Just One Thing with JR Fenn

JR Fenn’s story “Cassandra” focuses in on the powers at play in a tight-knit town. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“In the final weeks of college, knowing I needed a plan, I got a map and zeroed in on a peninsula in Alaska that looked, from the shape of it, to be an awe-inspiring place to live. I went there for the summer and ended up staying for several years, working as a public radio reporter and anchor.

The town is home to a large, seven-mile-long sandbar that stretches out into the bay. There are shops, a hotel, and the theatre that appears in the piece at its end. When I lived there, I loved to rollerblade along the bike path by the road on the sandbar. Sometimes the waves splashed the pavement and sometimes the water lay far out beyond the sand flats. The tides were very dramatic, some of the highest and lowest in the world.

Opposite the theatre, behind a dumpster, were some old wooden pilings where the bald eagles liked to gather. You could sit and watch them for hours if you wanted to, and tourists liked to feed them. The bald eagles were treated like scavengers, which was surprising to me, having come from a place where sightings of eagles were rare. It was a strange and beautiful place and I’m happy some of that appears in this story.”