THAT AFTERNOON I INVESTIGATE the camp’s nature exhibit, where I learn how to tell how old a Dall sheep is (think tree rings), examine resource files labeled Aurora through Giardia (from the sublime to the ridiculous), and reverently touch the wing feather of a golden eagle. “What is it you want guests to take away…
Read more I learn how to tell how old a Dall sheep is (think tree rings)
ON A SUNNY DAY in southcentral Alaska, an official indicator of just how nice a day it is is, “The mountain’s out.” Which mountain? Well, obviously, you don’t live here. “The mountain” is of course, Denali, all 20,320 feet of it. A hundred miles from Anchorage, it looms up substantially on the northern horizon nonetheless.…
Read more “The mountain’s out.” Which mountain? Well, obviously, you don’t live here.
THE LAST DC-3 I was on belonged to Mudhole Smith’s Cordova Airlines, on a trip to Cordova to visit family there. The plane was stripped down to the bare fuselage, half the seats had been removed to make room for cargo, and an army blanket had been stretched across the center of the plane, from…
ON FINGER LAKE, JUST this side of Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range, a hour by Cessna 206 from Anchorage and splat in the middle of the Iditarod Trail, is a little slice of heaven called Winterlake Lodge. Here, world-class chef Kirsten Dixon, and her husband, Renaissance man Carl Dixon, hold open house year round…
O Lord give my dogs / the strength to continue on / and me the knowledge to survive. —Richard Burmeister, “The Musher’s Prayer” QAEY WILLIAMS HAS BEEN standing in line in front of the Fourth Avenue Theater in Anchorage since eight am. It is the first Saturday in March. She is armed with a folding chair, a…
I USED TO LIVE ON on a boat. Sometimes the boat broke. One time when it broke, fog rolled in. We shut down the engine and listened for surf so as not to run aground while we waited for the fog to lift. As we lay dead in the water, a baby gray whale surfaced…
The Aleut visor is one of those marvelously ambidextrous Native traditions that work on both a practical and an aesthetic level. A wooden cap with no crown and an extended bill, a visor protects the hunter from the glare of the sun, the splash of the sea spray, and by virtue of its acoustical construction…
I wanted the gold and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. —Robert Service MY GRANDMOTHER GAVE ME a copy of Robert Service’s The Spell of the Yukon when I was ten years old. He is better known for Sam McGee and Dan McGrew but I loved the title poem best, with its…
Read more Dad said it was a wet, dirty, dangerous job for which nobody ever paid him enough money.
Meanwhile, back up on stage…Keys in top hat, tails and aloha shirt at the keyboard is joined by Alice Welling on the lungs, Mike MacDonald on the drums, Ed Bourgeois on the channeler, and Jelly Roll Jim on the bass. Also Martha Stewart (And you’re not, which must suck), Sourdough Mike from Egegik, Yukon Jacques,…
I RODE THE ALASKA RAILROAD from Anchorage to Fairbanks in the early Seventies to get to the University of Alaska. It took a minimum of twelve hours, because the train would stop what seemed like every five minutes to let off a hunter, or pick up a fisherman, or drop off supplies for a homesteader,…