For the next several days I worked with wet feet. I built fireline for who knows what reason and watched it rain. Oh, and did I mention I ate nothing but tuna? There was no excitement, and no thrills or feelings of accomplishment.
“What I can’t figure out,” Fogie said, “is that if there’s no threat to anyone or anything, why are we here? Kinda takes the fun out of it.”
Dan pulled a deck of cards from his pack. “Anyone for poker?”
Too funny. In past fire assignments we never had time to play cards while on the fireline. Annoyed with bugs, rain and wet feet, not to mention hungry beyond belief for something other than tuna, I still passed. I sat on my poncho to watch them play. Huddled together with a tree stump serving as a table, Dan, Fogie, Fred, and Rob, looking like little old church-going ladies in their headnets, clutched the cards dealt to them.
“Damn bugs,” Dan said, waving his hands in a vain attempt to discourage mosquitoes that couldn’t be discouraged. “This nonstop whining has the potential to induce temporary insanity.”
How I wished he hadn’t said that. It ruined my own ability to ignore the whining.
“So when are we going to get some real food?” Fogie asked. “I just can’t eat barf-beef-stew again.” He sorted his cards.
I laughed. “I’m pretty sick of Typhoid Tuna.”
With a faraway look in his eyes, Dan said, “I’d give anything for a real cup of coffee.”
Rob discarded. “I don’t think I’ll ever eat salmonella-spaghetti-with-meatballs again. Hit me with two.” Tongue in cheek, he studied his hand. “I’ll bet two sticks, raise you three. I heard a paracargo shipment’s coming tomorrow.”
What a relief. Real food.
Fred tossed in three sticks. “What’ve you got?”
Rob splayed his cards on the stump. “Two pair, aces high, kings low.”
Fred laid down a full house. Everyone else threw their cards down in disgust. I grinned. I knew that was coming.
That night at camp, we forced down more bad fare. It was a little hard for me to care about food, though—I had something more important on my mind now. I removed my boots and socks and propped them near the fire. Dry. Please, dry.
Because of the former bear attacks, we always posted a lookout while the crew manned the fire, and took turns taking care of camp. Dan and I were assigned camp duty today.
I saw the plane first. “Dan! It’s here!”
Dan turned from his conversation with our bear lookout, who’d earlier scared off a grizzly. “What? Oh!”
I trotted to the edge of camp to watch. Dan ran up beside me, shielding his eyes from the weak sun. “He’s getting into position.”
The two-propeller aircraft, coming in loud and low, returned to align itself with the drop zone. From the cargo doors spilled a large crate, then two more. Two parachutes opened, but not the third one. That crate plummeted and hit the ground with a smack, disappearing from view. The others floated gracefully, tumbling a few times before they stopped. We laughed at the irony of one chute not opening.
“I can’t wait to see what they sent,” Dan said, as we made our way to the crates. “I’ve got first dibs on coffee and Danish.”
“I wonder if there’s any fresh fruit,” I said, salivating at the thought.
“After I put coffee on, I want bacon and eggs to go with the Danish.”
Soon we realized retrieving the boxes wouldn’t not be easy. We’d have to cross boggy tundra. Each of us picking a different route, we searched for stable footing. At first I found solid ground. But on my next step, one leg sank clear up to my crotch. Oh my God! Quicksand! Terrified, I clawed at the ground, desperate for something to hold onto. But there wasn’t anything! In a few moments, all Dan would see was my hand poking out of the ground.
Panicking, I screamed, “Ah! Dan! Help!”
“What?” he asked, without turning around.
“I’m stuck!”
He turned and chuckled at my predicament. “Well, get unstuck.”
“I can’t!”
He folded his arms. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
When I didn’t sink any further, overwhelming relief turned my fear into silliness. One leg on top on the ground, the other one deep in the bog—I must look completely ridiculous. I exploded into a fit of laughter.
Dan screamed. “Argh! Hey, now I’m stuck.”
That struck me as even funnier. “Well get unstuck!” I managed to spit out.
Annoyed with me, Dan said, “Hey, this isn’t funny!” Then, “Bwah-ha-ha!”
