by Steven Swaks
“Jeb, you know the weather is terrible. I can’t go.”
“Bethel is legal. Aniak is legal. Why can’t you go?” He shrugged.
“Bethel and Aniak are barely legal and I have no clue what’s going on up river, I have nothing about Sleetmute and the entire Yukon is awful, who knows how bad it is out there. If I go in that valley and it’s foggy, I‘ll have no way out for fifty miles.”
“Now, if we don’t fly in snow showers anymore…” Jeb said as he casually walked away to the hangar.
I stood there astounded like a disarticulated puppet, an abandoned toy neglected by a spoiled child. That was it, somebody had cut the strings and set me free. There would not be another try, another attempt at a doomed flight, another shot in the dark without consequences. There was no learning, no regard for safety, only the cruel reality of the cold and disgusting two miles and 500 foot ceiling. Anything above that was fair game and granted a flight. There was no judgment, no big picture, nothing. Dean had died in vain.
I refused the flight, I still had that right. I had the right to stay alive, but we were beyond that. We were beyond a simple refusal and a shrug of disapproval. A long brewing wave of anger inhibited by morals and etiquette, came from within. Months of disregard, months of attempts and abuse, Mekoryuk, Dean, all came rushing back in an explosion of frustration and fury. I chased down Jeb into the hangar in quest for more. There was no more politeness and restraint, just the animal instinct of self-preservation, the logic of rebellion.
“JEB!” My voice carried the deep wrath of anger. Jeb turned around surprised. “You don’t give a damn about our safety! Dean meant nothing to you! You always give it a shot, you keep pushing and hope we’ll go!”
“You can always say no, nobody is forcing you to fly.” Jeb’s voice was failing, unconvinced by his own feeble argument.
“You lie to us all the time, you hide the bad weather, you always try to overweigh the plane!”
“Isn’t it your job to check that?” Jeb was becoming more inquisitive, hiding behind the regulations and brought the old argument, the pilot was responsible for everything.
“It’s my job to check everything, but you are supposed to assist us and not make it harder! I shouldn’t have to spend my time fighting you off and check if you lied or hid something behind my back! You should be an ally and not an enemy constantly pressuring us!”
Jeb was cornered and stood there speechless. I looked at him with disgust, I shook my head and walked away.
It had been a waste of time. I might have felt better from it, but it was probably the unfortunate extent of my reaction, a vain outburst to nowhere. I simply did not understand, why so much disregard? Jeb had a job to do. Planes had to fly, but the consequences of a crash were drastic. Besides the obvious human dimension, the accident meant a more mathematic outcome. The financial consequences of a mishap came as a tidal wave of increased insurance premiums, loss of revenue, purchase of equipment, and loss of reputation running down deep inside the company’s finances. Aviation was a daily gamble with human lives battling a line of numbers, the dollar sign against a life.
Norton Aviation was heading towards dangerous waters; I was hoping we would soon correct our course and change our vision. I could only hope and work at my level, one flight at a time.
The Ice Road
November
The Kuskokwim River was everything. It fed people, it gave them a means of transportation, it even gave a change of scenery to an otherwise -let’s face it-bland local landscape. So, when the river froze, or thawed as a matter of fact, the world stopped. The fine ice was too weak to support land vehicles and the boats could not take the chance of getting stuck. As the river slowly froze, people waited and watched the bush plane fly over with lust. The topic kept coming back in conversations.
“How’s the river?” The native elder asked me.
“It’s freezing up, but there’re still a bunch of open holes,” I answered while shaking my head.
“Rhaaaa,” the elder did not hide his frustration. He shrugged and laughed, “it’s ok, we can wait a little longer, hasn’t been very cold lately.”
So everybody waited. While the river took its time to freeze up, some young, brave, and occasionally stupid spirits ventured onto the freezing river. The powerful and light snow machines were often the first ones to ride on the Kuskokwim occasionally skimming on weaker areas. Of course, every year, impatient riders took their brand new snow-gos for a ride, only to realize that the ice was really not thick enough. With luck, they swam out of there and were rapidly rescued. They walked away with a bruised ego and a $12,000 snow machine left to rust at the bottom of the river. The not so lucky riders drowned or managed to reach the shore line and froze to death.
As the river froze, and once the ice was strong enough, an appointed deputy came on a daily basis to check the thickness of the river and published the results. After the snow machines, as the ice grew thicker, the light pickup trucks came to join the ranks of the lucky selected, then the weight of the vehicles increased as the winter progressed. After a few weeks of patience, the river was again the vital link so many counted on.
Throughout the winter conventional fishing activities drastically slowed down and ice fishing took over. The strong ones came out braving ridiculous temperatures and sat by a tiny hole patiently waiting to catch dinner. Well beyond my urban comprehension, a selected few incredibly skilled fishermen even managed to net fish through an ingenious system of holes and net extensions under the ice.
