Looking for Alaska

by Peter Jenkins

  Mike, Pete, and I pulled two doghouses across the lake at a time as Dave, the present caretaker, critiqued our methods from the window. We made four trips; each time the doghouses fell off on one snow lump or another. The whole surface of this side of the lake, more exposed to the wind, was a series of carved lumps, like moguls. Julianne and Elizabeth were zooming around spying on us. Elizabeth was teaching Julianne how to run the snow machine.

  Elizabeth’s main job was to care for the animals. Based on how unusually difficult it was to get yourself here, much less pet food, I was constantly amazed at how many dogs and cats were a part of this family. Just a couple days before we’d gotten to the Jayne homestead, their beloved yellow Lab, who had been Vicky’s back in Iowa, died at almost sixteen. He’d become so infirm Mike or Pete or Eric had to carry him outside to make the snow yellow. He’d go and then immediately fall over, he was so weak. Vicky had said that she thanked God he died in his sleep. One night I stepped out on the front porch to look for the northern lights and stepped on his frozen body, covered with a blanket. They would have to wait until spring to bury him. Eric joked that spring lasted a week, summer three weeks. They’d lost two dogs this year, since Tutt, the Pomeranian, had been killed by wolves.

  Elizabeth fed and watered and paid attention to other animals, such as Handsome, a three-legged cat that someone had brought to Eric’s vet clinic after it had gotten caught in a trap. He was ten and could hop up the carved-wood, circular stairway Eric had built to where the heat was.

  And there were Skippy, Sweet Bones, and Stumpy, three cats that they’d adopted from another of Eric’s vet clinics in Washington State. Eric and his family had made an intermediate transition to the Northwest before making the final leap here. There was Red, the retired sled dog that had come inside the house one day following funny Fred, the part–basset hound. Sled dogs aren’t supposed to like it inside, but not Red. He immediately loved the easy life and refused to live like a sled dog anymore. Just watching Fred come into a room and, ba-dunk, steal everyone’s attention was worth the trip out here. Fred came from the Fairbanks animal shelter. There was Truman, the Mackenzie River husky; shy Lisa, the total mutt; Buddy, the fourteen-year-old part-sheltie from Iowa; and Shelley. Elizabeth not only readily handled all the responsibility as a twelve-year-old, but she is also an excellent student. She will probably graduate from the state homeschool system by the time she’s fifteen.

  Late that afternoon, an hour before sunset, Eric said the conditions were right for him and me to take a couple snow machines up to the head of the lake and beyond. It was the last week of March and would be light until after 8 P.M. We were gaining about seven minutes of daylight per day now, forty-nine minutes a week. Gaining daylight is something counted and counted upon all over Alaska. The sun was painting the snow pink and a pale peachy color; there was no wind. The air was so perfectly pure that the mountains appeared a thousand miles away or right next to us.

  We took the lightweight machines since we were not hauling anything but ourselves. Riding through the fresh six inches on top of the four or five feet of snow underneath was a luxurious feeling. It had enough mass to hold us yet it felt like flying through clouds atop the ground. The snow gave in to our weight ever so lightly so that our movement was smooth, silky, and effortless.

  We rode atop the tableland right before it dropped off into the lake. Eric mentioned when we stopped at a sudden clifflike decline that all kinds of bushes and tundra and rocks and even boulders were underneath us, and this deep snow is what made traveling on this magic carpet of snowflakes so awesome. Of all the freeing and inspiring movement I’ve done in my life, moving atop this deep powder was as thrilling and inspiring as any I’d ever done. Moving across water, no matter how slight the resistance, couldn’t compare. Flying through the air, diving off a high cliff was too fast and too short with too much bang at the end. Walking and running were far too plodding.

  We rode off little cliffs, our way padded and buffered by the four to six feet of powder. We flew across sections of blueberry bushes that would be a maddening, impossible tangle in summer. We saw a dark gray, almost black fox. It was hunting slowly, then started running when it saw us along the hard edge of the lake. Its fur was so luxuriant, deep, and shining against the white-on-white of everything else. The fox would run fifty feet and stop, look at us, run a bit more, and watch us.

