Alaska! Up North and to the Left

by Steven Swaks

  “Go ahead, grab a plate, don’t be shy!” Jason barked at me with -I have to admit it-a friendly smile.

  I picked up a plate and heard footsteps behind me.

  “Hi Steven! I am glad you had time for dinner! Go ahead, dig in.” Dr. Karn approached me and patted me on the back. There was a woman behind him. “Oh, by the way, this is Maureen; she cooked that terrific dinner tonight.”

  She smiled, shook my hand and left to the kitchen. While the men slaved around the mine, Maureen lovingly cooked for them in the main house. She was patience and sweetness incarnated in the middle of the wilderness and rugged workers. As soon as her guests opened the front door, their ruthlessness melted in the aroma of a home cooked meal. There was no more isolation, no more mosquitoes, no more threats of grizzly bears or wolves, just the warmth of her smile and the exhilarating smell of her cooking. She had been seasonally working in Nyac for years and the rest of her family had learned to accept her annual migration. But it did not matter; she was at an age when the kids are in college or already working. Her universe for the summer was limited to the main house and its kitchen. She was like so many other workers, she came to bush Alaska for a few months each year and travelled back home at the end of the season to harvest the fruits of her work. It was not a bad philosophy of life. I had seen cooks making well over $100,000 for six months of work. I do not know if it was the case for her, but she seemed to be enjoying herself.

  I picked up my food and followed Dr. Karn around the cooking area. We passed the soda fountain and entered the dining room. Three small rooms succeeded each other to form an “L” shaped area. The first room had a small table, probably reserved for the outcast in search of independence. The second section was more convivial with the main dining table. To the right of the main dining room, a large opening in the wall led to the last leg of the “L”. Two armchairs and an old sofa were there pretending to be ready to comfort the weary workers, though their schedule did not allow that. The small bed was the only option for the exhausted miners, there was no time to relax on the couch sipping a cappuccino and enjoying the paper. They were only in the mine for a few months and productivity was management’s motto. Labor laws barely allowed for a short night of sleep before returning to the pit.

  We sat at the long dining table and joined a few workers. Two of them were seasoned with thick and callus hands, they had spent their lives outside working under rough conditions, but the light in their eyes was still there. They were not victims but advocates, they had chosen that life. Decades ago, they had decided to leave the expectations and the predictability to enter the nostalgia of the past. Another worker was much younger, his bleached blond hair gave him a surfer look. Who knew why he was in Nyac, perhaps it was a summer job, perhaps he would be there in thirty years facing another bush pilot. Either way, driven by a palpable fatigue, they hardly nodded when I sat at the table. My dining experience as a guest was rather different. I had come to the table after a Sunday of rest and I was enjoying sharing their daily routine and listening to their stories, the changing weather, the occasional bear venturing close by, or the lack of spare parts for the machines. What any other workers took for granted was a headache in the middle of the mountains. An injury would have taken hours before being addressed by any kind of emergency medical services, and supplies were often lost or delayed by the capricious weather.

  Among a few dining workers, Tim easily stood out. Tim was as nice as he was large (his six foot five, three hundred pound frame and hands the size of a paddle inspired respect from all of us). I am not quite sure what his role was in the mine, perhaps some kind of supervisor with an ounce of mechanical skills. Either way, Tim proved to be a great damper on Jason’s temper, especially in regards to aircraft operations. Not so long ago, Tim was the unfortunate passenger on an overweight Cessna 172, taking off a runway much too short with trees at the end much too tall. The plane had clipped the tree tops, flipped over, and crashed back to earth. Tim had walked away unharmed, but since the accident, he was a strong advocate for air safety and for heavier usage of the lower strip. That’s often what it took, an accident to open the eyes of the beholder; the others kept walking in the darkness, and ignored the dangers.

  The dinner went by in a succession of small talk punctuated by a wonderful meal. The prime rib was there fighting with a few vegetables and the mashed potatoes, while the chocolate cake à la mode was simply wonderful with vanilla ice cream dripping down for our own decadence.

