20th Century Woman

I met John on an airplane in the year 2000.  I was flying to England, in business class on frequent flyer miles.  As I stowed my bags I remarked to anyone listening that the plane was very hot.  A short guy with fluffy gray hair two seats back said, “That’s because it came from California.”

I had an aisle seat next to a large black woman who was sneezing and reading a book on black power.  She did not want to talk.  I don’t sleep on airplanes, and the incessant sneezing would have prevented me anyhow.  The short guy got up and stood near the service area with a drink of water.  I thought he looked interesting, so I got up as well.  We chatted.  He told me he had a house in Forks, Washington (an odd place where it rains all the time) and one in England, that he owned a software company, that he had 3 grown children, had been divorced for 17 years and had not had any female companion since but was looking for someone now to travel with.  We exchanged email addresses.

A few days after I arrived at my daughter’s house in a little English village I got an email from John suggesting that we get together.  I cautiously proposed lunch with my daughter and me at a place of his choosing.  We ultimately met at the pub in my daughter’s village where he treated us both to an elegant lunch.  We found him to be charming and friendly.  My daughter said that in her opinion he was too short.

That was in June.  John and I corresponded by email during the summer and our paths crossed again in the fall when I made a trip to New Zealand to visit cousins.  I had a 5 hour lay-over in Los Angeles and met John there for lunch.  Later in the fall we took a trip together to Borrego Springs.  I was in love.

John said he had rented his house in Forks and would look for a place on Lummi Island.  I went to England for Christmas and he stayed in my house while I was gone.  I called him every day, but for some reason was unable to reach him for a few days around Christmas.  I have now forgotten his explanation of that, but I was troubled.  After I came home we went to Port Angeles to pick up his things (consisting of a number of boxes of tools and papers) at a storage unit.

He went back to England a week or so later and we kept in touch by phone and email.  I could never call him directly.  He said he did not like cell phones and he had a Seattle phone number, a service that took messages.  He said this was because he traveled so much for his business.

The pattern of our life became this: John would come to Lummi for a few weeks and then leave for a business trip.  Sometimes he would be gone for a couple of weeks, sometimes a couple of months.  Most days we spoke on the phone or emailed. I actually didn’t mind this arrangement.  I was independent, and I liked having some time to myself.  My friend Ria said, cynically, “He’s the perfect man, always gone.”

As time passed I became more and more uneasy about his life and past.  The business was murky, and it devolved that, (contrary to what he first told me) he had had several romantic episodes in the past.  One with a woman named Cynthia who worked for him in Chicago, and one in Seattle with a woman named Beatrice who he met on an airplane.  Both, he said, suffered from bipolar disorder, so he took a great interest in books and articles on mental illness.

One night I couldn’t sleep because I was worried about all the inconsistencies of his stories.  I was sure there was something more I should know.  At four in the morning he told me of his son Louis, 9 years old, in Forks.  It turned out that the house in Forks belonged to Beatrice.  Louis was their son, and he visited him regularly, though (he claimed) he and Beatrice were estranged.

During that period I made frequent trips to San Diego to visit my 95 year old mother.  One afternoon when I was there my cell phone rang.  A woman with an odd English accent asked for John.  I said, “He’s not here, he’s in England.”  The woman then said, dropping the English accent, “This is Beatrice,  he’s not in England, he’s here with me.  I found this number in his wallet.”

It was touch and go for a while with me and John.  I told him that he could choose.  Either me or Beatrice.  I said, “I don’t share.”  He chose to stay with me, and thereafter Louis visited us on Lummi.  Beatrice got married.

I became a snoop.  I went through his papers, and there were a lot of them.  Old emails, old records, legal documents, diaries and scribbled notes.  I learned his shorthand.  Detecting became a major pastime for me.  One day I found a paper with names on it.  There was Beatrice, Cynthia, Sheila (his ex-wife), his daughter Sarah, sons Peter and David and the name Issy.  I demanded to know who Issy was.  “Oh,” said John, “she’s my daughter, Isabelle.”

Isabelle’s mother was Erika, a German woman who had lived across the street from John and his wife.  When John separated from his wife he and Erika lived together but never married.  Erika had gone back to Germany with Issy when Issy was a teenager.  Issy was grown up, married and had a son.

And there were 2 more.  Emily in Seattle was the youngest.  She was only 6.  Her mother, Amanda, had been Louis’ baby-sitter.  John had impregnated her while she was baby-sitting his son.  At first he denied being her father and told me some far-fetched story about her parentage.  By this time I hardly believed anything he said.

