Only in Alaska...

Does someone from town stop by at the clinic to gift you moose poop pellets.
Apparently people make stuff out of them (often jewelry!) and sometimes they are painted gold, transformed into treasured "gold nuggets"



Does a nurse get away with having a ziploc baggie of dry moose poop in her scrub pocket for even a couple minutes...


Is the "graffiti" that marks the highway hills made out of stones

Is there a 911 call for bear mauling. And the patient's location is so remote that it takes a couple hours on the phone with seemingly everyone before a helicopter is even arranged to meet the patient. And in the process of dispatching and frenzied calls...a state trooper walks in covered in moose blood with a story about how the eye of the moose exploded all over his glasses...
(I had to shake my head in disbelief)
Pray that this patient survives.
Never saw or will meet this poor victim... but was only one of the nurses working over the phone!

Will the wilderness kill you--and sometimes quickly.

Can a four hour drive seem like thirty minutes because of the unmatched beauty all around you.

Do pumpkins grow to be over seven hundred pounds.

Do you sometimes see more four-wheelers on the road than cars.

Do people talk of snow in September.

Does a trip to Target, or even the mall, seem therapeutic and comforting...

Is someone unable to make it to movie-night because they happened to shoot down a caribou at the last minute on their way back home from berry picking...



Do you go to church and then afterward, the ladies show off their fridge...
with a de-brained moose head in it!


Do you meet the frogs you learned about in biology class...the ones that freeze over in the winter and then thaw back to life in the spring.

Only....in Alaska.

*stay tuned for more of these bewildering, "pretty-sure-I-might-be-in-another-county-right-now" moments*