  Dr. Karn proved to be a very pleasant host, elegantly managing to mix business with my presence. While the doctor kept a strong hand on the current affairs, he also seemed to be open to his employee’s needs. His attentive stare meant a lot to his workers, there was a time to manage, and a time to step back and listen.

  Between two stories, I glanced at my watch, keeping in mind the Alaska Airlines jet bound to Bethel. In an unfair race, we would both arrive in Bethel roughly at the same time. I became the party crasher and pressured him to expedite his dessert, and drive back to the plane, but there was always a new story to tell or a last minute issue to address. Tim understood my rush and used his weight in my favor, his deep gargantuan voice was more persuasive than my younger and greener opinion.

  We flew back to Bethel. I parked the 207 for the night, and rushed to the Alaska Airlines terminal to catch the evening flight. Once in a while, if time allowed, the doctor and I talked about different topics, from the healthcare system in rural Alaska, to his experience gained as a parent. Dr. Karn was a very sharp and assertive character, and our evening chatter often turned out to be very interesting with some political slippage. His business point of view on healthcare management was radically different from the local perspectives; it was profit vs. social healthcare catered to the natives. In a fracas, they often collided and left any social needs bleeding on the sidewalk.

  I dropped him off at the terminal. Dr. Karn extricated himself from the car, shook my hand and walked away pulling his small rolling suitcase. I was back to my normality, or whatever was normal about it. Bethel might have been in the middle of nowhere for the masses, but for us, at least for now, it was home. For two hours, I escaped the already isolated small town. I caught a glimpse of a different lifestyle away from anything else I knew. Two weeks from now, I would pick up Dr. Karn and experience the magic one more time.

  Never Mind

  July

  This trip was not our first weekend to Anchorage, but the effect was still the same. Lydia and I did not talk about it, but it was there, the gentle jitter, the butterfly in the stomach of a teenage boy asking his secret crush on a first date. We had passed that juvenile stage a long time ago, but the excitement of a weekend in town remained. The walk down the concourse in Anchorage Airport still carried the innocent joy of a preschool courtyard. We marveled at everything, the unfamiliar faces, the rush of passengers running to catch a flight, the scents so foreign and familiar, the bright and aggressive lights, the neon flashing, the brands rushing towards us like a commercial dam bursting after months of Bethelian repression.

  When Lydia came back from Pilot Station, she had experienced the same sensory overload in Bethel. The small town was a big city, an urban oasis dwarfing the small villages. Bethel was vast with a highway and restaurants, cars and a large airport, a hospital with overnight patients, supermarkets and a hardware store. This morning, Anchorage was massive, it was a capital, a megalopolis. 260,000 people, how was that even possible? 260,000, the number was staggering.

  The nearby mountains gave a unique identity to the city, the label showing that we were at the end of the American continent, as if man had decided to bleed out its civilization down South before coming to Alaska. Nature had finally overcome our hunger for concrete and conquest; she was around us, surrounding us for hundreds of miles of dense forests, mountains, tundra, and ultimately, the merciless Arctic.

  Anchorage was the gateway where man stood in front of the untamed Alaska we loved so much. South of th
e city, the Seward highway and its incredible drive followed along the Turnagain Arm. The name might be unimpressive, only expressing the frustration of a disappointed explorer hoping to find a passage or an open door to a new quest that never existed, but the modern traveler did not have such high expectations and truly treasured the drive. It was a simple two lane highway meandering about, following the inlet and the adjacent cliffs. Once in a while, we spotted a daring white Dall sheep hanging on the side of the mountain or a yellow Alaska train only adding a tasteful touch of human presence to nature’s perfection.

  If Anchorage’s surroundings were stunningly beautiful, the town by itself was more conventional. It could have been a slice of the San Fernando Valley with its large boulevards and rows of businesses, endless procession of car dealers and gas stations, fast food joints and strip malls, but the climate and outer area immediately surrounding the city reminded us that, indeed, we were far away from California. Even in the heart of the summer, the mercury hardly rose to the 60 degree range with frequent rain.

