IT IS A MARTIAN LANDSCAPE. A cliff descends from a dark sky, crowned with Rushmore-like heads, if Mt. Rushmore had been carved by Easter Islanders, and then erodes into a delicate lacework frame of what could be either the remains of a condominium for little green men or just the remains of a dear departed…
…give me a sunny day on the deck of the Millenium Hotel, with the float planes flying into Lake Hood overhead, a plate deep-fried halibut on the table in front of me, and a pint of Alaskan Amber in my hand, and I’m a happy woman. Which was why, when I went to Juneau recently,…
Read more This action was not necessarily inspired by a sense of devoted service to Alaska magazine
THERE ARE LOTS OF reasons to go to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer every year. Turkey legs and crab cakes and cream puffs. The Elks’ Rat Race. The giant cabbages. The Scheer Lumberjack Show, where my friend Rhonda Sleighter can sigh over Fred “The Silver Fox” Scheer’s biceps. Yodeling along with Hobo Jim at…
I’m in the back of the raft, also known as the “ejection seats” because of their tendency, upon the hitting of a rock, forcibly to launch the occupants into orbit. “One hand for the boat,” Mom always said when we lived on the Celtic, and while it is difficult to take notes while maintaining a…
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)
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…
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.