by Steven Swaks
Kwethluk was the first real landmark out of Bethel. There were short rows of houses built along the unpaved and often muddy main street. There was a small clinic, a school, a mile long road leading to the airport, and an isolated orphanage was a ten minute boat ride away. The facility had closed down in the seventies, but the books and furniture remained, or so I was told. One day I would go there. I would have to see for myself.
Beyond the small village, there was nothing more, or everything else, the endless procession of small lakes and trees, the poetry of the true Alaska unveiling under my wings. In an appreciated solitude, I was approaching the mountains. The once vague hills in a blurry horizon were taking shape. One by one, the mountains were defining their own individuality, each one of them showing their own cliffs and peaks, their dips and valleys. The snow still crowned the mountain tops for a last spec of winter. For a few short summer months, the snow would soon completely surrender, only to come back early October with a cruel vengeance.
Suddenly, it just hit me. I was a Californian boy flying fuel to a gold mine in Alaska! One day, unexpectedly, my monotone little sunny life took a sharp turn and propelled me to Eskimo country. No more Hollywoodish glamour, no more bikinis and fake tans, instead the adventurous and blunt wild of Alaska.
“Nyac, Norton Five One Charlie.” I called on the marine radio*.
“Norton go ahead.” Jason answered.
“I’ll be there in 12 minutes with two fuel drums.” Not that it was a surprise, Jeb had called him to let him know that I was coming.
“All right, upper strip.”
“Ok, I’ll see you there, upper strip.”
Ahead of me, the valley leading to Nyac was appearing. I was gorging myself with my surroundings, the thick woods, dozens of groves and brooks leading to the mountains and the mine. I was ever coming closer to the entrance of the valley, a few cliffs carved in the mountains, a majestic waterfall, the canvas came together in an éclat of impressionism. I could not get enough. I was overdosing on scents soaking the cockpit. The pine was king, there was no more wet freight or oil smell, but the raw communion with my surroundings.
Like giant gates protecting the beautiful bride, the mountains rose to guard the valley. Two cliffs stood at the entrance of a narrow valley heading to the gold mine. United to conquer the bold pilot, the weather was always nearby willing to throw its spell on the intruder. The fog often rolled in like a ghost and lurked around ready to sneak up on the pilot and trap him in the depth of the mountains. The valley was a one way trip, barely wide enough to allow a U-turn in good weather. With restricted visibility, all bets were off, the mountainsides waited for the lost pilot, hidden in the thick fog. The careful pilot always thought of an exit, to an extent. Once committed to venture deeper into the mountains, there was no turning back, the runway was the only salvation, not finding it was a death sentence.
The gold mine was a large open pit spreading for miles. An endless succession of squared gravel pits carpeted the bottom of the valley and followed its contours like a deformed checker board. Once in a while, the pits branched out and travelled to a small adjacent valley. A network of paths and dirt roads ran throughout the mine and the key areas. They went to the two runways, the current work site, the bear infested dump, the hangars, the workshops and the main housing, nerve center of the entire installation. During the few months above freezing, from late April to early October, up to fifteen miners worked there twelve hours a day in the realistic hope of finding more gold.
Meanwhile, wildlife sat back and cohabitated with men. A pack of wolves had erected their den a hundred yards from the lower strip, a second pack was a little shyer and lived further down the valley. A handful of grizzlies roamed the local mountains along with a large collection of black bears. Once in a while, a bold moose ventured around Nyac, unaware of the plethora of predators already labeling him dinner.
A few decades ago, man had found gold and never really left; money poured in as gold bled out. But the mine was too far from everything and man needed more, right now. Man became carried away by a need for massive deliveries, the heavy equipment came and the installation grew. Man splurged and added a large runway for massive deliveries, but only led by their sense of adventure, the managers kept the upper strip for the 207s, the uneventful shuttle. For us, there was no wide and long runway, there was only the tree surrounded, short and twisted, dirt road. The landing became an art. Pilots read the wind and negotiated the terrain. We dodged trees and swung the tail just before touchdown to properly line up the plane with the runway. It became a game, the expression of a skill and the pride of extreme performance. The landing survival was rewarded by an incredible overdose of the sense and peacefulness, the scents of spring and flowers blooming, the long lines of spruce trees, the nearby cliffs, the towering mountains, and the incredible silence occasionally broken by the wind blowing through the woods.