  With Anchorage, man imposed its ruling and took over a part of the land. The city had all the conveniences from the mall to the discount outlet store. Lydia was back home, with her old blasé attitude driving along the boulevards. She had a blank stare dully looking at an endless legion of store signs going by.

  “I have to say, the town by itself really looks like anywhere else,” she vainly commented.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true,” I vaguely acknowledged.

  We were approaching a curve and the car a hundred feet in front of us slammed on the brakes.

  “What is he doing?” I muttered. Ahead of the car, a 1400 pound moose was trotting on the curb without a care in the world. Our eyes bulged out as we drove past the giant mammal. Lydia’s head swiveled following the beast. She looked back in front of us with a blank stare, “Never mind.”

  Red Devil

  July

  I was on my way back from Kalskag when the fifteen minute ticker on the GPS reminded me to call dispatch. I instinctively keyed the microphone to call Jeb and receive my next assignment. I have to admit that Jeb was on top of it, the instant my thumb released the microphone switch to announce my return, he most often came right back on with a new destination and an occasional description of the flight to come. Each new trip was a surprise, a present waiting to be opened with ever changing airports, passengers, and loads. In this late afternoon, the weather was fine, I had plenty of flight time left out of my eight hour daily allowance, and I could virtually be sent anywhere.

  “Red Devil, NEXT, 3 pax, two dogs.” Red Devil? Beyond the hellish name, it was not a bad destination. I had not yet had a chance to fly there. I believed it was in the middle of low mountains, well north of Aniak, maybe ninety minutes away from Bethel. The flight would be a good break from the routine.

  A few minutes later, I entered our terminal and met a small family. There was a man, two preteens, and two very large dogs. The man, Matt, was obviously the father and tried to rule the two little ones from the height of his late forties. He was wiry, and had not seen shaving cream for the last three or four days. The two girls were jittery and stuffing themselves with candy from the vending machine. They were at the age where the beautiful little girl was slowly dying away to leave room for the obnoxious teenager, the know it all, the been-there-done-that attitude from their extensive life experience accumulated during their previous 12 years. The dogs were two massive and muscular balls of coarse hair. Thick strings of saliva occasionally came out of their mouths and extended until gravity won the struggle and fell on the floor. I did not know what kind of breed they were, perhaps some kind of mutated Rottweiler. Either way, they were the kind of monster a passerby found lying on a curb, chewing on a mailman’s tibia. Those two fellows were about to embark in the back of my plane, as far away from me as possible, doing their business or eating who knows what. Randolph was also there, slouching on the couch, eyes closed, resting between two flights. His attitude was almost becoming a provocation, an ongoing statement to Jim after months of frustration.

  As I walked towards our wooden counter, I politely acknowledged the family’s presence and introduced myself, nothing very exciting, “Hi, my name is Steven, I’ll be your pilot to Red Devil, we will be leaving in 15 minutes.”

  “I’m Matt,” the man energetically shook my hand, “This is Lilly and Amy.” The girls did not respond to the introduction. “Come on girls say hi to our pilot and stop buying candy!”

  The two young ladies froze for an instant, looked at their father startled, looked at me, mumbled “Hi”, looked at their dad one more time to assess the level of threat, and resumed chewing on the sweets.

  I walked to the counter to finish up my paper work from the previous flight. With an amused eye, I candidly observed them. The father was trying to bring some cohesion to his personal madness with the gluttonous girls, the restless dogs, and the bags to keep track of.

  A loud familiar shrieking sound came from a distant taxiway, Randolph opened one eye. I looked outside, the noise sounded like a Skyvan, but ours, Five Zero Niner, was parked right outside dispatch.

  “Is that a Skyvan?” Randolph asked.

  “Sounds like it,” Jeb answered also looking out.

