The Job

Tordrillo Mountain Lodge

For a long time, I was told over and over again that I was living the dream — flying around in helicopters, skiing, hiking, fishing, and exploring a remote part of Alaska. To give a little context, I spent five years living in my family’s dry cabin, working at a billionaire’s resort tucked deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Cut off from real life, I shared the dinner table and sat around campfires with some of the most influential people in the world. That place became my whole identity — to the point where, even years later, the first question I get from people is whether I’m still working there full time. I was living my dream but everything has a way of eventually fading.

To be honest, that job saved me from a previous life and gave me meaning for the first time in years. I felt as if I’d finally found a place I belonged, with people I belonged with. I made my best friends — a new family. I lived a romantic life, spending summer mornings kayaking across the lake to work, then returning in the evening to birds singing an endless tune, while gazing across the water at Mount Spur lit up by the never-setting midnight sun. In the winters, my commute was a snow machine (mobile) across the frozen lake as the northern lights would dance over head some mornings. It was that little corner of the earth I grew up visiting, that would become a place where I was the most comfortable, it was home. 

But it wasn’t perfect by any means.

There were years where I slept next to a radio and a wood burning stove, waiting for a call in the middle of the night telling me the power had gone out. With temperatures hovering around -20 degrees Fahrenheit, I would wake up in my puffy gear, throw a log on the fire, and snow machine over to bring everything back online. Then the times when one of those best friends held my legs as I reached into the septic tank to fix a lifting pump. Or the multiple occasions that a diesel fuel pump would explode on me, covering all my clothes with diesel and a smell that is impossible to get out. Most of my winters were spent out on the frozen lake grooming the runway for hours in a snowcat from the ’70s, its engine roaring a foot from my ears and constant windstorms undoing any progress I’d make. My summers, I would try to do yard work while mosquitoes swarmed by hundreds. The list goes on and on.

I was a sheltered kid with a degree in economics from some fancy college looking for something different. This was different, just a couple other 20 something year olds trying to manage the facilities of a $20 million resort, giving people the vacation of their life, in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. I had help, a lot of it, but I was so far out of my comfort zone, and that was kind of the fun part about it.

Just as I felt like I was starting to figure it out — when things were getting really good, and I was happy, content almost — then reality hit and life got very real, very fast. 

I always knew the job was inherently dangerous, but it’s another thing entirely to experience it. We were on top of the world, just finishing hosting the first ever Natural Selection. Then one morning the dominoes fell and my brother called to tell me it was time to put down my dog, my first dog, who was my shadow. I took that day off and hid in my cabin, only to receive another call later in the evening that one of the helicopters didn’t return to base. One of those friends I’d shared every meal with, hung out with every day, was found the next morning — among the wreckage. It made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the AP. One of the wealthiest people in Europe was in that crash — one of the deadliest in decades. It turned into one of those really dark days. 

The lodge’s Instagram filled with horrible comments and messages I was forced to read. Lawsuits started that are still going on today. The air was sucked out of the place. But we kept working, wanting to finish the season. That meaning was replaced with a numbness, one I could never shake.  I was left trying to hold onto a memory of what was — or what could have been- trying to remake those good times. I ended up chasing that dream for years afterward, but nothing was ever really the same after that and it eventually just became a job. I went through the motions, counting down the days every season until I was doing something — anything — else.

Then when that day finally came, I couldn’t do it anymore, and I left. I came back to my real life and saw my friends move on with their lives. The world hadn’t stopped. I felt out of place again, left out, and alone. That was hard to accept, and as I searched for what was next, I tried to find that same meaning again — in something else, or someone else. It became unhealthy, and I didn’t do myself any favors.

How do you follow a job like that? How do you fill that void? That’s what I kept letting myself focus on — an unrealistic expectation.

So, here’s my take now: there’s no perfect job. In the end, whatever you choose will always become just become a job. That’s just how it works, so don’t expect it to be your meaning.  But the experience — that’s what you learn to appreciate. The journey. No matter how short or long, you focus on the people you surround yourself with, the community you built, the skills you learned, or the places you choose to explore. Nothing is lost.  You make the most of the opportunity to get to know people from all walks of life. As interesting as the guests were, they never compared to my coworkers — an odd bunch from all over the world, with the most diverse experiences, and some of the best people I’ve ever known. They helped me create a new definition of success. That’s what I’m most grateful for — learning what that word really means.

I may have missed out on a lot but I would never give up my experience at the lodge or the family I met along the way. Every day, I hold onto that, knowing how deeply that place shaped me, help make me the person I am today. It will always be home.

Sean-

Thank you for everything. Thank you for teaching me so much about what is important in life. I now look at the world differently because of you, in a good way, never taking for granted a relationship, a person, and making the most out of every moment. I don’t know where you are now, but you’ll always be missed, and that impact you had on everyone will live on forever.