I’m in the Costco parking lot filling up the back of my car with bags of peanuts so the Stellar Jays won’t break my windows pecking at them when a car pulls up behind me, a woman gets out and asks, “Are you Elise Patkotak?” When I answer in the affirmative, she pulls out my new book that she’s just bought in Costco and asks me to sign it. A few sentences later I realize she is the granddaughter of people I knew in Barrow and the daughter of a woman I know from Barrow.
It’s only in Alaska that you can have moments like that.