Alaska's lure catches another one

A few months ago a friend Outside I correspond with told me about her friend's daughter who was coming to Alaska for a job during the legislative session in Juneau
As described to me the daughter is a professional woman who prides herself on never taking a permanent job, rather trying one here and there around the country, never unpacking completely and moving on when the job ends.
I told my friend she ought to warn the woman's mother what happens to some people when they come to Alaska. To emphasize the warning I told her this story:
In the 1970s a woman wrote a letter to the editor of the Kodiak Daily Mirror. It went something like this:
"A few years ago my oldest daughter went to Kodiak for a summer job. In the fall I received a letter saying she had found a job that would carry her through the winter and since then she has stayed there.
"A couple of years later, my middle daughter thought she would visit her sister in Kodiak. She spent the summer and then in the fall I got the letter. She'd found a job that would carry her through the winter and she too never came home.
"Now my youngest MY BABY says she wants to visit her sisters for the summer. WHAT IS IT WITH YOU PEOPLE?"
My friend passed the warning on to her friend. Over the past few months occasionally my friend has related some of the daughter's adventures. With each one she sounded more enthralled with Alaska.
I today I received an email from my friend. Here it is cut and pasted and unedited:
So...Catherine has found a summer job in Sitka when her legislature job in Juneau ends. She told Meryl, “I’ll be staying in Sitka all summer...and hopefully forever.”
All I have to add to that is, sometimes people choose Alaska and sometimes Alaska chooses people.
Welcome, Catherine.

Another one reaches the end of the trail

Is there anything more classically Alaskan than a guy entering a sled dog race in order to win enough money to buy some yellow machinery for his gold mine? That almost sounds like the beginning to a bad movie, but there is a man who really did that.
Perhaps like most people we only remember his name and maybe one of those pictures of him in his parka, the hood thrown back and a big smile on his face. And it seemed for Dick Wilmarth that was the way he preferred it.
He took his chances out on the edge, what one Alaska sourdough called a perimeter man, someone who lives in the fringe of society choosing to avoid the fuss and fury of the center, preferring instead a small gold camp or the wilds of rivers, mountains and tundra where he turned enough of a living to keep going, underwent difficulties that would have discouraged if not killed mortal men and he did it with an outward nonchalance and a smile.
He lived so far out on the the edge that if it hadn't been for the Iditarod most of us would never have heard the name Dick Wilmarth.
Then again, if we hadn't heard of Dick Wilmarth, we might never have heard of the Iditarod.
The way the story goes, during that first race, a group of the leaders gathered in a tent on the Yukon River somewhere. The location changes with the telling. But most agree the leaders were talking about quitting. They did say, however, it had to be unanimous. That was about the time Dick stuck his head into the tent and asked what was going on. Someone explained it to him. His only response was, "Well, I'm going to Nome," and off he went, dragging the rest of them behind him to finish the race, proving it was possible and leaving them to get ready for next year.
Some of the people in that tent went on to run the race several more times. There was at least one future winner involved. But Dick never raced again.
He had won the money to buy his yellow machinery and for him that was what it was about. How many bush people do you know? Have you ever noticed if you ask them what they do for fun you get a blank stare? That's because in the Bush you always have to be on your toes, always aware and there is always something that needs doing. What others see as drudgery, the perimeter people find satisfying, even pleasurable, but it's never about having fun. Not too long ago I was talking with one of the winners from the old days. He was complaining that some guy in the Iditarod had scratched saying it just wasn't fun. This guy said it was never fun, it was diffiult. But, pleasureable, nonetheless? I asked. He smiled.
And that was my guess about how Dick Wilmarth viewed the Iditarod, a means to an end. Other people wanted to race. He wanted a bulldozer. That fit into his life better than an annual dog race.
So after the race he went back to his perimeter and the life he had chosen and lived for the next 45 years, much like the life of someone like him might have lived a hundred years earlier, only without television. We are left to imagine the hardships, the joys, the satisfaction and yes, maybe even the fun that life gave him.
Sadly he may have been one of the last true Alaska perimeter men and whether we knew him personally or not, it's like the mountains around us that most of us will never climb but we are glad they're there. So too do we like the idea it's still possible to live on the Alaska perimeter as evidenced by people like Dick Wilmarth. But last week we lost one of those mountains and he has left a hole in our lives if we are willing to admit it.
It wasn't just in the Iditarod that he led the way.

