Looking for Alaska (56 page)

Pete smiled as Eric ran down the list of instructions and warnings. Pete's blue eyes shone as confidently as those of any fifteen-year-old I'd ever met. He would be traveling over 120 miles on a snow machine, today, if nothing went wrong. So much could go wrong, but also so many things were right about him undertaking this responsibility. If he did it, he'd be the youngest person ever to do the winter trail solo. But it wasn't about being the youngest, it was all about having confidence in what he could do himself. Pete knew he could fix the snow machine, he knew how to make out the trail in gray light, he knew he wouldn't panic if he got lost. Right before they left, Eric asked Pete if he had any matches. He felt around in his pocket. It was the one crucial lifesaving thing he had forgotten. He got a box of wooden matches so if he did get stuck, a fire could be started and he would keep warm.

After they left and we ate breakfast, Eric and I went and cut wood about eight or nine miles away. It took us a couple hours to load up the Siglan sled with dead spruce logs. We brought back about a week's worth of fuel. Then it was afternoon, and the light began to wane. Everyone kept opening the front door and looking for the headlight of a moving snow machine. I saw one; it was Big Dave going around in circles on the lake. All of us got quiet, not wanting to ask about Pete. I noticed Eric went outside every fifteen minutes and looked and listened. Eric could wait no longer; he suited up to go find Pete. As he did not return, we began to worry.

After about an hour, I saw another moving snow-machine light. At first I thought it was Dave, back to his circling, but then I saw that there were two. It had to be Eric and Pete. Pete was almost home when Eric had found him. A huge cheeseburger, a mountain of fries, and the census taker had delayed Pete. The census taker was unprepared, or unwilling, to come down the winter trail and actually eyeball the seven people at Chandalar Lake, so Big Brother asked Pete a lot of questions, took up his valuable time knowing he was expected back, and didn't even pay for his burger.

To think a census taker was snooping around in the wilderness made me feel sick, even violated, oddly. Out here in this white temple, a person can ride the snow and soar in the vapors of snow crystals kicked up. You can turn off your machine and what you hear are millions of notes created by nothing. It struck me as grotesque that some census worker was wanting all kinds of personal details, far beyond how many souls were living out here. Was there no place to get away from the incessant data gatherers, the governmental snoops? This encounter notwithstanding, it was easy to see how proud Pete was at having done the return trip on the winter trail alone.

That night the northern lights pranced in our blue world lit by moonlight. What did people think of this night light before they understood what it was? Was it contented spirits dancing in heaven? Did anyone think they were spirits trying to come back into the world for their loved ones? Could it be your mother who had passed away two winters ago when the caribou never came, leaping, the one in the sky that was yellow and red?

I understand why Alaskans get so sick of people being hung up on Alaska's winter darkness. The light from the moon as it bounces off the whitest snow is another form of illumination, of revelation, that more than makes up for the missing sunlight. Everything is bathed in shades of blue. The summer sun for several hours in midday around my farm is oppressive, its glare closes my eyes, makes me shield myself with sunglasses, hats, and shade. The blue light showed me plenty: strings of caribou, clouds moving, definition of mountainsides, frozen lakes, maybe even a wolf slinking into the darkest blue of the forest. Then when Alaska's winter sun comes out, its low angle makes for an almost three-hour sunset. Sometimes the mountaintops all turn pink and gold. They are rich shades of these colors that I'd seen in pictures thinking they had been manipulated by filters.

Julianne and Elizabeth had been waiting all day for Pete. Mike and Pete had run the new dog team yesterday before they left. Pete had no experience, Mike only a bit, but they ran the dogs up and down the lake. The girls and Dan wanted to get in on it, but Pete and Mike weren't ready to be hassled by them. Pete promised if it wasn't too cold, he'd hook the dogs up and teach them how to mush in the morning.

Vicky made the best pancakes in the world that morning. I'm not sure if it's the cold and the lack of humidity, the lung-filling perfect air and hard work, but food in Alaska tastes better and you seem to need more of it. I wonder, does it have anything to do with the coming of winter, the body picking up signals about a need to hibernate?

