Over the last two years, I have grown accustomed to finding places to shower, hauling water and cold strolls to the outhouse. It is the life many Fairbanksans share—living in cabins.
            I have met many true Alaskans here who spent their childhood in rougher conditions (wood heat, no electricity, true isolation and all), but my situation is appalling to people from “outside” and even some locals find it a little surprising.
            My former employer once had to drop me off at my house once and he categorized my cabin-covered neighborhood as a “slum.” I have grown to like this low-rent district with its assortment of characters. Though it does have its disadvantages as far as security is concerned.
            This summer, while my roommates and I were all away, someone broke into the cabin, stole our electronics and tried on my clothes. We came back to a ransacked mess. I was a little irritated that they had to steal our things. They tipped our transfer-station couch over and made a complete mess of the place. At first we considered moving, thinking that maybe we would feel insecure after all that, but after settling in for the semester, it feels like home. I guess I could attribute our mishap on the neighborhood, but then again houses are ransacked in every echelon of society.
            The place is advertised as “two bedrooms” but there is really no divider between the bedrooms, so it is like one big bedroom upstairs. Sound flows freely between the upstairs and down which makes it necessary for everyone to coordinate when they sleep a bit so as not to wake the others. Information also flows freely between everyone who lives here, so negativity is strongly discouraged.
            Such cramped conditions could lead to a lot of squabbling between people, but we cope very well with the circumstances. We’re like family. I care about what happens to them, which is good because the current living situation makes it impossible not to know exactly what happens every day.
            Much to our disappointment, our landlord banned bonfires at our house because it leads to nails in the driveway. He enforced this policy shortly before my twenty-first birthday party last year. My industrious friends would not be brought down though. Since our landlord’s gripe was with metal on the ground, they found old barrels, loaded them into a car and brought them back to make small fires in. It was great. People driving up said we all looked like bums standing around barrel fires.
            There are some drawbacks to living in this place, like the whole no running water thing. I usually shower on campus, which is not so bad. Sometimes I must sacrifice a bit of personal hygiene for the sake of my living conditions, but like so many things, at least it will make a good story some day.