2025 has been a weird year. I’m not even talking about all the sociopolitical unrest, the encroaching tide of fascism, climate calamity, or a third consecutive Tron film eating shit at the box office. All those things are real and weird, but at this point kinda predictable. We’ve been living in The Cool Zone since around 2014 and Tron: Ares looked like the kind of Jared Leto slop that even a banger soundtrack couldn’t salvage. Plus, we all know nothing could top Jeff Bridges’ line reading of “Biodigital jazz, man“.

No, 2025 was weird on a more personal level, and in a way I didn’t quite expect. The end of a long relationship, a realignment of priorities informed by my move back home two years ago. More than anything, though, it’s been the adoption of my sweet, sweet boy, [[Salmon]].

salmon the dog

We always had pets around when I was a kid, but through my twenties I existed in various states of broke as shit, constantly traveling for tour, or some combination of the two. Not exactly a lifestyle conducive to responsible dog ownership. But after moving back home to Alaska, I felt a distinct dog-shaped void in my life while hiking through the Chugach or just driving around in my old pickup.

I brought my son home two days before last Christmas. He’d broken his leg at 8 weeks from playing too hard (common border collie type behavior) and no one wanted a puppy in a cast who had to be carried everywhere for months while it healed, then carefully rehabbed to keep from re-aggravating the wound. Thankfully his mom and dad’s owners both did a great job nursing him back to health so by the time I found out he existed he was running around without any perceivable hitch in his giddy-up. He was six months old when I adopted him and my life hasn’t been the same since.

It’s pretty cliche among pet owners, but there’s truth to the “I can’t imagine life without my pet” sentiment. Every morning I wake up to snuggles and nose boops from this little goober. Every day is peppered with games of fetch, tugs-o-war, a run, hike or bike ride to run out some of his herding dog energy. When I turn in for the night, his boundless energy gets switched off somehow as he curls up next to me in bed. I try to limit my millennial cringe doggo-speak to referring to him as my son—a moniker that carries more truth than exaggeration, given how much my life revolves around his wellbeing.

Just Walk Out

These days, Salmon acts a powerful perspective ballast in my life. World on fire? Okay, but Salmon is hungry right now and would really like some peanut butter in a Kong, so that’ll have to wait. Institutions of the failing neoliberal world order collapsing? Sure, but Salmon would like to go to the park or at least play in the back yard with a tennis ball, so those anxieties honestly are a low priority at the moment.

I’ve struggled for years with what to personally do about the imminent decline of the empire I was born into. For a long time my first instinct was to, selfishly, Just Walk Out and go enjoy another country’s semi-competent society while I can. Chase some health care even if I can’t outrun climate catastrophe. Especially while living in Seattle and LA over the last decade, the prospect of a future in America seemed pretty bleak. Even when I had a relatively cushy remote tech job (before the fourth wave of layoffs finally got me), the likelihood of a relatively secure, middle class life was unlikely.

Has any of that changed or gotten better? Fuck no! But moving home to Alaska in 2023 brought my overall cost of living down slightly, reintegrated me into meaningful community, and landed me back in a solid public-sector (union!) job that actually does meaningful work—not just fattening some VC ghoul’s portfolio by generating a few more leads for a sales team.

Alaska is a strange place, politically. Often cast as a “red state” due to how it’s voted in presidential elections, it’s really a place where people take libertarianism more seriously. Think more “I don’t give a shit what you do just let me cook and leave me alone” than “encyclopedic knowledge of age of consent laws”. Despite a massive resource extraction industry that bolsters much of the state economy, there’s a common understanding that Alaska is, objectively, the most beautiful place on the planet and we should do our best to protect the environment. The state constitution also guarantees the right to an abortion. Truly a land of contrasts.

But it’s also a state that cannot function without the federal government. No other state is so dependent on federal subsidies and grants to keep the lights on. Geographical remoteness also renders Alaska heavily dependent on stable supply chains. Even when those work, commodity prices remain high, especially in rural Alaska. Should the US (and federal programs) continue to deteriorate, the state would quickly cease to function in a modern sense.

But that last qualifier is worth some focus. The many, many indigenous peoples of Alaska have been making shit work up here for a Very Long Time. The salmon run has fluctuated year-over-year as climate change and water temperatures rise, but there is a case to be made for a degrowth plan for life in Alaska.

I’m only a third of the way through Slow Down by Kohei Saito, but even setting aside the (salient) Marxist argument for it, the case for a stern reexamination of the consumptive side of our environmental impact is hard to ignore on its face. It’s hard to ignore as I’m typing this out 40,000 feet in the air on a flight to Tokyo.

back to japan

Japan sits at number one with a bullet on my list of places I used to want to “escape” to. Ever the Toonami Millennial Weeb, I wanted to visit since my first Tenchi Muyo OVA, and each trip has been more enjoyable than the last. I’m doing three weeks of bopping around Tokyo, visiting Hiroshima, cycling the Shimanami Kaido, and most importantly of all, taking a ton of fucking photos. I packed light, bringing only the Fujifilm X100VI and an Olympus OM-1 with the original Zuico 50mm f1.8 prime for some 35mm fun.

I’m leaning more and more on sticking it out in my home state—no matter how stupid things get on a national level—and it’d be logistically quite difficult to find a job/lodging/visa/etc. in Japan that would also accommodate Salmon’s need to have a bunch of nature to run around in. Hell, I need it to.

Japan photos to come~