A Fur Piece

"Why would you want to go to Alaska for vacation? In the winter?"

Why not? Dave and I have never been inclined toward the tropics. There's something about being comfortable outdoors nearly naked in the wintertime that just seems wrong, somehow. Something morally corrosive about being caressed by gentle breezes, with nothing better to do than fend off parrot poop with the itty bitty umbrella in your drink. You go to Alaska in the winter and you can appreciate the warm shower and the cozy bed quilt and the two-inch view of the mountains through the peep-hole in your balaclava, and your heart is the gladder. You come home from Belize and your nice comfortable home life looks like a pile of crap.

It's probably even more fundamental than that. I have a Viking chromosome inside me somewhere that beckons me north. It's the strapping chromosome with the little horned helmet. The chromosome said harr! Head for the pole, and our more practical friends Scott and Kevin agreed and added a recommendation to pack warm gear. We received our instructions and bought gloves and hats. Snow boots. Insulated trousers. And what most people call "thermal layers" and Dave cannot be dissuaded from calling "panty liners." We were ready.

Scott picked us up at the airport and took us to downtown Anchorage. There weren't enough degrees out there to rub together and make a spark. And the wind was blowing. Dave and I looked like sleeping bags on legs. Giant walking larvae. Charitably speaking, we were penguin-shaped. Everyone else was hatless, busily peeling down their zippers and fanning their necks. I'd seen something like this in Maine one winter. Kids were coming in from playing outside and their mom said "how is it?" and they said "nice! It's above!" by which they meant it was above zero degrees Fahrenheit, which is a totally stupid temperature. Don't they know what zero degrees is? It's no degrees.

Anyway the Fur Rondy was going on. That's short for Fur Rendezvous, and there are sleds and dogs

and parades and snowshoe softball games and, everywhere, people wearing carcasses. One man had an entire wolf wrapped around his face and his companion was trailing lynx paws for ear flaps. A fox curled up on someone's head as if it were trying to get a better view. And those hats with dingleballs? Actual balls. I thought: we're not in Portland anymore. And then I thought: great thundering Thor on a toy pony, I want one.

I tried on a fox hat. It was fabulous. Its provenance via the leghold trap was invisible. I could have bought it then and there, but I could only have worn it then and there. You cannot wear slain headgear in Portland, Oregon. We have standards for earnestness. Shit: there are thresholds you can't cross in Portland unless your shoes pass the hemp detector. Nobody's packing, but if you wear a dead critter in Portland, you will be liberally sprayed with ocular bullets of shame. Nobody thinks a thing about it in Anchorage. If it hadn't been Fur Rondy, they wouldn't have had the stuff on at all: you wouldn't even think of putting on your fur until it's below. So there's that. Fur is really, really warm.

And it's really, really gorgeous, all of it, from snout to dingleballs. You can make a case that it's even more gorgeous wrapped around its original beating heart, and no one could disagree, but it's gorgeous this way, too, and unquestionably the thing to wear if you're a naked human trying to make a go of it in the Arctic. There aren't that many humans in this state (Alaska, not naked). It's even possible there are few enough that most people can get a hat and there will still be critters left too. I don't know.

I know I don't get to go home with a hat.

A Month In IKEA

My colds all follow the same script. There is the inciting throat tickle; the sore throat and fever; then the march of the phlegm brigade; sneezing and congestion; and finally, a dry hacking cough for a day or two, and we're done. A week, tops. The dry cough is the worst. Nothing alleviates it, although there is medicine that will transform it into a dry, mentholated cough.

So when I got my inciting throat tickle in the airport in Fiji on January 20th, I thought: well, at least I'll be done with this before I give a reading of Trousering Your Weasel at the bookstore. And judging from the crush of humanity and humidity in the Fiji airport, I should be grateful it's not Ebola. People who are not me love that kind of heat, but I associate it with lying wretched on the linoleum floor in front of the black oscillating fan in August in Washington, D.C. in 1960, and other tropical diseases.

My throat did get sore, but that misery was eclipsed by the fact that my ears sealed up on the airplane and never flopped back open again.

After two weeks, they still hadn't. "Have you tried yawning?" people inquired, one after the other. No! Really? I am nearly sixty and I've never heard of the yawning trick, you annoying shit. Young mothers steered their children away from me as I walked down the street repeatedly gaping like a carp and yanking on my earlobes. I still didn't have congestion. Then, all out of order, came the dry, hacking cough. "I've still got three days before my reading," I thought. "I should be done by then."

The cough continued unabated, especially when I tried to talk. I quit talking two days before the event in an attempt to rest my throat, a nearly unprecedented phenomenon which left Dave confused as to whether to enjoy it or be worried sick. The dry, hacking cough remained in force for a solid week, with one two-hour break in the middle, during which I had my reading. It was a little miracle, for which I was advised to credit God, who intervened on my behalf because he really wasn't up to wading into that business in Syria.

And then the cough subsided, followed by--we are three weeks into this thing now--the beginning of major congestion, which appeared to be having no effect against the invading virus, and so was amplified by a surge of phlegm soldiers, which emptied into my hankie in such quantities that it seemed my head should fold up like a drained juice box. On Day 24, my left ear unclogged for several minutes and then thought better of it. A few days later the mucus quit running but kept accumulating and filled up every available space inside my head like a herd of unemployed twenty-year-olds in a house full of sofas. And then the sneezing began. One after the other. FAGLAVIK! FORHOJA! SNOIG!

That's when it hit me. OMG. My cold went to IKEA and it can't get out.

That's what happened to Dave and me. We went in to IKEA for something specific. Escalators herd you straight upstairs. I didn't notice at the time, but there are no down escalators. We did maneuvers through office furniture, bookcases, and bathroom furnishings, and finally located our section, selected our item, and tried to make our way back. In IKEA, there is no way back. Retracing your steps requires a sort of reverse peristalsis that their staff is not equipped to clean up after. We were instead directed to the exit by large one-way arrows on the floor aisles, and so we began our odyssey, kinking around the store like farts in a bellyful of intestines. There are no windows. I have a good sense of direction but after four turns I had lost all sense of the exit. "This is ridiculous," Dave said. "Oh look: picture frames," I said. We got some traction in the pillow department and gained momentum through glassware, until Dave bogged down at the tumbler display. Linens were next. I could use some new curtains. I pawed through the samples. "There's a shortcut here, it says," Dave said, pointing at a sign. We headed that way.

"Look at this sweet vase!" I said. "We don't need any more vases," Dave said. "But it's so cheap!" I said. "We have a million vases," Dave said. "Look at this price!" I said, to his back, which was disappearing around the bend. I caught up fast. He'd gotten hung up. "Look at this sweet drawer divider!" Dave said.

Ten minutes later, I was pleased to see another display of curtains. "Hold up," I said. "There's more curtains here."

"They're the same ones," Dave said. Pshaw. I'm the one with the good sense of direction, not him. Holy shit. They WERE the same ones. I was rattled. "Okay, run! Run! And this time, no shortcuts!"

The exit doors finally came into view. They are easy to find. You start at the entrance doors and follow the arrows for forty-five minutes.

I feel sorry for my cold. But enough is enough, I told it. Grab some Swedish meatballs like everyone else and get the hell out of Dodge.