Amanda and Emily came to visit us when Louis was here.  (I insisted that John get Beatrice’s permission for this.)  Amanda is a lovely person. She lives on disability but is educated and intelligent; she spends her time taking care of her daughter and volunteering at a shelter for feral cats.  Emily is a beautiful child.  She was very shy with John.

And finally there was Leon.  I found a note that said “Leon’s birthday.”  I figured out who Leon’s mother was.  Her name was Melloney.  She had been a business partner of John’s for a while.

By the time I discovered Leon two more important events had occurred.  John’s business and John himself had been sued in England by Ericsson, the Swedish cell phone maker, for work contracted and not done; and John was diagnosed with bladder cancer.  He and his business were bankrupted.  He was ill.  He had to have all his treatments for bladder cancer in England because, when his business went under, he lost the private health insurance with which he provided himself through the business.

By this time I had discovered that he was not divorced at all, but lived with his invalid wife when he was in England.  They had been married for almost 50 years.  One day when Louis was visiting he asked John where he stayed when he wasn’t on Lummi.  John said, “I stay in England with Sheila.”  He was beginning to tell the truth.  Sheila was crippled with arthritis and confined to a wheelchair.  She also had serious heart trouble.  While John was with me, and when Louis was visiting she died suddenly.  John sat, white faced, at the kitchen table when he got the news.  “She was just a kid.” he said wearily.  He himself was dying.  The cancer had spread.

He had radiation treatments in England.  They were said to be palliative since metastasized bladder cancer is incurable.  The treatments were in Oxford and he and I stayed with my daughter for the 5 weeks the treatments lasted.  During this time I met two of the children of his marriage, Sarah and Peter.  David lived in France with his wife.  Sarah and her husband and Peter came for a meal and we all sat in the garden at my daughter’s house.  I met Melloney and Leon as well.  They visited twice and we went to her house.  Melloney was a handsome black woman, originally from Jamaica.  Leon was a lanky, melancholy teenager with dread-locks.

The radiation treatments made John sick.  He never quite recovered from them, and I am not sure they prolonged his life.  He lived only 11 more months.

Issy was the only one of his children that I had not met.  She didn’t know how ill he was.  He kept saying he would call her, but he never did, so I called her in Germany.  She spoke perfect English.  She was concerned.

The above events took place over a period of 4 years.  You will ask why.  Why didn’t I get rid of him right away.  Why did I let myself be fooled for so long.  And when I found out what made me continue with such a person.  The answer is I don’t know.  I loved him and he needed me.  He was frequently a charming companion. We enjoyed many things together, and he was fun at parties. He was a good cook, he did chores, he ironed.  Before he left on his “business trips” he ironed all his clothes.  Beatrice once said to me, “You knew when he got out that ironing board you were in trouble.”

He was certainly a reprehensible character.  He spread his seed around recklessly, fathering children he couldn’t possibly care for.  He loved them intermittently, and he was proud of them, but he was completely irresponsible.  He lived on women.  He wasn’t expensive to keep as his needs were simple, and he tried to do some work — like painting, gutter cleaning, general maintenance — to compensate.  And I have to say it was interesting.

When he got really sick with cancer, around Christmas time, he went back to England.  He had a small apartment there that had belonged to his wife, but her will granted him the right to live in it until he died.  He hoped to recover enough to be able to return to Lummi for a while, but he only got worse, and eventually he had to go into hospice — there was a residential one near his apartment.  Issy came from Germany to visit him there and brought with her his grandson, Christien.

He called me and asked me to come; he didn’t want to stay in hospice; so I went.  He and Sarah met me at the airport and we drove back to his apartment.  He looked thin and ill.  I thought it would be only a few weeks.  He lasted almost 3 months.  The account of those 3 months is my next post.

Education has been my whole life.  My mother was a college professor, my stepfather was a college professor.  My step-mother was a junior high school teacher and later a school principal.  My uncle, in whose household I actually spent most of my childhood after my parents were divorced, was a teacher in a prestigious prep school.  I started life believing that learning and teaching were the most important things in life.  (It began to dawn on me as I approached adolescence that sex might be more important, but that is another post.)

In my uncle’s house cocktail hour, when education was the main topic of conversation, began early.  At about 4:30 or 5 his sister, our maiden aunt, would announce: “It’s elbow bending time.”   The huge old house was filled with the furniture and decorations that my uncle’s grandparents had collected in their travels.  There had been money; there still was money, though it always seemed to be inaccessible.  My uncle had lost his in the great depression and lived mostly on the benevolence of his parents.  Teaching at the prestigious prep school didn’t pay much.