Search "Iditarod" for similar stories.

Growing old gracefully … in the Alaska sunshine

Woodcutting mayhem

March has always been the best month of the year at the East Pole. One of the attractions means
sunlight on the deck in the afternoon, about an hour when it's warm enough to sit out there and have a beer while wearing a t-shirt.

This year, though, the times have been tougher. March also provides the best weather for firewood gathering, but this year between falling and almost breaking my back and overcast weather that dumped heavy snow for days, I've fallen way behind in firewood.

Then eariler this week, I broke my snowmachine. Don't get me wrong; I was thankful I didn't break me as I have the past two years. But just as the sun began to break through, I had to go away, as it turns out all the way the Eagle River for a repair. I mean who knew driving a machine hard against the parking brake would gouge the drive belt enough to make a sound like the whole machine was coming apart?

I went my to favorite place and they had a three-week backlog, but they were kind enough to call their other store and it turned out that one only had a three-day deadline. I went there hoping for three days but fully expecting three weeks, given the clunking sound the machine was making. But three days later they called and said chunks had been gouged from my drive belt. (for those of you who don't know, this is a simple fix) Here's how simple. It is one thing you always carry a spare. The guy said they didn't have one in stock and it would take a week to get one. I told him I've got one! End result, a fix that I expected to take three weeks and cost more than $300, took three days and cost me $60. How often does that happen?

Ok so back to aging gracefully. Over the years as I have cut firewood around here, I've always looked for blowdowns, or dead standing. I have tried to maintain the forest. I don't want to look out my window and see a bunch of stumps (I do cut the stumps eventually), nor do I want to see a huge clearing as far as the view goes.

So, because of weather and injury I have fallen behind on wood cutting.

Then while I was hanging out in the Outside  waiting for my snowmachine repair, I got to thinking and here's what I came up with.

First I am worried about next winter's firewood. Secondly I am absolutely pissed at missing the first sunny week we've had this March. And, I am planning what to do when I get back, mostly about the firewood situation. And that's when it hit me.

So here we go to the point where all this comes together. There's this huge birch tree about 50 feet in front of the cabin. It's one of those I have never considered cutting. So a thought process began like this. I am 75 years old. If I started cutting now and cut every day for the rest of my life, when I die, nobody would probably see any difference in these woods at all. A Decision made.

Today that tree came down. Huge. It took me longer to clear where it fell across the trail than it did to cut it down.

So the accumulation of the days is this. I try to put at least twice as much firewood into the piles as I take out to burn every day. Today from the two other trees I've cut, three times as much went back into the piles.

When the time to quit for the day I came inside to just lie down and listen to the radio. After about half an hour I walked outside. The moment I opened the door I was hit with something like a heat wave. At that point I realized what cutting down that last tree had meant.

So just to test, I made my first single-malt slushee of the year and sat in my new big chair and enjoyed THREE hours of sunshine instead of one. Now if Thoreau could only see this. That tree warmed me once just from getting out of the way, with four more times to go.

And then there is the moment of grace. I prefer that to the moment of zen. I am sitting in that chair, with my single-malt slushee, my feet up on the box that houses my generator for warmth and quiet. A chickadee landed on the uplifted toe of my boot. He perched there for a while, looking around for where he wanted to land next. And at that moment in that place in the quiet of the forest, with the bird on my boot and the sun in my face, I felt it. While he stood there I realized I had reached that state of grace at least for a precious moment. So glad I didn't miss that.

 Firewood  and revery

Creek crash, the rest of the story

Tonight I posted the following on facebook: Another great day except for the tipping the snowmachine over in a creek part.

