Comfort

We came to Alaska with relative ease. Living here hasn't presented the same comfort that moving here did. Everything sparks and moves here: our blankets and stockinged feet emit blue sparks (sometimes painfully so) in the dry air, the Earth is never fully settled due to the constant shifting of tectonic plates and groaning blue glaciers (still here, still receding, still moving slowly forward in their diminished states), and walks in the woods and even through town put us on edge due to healthy cautious fears of wolf packs (there's one in our neighborhood) and bears both brown and black. While it's beautiful, majestic, and awe inspiring on a daily basis Alaska has never been comfortable to us. But we've of course been horribly spoiled, and when we go back, we'll probably have to train our eyes to stop trying to fill the empty space in the sky where snow-capped craggy mountains used to live.