He mixed the cocktails in the butler’s pantry, whose walls were lined with cabinets containing many sets of fine china from Bavaria and England.  The liquor was kept in the old wooden ice-box.  They drank martinis or old-fashions or Manhattans, or sometimes gin and tonic.  All the rooms in the house had fire places, but generally cocktails were had around the living room fire.  Usually friends, other teachers from the school, would drop in, to talk about education and how to make it better.   At about 7:30 Mary Stanton, the cook, would declare dinner ready and they would move on to the dining room.

From the time I can remember I listened to these discussions and arguments about methods, curriculum, the nature of learning.  At first I couldn’t understand, the talk amazed me and I believed I’d never be able to talk that way myself, but as I grew older I sometimes joined the discourse.

After a few years the routine, but not the topic, changed.  Mary Stanton retired, (cooks were harder to come by, and there was, instead, a succession of people to look after my cousins, 4 girls, the oldest 8 years younger than me).  My aunt cooked, helped by my grandmother when she was there.  My aunt and grandmother were both foodies, and good cooks.  Dinner was at a European hour — around 9 o’clock.  Cocktail hour lasted longer and moved to the ball-room sized kitchen for the last couple of hours.   Still, they discussed education.

In school I had 2 teachers who really educated me. They both taught English.  Mrs. Little taught me in 6th grade.  She explained grammar and I loved it.  It was from her that I began to grasp the structure of language.  The second was my high school (a girl’s prep school) English teacher, Miss Sweeney.  I have written about her before.  From her I learned about the art of language and literature.  There were other teachers who were interesting; Miss Hawk who taught American history, Miss Grassi who taught Latin.

What made these women good teachers.?  I don’t think it was a method or a technique.  I think it was who they were.  They were, above all, smart.  They were kind, and all were at times funny.  Mrs. Little was gentle and patient.  Miss Sweeney was brilliant, shy, witty and inspiring.  Miss Hawk was formidable, tough and scary.  Miss Grassi was young, cute, methodical and had dozens of different pairs of shoes, all very stylish.  They were hard working women who cared about their student’s success.

How could I end up as anything but a teacher?  I taught junior college, college, university (biology was my subject) and then, after I changed careers and went to art school, I taught adult education art classes.  And I taught biology as an adjunct in the same art school where I was a student.

I saw my 5 children through pre-school, elementary, secondary, college and graduate education.  And now I am watching my 12 grandchildren become educated adults.

So I have done a lot of thinking about education, and about the troubles with education in America.

When I was a graduate student working on my Ph. D. I taught biology courses for non majors, because this was the job of graduate teaching assistants.  I was assigned a lot of courses because, before going back for my doctorate, I had been teaching at the college level with a master’s degree.  One course I was regularly assigned to teach was “Sex, Reproduction and Population.”  The powers that be said they gave me that one because they wanted someone with experience to teach it.  Since I was at the time pregnant (very — it was touch and go whether I would get my final grades in before going into labor) “experience” could be variously interpreted.

In teaching these courses I had students (mostly satisfying a science requirement) from all divisions.  The courses were pretty easy, and it was impossible not to notice the many education majors, especially elementary education majors.  The majority of them were not good students, and they consistently scored the lowest grades.  Students in general tend to grumble if given exams in which they are required to write an essay answer.  They prefer multiple choice or, better yet, true-false (50-50 chance of getting it right even if you know nothing at all).  My education majors were outraged by essay exams.  They had trouble with grammar, spelling, punctuation and in general had difficulty writing a sentence.  They said, “This is a biology class, not an English class.”  My response was that it is reasonable to expect people in college to be able to write a sentence, and an essay question is the best way to find out what people really know.  Of course, essay exams are a lot more trouble to grade than any other kind.

I was troubled by the quality of these students, who would be teaching children in the future.  Why were they not better prepared and more able?

In part this was because the education division was known to be less rigorous than, say, engineering or even liberal arts.  I had myself taken a few education classes with the thought of getting a teaching certificate, and I found them not at all demanding and short on content.  Today this may be changing.  A friend has been preparing for a teaching certificate to teach high school here in Washington, and she seems to be always making up elaborate lesson plans.

Teaching is a low paid profession.  Almost any line of work you can think of pays more.  Law, medicine, business, engineering, plumbing, nursing, carpentry, policing, truck driving, you name it, they all make more money.  Teaching used to have job security, but these days there are a lot of teachers being laid off, and there is much talk about making it easier to fire poor teachers.

Teaching and intellectual pursuits in general are looked down on in this country.  People with knowledge are called egg heads and are said to live in ivory towers.  Since I was a kid I have heard: “those who can, do.  Those who can’t, teach.”

Who is going to pursue a profession that is poorly paid, given no respect, and has little job security?  Even young people who love the idea of teaching will surely think twice before selecting such a thankless life.