I thought better of it, a little too dramatic, don't you think? So I started a comment but it got too long, so here it is on the blog.
OK, I apologize for being a little dramatic. First of all it was barely a brook. Someone had slid sideways into it and I took it a step further and the machine tipped. For a moment my ass was in about 6 inches of water and my leg was under the machine. The back end of it was partly submerged and my fabric tool bag was filling with water. I managed to squirm out, find a point of leverage and tip the machine right side up by laying back partly in the water and partly against the far bank and push with my legs. And drove off none the worse for it. But there's some backgorund. A few years back Iditarod writer Frank Gerjevic asked a veteran musher, Sonny Lindner about a creek he had fallen into during a race. Sonny is a man of few words. His response to Frank's question was, "How am I supposed to remember every creek I fell into (during 40 yars of driving dogs)? Sitting in that little brook today and figuring my next step I decided I want to remember every creek, river, lake and ocean I fell into. There are more that I care to admit to right now but believe me I remember them all. No disprespect to Sonny at all.

200,000 nmiles on a dog sled

You can find Sonny's story here

Have you ever had a day like this?

    I woke up mid morning with no idea what I was going to do today. Mindlessly I followed the morning routine, hot chocolate, check to see if the mountain is out (nope), check the Internet if there is a good enough signal, stoke the fire still smouldering from last night, check the bird feeder and watch the chickadees for a while. All things are as they should be, now what to do
A flicker of motion outside the window catches the eye, a bird larger than the usual. I grabbed for my camera which has been largely ignored this week because of all the snow shoveling. But before I could even get a lens on, the bird took off, staying only long enough for me to identify it as a merlin, a discouraged merlin because he couldn't follow the small birds into the thicket of birch branches. From the silhouette etched in my brain and the color I made the identification from the Birds of Alaska guide. That observation was worth firing up the generator so I could get a good cellular signal and add the merlin to yesterday's post about chickadees and thick branches.
A look out another window told me what I was supposed to do today. All week things had to be shoveled off, trails snowshoed and packed down. Snowmachne stuck twice, the roof. Today I could finally get back to the main chore, firewood.
But first, of course I had to dig out the snow covering the sections near the house waiting to be split. No pressure though, so I worked at a leisurely pace and in short time had most of it uncovered and the splitting began. Working under the feeder I could hear chickadees' wingbeats as they flew to and from it. Before I stopped for a break I had taken two sledloads of split wood back under the house to be stacked later.
     About that time I focused on the large black storage container on the porch. My friend whom I helped after tweakers just about destroyed her rental home had bought it for me as a thank you. For all the time I have spent at the East Pole I have thought I should have some kind of safety net. If this cabin were ever to catch fire, there is no fire department to call and no ready source of pressurized water. I always thought the smart thing to do in case I had to bail out in a hurry was keep a survival kit outside the house somewhere, something full of gear that could help me survive for at least a couple of days if the worst should happen and that was what I planned to use this container for. The problem is it sat on the deck since December, largely ignored except for a place to store stuff. So today I started thinking about that and pulled it indoors to fill. I have a container with 20 days worth of survival foods coming. I had to make a list of stuff to buy and stuff to bring from the other house. So far I have a one-burner Coleman stove, matches, a sleeping bag, a knife and a multitool like a Swiss Army knife. To-buy list just started includes an ax and a small shovel, a spare snowmachine key. Up in the loft here to bring down is a tent and a pair of short snowshoes. I will also sort through clothing here and make sure I have a change of clothes that includes several layers and boots. In the process of looking through stuff I discovered I own five corkscrews. What was I thinking? (Suggestions are welcome.)
That got me to lunch and a short horizonal rest and then back out to the wood pile, but with all this machinating in my mind it felt proper to take another break and write it down. So that's the day so far. Back to the wood pile. Oh, yes, I put the box of Franzia's finest blush chablis outside to chill. It feels like that kind of day. One big stump to split then more digging and stacking. BRB
   One other considertion. Despite the lack of mountain, and bright sunlight, it's a most beautiful day here. Deep undisturbed snow covers the ground and huge globs of it cling to branches in all the trees waiting to drop on some unsuspecting traveler. Meanwhile melting snow is drippping off what remains of the snow on the roof making icicles that soon will be stout enough for the chickadees to cling to and drink from.
     As the afternoon ages, whiskers of cloud grow across the sky. In the end four sled loads of firewood under the house and the next group released from its snowy den.
Then the daylight part of this one culminates in a comfortable chair on the deck, bright sunlight for a time but not long enough to send the thermometer past 58 degrees. A glass of wine, a playlist of love songs on the iPad/iHome system: "Suite Judy Blue Eyes," perfect, we dreamed of a life like this. Sitting back, listening relaxing, the memories will come with the second glass of wine. "once upon a time I was falling in love, now I'm only falling apart." A total eclipse, except, NOT. Turn around. Forever's going to start tonight.
   And then there's that happy moment of lucidity and you are glad to be alone and can only hope no one can hear you in the deep woods as you step out onto the deck, driven by iPhone and earbuds and absolutely sure you hit the high note in Unchained Melody at the top of your lungs.
It's been that kind of day.