As the plane came to a more manageable taxi speed, I turned around and taxied to the ramp halfway down the runway. More than a true aircraft parking, it was a widening of the runway with two small and dilapidated metal hangars. I always turned around very cautiously, the propeller having the bad tendency to pick up loose gravel. The tiny pebbles did not mean much by themselves, but the propeller tip passed right above the rocks at very high speed and often picked them up and propelled them like little missiles headed straight back for the propeller blades. There were ways to avoid that, a subtle combination of higher taxi speed, low power setting and maneuvering downwind often did the trick. Unavoidably, once in a great while, a rock did find its way to the prop and dug a dent on the leading edge of the blade. The mechanics’ reaction was usually directly proportional to the size of the dent. The rest of the story was often the same. Discovering the nick, cursing bloody Mary, entering the Norton hangar by the smallest door possible, finding Brent, the most understanding mechanic, trying to avoid Max, the head mechanic, at all cost, and having the prop filed swiftly, and above all, stealthily. That was the best outcome possible, but the more realistic one would have included Max finding the nick and giving me a hard time for the following week. After all, the mechanics owned the plane, the pilots just borrowed it, or so it seemed.
Hopefully this time I would not face this scenario and I would fly back to Bethel as a proud Nyac graduate. I was becoming a tourist as the plane gently taxied. I looked outside, twisting my neck to see more and catching a glimpse of the peaks, so high up there. I felt so puny like a little child playing in the middle of adults, my surroundings dwarfing me.
The 207 approached the small ramp in order to park close to Jason’s truck as requested on my flight with Randolph. I continued looking and peeking outside, there was a dirt road leaving the runway towards the mountain and a small wooden bridge barely wide enough for a single car. Then, there was nothing, only the promise of a future trip to the camp’s main structure, an old wooden house resting against a steep slope. I hoped to climb up there someday to see more of their facilities and meet Maureen, their renowned cook. For now, I was limited to stay on the small ramp and deal with Jason. That was an interesting little fact, throughout my life, everywhere I worked, there was always a neurotic Jason to deal with, direct descendants from Friday the 13th. In Los Angeles, there was the Jason paramedic, a little too aggressive for my taste, but not so bad in the end. At the flight school, there was the Jason flight instructor/ mechanic/ night guard/ everything else. After years in the military, that Jason had walked away with deep wounds in his flesh and in his soul.
Without falling into the melodramatic, the Nyac Jason was the legitimate heir in an ever extending list. This Jason 3.0 was the mine’s main contact with Norton Aviation and self-proclaimed manager. He was standing at the edge of the ramp, his arms crossed and chin up like a little king waiting for his court to enter the castle’s great hall. Jason was most definitely approaching the age when most people decide to throttle back and enjoy their last two decades of life. His slight portliness and lack of f
ashion, or simple desire to be comfortable, manifested in some form of sweat pants barely holding onto his hip. His appearance only matched his poor attitude, and in an ultimate attempt to assert his authority, Jason made a point to complain about anything possible.
I stopped the plane in front of his truck as previously requested. The propeller was finishing its last rotations and I could already hear him complaining.
“Why didn’t you park there?!” His right hand was fidgeting towards the hangars thirty feet away, or what was left of it. Years of neglect were taking their toll, the structures were still up, but rust was spreading like an uncontrollable cancer. They obviously did not use them for much, for some temporary storage at most. The large doors were wide open and it seemed it had been that way for a long time. “Don’t you know we have to put the damn drums in the hangar? Now we have to roll them all the way down there!”