There’s a lot of talk these days about “evaluating” teachers based on the test scores of their pupils.  These tests, of course, would be standardized tests on a standardized curriculum. And that’s another problem with education.   What is to be taught is more and more decided by legislatures or governments (just look at what‘s happening in Texas), and teachers have almost no discretion to choose materials or to innovate.  Kids end up all learning the same stuff, chosen by politicians, with political and religious slants. The days of quirky original teachers are over.  My wonderful teachers would not have made it in this uniformly standardized world.

Teachers unions do not help.  They defend and perpetuate the mediocrity of the profession.  They protect the jobs of teachers by insisting on the certification based entirely on a number of education courses with questionable content and usefulness.

I know there are some fine teachers out there.  But I think more and more of them are deciding it’s not worth the grief.  Or they are opting for teaching in private schools.

Now, in old age, education is still part of my life.  I have finished teaching, but I am still learning, just for the pleasure of it.  Jerry and I open our bottle of wine every evening before supper and we often discuss the troubles with education in America.  Sometimes we haggle over details, but we agree on most things.

Here’s my plan; what I would do if I were the education tsarina:

After passing a constitutional amendment prohibiting politicians from messing with what is taught in schools I would:

First, double teachers’ pay.  It still wouldn’t be great, but that would be a start.  That would attract more smart, talented people to the profession

Second, eliminate half the administrators.  That would save quite a bit of money.

Third, let schools develop their own curricula and chose their own texts and materials.  One general standardized test before and after high school would be enough to make sure kids were literate and could do arithmetic.  That would create diversity in programs and a population of graduates with a variety of perspectives on the world.  New ideas might emerge as these young people mix and interact.

Fourth, let parents send their kids to any school they could get them to.  That would encourage schools to compete and develop innovative, interesting programs.

Fifth, drastically pare down education course requirements in teacher certification.  Certainly for high school teaching not many of those courses are needed.  Possibly a course in adolescent psychology.  For the lower grades it would seem important to understand child psychology and learning mechanisms, and to be able to recognize learning problems.

Finally, I would eliminate football.  It used to be something fun to do after school.  Now, in many places it’s all that matters.  It isn’t educational and eliminating it would be another big money saver.

But I’m not education tsarina (sigh) so none of these things will happen.

There are fires all over Alaska. Though it didn’t rain much while we were there, the skies were overcast most of the time and it was cooler than usual.  No sooner had we left than the sun came out and it got blazing hot.  Temperatures reached 85 in Fairbanks.  Yesterday Jerry and I got an email from our friend across the road telling us that there are fires along the Manley road making travel difficult.  One of the fires is within a few miles of our house.

She wrote:  There are 87 fires burning in Alaska and 2 of them are on the Elliot Hwy.  The Eureka fire [that’s the close one]  you can look up on the BLM fire map. It is over 10,000 acres.  It came down the Kentucky Creek valley and roared across the highway at mile 130, blackening the highway and everything in its path.  It came toward Scott’s and burned some on both sides of the road.  The fire crews saved David Monson’s place at Alameda and Kentucky and saved the place at the Eureka airstrip.  The big gravel pit across from Scott’s became a fire line and they back fired this morning trying to stop the fire before it got into the big timber on the Hutilana and took off for Manley.  We had a thunder shower this afternoon and that helped.  We are having a low pressure until tomorrow and that is helping also.  The road was never officially closed but you traveled at your own risk and the flames and heat from Mile 84–87 were intense.  That is the other fire on the Elliot.  It crossed the road and is almost as big as the Eureka one.  The Eureka fire also crossed the road at the top of Silverbow Hill.  You will see a big difference when you return.  No houses have been lost, they even saved the shacks in Woellert ville in Eureka!!

Meanwhile, down here in Puget Sound it has done nothing but rain for the last two weeks.  Green is rampant.  The rain has pummeled my big pot of  delphiniums which had blossoms reaching up to the rain gutters by the front door.  They have flopped over in a wet mass on the sidewalk.  Poppies bloomed and their petals quickly turned into red goo.  The peonies outgrew their support and are lying wet on the grass.  And speaking of grass, we can see it growing.  Today is supposed to be only partly cloudy — rain returns tonight — so Jerry is trying to seize the moment and mow the lawns.

I am tired.  Two days after we arrived home from Alaska my sweet nephew, John, came from San Diego to go through the last of my mother’s possessions which have been stored for 4 years.  His grandfather’s slide collection, probably more than 10,000 of them taken during his travels after he retired, were left to John.  Then there was other miscellaneous stuff, the last few boxes that I just couldn’t face, to go through. We did it together, and John did all the physical work.  Even so I found it exhausting.