He threw his arms on the ground as though in homage to the tundra god, rolling on his side, tugging hard at the sunken leg. I tried that, too. But like a giant suction cup, the tundra had no intention of letting go that easily. Cold water seeped into my buried boot. Damn it. I tugged harder, worried my boot would come off. Now that would be bad. No boot would be worse than a wet boot. I finally got it out with a sucking thwop and stood up. Thwip. My other leg sunk. I don’t believe this! After several attempts, I managed to get both legs out at the same time, and immediately sat down. Dan also managed to pull both legs out.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Try crawling on all fours.”
“You’re kidding, right?” He wiped a few stray tears with his sleeve.
“I learned that as a kid in Syracuse, when the snow was too deep to walk in. It spreads out your weight.”
Dan grinned at me, shaking his head. “Now we’re really tanker dogs.”
We crawled to the crate which had augured into the tundra. Dan stretched out on his stomach. He reached down to lift the lid. “What’ve we got here? Hey, a coffee can.” He held up a flat piece of metal. A few specks of coffee flittered off in the breeze. “Wait, but where’s the coffee? I don’t see any in the box.”
I pulled out a plastic bag, turning it over a few times. White and flat. “What could this be? Oh, I know what this is; it’s a loaf of bread!”
Dan laughed. “You mean was a loaf of bread. Now it’s just a giant cracker.”
I threw it back in the box, where it landed with a thud. Nothing in the crate was worth salvaging. Every item was either squished, or just plain missing, like the coffee.
“We’ll have to leave it here,” Dan said. “We’d need a hoist to get it out.”
“Yeah, what a shame to lose all that food. Let’s go check the rest.”
Fortunately, the others had landed on firm ground. We dragged, pushed, and cajoled our prized supplies back to camp.
Dan pulled with the rope looped over his shoulder. “I feel like a sled dog!”
“We must look ridiculous,”I said, tugging a crate.
“Good news,” Dan told the crew later. “We got food today!”
“Oh, please tell me they sent something decent,” Rob said.
“Yup.” Dan winked at me. “We only got two of the boxes, though. There’s one more out there with chocolate—any volunteers to go out and get it?”
Rob and Fogie jumped up and dashed to the drop zone. Dan and I dissolved into hysterics.
That night, Monte taught me the trick of roasting potatoes, vegetables, and steak in an aluminum foil pouch. How I wished we were alone on a camping trip. Again, I propped my boots by the fire, desperate for dry feet.
“PUMP WATER TO put out a fire burning on top of water?” I asked, the next morning when I heard the new plan. Were they kidding?
I despised the term “learning experience,” because it alluded to an unpleasant one. This will look good on my next job application, I thought, to convince myself that I wanted to do this. I slung a fifty-foot bundle of canvas hose onto my shoulder, and traipsed through swampy tundra, taxing my muscles and testing my balance, following others doing the same. We unrolled and connected hoses to form a hose-lay several hundred feet long. Fred set the pump alongside a deep pond and tossed in a hose end. He pulled the starter rope, and the engine kicked in, sucking water to charge our line. Back to the nozzle we trudged, where we stood, agha
st. A wind change had already sent the fire out of our reach.
I don’t believe this. All that work for nothing. A very unhappy me rolled my length of hose inch-by-inch, pressing out the water, uneven terrain fighting every attempt to make a neat bundle. I hoisted the now heavier load onto my shoulder and joined the others to lug the rolls back to camp. I mentally added a new reason to why I preferred working on a fire suppression crew versus a tanker crew—no hose lays.
Two days later I awoke to steady rain doing what rain should do: put fire out. But no one mentioned leaving. We passed more time playing cards when the mist let up and huddled under ponchos during brief, heavier rain. Not sure what prompted our release, but it finally came. There was no mention of mop-up. If they had, I would’ve doubted their sanity.
Once back at Wildwood, I picked up Teresa’s note off the dining room table. “It was fun being roommates! I’ll write and fill you in on my new diet.” I smiled and sighed.
Upstairs, I flopped spread-eagled on my bed. Ahhh. My poor sodden feet burned something awful, though. Too bad getting clean required getting wet again.The hot shower was great, clean clothes were great, but most wonderful of all was slipping on dry socks and sneakers.
