After suffering a particularly bad break-up, I turned to a dodgy-looking kebab shop for solace. It was a bad idea; the soon-to-be-closed-down shop put 140 people in hospital. One customer had such severe food poisoning, he ended up in a wheelchair. I ended up in Alaska.
Let me explain. The bottom fell out of my world and then the world fell out of my bottom. While I was delirious from the effects of this, my friend suggested we go camping in Alaska. I agreed. Now obviously, nobody in their right mind agrees to go camping anywhere. This is not only proof of how ill I was, it also demonstrates that there should be another way of measuring temperatures. Not numbers, but ridiculous things you’ve agreed to do while running a fever. Mine spiked to agreeing to go camping. In the wilderness.
It’s important that you know, before you read any further, that my idea of wilderness is anywhere more than a six-minute walk from a Pret. I don’t like nature. It’s too big/loud/quiet, and it doesn’t have good WiFi. I was born and raised in Elephant and Castle; the closest I’d got to wilderness was the AstroTurf in the local pub garden. But maybe I would discover a hidden side to myself! Maybe my ex was wrong about me! Maybe I wasn’t lazy and spoilt and whiny!
We arrived in Anchorage, a surprisingly un-picturesque city in Alaska. It isn’t the capital, which is Juneau, but Juneau can’t be reached by road. I’m no town planner, but this seems counter-intuitive. While waiting to join our group of fellow campers and seriously regretting my life choices, I browsed in a local shop, where I spotted a magazine called Susie’s AlaskaMen. I bought a copy and discovered that men far outnumber women in Alaska and so, in 1987, an enterprising person (“matchmaker/founder/editor” Susie Carter) had helpfully created a kind of male-order catalogue. I wondered if I might have accidentally stumbled across the answer to my problems.
Meanwhile our overenthusiastic tour guide had arrived along with my terrifyingly cheerful fellow campers. The tour guide lamented that we would not be around for the Outhouse Races, where people place their outhouses on skis and race them. Nor would we be able to enjoy the annual Moose Dropping Festival, where varnished pieces of numbered moose droppings are dumped from a crane into a parking lot and participants whose corresponding droppings land closest to the centre of a target receive cash prizes. Living in a state where the longest night lasts 67 days and where temperatures can plummet to minus 80° Fahrenheit clearly does something to your perception of fun.
The tour guide drove us to our first chunk of wilderness. While my fellow campers took photographs of passing moose and talked excitedly about the Northern Lights, I flicked through the pages of AlaskaMen. Maybe Ray, a bearded hunk holding a surprisingly large fish, might be a good way to get over my break-up. He “likes anything that is fun”. OK. Good start. I like non-outhouse-related fun. In moderation. Oh, but wait, he is looking for a woman who is “comfortable around animals and guns”. I am comfortable around neither. Speaking of animals, our tour leader was now handing out bear bells. Apparently, Denali National Park is home to around 400 bears and the best deterrent modern science has come up with is to wear bells round your ankles like some kind of third-rate Morris dancer.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Mainly because I was camping, which is wrong, but also because I was listening out for bears or wolves or some other hungry animal who would eat me like the filling in a sleeping-bag burrito. To comfort myself, I flicked through my catalogue. Maybe Troy is the man for me. He’s a bearded hunk holding a surprisingly big fish. He says he is looking for a gal. Am I gal? I’m not sure if I’m a gal. Also, the gal he is looking for should be one who “isn’t afraid of getting dirty or bruised”. That rules me out. I’m not a fan of either.
The next morning, I woke up surprised to be alive. A bear had not mauled me. Rude. I unzipped the tent and looked out at the sun glinting off a distant glacier. And what was that by the flower next to my tent? A beautiful little hummingbird? No, wait, not a hummingbird, A FUCKING MOSQUITO! The biggest one I had ever seen! That was why a bear hadn’t eaten me — a mosquito had snacked its way across my body and only left the gristly bits.
That day, some of the group climbed a mountain while others went white-water rafting. I didn’t fancy either of those, so I sulked my way round an incredibly beautiful glacier. My bites itched and I was cold and my bear bells were getting on my nerves. Our tour guide told us that Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, which works out as under 2 cents per acre.
“The United States was ripped off,” I grumbled.
“Alaska is like the land of the giants,” enthused the tour guide. “Because we have so much precipitation and a day lasting 82 days in summer— everything grows real big.”
“No shit,” I replied, batting away a mosquito the size of a pterodactyl.
“We have giant trees, giant glaciers, giant fish, giant vegetables,” he continued. “I once grew a zucchini the size of a dachshund!” What a legacy.
That night I lay in my freezing sleeping bag, waiting to see which animal would feast on me. I was over halfway through my copy of AlaskaMen and I hadn’t yet found my soulmate. But, hang on, who’s this bearded hunk? Randy! Randy seems a little different. He isn’t holding a surprisingly big fish, he is holding a surprisingly big axe. I like people who are different. Randy is looking for a woman who is “humble and discreet”. Slightly concerning. Then he says, “I’ll be waiting for you at the old dock, under a half-lit moon.” I’m pretty sure that’s a death threat.
The next day we headed to our second stop, Seward. Seward is the southern terminus of the Alaska railroad, and the historic starting point of the original Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race where Mushers race almost a thousand miles over the course of 15 days. Some of the group went fishing, where they caught a 250lb halibut; others went to the local market, where they bought a 120lb cabbage and rolled it back to camp shouting “coleslaw!”
Sitting by the campfire, eating burnt halibut and raw cabbage, the tour guide lamented that we were too far from Haines to visit the Hammer Museum, which has over 1,400 hammers. This did seem a shame, as I would have quite liked to bludgeon myself to death rather than face another night in a tent with these cheerful maniacs.
Two days later, the tour guide and I had a serious falling out. I had left toothpaste in my tent, and apparently this is literally an invitation for any bear to come and eat you. Bears love toothpaste. Part of me thinks that at least the bear would have lovely minty breath as his jaws close on your face.
My wilderness adventure finished in Homer, where we got a boat out to another ridiculously beautiful glacier and listened to it slowly melting into the sea, which sounds like thunder and lightning (ie: too noisy). Alaska is all very well if you want to see the most incredible scenery you’ve ever seen, but if you want a comfy bed, an en-suite and not to be eaten (my priorities when on holiday), it might not be for you.
As I lay in my freezing tent that night, I accepted that, apparently, there wasn’t a hidden side to myself. What’s more, I had reached the very last page of AlaskaMen. And there he was: Shane, an “old-fashioned type of guy”, looking for a petite, God-fearing woman who likes shovelling snow, someone “lower maintenance”, a woman “who doesn’t complain too much” and someone good at communicating as he “can’t read minds”.
Reader, I married him.
No, I didn’t — I’ve just always wanted to say that. But it did make me realise that, although I was single, there were plenty more bearded men holding surprisingly big fish in the sea. And maybe, just maybe, one of them might be looking for a woman who’s lazy, spoilt and whiny.
Georgia Pritchett is a writer and executive producer on Succession and the author of a memoir, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life