The first box we looked into contained Christmas ornaments.  They were all old and mostly ugly.  I didn’t want to keep any of them, but it made my eyes run tears to throw them away.  We tossed out boxes of papers.  There were old bank statements, grocery lists, notes on classes she took, pictures of people we didn’t know and pictures of us we didn’t like.  I felt as if I was throwing away her life.

There were many boxes of books.  Lots of books on economics, some of which my mother and my step-father had written.  We saved all of those, of course.  There were libretti of all the operas I know of, plus a lot I never heard of.  There were lots of plays and John kept those (he’s an actor) and there was some poetry and classics.  I kept those that I didn’t already have.  The rest we took to the book seller to see whether we could get a bit of cash.

We got a little.  The second bookseller we visited, who took almost 3 boxes of the 8 boxes we offered, said, “As you can see, there isn’t much demand these days for used books.”

We delivered a huge microwave, 4 humidifiers and a footbath to the Goodwill.

She never threw anything away and she wrote everything down.  I retrieved her recipe file, and here are a couple of bits from it.

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Beef tenderloin in Claret

1 3-pound piece of beef                            ½ cup claret
Tenderloin, trimmed                                  ½  cup beef consomme
Salt and pepper                                          ½  teaspoon cornstarch
4 young onions                                          ½  teaspoon lemon juice
4 tablespoons butter                                  Brandy

Roast the tenderloin rubbed with salt and pepper at 300 degrees.  Saute onions in butter, add claret and cook until reduced by half.  Add the consomme mixed with the cornstarch and simmer until thickened.  Add lemon juice and pour over fillet.  Run under broiler until bubbling.  Add 2 tablespoons of brandy at the table and light.

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The recipe above was printed on a card.  The next one was notes, written in Mother’s writing:

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Rabbit Casserole (or stewed)

2 or 3 onions: Fry them (in bottom of pot in which it will be cooked).  Cover with water; bring to boil.  Dice 3 or 4 carrots and add with meat.  Cook.  About 20 minutes before cooked add 4 rashers of bacon cut small and chopped parsley and a little thyme.  (Flour meat or thicken after.  If it dries up a bit add milk.  Milk is nice with it.)

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Finally, there was in the file a card headed: Thanksgiving dinner — 1948
4 guests.

1. A 14 lb hen turkey was perfect  — we had 4 meals off it afterwards
2. Breaded cauliflower
3. Whipped potatoes
4. Cranberry relish — Carroll preferred the cranberry sauce
5. A cup of cooked dressing = 2 cups of raw ingredients, so we made 28 cups of raw ingredients.
6. I used Crisco recipe for pie crust.  One 9 inch pie served 8 people.  I used Stokleys pumpkin custard which was excellent.  Nannies recipe modified for quantities by Joy of Cooking.
7. Served mixed green salad as a separate course.   Very nice.
8. Stuffed celery (cottage cheese and chives) creamed oysters on crackers as appetizers with tomato juice coctail.

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I kept the recipe file.  There is still a lot to be delivered to the church rummage sale.  John left yesterday.  We took him to Anthony’s for lunch before putting him on the airplane.  He and I remembered the many times we had taken Mother there.  It was a place she loved.

We are home on Lummi.  Alaska seems far away.  I felt a twinge of regret as we left the little house alone, water drained from all the pipes, refrigerator off, windows shut and everything put away or stowed in the truck.

This trip we used the camper.  I confess that it was not entirely wonderful.  I think it is really a one person camper.  The bed was comfortable enough, but it isn’t possible for me to get up in the night without making Jerry get out of bed — my side is against the wall.  While I cook Jerry has to sit in one spot by the table or I can’t move around.  The tiny sink has only cold water.

Nevertheless we enjoyed ourselves.  The first 4 days on the road we were going slowly and sightseeing.  (When I say going slowly I mean only about 300 miles a day).  The first night we stayed in a pleasant campground beside the Chena River in Fairbanks.  The water was turned off, so there were no showers, and at first the electricity didn’t work.

We made a flash visit to Denali.  I could only get Jerry to stay long enough to use the bathroom in the visitors center and watch a 20 minute movie about the park.  It had aerial shots of the tops of rugged mountains.  I whispered to Jerry, “Did you ever fly over stuff like that?”  He replied, “Oh, sure.  I used to make drops to those crazy climbers.”

Mountains in Alaska interior

More mountains

The next night we drove down to Talkeetna where we had water and showers and internet.  We were getting set up when I noticed that we were beside a train station; next a helicopter rose up from almost directly behind the train station, and when we were taking our evening walk with the poodles we heard an airplane taking off nearby.  I said, “Oh, that’s really loud, what could it be?”  Jerry said, without hesitation, “It’s a Cessna 185 with wheel-skis.  That’s the noise they make.”