Pete and the girls untied all the dogs, put on their harnesses, and then hooked them to the sled. Red, the retired sled dog, wanted to run; he was jumping and barking. Pete tried Fred; he didn't have a clue. He pulled to the side, in the way of saying, get me out of here. He lay down while all the huskies lunged and barked excitedly. Pete finally took Fred out of harness, and he became a retired sled dog without ever pulling the sled one foot.

Pete ran the team off the hill and down onto the frozen lake, quite a rush since the dogs seemed to like to run down it. There was about six to eight inches of fresh powder. The big brother was impressively patient as a teacher. When the girls finally took off, it was hard to say who was leading whom. They got off the snow machine trail and bogged down. Pete would run through the snow to help them, sometimes having to get ahold of the leader and lead him through a drift. Elizabeth and Julianne had bonded quickly; they might as well have been the only girls in the world. They mushed around their end of the lake, each taking the lead while the other sat in the sled as passenger. Then Rita took off with Julianne as passenger.

Rita and Vicky, both gifted at creating food from the barest basics, had been baking bread and making tender sourdough rolls. When we came in, the counter was full of whole-wheat creations, and the delicious scent from all of it filled the room. All the nonmushing dogs were loitering, waiting for any possible snack. Eric walked in from the food cache with a hindquarter of a caribou that Tyler, the “vacationing in Fairbanks” caretaker, had shot earlier in the winter. He carved off caribou steak after caribou steak, throwing each delighted dog equal bites of the bright red meat.

GETTING BUSHY WITH IT

As we talked for hours after dinner, someone turned on the radio; the only station they got was from Japan. If you were alone and superlonely, maybe you'd listen. But we were listening to Eric, telling us about his plan to take another canoe trip down the Yukon this summer. He would take Dan and Elizabeth and stop in each Native village on its banks and offer his veterinary services to the people in Rampart, Tanana, Ruby, Nulato, and so on as far as they traveled. There was no regular vet service in these villages. Sometimes Eric would be paid and sometimes not. He would also stop at the many family fish camps, where every year salmon were caught, cut up, dried, and smoked.

We didn't want to go. We had become connected to this family and fond of winter in the Brooks Range. The next morning, we were packing our clothes when Eric came in, still as shy and polite and unassuming as always, and asked if anyone would like a shower. You would have thought he'd asked if any of us wanted to fly or live forever. We had not felt water, except on our one washcloth. Eric said he had gotten up early and heated a large pot of water. Pete had hauled some extra water from the lake, a rugged job, even for him. Water weighs eight pounds per gallon, and getting it at fifteen below zero, scooping it out in five-gallon buckets, then hauling it upon the snow machine makes for real appreciation of each cup.

Eric had a camp shower, like a rubber hot-water bottle. You fill it with warm water, then hang it in the shower stall and get naked. It was chilly in their bathroom, but who cared, warm water would soon be dripping on me. Rita and Julianne went first. Rita had not taken off her wool cap since we'd been here. She is a stylish woman; this was probably as long as she'd ever gone in her life since she was thirteen without seeing herself in a mirror. Just hearing the precious water, heated by the miraculous generator, powered by precious gas, every ounce of it hauled out here on the winter trail, was a major episode in our lives. Every other shower I've ever taken would be considered better by objective analysis, but they weren't. This was the best.

To shower, to be warmed by water—what pleasure the warm little streams running down my needy body were. I heard water dripping off my body onto the tub as I'd never heard it before, what a ravishing sound. I used as little as possible wanting to be warm and wet but also needing to get clean. It was more than a treat, rare to many in the world. Why was I so unappreciative so often?

In a way, taking that shower at Eric's summed up what was so meaningful about our experience. The silky, precious, caressing water Eric warmed for us we loved for how difficult it was to get to us. We loved it just as we loved his home, each bit of warm air, slice of bread, lightbulb lighting, and motor or generator starting. When the sun shined, it not only shined on us but on solar panels for us. I had a new appreciation for plastic buckets to haul water, metal forks—so many things. The list is long.