  When we came to the beginning of the frozen lake, we could see that no humans had been here for months, because there was not a track, no evidence at all. Then we headed into the north fork of the Chandalar River. There were bare places where potent winds had blown off the snow and exposed the ice. The icy spots were turquoise-colored, and solitary beautiful, like a Navajo-carved piece of turquoise lying on the fur of a sleeping polar bear. We knew there was water underneath, somewhere. Farther up, as the valley narrowed and the walls of the surrounding mountains became steeper, we began to see a few tracks. It looked as if a moose had been feeding on the reddish willow branches. A couple of wolves had come through, sticking to the willows and rabbit tracks. A half mile up we came to the tracks of a relentless wolverine.

  On our way home, we decided to go across the lake for a ways, then zoom up onto the land where the snow was more fun. We found deep places we would start sinking into, yet we always powered our way out. No wonder winter, when the rivers and lakes and ponds and swamps that cover Alaska are frozen, is many people’s favorite time of the year. Snow like this brings freedom, the chance to wander and explore, race sled dogs, follow the caribou herd. It gives people the ability and the time to visit neighboring villages.

  We got home, red-cheeked and refreshed, and Rita and Vicky had made some homemade cinnamon rolls, the best I’ve had anywhere in Alaska, and the Alaskans love their sweets. I ate my second cinnamon roll while all the dogs and one cat waited for a crumb. This place reminded me of a painting that hung in my Sunday school classroom when I was six or seven at First Presbyterian Church. It showed all the humans and all the animals lying down together in peace. I always liked that picture. The entire time we were here, I never heard one growl or hiss out of the dogs and cats.

  The Jayne family: Mike, Dan, Pete, Elizabeth, Vicky, and Eric. PHOTO BY PETER JENKINS

  The four adults drank tea after dinner while Eric told us vet stories. One was about a senior citizen, a sweet, widowed Iowa farm lady, who was in the sometimes-deep confusion of early Alzheimer’s. She was convinced her dachshund had fleas, so she would bring it to Eric once a week. One time she covered the brown dachshund with shaving cream, even in its ears, to kill those pesky fleas. And there were the calls late on Christmas Eve, usually from some widow. Eric knew what they really needed was company. He would always go to their home and bring a few children. They would visit and eat the Christmas cookies the lonely old woman had made, the sugar cookies that had been her husband’s favorites. Eric would ask about her sick pet and she would say that it was better. It was hard to imagine Eric saying no to anyone who asked him for help. In a way, living out here being such a sensitive soul might have been a relief in this world so quick to use you up.

  About an hour into Eric’s stories, Mike came down the stairway. It moved a bit under his weight. He waited until his father stopped speaking; he kept glancing at me. Since we’d moved those doghouses and stoked the wood furnace together, we had bonded a bit. Apparently he had something to say and he wanted us to witness it. Something was up.

  “I am going to graduate from this home school this year, right?” Mike said, his muscled neck set sternly. I remembered how uncomfortable it could be for someone his age to talk to adults.

  “Yes, that’s right, Mike, if you get all your work done and turned in,” Eric said.

  Now Mike spoke directly to me. “If I do, then I want to get an old sailboat, fix it up with some of the money I got when Mom died, and sail around the world. Dad tells me you did a boat trip. You know that movie Legends of the Fall, when Brad Pitt’s character took off on that boat,
that’s what I want to do. What do you think about that?” Mike asked. He said it all in one breath, as if he didn’t want to stop for fear of losing the courage it took to speak his dream out loud.

  “Sounds like a major change from life out here,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I should say. Eric might want him to stay and help here.

  “Yeah, it does,” Eric said. “I think it would be a great thing for Mike to do.”

  Now that I knew how Eric felt, I could speak freely. “I’ve got a friend, Scott Bannerot, that’s been sailing around the world for the last few years. When I get back to Seward, I will try to contact him, see what he says. I think he’s in New Zealand. That sound okay?”

  “Sure, that would be good. Thanks.”

  Relieved, excited, Mike went back upstairs; he and Pete were watching one of the new movies we’d brought with us from Fairbanks.