Collision avoidance radar?

There's a stand of birch trees about 15 feet from the end of the porch, two large ones and two small.
The big ones might be 70 feet tall, the others a little shorter. Among the branches the chickadees gather as they stage for their dive to the feeder full of black sunflower seeds.  Sometimes you can see them coming from a long distance, their wavelike flight pattern a straight line to the feeder or the staging tree.
     So many of them  gather at times I'm reminded  of sailors manning the rigging of a tall ship. It seems every branch and twig is alive with a bird.
     Given the size of the trees you can imagine the maze of branches and twigs reaching almost from the ground, up to 70 feet in the air.
     Watching the birds flit among the branches today raised a serious question. Chickadees only have one speed when they fly — fast. So, given fast, how can they tear around all those twigs at top speed and never hit even a little twig? I've seen them bump into each other around the feeder, but never in the trees. What allows them to zoom through all that brush? Do they have bat radar?
     There may be a reason they learn to fly headlong through a thicket of twigs and branches. A merlin came by today, a falcon-family bird of prey. He made a couple of dives at chickadees but they escaped into the mesh. Being considerably larger, the merlin couldn't follow into that tangle and he gave up fairly quickly.
     Whatever the reason, maybe those folks designing driverless cars and trucks could learn something from the chickadees. Elon Musk are you following?

More bird posts

Another man done gone

     A friend of mine died last week. He was the fourth person close to me who has died of cancer in

the past few years. These aren't casual acquaintences or just someone on facebook. These are people who have had profound effects on my life and I miss each one very much.

     I met Del Allison at a party in Anchorage during Fur Rendezvous in 1979. Another friend hosted this party yearly when Gareth Wright and his family came to Anchorage from Fairbanks for the dog races. He had won the race three times and now His daughter Roxy ran the family dogs.
     I had sat on a couch next to Gareth and he asked me how things were going. I told him I was attempting to write a book about the Iditarod but the company I worked for had backed out of providing me with any support and after a year of research it had come to a halt because I couldn't afford to fly along wth the race.
     A man I hadn't been introduced to leaned around from the other side of Gareth and asked, "You want to write a book about the Iditarod?"
     I said, "Yes."
     "How much do you need?"
     The rest is history. In the next two weeks before the race Del Allison gave me a check for enough money to support me along the trail and hired a pilot and airplane.
     Without that help there might never have been a "Last Great Race." It is as simple that.
     Del ran the race that year and then he and some friends continued on with their dog teams to Barrow, another 500 miles or so to the north
     The following winter when a place I had lined up to live while I wrote the book fell through, he found a 10x14 cabin on the banks of the Susitna River and loaned me five dogs and a sled to get back and forth. It was the perfect set up to write such an Alaska book.
    Two years later when the book was published I was able to hand him the first one off the press to thank him for all he had done.
     We remained friends through the next few years, had a couple of adventures, enjoyed some memorable New Years' Eves.
      I had always admired an art print he had hanging in his house: Melissa and McGonigal, a collection of ink drawings illustrating how a nude ballerina taught a moose to dance. When he left Alaska he gave me that print in its barnwood frame and I still have it hanging in my living room. Now it will be a memorial.
     This is whatI am talking about when I say people who have had a profound effect on my life. Were it not for that chance meeting with Gareth Wright, I might never have been able to write that book. Think about that, it's a book the Associated Press class has called an Alaska classic.  And, Del Allison made it happen.
     I can never forget how my first book happened nor can I ever forget the man who gave this writer the lift it took to get it done.
     Each time this happens Eugene O' Neill's quote becomes more firmly cemented into my mind
     "I used to think getting old was about vanity. But it's about losing people you love."