Broken Bearings

In front of Nome lies the Bering Sea, vast and scary. All the streets in Nome dead ends in it, with a perfect sign just begging the question ‘where to now?’ Nome is the end of the road, last call. The shoreline is where my great grandfather once stood searching for the perfect piece of gold, further out lies Russia and a roaring sea that will claim lives every year. At present the water is frozen for miles out, and besides the Nome National Forest; discarded Christmas trees planted in the ice for an otherwise treeless town, there is nothing but ice, ice, ice as far as you can see. The Bearing Sea is the perfect place for philosophic reflection, long walks, snow angles, spinning around in circles, making lists, shrieking loudly to the tunes from an ipod, and, well, other memorable things. As I leave my 20s in a town built on dreams of fortunes from gold, I realize I struck it last year when I stood on the Bering ice and decided it was time for a change.