Looking for Alaska (49 page)

The coffee I'd just swallowed turned to acid. After hearing about the stab wound, or “accidental” knife cut, I wondered again why I was taking my youngest child and wife into the deepest, whitest wilderness homestead in America with these people whom I didn't know. Was Vicky trying to warn us? Come on, Peter, anyone can cut his brother accidentally with a really sharp knife. But if anyone could, why hadn't I ever cut one of my brothers or sisters? We certainly fought enough. I'd only met Eric at the library speaking event. For all I knew he wasn't even a vet, Vicky wasn't his wife, and Hugh was heaven knows who.…

MY TRUST IN STRANGERS

I'd been putting my faith in strangers rather blindly my whole traveling life. After all, everyone I know now was once a stranger. There is nothing devious about Eric's intentions, they just want us to visit, I kept telling myself. Eric feels that he knows me from reading my books. I had no problem taking substantial risks, trusting my intuitive instincts—when it was just me. It was Rita's and Julianne's trust in me that had me building up bad outcomes out of anything that didn't make sense.

I got out of the car and washed the windshield, again, to buy some time. Julianne had been and now was even more excited about this adventure, just the three of us. She wasn't saying anything, but she is so trusting. Finally finished with the windshield, I got in and followed them north. About five miles down the road the dog, or dogs, farted or, worse, had diarrhea. It was too cold to air the vehicle out for long. Juge had offered Elizabeth her Game Boy to play with, and Elizabeth took it, shyly, and played a game, maybe two, before telling Juge that she got really, really carsick, that she'd have to stop playing.

I asked Elizabeth what she did during the winter. She said she did schoolwork, that she helped Vicky quite a lot. I asked her if Vicky was her stepmother. She said she was. We passed the only possible turnoff, a road that went to Minto. Minto Flats, the gigantic wetlands and hot springs, was nearby. Wolverine Mountain was to our west. With all the ponds and creeks and marshes, it became obvious why Alaskans did their land travel in the winter when the ground was frozen and coated with snow and traveled on the water during the short season when water became liquid.

Maybe fifty miles out of town, Eric pulled over, steam flowing from under his hood. He popped the hood; something was wrong with the car. He said the car had been overheating lately. Hugh and the three dogs were wrapped up together in the backseat in a maze of sleep. It was probably the warmest sleep Hugh had had in months. Eric said he thought the mechanic was supposed to have fixed the car. He pulled out a gallon jug of water, poured it into the radiator. I fast-forward to our possible situation: the engine block cracks, the car's done. We have to go back to Fairbanks, adding Eric, Vicky, Hugh and the four huskies, that would be six huskies and seven people in the Explorer. How vulnerable we were on this winter road. But after ten minutes or so we began the trek again.

Julianne kept trying to talk to Elizabeth, but she said few words and her face was clearly strained by the strangers who surrounded her. I wondered when was the last time she had been in a tight place like our car with no way out, where there were only unknown humans. No matter how friendly we were, she did not seem able to relax.

“Elizabeth,” I asked, “what's the ride like on the snow machines into your house?”

“It's long.”

“Is it cold?”

“Usually.”

“How cold?” Julianne asked.

“It can be forty-something below, but twenty-something below is more normal this time of year.” That was better. She seemed intelligent. Even at home, being the only girl with three brothers, she probably didn't talk much.

“Is that cold?” Julianne wondered.

“Not really if you're dressed for it,” Elizabeth said.

I wondered where these winter clothes were because Eric, Vicky, and Elizabeth were now dressed like friends of mine would dress on a “cool” December day in south Texas. What if we were stranded or broke down on this road? Since we'd left the truck stop, we'd only seen a few double semis. But I had to assume they knew what they were doing. Everyone, including lifelong Alaskans, told us not to even consider leaving Fairbanks in winter headed north without a full gas tank, extra gas if you could haul it; sleeping bags; some water; food; and if possible a satellite phone. Our friend Pat Ivey, who works at the University of Alaska, ordered me, and she is not the ordering kind, to call her when we got back to Coldfoot. She told me that if she didn't hear from us in a week, she would call out the state troopers. She'd been in Fairbanks for decades and had read too many stories about what can happen to stranded people around here.