Days later, I wondered why my feet still burned. Too many days of wet boots, I guessed. Stubborn, I suffered for a week until the tingling quit. Years later, curious, I researched the symptoms. I’d had trench foot. I could’ve lost my feet to gangrene. My jaw dropped. Oh my God, gangrene?
Several letters from Joe awaited me. Each one tore at my heart. Since I’d met Monte, I still wrote Joe, but not much. Our phone calls had ended months ago. Did I still love him? I wasn’t sure. Maybe? But I did wonder if I could ever love only one person. It didn’t seem so, I mean, at one time I was in love with both Glenn and Joe. What an emotional mess I’d created.
MID-SEPTEMBER: WINTER would descend on Alaska soon. I recognized all the signs: a lower angle to the sun, that unmistakable early-morning scent, and a different kind of nip in the air. Strudel gave us the option of working for two more weeks or taking the layoff starting that Friday. Two more weeks of this place? It was not like me to turn down the extra earnings, but I couldn’t stand it here anymore.
I’d come all this way to The Last Frontier, and there was so much more to see.
I shipped all of my belongings home, except my camping gear, 35mm camera, and a change of clothes. I wouldn’t need anything else.
THIRTY-FIVE
TRAVEL BROCHURES SCATTERED across my living room floor, I had to quell my longing to visit every single place. Not possible in seven days on a limited budget. One thing for sure, I wanted see Mt. McKinley. A narrow-gauge railroad trip from Whitehorse, Canada to Skagway would be fun. From there I could ride the ferry to Seattle, and then fly home. It seemed wonderful on paper, but when I made reservations, I began to get nervous. Could I do this alone?
“I’m a little scared, Dan. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“You’ll be fine,” he said, then paused. “I just have to say, though, that I think this trip smacks of avoidance. You don’t want to deal with Joe. You know that song by Supertramp? Makes me think of what you’re doing.”
Take the Long Way Home. I knew the song, and now I’d never hear the lyrics in the same way again. It surprised me that Dan thought this. Avoidance had never crossed my mind.
A few days later, Dan again surprised me. Stretched out together on the living room carpet, talking, he dropped a bomb. “I like you a whole lot.”
“I like you, too, Dan,” I said. “You’re a great friend.”
“Well, maybe I like you too much.”
Did I hear him right? How did I miss this? For the first time, we discussed our friendship and our feelings for each other.
“Do you think we’re in love?” Dan asked. “I mean, look how great we get along.”
Were we? I liked Dan very much. Could it be possible we were in love and didn’t know it?
“Is it okay if I kiss you?” Dan asked, blushing.
We kissed. But I couldn’t deny it. There was no romantic spark. I told him so.
“Yeah, that’s okay, I didn’t feel anything either,” he said.
Wounded, now I wished I had felt something. Would that have changed his response?
As my last day approached, I reminisced. I’d formed a kinship with my coworkers here at Wildwood, especially Dan, but I’d miss everyone. Monte had asked for my itinerary, saying he’d try to meet up with me. What would happen to our relationship after my trip? Would he come to see me in Arizona? I didn’t ask. Probably because a week earlier, he’d said he’d “love to be with someone like me someday.” I wrapped the sharp sting up with layers of denial to keep it from hurting so much, believing he’d find a way to be with me, not someone like me.
Stoic Fred acted like he didn’t care. I expected this from him. I wondered if he regretted us not getting involved. Not that I thought it would’ve worked—it was one of those little “what if” moments.
Hours before I’d catch my ride to Anchorage, I sat with Dan at my dining room table. Our special friendship had formed an emotional closeness that’s rare in life. The “rescuing the food box” episode still made me laugh, as did all of our adventures. I’d miss him so much.
“Will you write?” I asked.
“Sure.” Deep in thought, he stared at his folded hands resting in front of him.
I placed my hand on his arm. “Did you find a job in California?”
“Angeles National Forest. Leaving tomorrow.” A deep breath. “I’m so impressed that you’re going off on this trip, alone.” His eyes were moist.
