Looking for Alaska (55 page)

Eric described him as heavyset, short, and said he probably didn't take a bath for eight months. After he left, the owner, Walt, had to take almost everything out of the cabin and burn it. Stuart was here from December through the summer. How does Walt find caretakers for a place like this, and what does he tell them about it?

“The most bizarre caretaker was the man who claimed to be a World War Two veteran yet he was only forty. He left notes in the cabin that said he was going to go to Germany and save them from the Jews. The man was on medication, except he forgot to bring it with him,” Eric said, raising his eyebrows.

The caretaker parade across the lake was like the Jaynes' own off-off-Broadway one- or two-man plays. The plays normally had similar last acts: the character or characters losing self-control, self-esteem, and sometimes themselves to temporary insanity. Dave was only in act 2. The only thing Eric worries about is that one of these caretakers will snap and take it out on Eric's family, especially if he happens to be gone, especially if Elizabeth and Vicky are there. I knew exactly how he felt.

Mike, Pete, and I dug out about eight old doghouses from three feet of snow; they were built out of logs. Behind his snow machine, Eric had hauled out a wooden sled so they could all learn mushing. A couple of Hugh's dogs had come from Athabascan musher Jerry Riley, who'd won the Iditarod in 1976. He came in eighth in the Iditarod in 2001, amazing for his age. Jerry, tough as double moose hide, was trying to help Hugh get started.

Mike, Pete, and I pulled two doghouses across the lake at a time as Dave, the present caretaker, critiqued our methods from the window. We made four trips; each time the doghouses fell off on one snow lump or another. The whole surface of this side of the lake, more exposed to the wind, was a series of carved lumps, like moguls. Julianne and Elizabeth were zooming around spying on us. Elizabeth was teaching Julianne how to run the snow machine.

Elizabeth's main job was to care for the animals. Based on how unusually difficult it was to get yourself here, much less pet food, I was constantly amazed at how many dogs and cats were a part of this family. Just a couple days before we'd gotten to the Jayne homestead, their beloved yellow Lab, who had been Vicky's back in Iowa, died at almost sixteen. He'd become so infirm Mike or Pete or Eric had to carry him outside to make the snow yellow. He'd go and then immediately fall over, he was so weak. Vicky had said that she thanked God he died in his sleep. One night I stepped out on the front porch to look for the northern lights and stepped on his frozen body, covered with a blanket. They would have to wait until spring to bury him. Eric joked that spring lasted a week, summer three weeks. They'd lost two dogs this year, since Tutt, the Pomeranian, had been killed by wolves.

Elizabeth fed and watered and paid attention to other animals, such as Handsome, a three-legged cat that someone had brought to Eric's vet clinic after it had gotten caught in a trap. He was ten and could hop up the carved-wood, circular stairway Eric had built to where the heat was.

And there were Skippy, Sweet Bones, and Stumpy, three cats that they'd adopted from another of Eric's vet clinics in Washington State. Eric and his family had made an intermediate transition to the Northwest before making the final leap here. There was Red, the retired sled dog that had come inside the house one day following funny Fred, the part–basset hound. Sled dogs aren't supposed to like it inside, but not Red. He immediately loved the easy life and refused to live like a sled dog anymore. Just watching Fred come into a room and, ba-dunk, steal everyone's attention was worth the trip out here. Fred came from the Fairbanks animal shelter. There was Truman, the Mackenzie River husky; shy Lisa, the total mutt; Buddy, the fourteen-year-old part-sheltie from Iowa; and Shelley. Elizabeth not only readily handled all the responsibility as a twelve-year-old, but she is also an excellent student. She will probably graduate from the state homeschool system by the time she's fifteen.

Late that afternoon, an hour before sunset, Eric said the conditions were right for him and me to take a couple snow machines up to the head of the lake and beyond. It was the last week of March and would be light until after 8
P.M
. We were gaining about seven minutes of daylight per day now, forty-nine minutes a week. Gaining daylight is something counted and counted upon all over Alaska. The sun was painting the snow pink and a pale peachy color; there was no wind. The air was so perfectly pure that the mountains appeared a thousand miles away or right next to us.

We took the lightweight machines since we were not hauling anything but ourselves. Riding through the fresh six inches on top of the four or five feet of snow underneath was a luxurious feeling. It had enough mass to hold us yet it felt like flying through clouds atop the ground. The snow gave in to our weight ever so lightly so that our movement was smooth, silky, and effortless.

We rode atop the tableland right before it dropped off into the lake. Eric mentioned when we stopped at a sudden clifflike decline that all kinds of bushes and tundra and rocks and even boulders were underneath us, and this deep snow is what made traveling on this magic carpet of snowflakes so awesome. Of all the freeing and inspiring movement I've done in my life, moving atop this deep powder was as thrilling and inspiring as any I'd ever done. Moving across water, no matter how slight the resistance, couldn't compare. Flying through the air, diving off a high cliff was too fast and too short with too much bang at the end. Walking and running were far too plodding.

We rode off little cliffs, our way padded and buffered by the four to six feet of powder. We flew across sections of blueberry bushes that would be a maddening, impossible tangle in summer. We saw a dark gray, almost black fox. It was hunting slowly, then started running when it saw us along the hard edge of the lake. Its fur was so luxuriant, deep, and shining against the white-on-white of everything else. The fox would run fifty feet and stop, look at us, run a bit more, and watch us.

When we came to the beginning of the frozen lake, we could see that no humans had been here for months, because there was not a track, no evidence at all. Then we headed into the north fork of the Chandalar River. There were bare places where potent winds had blown off the snow and exposed the ice. The icy spots were turquoise-colored, and solitary beautiful, like a Navajo-carved piece of turquoise lying on the fur of a sleeping polar bear. We knew there was water underneath, somewhere. Farther up, as the valley narrowed and the walls of the surrounding mountains became steeper, we began to see a few tracks. It looked as if a moose had been feeding on the reddish willow branches. A couple of wolves had come through, sticking to the willows and rabbit tracks. A half mile up we came to the tracks of a relentless wolverine.

