In the cold, dark days of winter, some Alaskans turn to jigsaw puzzles to keep themselves busy indoors. This year, one Petersburg resident took that idea to the extreme – ordering the biggest puzzle in the world, and rallying hundreds of community members to put it together.
But participants say the puzzle was more than just a puzzle. It was about finding a way for everybody to fit in.
It’s another chilly weekend afternoon in Petersburg, and the rain buffeting the island has driven many indoors. And that is exactly where I find a few dozen families – in the community gym assembling a goliath 60 thousand piece puzzle, which is called, “What a Wonderful World.”
The group isn’t doing it all in one go. About 60 households and two school classes assembled thousand-piece sections over the winter. Which, according to participant Kelly O’Connor Demko, is the ideal time to chip away at such a project.
“I enjoyed just having it to do over the winter,” says O’Connor Demko. “It was a nice time to pull out a puzzle and work on it.”
The gargantuan puzzle is splayed all over the placard floor, extending from one free throw line to the other. If you’re not a basketball fan, that’s about 10-by-30 feet.
It depicts a world map, with incredible detail. O’Connor-Demko guides me to the Southeast Alaska section, which has scenes of totem poles in Juneau and seaplanes in Skagway — and flocks of the region’s ubiquitous bald eagles soar everywhere in between. But, to the crowd’s disappointment, Petersburg is missing.
Some sections were harder to complete than others. Matt Pawuk and his family took home a chunk of Russia that was basically all one color.
“Yeah, it was pretty much just a bunch of yellow,” says Pawuk.
Pawuk says he tried his best to get his family as excited about the project as he was, but didn’t have much luck until the end. His daughter, 12 year old Savina, jumped in when there were only about 40 pieces left.
“I barely did any!” says Savina. “I only worked on it towards the end. It was pretty hard though!”
Not all sections have made it to the jigsaw jamboree in one piece. Moments ago, Caroline Dowd accidentally dropped hers in the parking lot, shattering months of her and her husband’s hard work in a matter of seconds. She tells me all about it, while, just behind us, a group of puzzlers hurriedly try to put the rain-soaked pieces back into place.
“Yeah, I had, like, a box, and I was holding it by the sides, and then it fell…” says Dowd. “It was just like a combination of me trying to catch that piece… and another piece fell… And it all just, like, combusted from there. It was like a series of unfortunate events. And once it dropped, I got a little dramatic and [to my husband] I was like, ‘I NEED YOUR HELP RIGHT NOW!'”
(Photo by Shelby Herbert/KFSK)
Otherwise, the puzzle is coming together smoothly on the surface of the basketball court. At the center of this operation is Sondra Hurst, who is really into jigsaw puzzles. She says they give her a sense of peace and order in life, and make her feel a bit more put together.
“They are a stress reliever for me,” says Hurst. “So, when I get stressed and life gets crazy, it’s kind of something that I can work on and just eases all the tension in life for a while.”
She says she thought a fun and meaningful way to share her passion would be to rally a bunch of people into working on something much, much bigger than themselves.
“…Instead of us just all doing our individual puzzles, [we could do] something bigger and larger that we could all come together for,” says Hurst.
But when she told her husband about her idea, she says he told her she was crazy, and that she’d be lucky if she got five people interested. She got well over a hundred, after her proposal blew up on Facebook.
After a group photo with the enormous map, it’s time for it to be disassembled by the hands that put it together in the first place. Which is a little sad, for some folks. But it’s a spectacle for others, like 96-year-old Itsy Fujishin who is looking on from the stands. I catch her gushing about it to her friend, saying that it’s the biggest puzzle she’s ever seen.
“…And it’s beautiful!” says Fujishin, laughing.
The puzzle is going back into the box, but its life isn’t over. Hurst and her co-conspirators are planning to send it to other communities in Southeast, in hopes that the activity will help bring them together during the cold, dark winter, too.
(Photo by Shelby Herbert/KFSK)