At the airport in Talkeetna

Of course we had to walk to the airport to look at the planes.

Talkeetna Airport

In that campground there was a lady (of a certain age) traveling alone in a large camper with three Pomeranians and a Chihuahua.  The Poms were mostly bald.  She told me that they had a hereditary disease that made them lose their hair.  That gave them a sort of rat-like look.  She had a little fence thing that she set up next to her camper for them, and when she put them in it they all immediately pooped .  Then she scooped the poop, put the pooches back in the camper and set out on her large tricycle for morning exercise.  When she came back she said she hadn’t seen a single moose.

After that the camping places were minimal.  Just electricity, no water.  We had water in the camper though.  Just about every camp ground was still shut for the winter, or only just getting started.

A glacier near Palmer

Me with the poodles at Lake Kluane

Swan taking a nap

Sheep mountain near Lake Kluane

Coyote hunting in British Columbia

The last night we spent in the camper was the worst.  We stopped at a place with a full page ad in the Milepost, claiming all sorts of good things — showers, internet, and open year round — but when I enquired the man in charge said, “The campground is closed.  There’s one electric hookup left next to the restaurant.  No water.”  I asked about toilet and showers.  “I told you, lady, the campground is closed.”  I got the same response when I asked about internet, even though there was a signal he wouldn’t give me the password.  It seems a poor way to run a business.

Once again, the high point of the trip was the Cassiar Highway.  We counted 12 bears, and I got a lot of pictures.  Here are some bears.  They range from cute to “I’m glad I’m sitting in this nice enclosed truck.”

Along the Cassiar

Her cub

Dandelions for lunch

Large black bear

I called my house and cat watcher the last night of the trip to say that Jerry couldn’t find our house key, so leave the door open for us the next day.  Next morning when we were within phone range I found a message on my phone from her that said, “I hate to tell you this, but I just locked us all out of the house.  The key is on the dining room table.  There may be a window open, but I’m not agile enough to climb in.”

Jerry is an agile old man, though, so he was inside in a matter of minutes.

So much has happened since we left.  We drove into summer.  There is a wall of green around our house.  Some of our friends are getting divorced.  Some of them are getting back together again and moving.  A friend’s grandchild has leukemia; another friend has completely recovered from multiple myeloma.

Back in the blog world one friend’s father has died, one has painted a terrific portrait, one has redecorated her house, and another has had his prostate removed.  How things can change in just 6 weeks.

I am glad to be home in this green and pleasant land.  I hope nothing much happens to Jerry and me for a while.

Tomorrow we will leave Manley and drive south.  Jerry is going to show me some parts of Alaska that I have not yet seen.

Our days here have passed quietly and peacefully.  Almost every day since we arrived here I worked on paintings for most of the day, and I have completed 6 paintings in 6 weeks.  That is, I think I have completed them.  I’m never certain that a painting is really finished.

Each afternoon between 4 and 5 o’clock I put away my paint brushes and Jerry and I sit down at the kitchen table for wine and conversation.  We have the radio news playing which often begins the conversation.  We talk politics, something on which we don’t always agree.  I am liberal, Jerry is closer to being an old style conservative:  that is, he harbors suspicions of government, of many social programs and he instinctively dislikes rules and regulations.  One of the reasons he likes Manley is because here there are no property taxes and no building codes.

We don’t change each other’s minds, but I think we inch closer to the views of the other.  I have become less trusting and cheerfully optimistic about public policies — more careful about dismissing every position taken by conservatives.  And I have brought Jerry around to my view that you won’t get the best people teaching our children until teaching jobs pay salaries that compete with those of other professionals.  We both think this country needs a single payer health care system (but we know it isn‘t going to happen), and we both deeply deplore the growing anti-intellectualism that is gripping the United States.

We move on from politics to science.  We have been studying geology and reading a book on the ice ages (Jerry has an affinity for ice and snow and cold) but over wine we go for the big picture.  Why is life, with its unimaginable complexity, flourishing in a universe that is supposed to be running down?  Life is such a highly ordered system, and yet it leads to an increase in entropy.  Why does the universe take this circuitous route to increasing disorder?  We pour another glass and go over the first and second laws of thermodynamics (1. You can’t win; 2. You can’t break even.)  Is there another, as yet undiscovered, law that would explain the development of life?  Since neither of us is religious at all, for us God is not part of the equation.

Why do a couple of glasses of wine make us think we are smart enough to fathom these things?

Since we will almost certainly not answer the questions, I finish cooking the dinner.  After dinner we feed the dogs — they have to sit quietly and look at their dishes full of food until I say “okay”.  Then they dash for their supper.

