The special brown passports would forever mark them as being a part of the mass of Yellowstone refugees.
In fact, a special annotation beneath the holder’s photograph announced in bold letters:
Yellowstone-Vulkanflüchtling
Oh, that wasn’t so bad.
The special designation entitled them to benefits other tourists didn’t qualify for.
For example, their visas had no expiration dates. They could stay in the country as long as they wanted. They could settle there and make Germany their new home if they wished.
They also qualified to occupy base housing units at the former Bitburg Air Base, which Wayne had a hand in closing down.
The housing complex, enough to handle over twenty thousand people, had been given to the city of Bitburg. They in turn upgraded the housing and remodeled it, with the thought of selling the units as condominiums.
Then came the Yellowstone Event.
The Bundestag asked Bitburg if the housing was still available and offered to repay the city for the upgrade and a bit extra for its trouble.
A deal was made and voila! Twenty percent of the first 100,000 now had homes for as long as they wanted them.
Wayne and Julie were offered the housing but passed.
Sure, it was only twenty six kilometers away from Wittlich, where Julie had just accepted a job at a law firm.
But why drive half an hour each way on treacherous winter roads when they could purchase a home within walking distance?
Wayne decided to take a hiatus from working.
And when he did decide to go back to work, he could work from home.
He was now, like it or not, the most notable volcanologist in the world. He’d been the first to warn the world the Yellowstone eruption was imminent, though he needed a bit of prompting from Hannah and Gwen’s research.
But nobody knew that.
As far as the world’s scientific community knew the discovery of what was to come was his and his alone.
He could write his own ticket. Go wherever he wanted to go, whenever he wanted to go there.
He could spend the rest of his life based at home in Wittlich and fly here and there to give speeches and host book signings.
Or… he could stay at his home and spend his days doing what his good friends Hans and Elyse did… working in their gardens and napping in the afternoons.
He shared his plan one afternoon with Julie and she outright laughed at him.
“What’s so funny?”
“You. You won’t last six months doing such a thing. And if you think you can you’re fooling yourself.”
“Why on earth would you say that?”
“Because you’re the biggest workaholic I’ve ever met. You’d go crazy puttering around in your garden, trying to coax your plants to grow more tomatoes or bigger cucumbers.
“You’d want to be where the action is.
“You say you hated the reporters shoving microphones in your face and demanding questions of you.
“But I saw you, grabbing the newspaper each day and reading it front to back looking for your name and making sure they quoted you correctly.
“I saw you beaming with pride every time a friend called and said they watched you on the evening news.
“I overheard you on the phone the other day with your publisher, telling her you want to travel more in the coming year and asking her to add several dates to your book-signing tour.
“Honey, you love the limelight. You love the looks on people’s faces when they look up at you, longing for you to share your knowledge and wisdom with them.
“You have a gift. Your love of science and volcanoes and dirt and rocks.
“I used to think you were weird. That your love of those things was abnormal. Now I know it’s part of you. Maybe a bigger part of you than I am…”
He started to argue.
“Honey, that’s not true. You are everything to me…”
“Please, Wayne, let me finish.
“You have another ten years in you at least before you should retire. You’d be miserable if you tried to do it now.
“Right now you’re at the peak of your career. It took a super-volcano to finally make the world aware of your knowledge.
“Now the world is clamoring for that knowledge. Everybody wants you to share it with them.
“If you go into hiding you’ll disappoint them all.”
He looked at his hands. He was unsure now. He was starting to bend.
But he wasn’t there yet.
Julie knew his Achilles heel. She was ready to go in for the kill.
“Honey, you came out of obscurity and became the most well-known volcanologist in the world. Scientists in every nation in the world are quoting you and your research. And they want to hear more from you.
“If you disappear now, they might start doubting your work. They might start thinking you faded from the limelight because you no longer trusted your own data, That you might not want to be exposed as having flawed calculations.”
“That’s preposterous. My work is sound, as are my calculations…”
“I’m just saying your disappearance might make some wonder, that’s all.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “I wonder if the University would be open to adding another professor.”
Julie smiled. She won.
She always did.
Chapter 41
“I always thought Anchorage was bigger than this.”
Tony looked around for the skyscrapers he expected to find in any other big city.
But Anchorage isn’t like that.
Yes, it’s by far the largest city in Alaska, at just under 300,000 people.
But it’s still got the same small town feel it had back in its early days, when it was a pretty-much lawless gold rush town.
These days it’s plenty safe. Law won out over the bad guys. And gold is no longer its main source of income. Tourism is.
But it’s still a very nice place to visit, and an even nicer place to live.
They decided to go back in a week to see how far they’d moved up in line.
Then they’d decide, based on the number of spaces they’d moved up, whether to wait an additional week or to visit more frequently.
In the meantime, they’d do the tourist thing, and see all the sites Anchorage had to offer.