  I had to get up a couple times that night and go to the bathroom, which was some kind of Swedish self-composting model, except the composting part had frozen. While I was up, I always had to step out on the front porch and hear the silence and look for the northern lights. Everyone was asleep; no dogs were moving across the plywood floors. As a person who loves quiet, melody, and peace, never in all my traveling had I ever been in a place so still, so void of noise. The light crunch of my feet—I had on wool socks—could probably be heard by a wolf a mile away, or so it seemed. I wanted so much to hear a wolf howl in this vacuum. I thought I could hear snowflakes landing. The cold didn’t get to me as I stood waiting to see the lights, Vicky’s frozen Lab lying in peace next to me. Then the lights were there, green and pink and blue, they wobbled and darted and flamed and disappeared.

  In the morning, Eric’s loud voice woke me. Rita and Julianne already had their eyes open and were listening, you couldn’t help it. I got up and went into the kitchen where Eric was speaking as firmly as I’d ever heard him. Pete and Mike were going into Coldfoot; Mike would get off at the truck stop and hitch a ride to Fairbanks. There he’d hook up with a musher and work as a handler with him. Pete would have to come back by himself, a journey filled with possibilities. To make matters worse, it was already snowing and blowing and conditions were gray light. Gray light meant that in the snow there was no shadow, no way to see the trail clearly. It is easy, especially across open places, to get lost. Then if you panic and strike out farther without being sure of your way, you can become terribly lost, so far off the trail that anyone looking for you will not find you. This trip would require substantial mental toughness, and of course, physical stamina.

  Eric spoke an order to Pete: “You get lost, just stay put. Don’t get brave and then get even more lost.”

  Eric was obviously concerned but also excited for his sons. If he hadn’t been, he would never have let them go. Running the winter trail alone was a boy-hood-to-manhood rite of passage out here.

  “Do you have a gun, in case you run into a winter bear?” Eric asked.

  “Yes,” Pete and Mike answered in unison respectfully, not with a whine.

  “Watch for overflow. Remember, if you get stuck and you’re not back by near dark, I’ll be coming to look for you,” Eric said.

  Pete smiled as Eric ran down the list of instructions and warnings. Pete’s blue eyes shone as confidently as those of any fifteen-year-old I’d ever met. He would be traveling over 120 miles on a snow machine, today, if nothing went wrong. So much could go wrong, but also so many things were right about him undertaking this responsibility. If he did it, he’d be the youngest person ever to do the winter trail solo. But it wasn’t about being the youngest, it was all about having confidence in what he could do himself. Pete knew he could fix the snow machine, he knew how to make out the trail in gray light, he knew he wouldn’t panic if he got lost. Right before they left, Eric asked Pete if he had any matches. He felt around in his pocket. It was the one crucial lifesaving thing he had forgotten. He got a box of wooden matches so if he did get stuck, a fire could be started and he would keep warm.

  After they left and we ate breakfast, Eric and I went and cut wood about eight or nine miles away. It took us a couple hours to load up the Siglan sled with dead spruce logs. We brought back about a week’s worth of fuel. Then it was afternoon, and the light began to wane. Everyone kept opening the front door and looking for the headlight of a moving snow machine. I saw one; it was Big Dave going around in circles on the lake. All of us got quiet, not wanting to ask about Pete. I noticed Eric went outside every fifteen minutes and looked and listened. Eric could wait no longer; he suited up to go find Pete. As he did not return, we began to worry.

  After about an hour, I saw another moving snow-machine light. At first I thought it was Dave, back to his circling, but then I saw that there were two. It had to be Eric and Pete. Pete was almost home when Eric had found him. A huge cheeseburger, a mountain of fries, and the census taker had delayed Pete. The census taker was unprepared, or unwilling, to come down the winter trail and actually eyeball the seven people at Chandalar Lake, so Big Brother asked Pete a lot of questions, took up his valuable time knowing he was expected back, and didn’t even pay for his burger.