The frozen world we were driving through in our rubber-tired, metal, plastic, and glass bubble appeared lifeless. I knew in my mind that somewhere out there, warm-blooded creatures struggled to survive. I looked for tracks in the perpetual snow and saw almost none crossing the thin line of gravel that gave us access. The road was surprisingly smooth at times, though sometimes the potholes, hidden by blowing snow, jolted us. The worst were the washboardlike ridges in the road that we hit, shaking our brains and making the car want to fishtail.

We were between Troublesome Creek and the Yukon River when steam started to pour out of the tiny red car again. We were so alone and the outside was so tough that I did feel as if we were on another planet. Their Dodge Neon and Eric's happy-go-lucky temperament made me think of a cartoon I hadn't thought of in years,
The Jetsons
—Eric was George Jetson, the Dodge his little spacecraft.

We stopped and Eric emptied the last of his water into the radiator; he held the plastic milk jug straight up to drain out the last drops. Where would we find more? Eric hadn't planned on the car overheating this much. I had some Power Aid; could you pour a sports drink into a radiator?

“Eric,” I asked, “what if something goes wrong with the engine, who would you call to come get you?”

“We're so far from anything, if I couldn't fix it, I don't know, we'd have to flag down one of these trucks, leave the car, and get a ride back into town. I didn't plan to have to haul all these dogs, so I don't really have many tools.” He scratched his head. “This satellite phone we've got—the company is Iridium—they've told us they're shutting down, they've gone bankrupt. It hasn't worked lately.”

I didn't respond, just felt another porcupine quill stuck into my growing mass of worry. Now, overheated somewhere on the Haul Road, I find out there may not be any way to reach anyone once we get to their place.

We took off again quickly to cross the Yukon River; we could hear some large semis coming from far off. The Yukon is wide and is the second-longest river in the United States. In the summer it's a liquid passageway, but now it was a frozen highway. This bridge was one of only two across the Yukon. Eric and his children's first experience with Alaska was floating six weeks down the Yukon all the way to Mountain Village by the sea, shortly after his wife, their mother, had died. The river, the isolation, the constant danger, and the kindnesses of the Native peoples along the way had offered some relief from what must have been intense grief and sadness. They all learned that there was no escaping the gray pain, even in Alaska, though it was as far away as they could get and still be in their own country.

Just after we crossed the Arctic Circle, the Neon began overheating again. There was no way we could thaw some snow, we had no metal pot. Eric found a little road and turned off. Where was he going now? After driving through some woods we came into a man-made clearing with a metal garage and a trailer where someone lived. It was a pipeline maintenance place. Eric knocked on some doors, tried opening a few, nothing. It seemed no one was around and everything was locked up. Then he walked around the side of the metal building and came out with his jug filled with water, followed by a medium-built man in clean overalls. They both looked under the hood, then the man went in and brought out another plastic jug of water. I stayed in my car the whole time, and as we got ready to go, the man looked hard at us. I wasn't sure if he shook his head or not.

Slightly past where the winter road turns off to go to the native community of Stevens Village, the Neon overheated again. We only had about fifty more miles to Coldfoot. Eric added more water. By now I was glad to step out just to stretch into the freezer that covered this whole topside of the world. This cold, an invisible aggressor, penetrated and stiffened almost every bit of me, yet the fantastically fresh air made me more alert.

Julianne was now telling Elizabeth a story about how our cows back in Tennessee were able to fend off aggressive coyotes that wanted to eat their calves. She told her that we'd lost two dogs to coyote attacks, one her Kenai, a wire-haired fox terrier. Elizabeth mentioned this summer they'd seen two possibly rabid wolves on the rocky beach of the lake just below their house. I was relieved that she and Julianne seemed to be getting acquainted.