We all cleaned up, dried our hair completely, which took me a minute and Julianne an hour. Julianne gave her Game Boy to Elizabeth; we hugged Vicky and said our good-byes. It is always sad to leave when you connect the way we had. This would be a family adventure we would remember all our lives. We got our cold-weather gear on and loaded up the sled for the voyage back to Coldfoot and took off feeling as if we were different people from the ones who had arrived several days before. It was gray-light conditions; I could not see much, if any, definition in the trail. This meant even though I was right behind Eric, I could not see the trail. I just followed his red taillight. If he went off a cliff, I would land on top of him when we came to the bottom of our fall.

Julianne asked if she could drive one of the snow machines back. Eric said that he had noticed how well she had learned to run one since she had been here and maybe he'd need her help on the way back. He mentioned that he weighed more than she did, though, and you needed the heaviest person in front. We crossed creeks; Eric and Juge got stuck trying to get up a steep hill. Juge walked up; Eric made it the second time. We lost the trail a few times in the featureless world. Rita and I missed the trail in a really tight spot with a cliff on one side and a steep, tree-studded hill on the other. We slid on the frozen waterfall that ran through it, and we and the snow machine slid down the hill. The snow cushioned us, as if we'd jumped into ten feet of feathers. It was all Eric and I could do to lift the snow machine back onto the trail in waist-deep snow. If Eric had not been with us, we would have been stuck twenty-five miles from their home, thirty-five miles from Coldfoot. The four of us moved as a swift unit down the trail. There was no fear of flying, only freedom in our confidence. We handled all our obstacles with humor and focus and high energy, and we made it in excellent time.

No building rises into view in Coldfoot. The mountains in Alaska dwarf all man-made objects. We pulled our snow machines up to the front door of the truck-stop restaurant and walked in, still coated with some trail snow. Julianne walked into the little truck stop with an increased boldness in her step and body language based on her accomplishments here above the Arctic Circle. All the people inside were staring at us, or were they? A few of the truckers were smoking; a man wearing a flannel shirt sat in the corner, a pile of papers in front of him. He was staring rudely at us. As I walked by him on my way to the bathroom, I noticed the papers were census forms. I'm not sure why, but I thought of flushing him down the toilet.

When I came back, he was grilling Eric. Was my response to these unknown “crowds” and this personal-information collector part of being “bushy”?

When I sat down across from Eric, the census taker asked, “Do you live out at the lake too?”

“No,” I said. Rita got up to get a coffee refill she didn't need.

The census taker was in his late forties; he seemed to be trying to be subtle. Either someone had told him that rural Alaskans could be slightly to totally rebellious, or he knew it from experience.

“Where do you live then?” he asked me.

“Ah, I'm a secret agent. I can't tell you, I'm on assignment. You know, you should head down the winter trail and go interview Dave. He's a Vietnam War vet,” I said. “He might enjoy answering your questions. He might take you for a ride on his snow machine.”

“No, thanks.” The census taker giggled. “That young man Pete answered all my questions.”

Rita was watching us from the counter. I'm not normally this aggressive with representatives of the government even if I want to be. Being bushy was the only excuse I could come up with for my awful, rude, prying behavior.

When we'd warmed up and had our hamburgers, I went to our vehicle and dug around for my address book. I had promised Mike I would give Eric instructions on how to contact my friend sailing around the world. I did put them in touch, and Mike ended up sailing with him from Tonga, north of New Zealand, to Fiji. He's going back again the summer of 2001 to sail from Fiji to somewhere else in the South Pacific. Mike had a great teacher in his dad when it came to realizing that you
can
live your dreams.

We loaded our gear into the Explorer and took off down the Haul Road. It was like cruising down an eight-lane interstate compared to where we'd been. Before we left Coldfoot, I called our friend Pat at the University of Alaska. She sounded a bit breathless, she was so glad to hear we'd made it. I almost laughed at her concern, but then I remembered how paranoid and uptight I'd been. She said if she hadn't heard from us today, she was going to call the troopers. Curt would have been able to assure her we were fine, if he had not been out patrolling somewhere in his seventy-three-thousand-square-mile territory.