There was nothing to say. No, I did not actually know where they stored their drums, but I strongly believe that my opinion did not weigh much. I nodded as a sign of submission, realizing that I was serving a valuable customer, and attended my freight. Our communication would really need some tweaking if we did not want to finish the season going at each other’s throat.
We both walked to the back of the plane and unloaded the fuel drums. The operation was not physically demanding but required some dedicated attention with 380 pound drums easily able to crush a finger or a toe hanging out in the wrong place. The manipulation by itself was more of a finely controlled movement, implementing minor corrections to the trajectory of a rolling drum rather than a tour de force. We dropped the drum on its side inside the plane, and carefully rolled it to the cargo door. The next step was very simple. We dropped it on the ground and hopefully cleared all toes before the heavy metal tumbled down. We then effortlessly rolled the drums to the nearby hangar.
Two passengers to be were standing next to the command car, or so it must have seemed for Jason. The vehicle was yet another old beat up red Suburban that Jason used to roam around the mine like Rommel inspected his troops in the Nazi Africa Corps.
“Those two are going back with you.” Jason hardly jerked his head towards them with disdain. “Are you boys gonna come here or what?!” Jason barked at them.
They both walked to the plane with two sports bags and back packs. I could only assume they were miners on their way back to Anchorage or even further. I was wondering why they were leaving the mine so early in the season, but it was not my place to ask, I was only there to fly them to Bethel. One of them looked like a seasoned worker in his fifties; the other one was freshly out of his teens. Who knows what might have happened? I could have speculated from the stubborn old miner arguing with his boss to the young and arrogant one unable to adjust to the harshness of the area. No girls to flirt with, no theater, a summer retreat in the gulag with a collection of grumpy old miners, but then again, Jason might have been the very reason for their escape, I would not have been the one to blame them.
I loaded the bags in the plane and assigned their seats.
“All right, see you Jason.”
“Yeah, sure, next time park by the hangars if you have drums!”
“And what if I don’t carry drums?”
“Then park by the truck!”
“That’s all I needed to know. Thanks.” I smiled. He shrugged and shook his head.
I briefed my passengers and prepared for takeoff. If the landing was really a matter of skill, the takeoff was more of a blunt ratio between weight and power applied. Lady power was the one in charge. She imposed her ruling and left me the crumbs, or the decision on how much weight I take out of the upper strip. For the first time, I seemed to be on the same page with Jason. My theoretical knowledge added to his few decades watching 207s taking off from the upper strip led to a magic number: Two. I would only take two passengers and their baggage out of the small strip. Anymore and they would earn a ride down the valley to the much longer lower strip.
We taxied back to the end of the runway and turned around. Without stopping, I hastily pushed the throttle to full power. The engine roared and lurched down the gravel strip. Another few hundred feet and the runway would be gone, only to be replaced by bushes rapidly growing into large and solid trees. A few tall spruces stood in our flight path just off the centerline and called for a slight turn to the left to stay away from them. But the 207 was designed with a very long nose cowling and made it difficult to see forward during a climb. From the beginning of the takeoff roll, the first minute of the flight was a well prepared and continuous move towards a safe outcome. The plane accelerated on the ground, lifted off, and aimed between the trees. After that, it was more of a side view confirmation that we were on the right path rather than a direct sighting; the increasing speed distorted the large conifers passing by in a green and brown blur.
The return trip was much easier, I was more familiar with the weather and we were flying away from the mountains and their dangers. There was no terrain to deal with, no cliffs or hills but the appreciated flatness of the delta. My passengers stayed quiet during the entire flight. We landed in Bethel and I drove them to the Alaska Airlines terminal for their flight to Anchorage. After that they probably separated and moved on to their ultimate destinations wherever it took them.