On our way home, we decided to go across the lake for a ways, then zoom up onto the land where the snow was more fun. We found deep places we would start sinking into, yet we always powered our way out. No wonder winter, when the rivers and lakes and ponds and swamps that cover Alaska are frozen, is many people's favorite time of the year. Snow like this brings freedom, the chance to wander and explore, race sled dogs, follow the caribou herd. It gives people the ability and the time to visit neighboring villages.

We got home, red-cheeked and refreshed, and Rita and Vicky had made some homemade cinnamon rolls, the best I've had anywhere in Alaska, and the Alaskans love their sweets. I ate my second cinnamon roll while all the dogs and one cat waited for a crumb. This place reminded me of a painting that hung in my Sunday school classroom when I was six or seven at First Presbyterian Church. It showed all the humans and all the animals lying down together in peace. I always liked that picture. The entire time we were here, I never heard one growl or hiss out of the dogs and cats.

The Jayne family: Mike, Dan, Pete, Elizabeth, Vicky, and Eric.
P
HOTO BY
P
ETER
J
ENKINS

The four adults drank tea after dinner while Eric told us vet stories. One was about a senior citizen, a sweet, widowed Iowa farm lady, who was in the sometimes-deep confusion of early Alzheimer's. She was convinced her dachshund had fleas, so she would bring it to Eric once a week. One time she covered the brown dachshund with shaving cream, even in its ears, to kill those pesky fleas. And there were the calls late on Christmas Eve, usually from some widow. Eric knew what they really needed was company. He would always go to their home and bring a few children. They would visit and eat the Christmas cookies the lonely old woman had made, the sugar cookies that had been her husband's favorites. Eric would ask about her sick pet and she would say that it was better. It was hard to imagine Eric saying no to anyone who asked him for help. In a way, living out here being such a sensitive soul might have been a relief in this world so quick to use you up.

About an hour into Eric's stories, Mike came down the stairway. It moved a bit under his weight. He waited until his father stopped speaking; he kept glancing at me. Since we'd moved those doghouses and stoked the wood furnace together, we had bonded a bit. Apparently he had something to say and he wanted us to witness it. Something was up.

“I am going to graduate from this home school this year, right?” Mike said, his muscled neck set sternly. I remembered how uncomfortable it could be for someone his age to talk to adults.

“Yes, that's right, Mike, if you get all your work done and turned in,” Eric said.

Now Mike spoke directly to me. “If I do, then I want to get an old sailboat, fix it up with some of the money I got when Mom died, and sail around the world. Dad tells me you did a boat trip. You know that movie
Legends of the Fall,
when Brad Pitt's character took off on that boat, that's what I want to do. What do you think about that?” Mike asked. He said it all in one breath, as if he didn't want to stop for fear of losing the courage it took to speak his dream out loud.

“Sounds like a major change from life out here,” I said. I wasn't sure what I should say. Eric might want him to stay and help here.

“Yeah, it does,” Eric said. “I think it would be a great thing for Mike to do.”

Now that I knew how Eric felt, I could speak freely. “I've got a friend, Scott Bannerot, that's been sailing around the world for the last few years. When I get back to Seward, I will try to contact him, see what he says. I think he's in New Zealand. That sound okay?”

“Sure, that would be good. Thanks.”

Relieved, excited, Mike went back upstairs; he and Pete were watching one of the new movies we'd brought with us from Fairbanks.

I had to get up a couple times that night and go to the bathroom, which was some kind of Swedish self-composting model, except the composting part had frozen. While I was up, I always had to step out on the front porch and hear the silence and look for the northern lights. Everyone was asleep; no dogs were moving across the plywood floors. As a person who loves quiet, melody, and peace, never in all my traveling had I ever been in a place so still, so void of noise. The light crunch of my feet—I had on wool socks—could probably be heard by a wolf a mile away, or so it seemed. I wanted so much to hear a wolf howl in this vacuum. I thought I could hear snowflakes landing. The cold didn't get to me as I stood waiting to see the lights, Vicky's frozen Lab lying in peace next to me. Then the lights were there, green and pink and blue, they wobbled and darted and flamed and disappeared.

In the morning, Eric's loud voice woke me. Rita and Julianne already had their eyes open and were listening, you couldn't help it. I got up and went into the kitchen where Eric was speaking as firmly as I'd ever heard him. Pete and Mike were going into Coldfoot; Mike would get off at the truck stop and hitch a ride to Fairbanks. There he'd hook up with a musher and work as a handler with him. Pete would have to come back by himself, a journey filled with possibilities. To make matters worse, it was already snowing and blowing and conditions were gray light.
Gray light
meant that in the snow there was no shadow, no way to see the trail clearly. It is easy, especially across open places, to get lost. Then if you panic and strike out farther without being sure of your way, you can become terribly lost, so far off the trail that anyone looking for you will not find you. This trip would require substantial mental toughness, and of course, physical stamina.

Eric spoke an order to Pete: “You get lost, just stay put. Don't get brave and then get even more lost.”

Eric was obviously concerned but also excited for his sons. If he hadn't been, he would never have let them go. Running the winter trail alone was a boy-hood-to-manhood rite of passage out here.

“Do you have a gun, in case you run into a winter bear?” Eric asked.

“Yes,” Pete and Mike answered in unison respectfully, not with a whine.

“Watch for overflow. Remember, if you get stuck and you're not back by near dark, I'll be coming to look for you,” Eric said.