The dogs finish eating in 30 seconds or less, and we start on our evening walk.  There is a trail up the hill behind our house.  It was originally cut by the man from whom we bought this house.  He fancied himself a trapper, and he sprinkled the trail (and the surroundings of the house) with a variety of odd little trap arrangements made from tin cans and chicken wire.  I am not sure what he expected to catch.  I have seen squirrels, rabbits and two moose since we first came.  Last year there was a great grey owl which hunted voles in the yard.  However, I know he caught some animals because the tool room of the house (which Jerry and I are going to convert to a bedroom next summer) still smells from the skins of dead animals.

The walk, like the talk, has stages.  It lasts about 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on how much we stop and look and how far we go.  The woods are predominately birch and quaking aspen.  These are not trees that live a long time, and there are many horizontal fallen trees punctuating the strong vertical thrust of the forest. In some parts there is the beginning of an understory of white spruce, which eventually will take over and be the climax vegetation.  All these hills were logged when the first white men came to this part of Alaska.  The wood was used to power the steam boats that worked along the Tanana River.

We go uphill for 20 to 25 minutes.  That’s hard, especially after dinner and wine.  The hill seems steep, even now after 6 weeks.  Since last year a lot of growth has occurred so Jerry sometimes takes the pruners to clean it up.  I keep track of markers, like piles of logs and a downed birch with its crown across the path as we slog up the long hill.

Here are some pictures of the woods and one of a spruce grouse which may have a nest there.  It has flown into a tree a couple of times as we passed by.

Through the woods

A birch with lichens

Fallen trees on the path

Spruce grouse

After 20 minutes uphill we get to the mining road.  That is a much gentler slope, and we go up that for a short distance now that the mud has abated.  The road undulates, and I am always hopeful of seeing wildlife as I mount each crest.  Last year there were moose tracks all over that road, but this year there are none.

At some point one of us says, “That’s enough, lets go back.”

Then we have the delightful stroll home.  Downhill all the way.  Back through the empty woods.   Looking over many miles without houses or people.  It’s always cool, and we are hot from climbing.  The poodles, too, like the downhill best.  Now they run ahead and sniff the sides of the track.

This lovely routine comes to an end tomorrow.  I’ll be sad to leave.  On the other hand, if life becomes a little more eventful I’ll have fresh blog material.  There’s just so much you can say about peace and tranquility.

Blowing in the wind

We have been here for 3 weeks now.  I love it here.  I love the isolation, the quiet (except for the occasional singing of the dogs across the street).  It is beautiful in an austere way.  Peaceful.  I spend my days painting.  I am using this time to get ready for a show I have in Bellingham this fall.  I want new work for it.  Manley is a good place to do this, because life here is so simple.  There is little housework in this tiny house and no gardening since we won’t be here in the summer.  I don’t have the distraction of the internet.

Though I have a lot to do, Jerry is restless.  He has no project just now, so he rakes leaves and chops wood.  We both listen to the radio and read.  We are still studying geology, watching another Teaching Company course about plate tectonics.  We finished Annals of the Former World and have started on a book about extinction catastrophes.  So far the writing in this book is rather ponderous.  We look at rocks with a magnifying glass.

We still have friends here who gave us a wonderful dinner last Sunday night.  There was king salmon that they caught last summer and local berries that they pick and freeze.  The berries are served with the dinner, partially thawed.  They are so good.

This Friday we made a trip to Fairbanks for groceries and a few other necessities and decided to stay 2 nights.  We started out in a steady rain in the morning. It was a difficult drive, with fog and limited visibility most of the way.  There are still patches of dirty snow along the road.  The only wildlife we saw were a few rabbits, losing their winter white to summer tan and gray.

I think there are more ravens than usual this year.  We stopped at the dump with our garbage and the ravens flapped around, eyeing us indignantly and making all sorts of raucous calls.  There is a lot of stuff in the dump this year: old cars and trucks, washing machines, microwave ovens, broken bicycles and sofas.  All this stuff is peppered with bullet holes.  A painted sign, “No Shooting” is at the entrance to the dump, but there is nobody to enforce it.  Jerry and I wonder why anyone would enjoy shooting a washing machine.

The drive lasted about 4 hours and when we got to Fairbanks we shopped with grim determination until about 4 in the afternoon.  Then it was time for self indulgence and treats.

I had planned to go to something I heard advertised on the PBS radio station — there was music at the university and a play, The Time of your Life, put on by a local theater group.  We drank some wine and decided to go out to dinner.  We went to the Pump House.