It was my last flight of the day. Everybody else in our hub was already gone, for a few hours Norton Aviation would be quiet. Tomorrow would be another day with a mumbling Ron, a mechanical Jeb, and a goofy Toad going on his own tangent and occasionally opening a little door to his bubbling mind. There would be Max, the head mechanic chronically glued to the phone, and Brent quietly laughing at somebody else’s joke. Lydia would not be part of the routine. As I drove away from the Alaska Airlines terminal, she was lying on our couch, staring at the white ceiling in a cloistral silence. Tomorrow was uncertain; her first trip to a Yupik village carried its load of questions and uncertainties. She was not afraid to go, but the fear of the unknown cast great shadows from the standing question mark.
Summer Day at the Village
June
“Fourteen bucks,” the Albanian taxi driver plainly said barely looking back.
Gladys Reno, the physician assistant mentoring Lydia on her first trip to Pilot Station, a Yupik village ninety miles northwest of Bethel, pulled money out of her wallet and handed it to the driver.
“Thanks,” he mumbled. Gladys and Lydia stepped out of the old Crown Victoria and walked to the back of the car. The driver unlatched the trunk from the driver seat, hesitated, and finally stepped out to help the two women. “That’s a lot of stuff,” the driver claimed.
“That is, indeed,” Gladys answered and glanced at Lydia with a frustrated look. It was not so voluminous; two suit cases, pillows, sleeping bags, a basket of fruits for the health aides, a cooler of food for the five day long trip, and a medication box.
Gladys and Lydia entered the Coastal Aviation terminal. It was not the largest at the airport (the biggest being Alaska Airlines) but it provided a certain comfort to the passengers. A large built-in bench ran the entire length of the terminal just on the right of the entrance. Children played in small houses with cut out windows beneath two flights of stairs, while awaiting passengers stood on an observation deck with a view of the busy ramp. Customers enjoyed a cup of coffee or a meal in a respectable coffee shop upstairs. The entire terminal had been splashed with an imaginative array of geometric shapes and colorful tones. High on a shelf, a television played nonstop mind numbing shows during the airline’s hours of operation.
Gladys tugged her suitcase with a sleeping bag strapped on top of it to the front counter. I would not speculate on her age, (after all, there is a time when it becomes incongruous to mention it) but her blond hair was giving up the battle against the grays, and a few wrinkles here and there wiped out any attempt to look younger. It did not really matter for Gladys, she was in the Y-K Delta and loved working there. She cherished the semi isolation away from main stream an
d urban centers. Even her sense of fashion expressed her feelings and overall life philosophy, she only needed to be comfortable and any other consideration was irrelevant.
Lydia was glad to travel with her, not that she was anxious, but Gladys’ extensive experience was most welcomed in a setting she was not used to.
“I am Gladys Reno and this is Lydia Swaks, we have two tickets to Pilot Station.”
“Are they already paid?” A Coastal Aviation employee, a young native girl with distant Asian features and long black hair, asked from behind the red checkin counter.
“Yes they are, by the medical center.”
“Oh.” The young girl fidgeted with the paperwork and dug out two pink tickets. “Those are your return stubs, you will have to show them when you come back. Do you have any bags to check in?”
“We do.” Gladys dropped off each bag on a scale, weighed them, and checked them in.
The employee looked at Gladys, “could you step on the scale?” Gladys did so and her weight was duly noted. Lydia followed.
They both walked away with their respective pink slips. They sat on the extended bench and glanced at people. Most of the passengers in the terminal were native, even on this early summer day. Soon, a few church groups, engineers, students, hunters or fishermen from the lower 48 would come and scatter throughout the delta, but at the first sign of a temperature drop, most would flock back and flee to more merciful climates.
A pilot in blue jeans and a black sweater came out of a back door behind the counter. He stepped over a passenger scale and walked to the access door to the airplane ramp.
“PASSENGERS FOR EMMONAK, KOTLIK, AND ALAKANUK!” The pilot opened a clip board and counted the number of passengers who came towards him. He made an inaudible comment to one of them and they both laughed. After an instant the pilot and eight or nine passengers walked out to an awaiting twin engine aircraft.