It gave me a boost of confidence to know that my traveling alone impressed him. I could do this. We hugged.
“You’ve been a great friend,” I said, choking back a sob, my face pressed against his neck. He broke the embrace. We exchanged our final words—not quite goodbye, but not “maybe we’ll see each other again,” either. From the kitchen window I watched him walk away and felt a few tears trickling down my cheeks.
AT THE ALASKA Railroad station, I hopped aboard, excited about my first train ride. Wow, it’s a double-decker! I bypassed seats on the first level and scampered up the stairs to snag a roomy window seat. Soon the train zipped along at a steady clip through picturesque scenery on its way to Fairbanks, my takeoff destination.
Late afternoon, I sat down inside the bus to McKinley Park, when a woman with a friendly smile asked, “Is this seat taken?”
Delighted to have the company of someone my age, I welcomed her to sit. We shared the same first name, which added to our connection.
“I’m from Juneau,” Linda said. “I took time off to see Denali, something I’ve yet to see. It’s always hidden by clouds. This time I’m prepared to stay two weeks.”
The possibility that I’d not see the peak in one day hadn’t even occurred to me when I made my travel plans. I’d need to think about that …
Linda and I pitched our tents side-by-side at the visitor’s center campground and built a fire to keep warm.
“What did you bring to eat?” she asked, unloading supplies from her pack onto the picnic table.
“All I’ve got is peanut butter and bagels,” I said, laughing. Hey, they were cheap and portable.
“Oh my, that will never do.”
She heated up some chili and offered me a steaming bowl. It smelled delicious. Famished, I dug in. While we ate, we talked as though we’d known each other for years, not a few hours.
Morning greeted us with low gossamer clouds floating a mere twenty feet off the ground. I rubbed my arms to warm them. “Well, this doesn’t look good.”
“It might lift,” Linda said, hopeful.
Once on the tour bus, Linda explained we’d not be allowed to get off.
“Not at all?” I couldn’t believe I came all this way and couldn’t get off the bus.
“Disturbs the wildlife. But they’ll stop whenever we want to take photos.�
�
Still disappointing.
“Grizzly!” the driver announced over his shoulder, pointing straight ahead.
I jumped from my seat to join everyone up front. The cinnamon-brown bear, unfazed by our presence, lumbered across the road. Zeroing in with my telephoto, I finally captured a grizzly photo, the ghost of which had shadowed me all summer; though not necessarily a bad thing. Especially now that I saw how huge and formidable they were. Another mile down the road, the bus stopped again.
Linda pointed to a herd of white animals. “Dahl sheep. They don’t look real, do they?”
They didn’t. With hooves tucked underneath them, curled horns held up high, they posed, contrasted against the indigo clouds like white marble statues.
Linda’s comment about the difficulty of seeing McKinley got me thinking. Should I change my plans and stay longer? Maybe I should find out if I could backpack into the park. Then I remembered my budget, and the weather. Those snowflakes out the window could mean business. A couple of nights in this cold was one thing, but a week? Better to stick with the original plan.
“So where’s McKinley?” I asked, seeing nothing but clouds and swirling mist.
Linda sighed and pointed to my left. “It’s over there. Socked in.”
Linda prepared to revisit the elusive mountain in the morning, while I readied my gear for the bus to Whitehorse, Canada. She zipped up her parka against the frosty air. “You’ll call me when you get to Juneau, right?”
I tied my tent to my backpack. “I sure will!”
A full day passed on the bus, with an overnight stop on the Canadian border. I arrived in Whitehorse and skipped down the steps, eager to explore. I also needed to find the youth hostel I’d read about. Backpack slung over one shoulder, I strolled down the main street, meandering in and out of shops identified with carved wooden signs dangling from chains. Tentatively, I opened the door under the sign “Youth Hostel—Vacancy,” and entered, my boots echoing on a plank floor. A coffee can and sign sat on the counter. Please deposit $5.00 per night. Fee paid, I smiled at the group of people sitting on the floor in the center of the room. I heaved my backpack onto a vacant top bunk and accepted the invitation to join them.
Summers of Fire Page 24