Cravings: A Cautionary Tale

December 10, 2023

I lived in a co-op for my last two years of college. I left the dorm and my sweet roommates for various reasons including a generalized anti-establishment streak, but it was mostly about food. I couldn't deal with the mass-market feel of the dining hall, I wanted to make toast in the middle of the night, and I needed to bake cookies for therapy.

The co-op was a glutton's paradise. We snacked on chocolate chips from a 25-pound box. Eight loaves of fresh bread came out of the oven every night. I developed an addiction to hot chili sesame oil, which we ordered by the case, and which I smothered on rice and ramen. When I graduated and moved out, I forgot my laundry in the dryer and literally lost all of my favorite clothes, but I remembered to grab a bottle of hot chili sesame oil.

I was leaving Boston and heading to Alaska for a summer job studying the temperate rainforest. There would be bears and big trees and whales and glaciers. There would not, I feared, be a ready supply of hot chili sesame oil.

A week after graduation I was on my way via American Airlines to Seattle where I would take a bus to a place called Bellingham to catch a ferry bound for Juneau, Alaska. This was no hop across the water; I'd be on the ferry for three nights, arriving in Juneau at 6am Monday in time to start my job at 8am. It was all mythic at this point. I packed my tent and sleeping bag, into which I tucked my trusty hot chili sesame oil, in my backpack along with whatever clothes and gear I could cram in.

Somehow I missed my connecting flight in Chicago (that's another story). I wangled my way onto another flight, but by the time it landed in Seattle, instead of five hours to find my way to Bellingham I had two. If I missed the ferry, the next one would depart in – oh, a week.

I sprinted to baggage claim, snatched my backpack, ran out the door, and found a bus to Bellingham. I threw the backpack in the storage bin under the bus and got on, breathless and exhilarated. Somewhere along the way I had caught a whiff of Chinese food and realized I was hungry, but there was nothing to do about that now.

The bus arrived at the ferry terminal in Bellingham just in time. I grabbed my backpack and ran. Waves of relief washed over me along with waves of hunger and more waves of that Chinese food smell. I glanced around for a food truck, but didn’t see anything and I didn’t have time anyway. I would find food on the boat.

On the ferry, I exhaled and began to get my bearings. I saw some lockers and decided to stash my hulking backpack and follow the Chinese food aroma, which I was happy to note must be coming from the boat. My backpack out-girthed the locker, so I shoved the bottom with both hands.

Once I'd jammed the backpack in and slammed the locker shut, I startled to see my hands slick with a reddish oily film. I sniffed. Slow-dawning comprehension snapped into place: the Chinese food smell following me around was the broken bottle of hot chili sesame oil, now leaching into my down sleeping bag and my backpack – the very ones I would be taking with me into brown bear country for the summer. This craving was not worth it, I thought.

But the Alaska Marine Highway System is was one of the greatest government services on the planet. I quickly learned that a purser is a person you want to know if you have a problem. The purser is the fixer of the ferry, concierge of the open ocean. The purser took pity on me, and by the time I was ready to sleep, the ferry workers had laundered and dried my sleeping bag.

In the meantime, I had met two guys named Matt and Matt who helped me set up my tent by theirs on the open deck of the M/V Columbia. They were heading up to work on something called the Slime Line in Petersburg, and they gave me food and duct tape to help secure my tent in place on the windy deck. I told them the story of my hot chili sesame oil and they played cards with me until the purser called my name over the speaker system. I ran down and was handed a warm, dry sleeping bag.

The solstice sky glowed pink and orange at 11pm when I snuggled in for the night in my tent. As we plied north toward Alaska, the day's adrenaline rush quieted to wonder. I might have lost my hot chili sesame oil, but I had found the adventure I craved.

Almost 30 years later, I'm still in Alaska. Through the years I have had to leave many things behind, some by choice, some by fiat of one kind or another. Letting go is never easy for me. I struggle to stay in the present. I struggle with nostalgia and loss, the particular loneliness of feeling severed from one's past.

Perhaps the hot chili sesame oil is a metaphor: I could not quite imagine a future without it. It is also a cautionary tale: Trying to carry it into my new life only left me with broken glass and slimy hands. Perhaps it was the story, not the hot chili oil, that was meant to last. And as it turns out, Alaska has an excellent assortment of condiments.

[Note: I originally wrote this for Mudrooms, a Juneau storytelling event, but didn't tell a story. The theme was cravings. I do this fairly often - the prompts are fun.]