  To think a census taker was snooping around in the wilderness made me feel sick, even violated, oddly. Out here in this white temple, a person can ride the snow and soar in the vapors of snow crystals kicked up. You can turn off your machine and what you hear are millions of notes created by nothing. It struck me as grotesque that some census worker was wanting all kinds of personal details, far beyond how many souls were living out here. Was there no place to get away from the incessant data gatherers, the governmental snoops? This encounter notwithstanding, it was easy to see how proud Pete was at having done the return trip on the winter trail alone.

  That night the northern lights pranced in our blue world lit by moonlight. What did people think of this night light before they understood what it was? Was it contented spirits dancing in heaven? Did anyone think they were spirits trying to come back into the world for their loved ones? Could it be your mother who had passed away two winters ago when the caribou never came, leaping, the one in the sky that was yellow and red?

  I understand why Alaskans get so sick of people being hung up on Alaska’s winter darkness. The light from the moon as it bounces off the whitest snow is another form of illumination, of revelation, that more than makes up for the missing sunlight. Everything is bathed in shades of blue. The summer sun for several hours in midday around my farm is oppressive, its glare closes my eyes, makes me shield myself with sunglasses, hats, and shade. The blue light showed me plenty: strings of caribou, clouds moving, definition of mountainsides, frozen lakes, maybe even a wolf slinking into the darkest blue of the forest. Then when Alaska’s winter sun comes out, its low angle makes for an almost three-hour sunset. Sometimes the mountaintops all turn pink and gold. They are rich shades of these colors that I’d seen in pictures thinking they had been manipulated by filters.

  Julianne and Elizabeth had been waiting all day for Pete. Mike and Pete had run the new dog team yesterday before they left. Pete had no experience, Mike only a bit, but they ran the dogs up and down the lake. The girls and Dan wanted to get in on it, but Pete and Mike weren’t ready to be hassled by them. Pete promised if it wasn’t too cold, he’d hook the dogs up and teach them how to mush in the morning.

  Vicky made the best pancakes in the world that morning. I’m not sure if it’s the cold and the lack of humidity, the lung-filling perfect air and hard work, but food in Alaska tastes better and you seem to need more of it. I wonder, does it have anything to do with the coming of winter, the body picking up signals about a need to hibernate?

  Pete and the girls untied all the dogs, put on their harnesses, and then hooked them to the sled. Red, the retired sled dog, wanted to run; he was jumping and barking. Pete tried Fred; he didn’t have a clue. He pulled to the side, in the way of saying, get me out of here. He lay down while all the huskies lunged and barked excitedly. Pete finally took Fred out
of harness, and he became a retired sled dog without ever pulling the sled one foot.

  Pete ran the team off the hill and down onto the frozen lake, quite a rush since the dogs seemed to like to run down it. There was about six to eight inches of fresh powder. The big brother was impressively patient as a teacher. When the girls finally took off, it was hard to say who was leading whom. They got off the snow machine trail and bogged down. Pete would run through the snow to help them, sometimes having to get ahold of the leader and lead him through a drift. Elizabeth and Julianne had bonded quickly; they might as well have been the only girls in the world. They mushed around their end of the lake, each taking the lead while the other sat in the sled as passenger. Then Rita took off with Julianne as passenger.

  Rita and Vicky, both gifted at creating food from the barest basics, had been baking bread and making tender sourdough rolls. When we came in, the counter was full of whole-wheat creations, and the delicious scent from all of it filled the room. All the nonmushing dogs were loitering, waiting for any possible snack. Eric walked in from the food cache with a hindquarter of a caribou that Tyler, the “vacationing in Fairbanks” caretaker, had shot earlier in the winter. He carved off caribou steak after caribou steak, throwing each delighted dog equal bites of the bright red meat.

  GETTING BUSHY WITH IT

  As we talked for hours after dinner, someone turned on the radio; the only station they got was from Japan. If you were alone and superlonely, maybe you’d listen. But we were listening to Eric, telling us about his plan to take another canoe trip down the Yukon this summer. He would take Dan and Elizabeth and stop in each Native village on its banks and offer his veterinary services to the people in Rampart, Tanana, Ruby, Nulato, and so on as far as they traveled. There was no regular vet service in these villages. Sometimes Eric would be paid and sometimes not. He would also stop at the many family fish camps, where every year salmon were caught, cut up, dried, and smoked.