Then they’d return to the joint military base and cool their heels with all the other RVers.
The base welcomed them with open arms, scheduling fishing excursions by bus to many of the best fishing spots in the area.
They happened to be between hunting seasons, but gave trapping lessons and sponsored trapping excursions in the area.
They even signed up those who were interested in free classes on smoking fish and other game, building and safely extinguishing campfires and basic survival skills.
They started a program they called “Adopt a New Alaskan,” in which they encouraged base personnel to visit the RV site and to make friends with one of the refugee families.
“Get to know them,” the base commander told his troops. “Nobody likes to be an outsider, and they’ve already been through a lot.
“Introduce yourselves. Become their friend. Show them around. Show them everything there is to do, both on the base and off.
“If you get to know them well enough, I’ll grant you a pass so you can go to visit them once they’re settled.”
On Joint Base Richardson-Elmendorf, single men outnumbered single women seven to one.
That was nice if one was a single woman, for she never had to lack for attention, never had to buy her own drinks or dinner at one of the base’s clubs.
The men, though, had to work much harder to get noticed.
Many of them signed up for the “Adopt a New Alaskan” program in the hopes they’d meet young single women moving up to Alaska.
But young single women weren’t attracted to life in the wilderness in great numbers.
/> In an odd twist of fate, couples like Gwen and Melvyn, Tony and Hannah, tended to meet and “adopt” the men from the base instead of the other way around.
On this day it was their “adopted soldier,” a private named Josh, who was showing them around downtown Anchorage.
Hannah asked him if he was handy with his hands.
“Fairly so,” he said. “My commander offered me a ten day pass to come and help you work on your cabin, if you’re willing to sign me out.”
Hannah found that just a little bit humorous.
“Sign you out? Like a library book?”
He flushed.
“That’s the way the Army keeps track of us, ma’am. We’re like a piece of property. Any time we leave the post and we’re not on actual leave, someone has to sign a paper stating they’ll take good care of us and make sure we’re back on time.
“It’s pretty humiliating, but the first sergeant tells me there’s logic behind it.”
“Really?” Hannah asked. “I’d like to hear that logic.”
“Well, he says if nobody signs me out and keeps track of me, I could just go wandering out in the wilderness. I could get lost or be eaten by a bear, and nobody would have a clue where I went or how long I was missing.
“At least if you guys sign me out like a library book and I don’t come back they know who to contact about where I might be.”
Hannah thought for a moment, then said, “Okay. I guess that makes sense.”
Josh said, “The military is full of nonsensical rules and regulations. Usually, though, if you dig into them you find there’s logic behind them all.”
“Are bears that much of a problem?”
“Typically the bears are as frightened of you as you are of them. The trick is never to sneak up on them or take them by surprise. Make a lot of noise and you’ll never see most of them. They’ll hear or smell you from a distance and will be long gone by the time you come through.
“You have to be careful, though. Sometimes you’ll encounter a bear cub and its mama. The best thing to do is to freeze in place until she gathers her cub and walks away. And never ever get between a cub and the mother. She’ll charge you for sure.”
“Do they have any bears here on base?” Tony asked.
“I’ve never seen one personally, but it does happen. They do come on base occasionally. Most of the wild creatures that come onto the base are moose and caribou.
“Something about that, though, is that they can be dangerous too.
“I arrived on post directly from basic training a year and a half ago. I flew in on a Friday and had the whole weekend off before I inprocessed on Monday morning.
“That Sunday I went on a walk around the base and came to some softball fields. There was a moose calf in center field, his mom nowhere in sight.
“I slowly approached him, hoping to get a selfie with him to send home to my folks.
“He was just a bit skittish, but seemed to be curious of me and didn’t seem to be afraid. So I closed the gap a couple of feet at a time by talking calmly to him and telling him I meant him no harm.
“Suddenly I heard the loudest screech I ever heard. I never knew that moose made noise, but they do.
“I turned around and it was the calf’s mother, standing near first base, and she wasn’t happy at all.
“She had her head down, like a bull does, and she was pawing at the dirt.
“And she was making the most God-awful of noises I ever heard.
“She looked at Junior and I guess gave him some kind of signal to run.
“Junior took off, around the outfield fence and into the woods, at about the same time she charged me.
“I thought I was dead meat.
“But she stopped about halfway to me, pawed the dirt again and screeched at me again while I kept backing up.
“She turned to make sure Junior was gone and I guess was satisfied with scaring me instead of killing me. I mean, she was bigger than any horse I’ve ever seen. She could have killed me for sure.
“Then she turned and bolted for the same woods Junior disappeared into.
“I don’t mind telling you, I beat feet back to my barracks and stayed there.
“Funny thing was, when I processed into the post that Monday, one of the first things they talked about was the wildlife.
