What do Juneau?

  • We’re on Day 3 (or 4?) of our Alaskan cruise, so I knew this morn­ing that we must be in Juneau. But we opted to get a win­dow­less inside cabin on the ship, so I didn’t have any idea how it would look.

    Turns out it looks like this:

    juneau-montage.jpgIt’s very pretty in a Great North­west way that I haven’t got­ten enough chance to see up close. It would be very inter­est­ing to know more about the peo­ple that opt to live here year-round. A per­son could look at the estab­lished vil­lage, the tourist shops and all that, and assume that the Alaskan state cap­i­tal is just like any­where else.

    But then, Juneau is the only state cap­i­tal with no roads going in or out. It can only be reached by air or sea. That gives you a lit­tle some­thing to think about. And then there’s the weather. It’s still mild out today — we’ve caught good weather every day so far, so you might be inclined to think it wouldn’t take that much to get used to life here. But you hear from the shop­keeper that last year was a bad snow year in which they got 200 (that’s two-hundred) inches of snow. And you think okay, maybe it would.

    Besides, there’s some­thing about the look of those moun­tains right up against the devel­oped land that looks like they might care­lessly squash the whole city like a giant rolling over in bed.

    The Russ­ian con­nec­tion I was look­ing for is here at least in a com­mer­cial sense. There were mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to buy matryoshka dolls and painted wooden eggs.

    stnicholasoc_juneauak.jpgWhen Greg and I braved the San Francisco-like hills, we even­tu­ally made it to St. Nicholas Ortho­dox Church. It was built in 1893 and it’s strug­gling for both funds and mem­bers (a sit­u­a­tion famil­iar to a lot of churches right now, I think). It’s the only Ortho­dox Church in town and one of only two in the whole south­west part of Alaska. Our group is com­ing tonight for Ves­pers, and I look for­ward to tak­ing a break from cruise activ­i­ties to do some­thing a lit­tle more meaningful.

    It makes me a lit­tle sad to think that this area hasn’t held onto the Russ­ian Ortho­dox her­itage more, but it’s hard to know how things went once the Klondike gold rush came sweep­ing in and then out like a rush­ing wave.

    juneauraven.jpgFor all its nat­ural beauty — you can look over the rooftops to the moun­tain behind it and see a thin water­fall cas­cad­ing hun­dreds of feet down — there’s some­thing solemn about the wilder­ness. The only birdlife we’ve seen are ravens, but they’re every­where, caw­ing like bark­ing dogs, com­pet­ing over scraps, swoop­ing down the alleys on straf­ing runs look­ing for garbage.

    You’d have to deal with a dif­fer­ent kind of lone­li­ness here. Every­one is friendly, but then it may be one of those cases when the cruise-boat tourists are a wel­come source of income. But when the sea­son ends and the tourists leave, how quiet the nights must get!
    Still, I think I under­stand why there are so many peo­ple that just get smit­ten with Alaska once they see it.


    Related posts:

    1. The lit­tle nat­u­ral­ist who cried “Whale!”
    2. Cruis­ing: But then again …
    3. Cold as a bat’s underpants
    4. Extremely inter­est­ing weather
    5. The Ortho­dox prob­lem in Jerusalem

    June 3rd, 2007 | Grace | 7 Comments |

7 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 06.03.2007

    Beau­ti­ful pho­tos! I hope that Ves­pers was lovely and prayerful.

  • s-p

    Some­times I think I could stand a few years of ‘quiet nights’…

  • Deb

    Your pho­tos are lovely. I think I could take a bit of soli­tude myself.

  • Grace

    Mimi,
    Ves­pers was a fine thing. It did my heart good to see icons, smell incense and hear prayers again after a cou­ple days of cruise-ship self-indulgence.

  • Grace

    s-p & Deb:
    If solitude’s the thing, then Juneau’s the place. (That didn’t quite win as a city slo­gan, but it could’ve.)

  • BJohnD

    My agency has an office in Juneau. Oth­ers who’ve been sta­tioned there say it’s very beau­ti­ful, but that it rains, oh, 330 days a year. Recently, that office sent out an intra-agency email solic­it­ing appli­cants for an open posi­tion. It included lovely pho­tos like the ones you posted, one of which, of a beau­ti­ful sun­rise, con­tained the date stamp “Dec. 13 9:51 a.m.”!

  • Grace

    Wow, an oppor­tu­nity to work in Juneau would be incred­i­ble, but it wouldn’t be for every­one. Besides the rain, there’s the long nights in win­ter, the cold (of course), the high cost and lim­ited vari­ety of food, the ‘small-town’ fac­tor (which can be a plus) and even just get­ting used to the cruise boat tourists dur­ing sum­mer. But it would be cool.

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