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My top eyelashes and bottom eyelashes clung together like Velcro. I touched my hair and felt a pile of crunchy ice. As I pried my lashes apart, all I could see was a thick mist rising from Chena Hot Springs and the Alaskan night sky overhead. Then I made out a few familiar faces: my husband and two of our best friends, Josea and Anthony. We met Josea and Anthony nearly three years ago in Chicken, Alaska where they were our “bosses” for the summer. Wikipedia says Chicken averages 17 people year-round, but anyone that lives in Chicken will tell you there are only two people who live there all year and that’s the postmaster and her husband. The winters in the interior, like much of Alaska, are dark and frigid; no one goes in and no one comes out, well, except by snow machine. The road out of Chicken is not maintained after October and the temperatures flirt with -50 degrees Fahrenheit. Say goodbye to those eyelashes—and nose hairs. My husband, Chris, and I ended up in Chicken a few summers ago because Chris is a sick man, I mean, terminal; he’s got gold fever, and he’s got it bad. He will literally go to the ends of the earth for this stuff, and it doesn’t get much farther than Chicken, Alaska, which lies on Canada’s Yukon border. Before heading into the great unknown that’s named after a farm animal, my husband opened Google Maps so I could get a better view. “That’s it?” I said, staring in disbelief at the seeming dirt heap of a town. He chuckled. He always chuckles in the face of fear—especially mine. Chris always asks me, “What are you afraid of?” to which I reply, “Everything!” At first, he just wanted to spend a week there gold mining, but that all changed when he saw Chicken Gold Camp’s ad on Facebook: “Looking for two people, preferably a couple, to work for the summer.” “We have to apply!” he said. Insert blank stare emoji from me. I knew he wasn’t joking. The man does not joke around about precious metals. Fine, I’ll put together some resumes and apply, but we probably won’t get it. After throwing everything together, I hit send. The next morning, I opened my email and saw these words: “Welcome to the team!” Shit. --- I blinked in disbelief. Didn’t Wikipedia say 17 people? All of a sudden, the town ballooned to almost 100 times that. Only a week after our five-day, ass-hauling adventure of nearly 3,000 miles—all the while towing a fifth wheel— we were plunged into this. Did we make a wrong turn and end up at Burning Man? I’m pretty sure the giant chicken structure was metal and wouldn’t burn, but I wouldn’t put it past these crazy Alaskans in their tie-dye tops, hen hats and hula hoops to give it a go. I snapped out of my wide-eyed trance just long enough to witness 1,500 marshmallow Easter Peeps rain from the sky out of a small prop plane. The crowd scattered to collect the once flightless birds from their new perches: in bushes, on roofs and some in the kiddie pool purchased for just this occasion. Chris and I poured beer into the wee hours of the morning until both of us were delirious. Josea and Anthony came over to see if we were comatose yet, and probably wanted to make sure we weren’t packing our RV for a late-night dash out of Dodge. With a minute to reflect, I realized that instead of feeling fearful, I was refreshed and inspired by this community of people who genuinely enjoy one another, making their own kind of fun, even if they are 80 miles from the nearest grocery store. I never expected to find myself in Chicken, Alaska. Heck, I didn’t even know such a place existed. Even more so, I never expected to find a family, a home away from home. Although our summer in Chicken is long over, we still make an annual pilgrimage back to the coop planted atop that mound of dirt and gold.