There’s something truly magical about a small town on the Kenai Peninsula in southeast Alaska. A magic that makes it painful to have left.
Seward, Alaska is a town of 2000 people that more or less doubles in size during peak tourism season. Cruise ships and buses down from Anchorage bring ever-changing tourists flooding in from mainland America and a hundred of other countries. To accommodate, and profit off of, the steady influx of eager tourists, the three main streets open all of their shops, hotels, and restaurants while the hospitality industries bring in summer help to keep up with the demand for Alaskan experiences. Companies in town are founded around the tourists and offer tours of the local land, waters, and wildlife unique to The Last Frontier.
The most notable among these tourist hotspots, in my entirely biased opinion, is the Alaska SeaLife Center.
I can give the full and proper spiel that I gave every Friday introducing the Center but it’s easier to convince cruiseshippers to laugh at jokes about the only escalator on the Kenai Peninsula than it is to amuse internet strangers so we’ll skip that.
Outwardly, the Center is an impressive public aquarium showcasing native Alaskan species, many of which are uncommon to see in the wild or elsewhere in captivity. As an aquarium, it is great for a quick visit when you’re in town (particularly when it’s raining as it is Seward’s only large indoor space available to the public). The underwater viewing area for the seal, sea lion, and sea bird habitats is truly stunning on a clear and sunny day and I’ve yet to see much else that can compete with the blue waters from Resurrection Bay, streaked by sunlight and bubbles from diving sea life.
And yet, it is ultimately the work behind the scenes that makes it so special. The wildlife response work and scientific research is incredible and unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed before.
In three months working at the SeaLife Center, I got to watch and learn about the incredible jobs at the heart of an aquarium. I observed vet procedures, photographed wildlife releases, and learned more about Steller sea lion breeding from literal experts than I ever thought I needed to know, all in a magical town in a beautiful state.
Seward is somehow nestled all at once between a beautiful sky blue ocean, the lush greenery of a temperate rainforest, and towering glacier peaked mountains. I have spent the better part of twenty years calling Colorado, the beautiful mountain state, home but wow, it sucks in comparison to Alaska. Absolutely nothing can prepare you for the beauty and awe of that state.
There is a part of me that is biased because I’ve never lived near water and always wanted to so being able to see the ocean from my apartment’s parking lot or look out over the bay in the conference room at work was very special to me. The mountains, though much more familiar, were simply closer and popped in contrast. The elevation on the popular mountain in town was still lower than the elevation of my parents house in the “flat” part of Colorado so it wasn’t so much the mountains themselves that left me awestruck, but the way they shaped the rest of the landscape around them.
As someone who has the bad knee of a 60-year-old, an autoimmune disease that makes me vaguely allergic to the sun, and a general lack of skill for prolonged physical activity, climbing mountains is not my thing but the hike around Two Lakes was my compromise. My favorite trail, it’s a reasonable loop with minimal elevation changes that circled around two eerily still lakes that glistened a surreal green blue. Twice I sat on the bank of one of those lakes, talking about life and trying to land pebbles on lily pads and somehow those are some of my favorite evenings in Seward.
The trail, for some reason, is located mostly unmarked behind a building for the local vocational school and tucked next to Mt. Marathon so that if you went off of the main trail, you could just start climbing the mountain without really realizing where you are thanks to the lack of signage, which is sort of an ongoing theme for Seward. The first time I walked the trail (alone as I usually do despite locals’ warnings about bears) I was not entirely convinced I hadn’t taken the wrong path and was about to be murdered in the woods. Of course, I quickly saw that all you have to do is walk east a little bit and you end up in a rich person’s backyard and a little beyond that is the main road that leads straight back to the SeaLife Center. It’s a small town.
A small town, and small budget, kept my adventures small but strangely I didn’t mind. When I was offered the internship I began drawing up grand plans of dog sledding and bear watching and other truly Alaskan tourist excursions but the prices of basic groceries at Safeway against my salary of zero dollars kept me grounded in Seward. Instead, I learned to spend my weekends following the advice of the locals. I was very lucky to get the only Seward born and raised intern as my coworker and cubicle-mate and definitely let her guide me whenever she was willing, which sometimes meant a tour of the town including the high school and a delay at the Chamber of Commerce because her friend’s baby was there. She directed me to the favorite beaches, trails, and coffee shops and rarely did her recommendations disappoint, even when we were tide pooling in the midnight rain, soaking through my shoes for a few scattered water bugs.
My last week brought me experiences that were not on my Alaska Bucket List yet are now my standout moments. As someone who has never been a fan of any public bodies of water, I surprised even myself when I quoted Gilmore girls then walked myself right into the very cold bay. I remember the tightness in my chest as I submerged and the shock of how hard I fought to keep breathing even as I walked out and yet I was so pleased to have done it and would have gone back without hesitation.
If nothing else, Seward made me do things I didn’t really want to do. I forced myself out of my apartment every weekend and fought my desire to be in bed by 10 pm when needed. I’m a homebody, an introvert, and inexplicably anxious about most new things but somehow never regretted any of it. Even if none of this was big, momentous escapades, it was something important for me.
I am quite grateful for the small adventures. Somehow they were more than enough.
Because I knew my time in Seward was limited, I tricked myself into thinking it was time for me to go. But, standing at the bus stop after my final goodbyes, the lies I told myself seeped through with the rain: this place was special and leaving it remains one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Leaving Seward meant leaving the people, the places, and the ideals that suddenly meant so much to me and in the weeks after my departure, I grieved in a very real way as I navigated what’s next. As I talk to my former roommate and watch for shared posts from my fellow interns, I see that I am not alone in this feeling. Seward, and the ASLC, somehow had a powerful influence on us in ways I’m not sure we can fully articulate. I, of course, had to try.