“They said, ‘If you encounter a young caribou or moose on the base, do not approach them, as they usually have an angry mother nearby.’”
“Thank you,” Tony said. “That’s nice to know. Because I’d have done exactly the same thing you did.”
Chapter 42
One thing Josh had that the Lupsons and the Carsons didn’t was a car.
The day they all met Josh offered to drive the couples up to their homestead sites on Eklutna Lake.
Now it was Saturday, four days later, and time for Josh to pick them all up.
“I’m sorry. I imagine it’s going to be a little bit cramped.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Melvyn said. “It’s very nice of you to take us up there.”
“Hey, anytime. I’m off every weekend, and we don’t go into the field for maneuvers this time of year. Anytime you want to go out there you just say the word.”
To be sure, stuffing five adults and a baby carrier into a Honda CRV wasn’t the easiest thing to do. But they’d manage.
It helped that the tallest among them, Melvyn, rode shotgun, and that Tony was smaller than average size.
Also, that all three of the rear seat riders were a bit on the skinny side. The women rode on either side of the baby’s car seat and Tony rode in a jump seat in the cargo compartment.
It wouldn’t be the most comfortable ride ever for any of them, except maybe the baby. He had his mommy on one side and Auntie Gwen on the other.
Both were cooing happily and making baby noises to him and tending to his every need.
The route to the lake would take them about seventy miles east and a bit north along the A-3 Interstate.
Only tourists and Alaska State Patrol officers called it that.
Locals called it the Glenn Highway.
Seventy miles east of the base, eighty from Anchorage, they’d turn south.
That would be where the real adventure would begin.
New Eklutna Lake Road was one narrow lane in each direction, which wasn’t lined because it’s hard making lines on loose gravel.
Occasionally there was a shoulder for a couple of hundred yards, accompanied by a sign which said:
SLOWER TRAFFIC PULL OVER AND LET OTHERS PASS
For most of the sixty miles between the A-3 and the lake, however, there was no shoulder on either side.
That, plus the fact that loose gravel made for long stopping distances, was why the speed limit on New Eklutna Lake Road was only thirty miles an hour.
Two hours each way on a gravel road didn’t sound like fun.
But there were no complaints.
The road was well maintained and was therefore very smooth.
There wasn’t a lot of traffic.
Other drivers were cautious and courteous, and nobody seemed to be in much of a hurry.
Most of the traffic on the road were recreational vehicles.
Tony guessed they belonged to other homesteaders whose homes were not yet completed, and who still lived in their RVs.
Assuming that for most of them the RV was their only vehicle, that was the one they had to drive into town occasionally for supplies or entertainment.
They found it odd that every single RV they came across came to a dead stop, as close to the edge of the road as they thought safe, while the oncoming vehicles slowly passed them by.
There was something else as well.
Every single driver of every single RV, without exception, waved as they went by.
“You know what that reminds me of?” Melvyn asked to no one in particular.
“Yes,” Josh offered. “That’s what people do in west Texas, where I grew up. Not
in the cities, but on country roads in the rural areas. They always wave to each other.”
Melvyn said, “It was the same way where I grew up in rural Nebraska.”
Tony grumbled and said, “Nobody waved at each other in rural Missouri, unless they were waving one finger. I guess they were just too pissed off about living in rural Missouri.”
Halfway to the lake they began to see signs announcing construction ahead.
It jarred a memory in Josh’s head.
“One of the guys I work with told me they’re paving all sixty miles and adding two more lanes. I guess they’re trying to accommodate the increased traffic from the eight hundred people they’re putting out here.”
It was the first time Melvyn had heard someone quote a specific number of homesteaders.
“They’re going to fit eight hundred homesteaders around one lake? That sounds very ambitious.”
“Well, it’s a good sized lake. Over sixteen miles of shoreline. He said half the homesteaders won’t settle on the lake. He said when you process they’ll give you a choice of settling on the lake or on the river just above the lake.
“He said the river is a quarter mile across and home to a dozen different kinds of fish, and it attracts a lot more game than the lake does.
“He said hunters tend to want land along the river, while families who enjoy skiing and boating tend to want the lake instead.”
After three miles of warning signs the gravel road gave way to a big, beautiful four lane highway.
The fresh black asphalt still smelled strongly of the tar which made up the sticky part of its composition.
The rest of the way to the lake the speed limit was sixty miles an hour.
Along with the newly improved road was a license to get there twice as fast.
Chapter 43
Just outside the lake’s entrance was a ten character totem pole, common for building projects on Inuit land.
The federal government couldn’t buy native lands outright, but they struck a deal with the tribe to lease the land for one hundred years.
Alaskans who homesteaded in Alaska tended to put a lot of work into their land and then to pass it on to successive generations.
The Yellowstone Event: Book 6: The Aftermath Page 13