7/11/14
Barrow, Alaska
I cannot remember the last time I prayed for anything. Wished, hoped, desired, sure, but appealed to
some higher power to grant it to me?
Probably not in the past decade.
That said, there have been plenty of times when I have wanted to, when I
desired to somehow control something that my rational self knew to be out of my
control. It seems such a simple
thing. You say a few words, and you
implore this higher power to grant you a favor in exchange for those
words. Even if you do not believe in
that higher power, what harm does saying a few words do? It seems almost rational to engage in what is
known as Pascal’s Wager, which says that, even if you don’t believe in a god,
the cost/benefit analysis in engaging in prayer outweighs that of not. What it does not mention is that to sacrifice
your beliefs, to admit that that there is a higher power than yourself. I am only referring to atheists in this
case. Theists have made their decisions
and for them to engage in prayer would not be sacrificing anything. Agnostics I do not include, since they have
refused to make a decision and cannot be included in any rational
discussion. The atheist makes his
decision that there is no higher power.
The Objectivist goes one step further and claims that his own self is
the highest power. To engage in prayer
despite that means that the Objectivist can no longer hold his self as the
highest power. To utter one word of
prayer one time destroys the whole supremacy of self. The wager is not, live 80 years as an atheist
and risk eternal damnation, versus live 80 years offering false prayers and
possibly receive salvation. No, the
wager is, live 80 years sacrificing yourself to no one and no thing and risk
eternal damnation, versus live 80 years as a slave and possibly receive
salvation. Again, I am not condemning
someone who truly believes in a god. I
am criticizing someone who is not sure so just “plays it safe,” thereby
becoming a slave to their fear, their uncertainty. There is nothing worse than being a slave to
anyone or anything, not even death.
After I closed, I took the opportunity to board early, knowing that with
my foot, no one would saying anything. I
fell asleep almost as soon as we took off, getting a nice nap on the
plane.
Then came the announcement. It was really foggy in Barrow, no
visibility. The plane was scheduled to
stop in Barrow and then continue to Prudhoe Bay (Deadhorse). If they couldn’t land in Barrow, they would
continue to Prudhoe Bay and return to Anchorage. It is impossible to explain how much that
fuck up my plans for Phase 2. Granted,
there were ways to rearrange things to possibly make it easier to hit the
southern National Parks, maybe skip the drive up Dalton, see what could be
done, but it would fuck up the hotels and make me need to rearrange
flights. Two times the captain tried to
make the approach and had to pull out.
The flight attendant said that “Mike” was a really good pilot and, if
anyone could land, he could. There was a
touch too much familiarity in her voice, but she had a ring on, so I didn’t
make too much of it. The pilot announced
that he had enough gas to try one more time.
After that, he would have to continue to Deadhorse.
A part of me wanted to pray at this point, but
I held to my rationality. Sokol, on the
other hand, a true theist, said the Shema, though I did not know that until
later. A few minutes later, I heard some
clapping. What did they know that I did
not? The plane was definitely slowing
down, but I didn’t notice anything different.
Contact! We landed, and I, too,
clapped at that point. For us, it was
just an obstacle to our vacation. For
most of the people on the flight, they hadn’t seen their families in days,
possibly not all week, and they didn’t know when they would be able to get home
if the flight couldn’t land. For the
people on the ground, it was the same, and, apparently, they clapped, too, when
we landed. We got entered the airport,
most of which was occupied by the security checkpoint, and saw a woman holding
a binder with the name of our hotel. I
asked if she could take us to the hotel, and she did. As she started the car, she said that really
wasn’t that great of a driver. I said,
“That’s okay. We had a good pilot, so it
evens out.” The joke went over her
head. I asked if we could get a taxi to
take us to Point Barrow at solar midnight (2:33 AM). She said that getting the taxi was not a
problem, but getting to Point Barrow was.
She gave us the name of a tour operator who could take us, and I called
him. The price was high, but it would be
worth it. We checked in to the hotel,
and the contract listed a fee for smoking in the room of double any fee I had
ever seen. I knew that we would not be
having pipes in our room tonight.
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| The world's northernmost Chinese restaurant. |
After
we dropped our stuff in our room and took the northernmost official Us of our
life, we headed out for Chinese, going to the northernmost Chinese restaurant
in the world. Just as in the small Inuit
communities of Canada, the Chinese food was good and ridiculously
overpriced. It was really good,
though. Not being able to spare any
Cubans, I had the next best thing after my meal, a Davidoff. These were the northernmost cigars of our
life, though we will be cigars even further north in a couple of hours. We made our way back to the hotel, the
biggest building in the city, and I told Sokol we were in the true North right
now. It was really no different than
Fort Simpson or Fort Smith or Iqaluit, other than the fact that it was a tundra,
instead of a wooded area.
When we got to
the hotel, we stood by the entrance, which provided us a little shelter from
the elements. Someone came over to say
that they were going to be repaving the parking lot at 10 PM. We asked all sorts of questions, both to make
conversation and to amuse ourselves. The
guy thought we were genuinely interested, and he had all the answers. Soon we were told that there was a designated
smoking area alongside the building and that we needed to smoke there. We did so, but our cigars were almost done,
and it was unbearably cold. I have no
idea how we’re going to do the cigars at solar midnight, let alone the plunge
into the Arctic Ocean. It will certainly
be epic. We headed up to our rooms to
relax a bit before our big adventure for the evening. I looked up a lot about the Inuit, the
Inupiat, the Eskimos, and the differences among them. The paving truck also came, which we wanted
to watch, but it was underwhelming. I
uploaded some photos and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close,
so that I can get ready for our big adventure.
I will also note that this concludes the first 500 MS Word pages of my
Travelogue.
Barrow, Alaska (Point Barrow)
The entire nation is behind me.
From Honolulu to Anchorage to Seattle to Dallas to New York, it is all
behind me. Every single person on the
continental mainland of North America is south of me. Sitting here at Point Barrow, with the Arctic
Ocean in front of me and every other point in the United States behind me, I am
freezing my hands off. It is the middle
of July, and the sun is still up. It is
hidden behind a cloud bank, ruining our chance at seeing solar midnight, but it
is significant moment, nonetheless. We
were planning on doing a plunge in the Arctic Ocean right at solar midnight,
but the ocean is teeming with jellyfish.
Sokol is going back and forth about whether or not to just do it anyway,
but I have called it off, not willing to risk getting stung. Instead, I have opted for puffing an Opus X
and writing this entry. I do not know
when to delineate the new day for today.
I have not slept since midnight, and I will not be watching TBS. The sun will neither rise nor set, and it is
hidden behind the cloud bank, so I cannot properly even use the solar midnight
delineation, unless I just want to call it at 2:33 AM. It is now 2:10 AM.
 |
| The world's northernmost football field. |
When people think about sitting on a beach in
the middle of a summer night, this is not what they have in mind. After I closed, I saw our van waiting
outside, so we got ready and headed down.
It was an Inupiat driver, and he said he was the only one authorized to
drive all the way up to the point.
Since it was 12:30 AM, and solar midnight was not for another 2 hours,
there was no need to rush, and he showed us some interesting sites along the
way, including the northernmost football field in the world. Soon enough, we came to the end of the road,
and we got out to take some pictures while he deflated the tires. From there, it was 3 miles along what was
just a glorified pebbly beach. The ride
was so rocky that I thought I would yak, but we made it. Then we saw them. The ocean was teeming with jellyfish, so we
had to call the whole thing off. I found
the exact northernmost point, and that was where I proceeded to write this
entry, which I will now close before I fully freeze off my fingers.
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