  Footsteps rolled down the stairs, and Jim walked in with a triumphant smile, “There it is boys!”

  Randolph stood up calmly. “What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you anything, heck, in this place nothing is confirmed until it happened two days ago, but yep, we got a second Skyvan! Five One Hotel.”

  “Five One Hotel? Isn’t that the one from Fairbanks?” Randolph asked.

  “They don’t really need it up there and we are swamped here, so now it’s ours!”

  “It’s going to be based here?” Randolph asked surprised. His perspective was renewed; a second Skyvan meant a need for new pilots and -finally-a potential upgrade.

  Matt looked at us intrigued, the teens were not interested, still focused on the candy machine.

  As the plane taxied in, Jim walked out to greet the pilot.

  “I can’t believe we are getting a new Skyvan,” Jeb said.

  Randolph approached the window to take a better look. “That’s cool, but who knows how long that plane is going to stay here, I bet you it’s going to be gone in two weeks.”

  “See, the bright side, you might fly that thing,” I said also looking outside.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll be more excited once Jim decides to upgrade me.”

  With a gassed up and loaded plane, I called my passengers and escorted the troops onto the ramp. The suitcases, bags and groceries were already behind the seats and in the nose compartment. There was literally enough stuff to last the entire summer. I came to find out they had a small cabin in Red Devil. I could not help but feel sorry for Matt alone with those two preteens and the monsters. Why did he volunteer for that? His entire summer would be in forced isolation with frustrated teenagers and the two canines. His salvation would rest entirely on an occasional neighbor turned friend by necessity or pure sense of survival.

  While I helped the girls to board the plane, daddy attached the dogs in the back. Matt then came to the front and strapped himself into the copilot seat. I knew I had to check the dogs. I had to make sure they were secured and the cargo door was properly latched. I approached the back door and glanced at the dogs. There, I saw them; daddy had used a cargo strap to secure the beasts. I did my job and made sure they would not be going anywhere. I just had to lock the double cargo door and I would be done. As my right hand approached the left door, one of the creatures lurched forward and snapped its jaw an inch from my digits. The back of the 207 had become their temporary territory and I was an intruder on my own ride. Matt barked a command and the dogs sat back. I held my breath and latched the double doors.

  I always liked to maintain a certain routine prior to departure. With the father, kids, dogs, and bags chaos, I really needed to maintain
a sense of calm to avoid forgetting something. In aviation, confusion or distraction could rapidly lead a pilot into forgetting a minor detail which was a wide open door to disaster. Bags and freight could come gushing out of an unsecured freight hatch into whatever was behind, a roaring engine, flight controls, or flaps. I did not want to belong to the statistics and I religiously stuck to my routine. I started my last check before the flight from the rear right side of the plane, checking the cargo straps, and closing the back doors. I then walked towards the front of the plane where I checked the front passenger door and made sure the passengers had fastened their seats belts and shoulder straps. The nose compartment was next on the list with a secured latch.

  Once I reached my seat, I gave the typical passenger briefing.

  “This is a Cessna 207, you open the door by pulling on the handle. There are three exits, two in the front, and one in the back on the right side of the cabin. You operate the seat belts just like an airliner -This is pretty much the only thing we have in common with the big guys…- the fire extinguisher is located between the two front seats. If you have to use it -hopefully you won’t-you pull on the pin, squeeze the handle and sweep the base of the flames. The ELT -the Emergency Locator Transmitter-is located in the tail, in the unlikely event of an accident, a radio signal will go off by itself for the search parties to find us. The survival gear is in a big orange bag located in the back of the plane. There will be no cell phones, no smoking, drinking, singing, or dancing during the flight. If you forgot anything I said or plainly didn’t pay attention, there is a safety card in front of you to remind you of the safety procedures on this plane. For your entertainment, you will find a countdown to our destination on the GPS screen located on the center console.” That was pretty much the basic talk I always gave my passengers.