If ice fishing was reserved for the few willing to expose themselves to arctic temperatures, the ice road was now an open playground for all. The snow machines zoomed by reaching speeds well in excess of 80 miles an hour. At those astronomical speeds on an unchecked surface, any snow drift was a miniature launching ramp waiting for the next rider to hit it and become airborne. While some tried to reach nirvana, others, more reasonable or less bold, cruised along at more manageable speeds happy to get to their destination in one piece.
The river became a high traffic area and brought Bethel neighborhoods closer together, and created an unmatched network of possibilities. The post office became a lot closer to Brown Slough, an otherwise more isolated neighborhood, and avoided the down town congestion. As the winter came, the river became an integral part of the city layout. With an ounce of sadism, the locals enjoyed giving directions to visitors.
“Well, from the airport, you go down the highway, turn right on Standard Oil Road, just past the post office. Then, you drive all the way down to the river and follow it to the beach by the harbor boat entrance…”
By the time the explanations reached the harbor, the visitor had a blank stare, barely recovering from the idea that there was no road going to Anchorage.
It took some time to appreciate Bethel’s intricacies and possibilities. We used a boat ramp or a beach as a legitimate freeway access, and we upgraded the float plane base into a ski plane land airport. Even in the midst of a disagreement between a land owner and the city regarding the use of a critical private road running through his land, the city turned the nearby lake into an alternate route running around the property. This solution did not solve the summer aspect of the question, but it worked for a good six months out of the year.
Out of our wintery compromise, the river was not immune to a few flaws, even if the ice sheet was rock solid, the river breathed up and down with the movement of the tides. As soon as the river froze, cracks appeared on the shoreline giving the river some room to move along with the tide. The overflow cracks looked like gigantic scars running parallel to the river a few feet away from the shore. Sometimes, they were frozen and did not pose any threat to the driver. Other times, they came along with a yellowish unfrozen puddle of water and suggested a weak area, sort of a large warning sign for the trained eye. I guess my eye was not trained enough and my beautiful forest green Toyota 4Runner dropped a foot in one of those yellowish areas. I did not try to figure it out, and gun
ned it out of there. I did ask an Eskimo friend who was with me in the car about the solidity of the yellow ice. His answer was a non-concerned: “I am not so sure if the ice is solid enough, but should be ok.” Those 12 little inches felt like an elevator crashing down its shaft, my stomach remaining airborne as the rest of my body went down still strapped into the seat.
The icy road went well beyond Bethel; the true limit was the driver’s skill or their vehicle’s capabilities. The Kuskokwim became a highway used by delivery and fuel trucks, even specialized cabbies jumped at the opportunity to offer a new service and link the local villages to Bethel. The river became the easy solution for a quick trip to the store or a commute to town. In a matter of weeks, the Delta grew a dense network of snow machine trails and miles of highway quality roads leading to multiple villages.
But the river was not a complete lawless Far West where the fastest trigger ruled the ice, even if some of the highway laws stayed in a gray closet wondering if they should come out or not, other more critical regulations stood out in the open and remained strictly enforced. The watchful eyes of the State Troopers often did not go very far and the powerful arm of law enforcement often came out to violently slap the drunk drivers. Yes, even on the river, an irresponsible driver could get caught for driving under the influence. Figuring out the exact location of the offense might have been more questionable, but the lawmen had plenty of resources to adapt.
The river might have come out as a lucky mess, an out of control opportunity barely managed by the Troopers, but the truth was far from that. Most drivers realized the dangers involved with an ice road and used common sense; the others played Russian roulette fueled by a blind overconfidence. The controlled chaos came with a few basic safety precautions, those little steps that all made it work out. Once the ice was tested and deemed thick enough to safely support a vehicle, a snow machine team led the way and placed reflective colored flags on wooden sticks to mark the safe way to follow and the obstacles to definitely avoid. Sadly, even in the heart of the winter, the current dug holes through the thick ice, some of them large and easy to spot, but others hid and became death traps, especially at night. Anybody falling in the hole was not only exposed to extremely cold water temperatures able to kill somebody in minutes, but the current streaming under the ice often snagged the victim and dragged her under the thick ice. More than once, people had disappeared on the river and showed up in spring on the river bank miles downstream.
The darkness did not even deter the flow of vehicles, of course it was not downtown Chicago at rush hour, but the fingers of head lights sweeping across the river were very common. Behind each one of them, a father was coming home after a day at work, a teenage boy was visiting a girlfriend, or a wife was coming back from a village after dropping off her pilot husband in charge of flying a plane back to Bethel.
Looking back, that little nocturnal trip had not been one of our brightest moves. It was in my early flight instructor days well before Norton. One of my students had left a plane in the nearby village of Napaskiak. The afternoon weather had gone down on him and he was unable to reach Bethel paralyzed by a thick ice fog. His closest alternative was Napaskiak, a small village only five or six miles from home. Unable, or unwilling to wait for the fog to lift, the student had found a pickup truck ride back to Bethel. I was the lucky winner in charge of flying the plane back to Bethel once the fog lifted. Like city idiots, Lydia and I decided to drive to the village to pick up the plane at night, I would fly the plane back, and she would drive the truck back to Bethel. As a safety precaution, I gave her a specific time to be back at the flight school beyond which I could consider her stuck somewhere along the way, and we would send the cavalry to look for her.
