main Character: Anchorage as in Alaska!?
Boss: Do you know of others?
MC: Yes, there are eight other places named Anchorage. Seven in the US, one in the UK. Don’t roll your eyes. You know I was a Jeopardy Champion. Don’t ask if you don’t want an answer.
Boss: Yes. Anchorage, Alaska.
MC: That’s ridiculous. I get cold under 70o. My idea of being outdoorsey is a 20-minute walk on a paved trail.
Boss: Actually that’s why we want to send you. You’ll go up, bring the project in on time, and come home. You might even be compelled to wrap it up faster.
MC: You want to send me because I won’t like it?
Boss: You won’t get distracted. You won’t buy a quarter share in a salmon cannery. You won’t get your bush pilot license in order to start a business taking tourists on Northern Lights tours. You won’t decide to study volcanoes with the UAF Geophysical Institute.
MC: Those are very specific concerns.
Boss: We’ve had some trouble in the past. The Alaska office has been sort of a black hole for us. People go up and don’t come back.
MC: We’ll I’m coming back. I like my job and my life is not a made-for-tv romcom. Any bearded mountain man who falls in love with me better be prepared to shave and move south. I am not Alaska material.
Boss: We’re counting on it.
❄️ 🏴 ❄️
Afterword
Does she – or he – come back or stay in Alaska? I’m inclined to think the former. Subvert the trope!
Update, Part 2 [Taking The Long Way Home]
Inspiration. UChicago Graham School, Alaska: Indigenous, Russian, American. Taught by: Alina Shokareva. What it says on the tin. “This lecture course covers three phases of Alaska’s history – before European exploration, Russian, and American.” AK. Online, 8 sessions, starts 8 Jan 2025. I have signed up. Join me.
Previous UCG classes.
Monks to Voltaire: European Intellectual Transformations 1200-1750 [No post] 2022
Whales, Whaling, and American History [State Of The Blog, 36 Days Of Type, intro] 2022
The History of Science Fiction. [Winter Protocols, Blanket Adjustment, intro] 2023
The Medieval Book [Stall Rest Chronicles 17 Feb, scroll down] 2023
The Anatomy of Fantasy [What’s With All The Fantasy Posts?] 2024
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
As always, I love your fiction. I’m still hoping that at some point you’ll put them – the fiction fragments – into a book.
From your mouth to God’s ear.
Joan
I’m hoping the warmup exercises will spark a bigger idea.