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WARNING: ANIMALCRUELTY AHEAD
TODAY
BARROW, ALASKA WAS a town unlike any other. As the northernmost settlement in North America, the residents found themselves isolated from the rest of the world by a seemingly endless desert of glistening white snow that went on for hundreds of miles and could only be accessed by aircraft. Though, the people that lived there didn't really mind the isolation. They actually thought living with nature and enjoying a simpler life in a small town where nothing bad ever really happened was quite peaceful.
Almost everyone that worked in Barrow was employed by oil companies, and they and their families suffered the harshness of the town if only for the rewards it had to offer them. Some members of those families often complained about the bitter weather, how their food was delivered or cooked, and even about having nothing fun to do. But even they couldn't complain about how peaceful the isolated town was and how it truly felt like home to them.
A majority of the town had a unique architecture to it. Homes and stores and everything in-between had been built on thick timber piles as a way to protect the structures from the stresses of shifting ice and to avoid any collapses or injuries. There were crawl spaces of various depths and sizes beneath buildings, a majority of them boarded up with timber to prevent animals from sheltering there while some residents left them as they were. In some places, thick snow drifts from recent storms almost reached window level, and people would have to tunnel their way through them to make accessible pathways for their home while others didn't even bother trying, knowing the weather in Barrow always won and they didn't stand a chance against it.
The roads were cleared periodically by the town's snowplow, which was always driven by Malekai Hamm. He was a good man, never causing anyone any trouble and always happy to make everybody's day easier by making the roads accessible to them. Whenever he cleared the roads, the banks of snow on either side would sometimes reach six feet tall, and he would just marvel at the glistening heaps while working. He even found the time to go around and hand-shovel walk-throughs in front of a handful of businesses such as bars, restaurants and even some stores, all of which served the town and kept the residents happy.