Everything went as planned, I flew back and Lydia picked me up at the airport. The next day, she went to her clinic, entered the tiny break room, and proudly boasted about her previous night’s accomplishments. The city girl had become Alaskan; the tall and skinny Shirley looked at her, took one of those deep and controlled breaths she was so famous for before any significant announcement.
“Well, you know Lydia; I do not believe it was very wise to go on the river, at night. You are not used to it, and it can be very dangerous.” She sat on an office chair, with her hands crossed on her knees, and continued. “There are many open holes and soft spots. You should really avoid going on the river at night. Many things have happened before. People went on the river and never came back.”
It probably took Shirley two minutes to say those few sentences, weighing the significance of each word carefully. Lydia blocked every single word and only retained the most significant. River, night, dangerous, not wise, all rang in her hears with the power of a Chinese Gong. What did I do? What was I thinking? I could have drowned in frigid waters!
“I did not think it was that bad, but everybody is on the river all the time!” Lydia proclaimed.
“All the Yupiks are, but they grew up here, they’ve learned to read the river. They know every weak spot. Look at you, you are straight from Los Angeles. Six months ago you were driving to the mall to go shopping!” Shirley replied.
Shirley’s pager went off and called her to a baby in need of antibiotics. Lydia sat alone in the small break room, the thoughts of what could have happened were deafening. Mandy, Lydia’s nurse, walked in and snapped her out of her torpor, it was time to get back on the saddle and move on.
History Chanel
December
In Los Angeles, we had television shows like Access Hollywood, The Hills, or The Real Housewives of Orange County. All those shows were dedicated to the materialism and futility of appearance, glamour was king, and sparkles ruled the world. Bethel was also visited by television shows, Andrew Zimmer came with his Bizarre Foods and ate whale meat. He shared his thoughts and enjoyed the local Eskimo ice cream akutaq, a daring but tasteful mixture of seal oil, sugar, fish, and fruits. Dirty Jobs soon followed, anchored in the spring mud with the Fish and Wild Life authorities. Even though I enjoyed Bizarre Foods and Dirty Jobs, could I hope for more? Could somebody dare to see Bethel beyond the freak show it appeared to be? The Los Angeles Times was the next one on an ever extending list of media. Take a ticket and get in line, but this time, it was The Los Angeles Times, I could finally hope for more than sensationalism.
The information had not leaked, the article was still a large question mark. I sat at the kitchen table and I took the entire experience in. This Sunday morning was beautifully set up. Harvey, my father-in-law, had shipped me a copy of the Times, now it was there, in front of me waiting to be opened. Even the winter sunshine had decided to show its rays, the hot coffee steaming by my side was another accent to this perfect Sunday morning to be. I blocked out everything else, I opened the newspaper, I could feel the crisp of the pages crackling as they unfolded. Like a child on Christmas morning, I went straight for the largest present. I could not waste time and linger on the national news. I had to know. It was an article on the taxi drivers in Bethel, I could deal with that. My greedy eyes hurdled down the article in an insatiable quest for more.
Minutes later, our remote village was reduced to a muddy loop, a large roadway circle with no chance of escape, no road leading anywhere but Bethel, filled with cabbies anxious to escape this disheveled conglomeration of shacks and warehouses in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a Siberian landscape. My steamless coffee was depressingly cold with the insipid taste of bitterness.
Far from desperation, there was still light at the end of a very long tunnel, The History Channel was coming to Bethel and Norton Aviation would shuttle a television crew around the Y-K Delta. This time, I hoped they would understand the local culture. What would the documentary be about? The Eskimo heritage? The Russian influence in Alaska? The local gold mines? Soon, the newspaper article would be a dusty relic on a forgotten shelf, and Bethel would come in the spotlight under its true colors, whatever that might be.
At last, the History Channel was in our humble t
erminal awaiting a departure to a distant village. The entire crew was there, the rugged and large host, the sound man, the cameraman, and the pretty producer with long black hair and a white arctic jacket beautifully contrasting her tall black boots.
I had been assigned to fly the television crew to Chevak, an hour flight west of Bethel. As I was reviewing the depressing weather, the young and sophisticated woman came to me to gather information regarding the flight.
“Good morning, my name is Jacqueline Duvall, I understand you are going to be our pilot today.”
“DAMMMNED!! I post my puckin peeth!” Ron jabbered while barging in the terminal.
Mrs. Duvall suddenly turned around and stared at him. For an instant, I had hoped to appear civilized and pretended to be working for an airline rather than a mad house, but obviously, my project was doomed in the womb.
“What’s going on Ron?” I asked, not really concerned about his distressed condition but by the remote hope of doing some damage control.
“I poled you! I POST MY PEETH!” Ron over articulated the same frustrating and incomprehensible result.
I shrugged and shook my head in hope of something else, a better explanation perhaps. Jacqueline Duvall had stepped back a few feet. Ron became ever more frustrated, opened his mouth wide and pointed at it, the top denture was missing.