Coldfoot, Alaska (pop. 13), was named by early gold miners, some of Alaska's most aggressive and fearless pioneers. Most had to walk here from Fairbanks, and by the time they got to the Coldfoot area, they had gotten cold feet, literally, and were overwhelmed by the inhospitable climate and mountainous, desolate conditions that seemed endless. Today, Coldfoot is a lonesome truck stop built with prefabricated buildings and its own power generators. A state trooper and his wife live here, over by the airstrip. There is one motel, which looks like a long, long trailer; they used these structures to build the pipeline in the 1970s. People say that during the pipeline-building days, Coldfoot was like a combination of the Wild West and a space colony built inside a freezer. Eric mentioned as we walked into its only restaurant that he hoped the place didn't close. Coldfoot was where they could get fuel, catch rides, keep their car, get work done on broken-down snow machines, and stay over before making the trip to the homestead. It was basically impossible to drive in from Fairbanks and then take the big risk of running the last sixty miles on the winter trail to their homestead all in one day. Too much could happen on the trail, like getting stuck in the dark. There were winter bears, such as the one that had attacked Eric's friend Bernie and his dog team out of Wiseman last winter, and there was the dreaded overflow. I didn't know what a winter bear was, and I didn't know much about overflow, but right then I didn't want to.

We sat down and ordered a hamburger. Who knows what we'd be eating out at their place? There is something about eating a hamburger and homemade soup at what feels like the last outpost on a frozen planet that makes it the best food you've ever eaten. Though part of the enjoyment may have been related to the relief at arriving in Coldfoot. Like bears eating all they could hold, having no way of knowing how much energy they'll need to hibernate, Rita, Julianne, and I ate as if it were our last meal.

Eric said he needed to go up Wiseman (pop. 21), about ten miles farther up the Haul Road. He wondered if we wanted to go or if we'd traveled far enough for one day. He said he'd received a message from someone here that Bernie there needed one of his sled dogs sewn up; apparently it had been in a fight with one of his other dogs. Eric said Bernie and his wife, Uta, were originally from Germany, and that they had been living here, surviving off the land, for fifteen years. Eric mentioned that Bernie sewed fur hats made of marten, wolverine, and mink. Vicky said that although she loved Bernie and Uta she is adamantly opposed to trapping. Eric said that after that run-in Bernie'd had with the winter bear, an old, starving grizzly, he might make a few hats out of it. It had attacked his dog team, and he'd had to kill it.

“Oh, yeah, and then after that,” Eric said, suddenly remembering, “I need to go to the state trooper's place and spay two of their dogs.” Now there was some positive news. Going by the state trooper's house, that's got to be a good sign.

We all went to Bernie's. Eric rode with us after we took the two reviving sled dogs out of the back of our vehicle. We'd already had two rocks chip the windshield; the crack had already begun. It is considered almost a miracle to drive any distance on the Haul Road and not crack your windshield.

The sun was now behind the mountains to our west, out where the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, a designated wilderness of 7,523,888 acres, was located. As Eric had told us, there was almost no privately owned land for hundreds of square miles in all directions. To the southeast was Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, that's 8,630,000 acres. To our northeast was the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is 19,285,923 acres. There was also plenty of Native-owned land around.

Eric had bought his land, about fifteen acres, from the University of Alaska without ever having seen it. The first time he saw it, he hiked in during the spring, a dangerous time when hungry grizzlies are emerging from their dens. He had no idea how demanding a trip it would be; he did not carry a gun and said he'd never been so afraid in his life, it seemed a bear was behind every tree. Now he said he can actually sense where the bears are when he's roaming his land.

Everything that they would bring to their land had to be carried in, mostly on a trailer pulled by a snow machine. Eric or someone in the family had to haul in every nail, every board, every window, every quart of fuel, every pound of flooring, every everything to the shores of Lake Chandalar where they lived. Most people Outside have no idea how the nails and windows and doors and bricks got to their home, much less brought it all there themselves.

SURGERY

“Whatever I do,” Eric said, after politely listening to Julianne tell him about the avalanches that had trapped us in Seward this winter, “we have to go by Trooper Bedingfield's house. They have been wanting to get their dogs spayed for a few months.”