The Pump House is by the Chena River.  It was a working pump house at one time.  Its purpose was to pump water uphill through a pipe to a ditch that provided water to gold dredges.  Jerry thinks it shut down in the mid 60’s.  You can’t take water out of the Chena River like that now because of environmental concerns.  There is still a commercial gold mine around here (called Fort Knox) which hires a few hundred people and is quite successful.  Fort Knox is an underground mine.  There is little commercial placer or dredge mining (open pit mining) now in Alaska except for small operations which are mostly based on pie in the sky optimism.

The Pump House aspires to a degree of sophistication.  People visiting the university are taken there. It has bits of old mining equipment scattered around the restaurant along with other “vintage” decorations, like old gas pumps, salvaged business signs and photos of Fairbanks in the mining days.  At the entrance there is a glass case containing an enormous snarling stuffed
grizzly bear.  The big muddy parking lot was full, mostly with pick-up trucks.

The food was actually not bad.  I had fresh halibut with a spinach sauce.  We drank more wine and talked — about the past, about Manley, about the rest of this trip.  We became mellow and affectionate.  We thought that if we went back to the motel, took the dogs for a walk and watched our geology DVD we would be ready for bed.  We postponed further amusement.

Our motel, The Golden North, is minimal, but clean and cheap. The couple who owns the motel has been there for years, and they know people in Manley.  Jerry chatted with the lady who checked us in about old acquaintance. It is in a dying part of town (actually, most of Fairbanks looks this way).  Our room looks out on a muddy alley and lot that stores rows of unsold snow machines.  A short way down the street is a strip joint that has a huge SHOW GIRLS sign over the Lonely Lady Bar.

The Lonely Lady

There are a few lonely pick-up trucks in the large parking lot.  Further on is the Castle, a restaurant and night club that has been closed since I have been coming to Fairbanks.  Its architecture is fanciful and its roofs are painted a painfully poisonous green, the lower windows are boarded up and there is a big for sale sign on it.  Jerry says it used to be THE place to go, and that he had, in his youth, taken dates there.

The Castle

Saturday we shopped till we dropped and were too tired for further entertainment.  On Sunday we started for home in much improved weather.  Just outside of Fairbanks we passed a large sign that read:  CANADA MY ASS, ITS ALASKA’S GAS.  That’s about a proposed gas pipeline to go through Canada.

The following explanation of the gas situation is courtesy of Jerry:  There’s a lot of natural gas now in the Prudhoe Bay area. The gas is separated from the extracted oil and re-injected into the ground and stored there until a market and a means of shipping is developed.  This has been going on for years.  There are 2 possible ways of shipping it: either by a pipeline through Alaska and Canada to the lower 48, or a pipeline to a port in Alaska (perhaps Seward or Valdez), where it would be liquefied and shipped by a tanker.  In the latter case the main market would be Asia, at least at first, because there is no port on the west coast capable of handling gas tankers.  If the pipe goes through Canada the market would be the US.  The opposition to the Canada pipeline apparently stems from the fact that a fee would have to be paid to Canada to transport the oil across its territory.

The trip home was beautiful, and near Manley we saw a black bear.  It was small and cute.  I like seeing bears from the inside of a car.  It ran across the road and in the woods it stood up and looked at us, a small black figure surrounded by tall white birches.  I fumbled with the camera and missed a good picture.

view from the highway

from the road to Manley

How glad we were to get back to our comfortable clean tidy house.  I felt a flood of affection for it.  Later we walked up the trail back of the house through the pristine, clean white birch woods.  No bears.

This morning while I was painting (a triptych of chickens) I looked out the window and there, right in my front yard, were a cow moose and a yearling calf, calmly munching new grass.  This time I got the camera in time.

Mother and calf moose

It is getting warmer, though last night the temperature went down to 28.  That suits me since I already have a few mosquito bites.  Frost will kill the ones that have hatched. The highs go up to 60.  We have 2 more weeks here, but we may leave a few days early and go on a jaunt in the camper to Denali and Talkeetna.   I need to see more of Alaska.

Here are a few notes on my last post and some responses to comments.

I am sorry for the mistake about the location of the militia that was recently in the news because of a plot to kill policemen.  It was indeed in Michigan, not Wisconsin.  I usually check things like that on the internet, but my access is limited where I am now.

And I did not mean to leave the impression that hunting in Alaska is not regulated.

Hunting in Alaska is certainly regulated.  There is a 126 page book on Alaska hunting regulations, liberally illustrated with pictures of smiling people beside dead animals.  This book has all the hunting rules, special areas, and instructions for hunting permit applications.  There are specific rules for the use of different kinds of weapons, including bows and arrows; rules for shooting along the roads and rivers; rules for chasing game on 4 wheelers, hunting from airplanes, and rules for the numbers of different kinds of animals one hunter can kill.   There are different rules for subsistence and recreational hunting.  There are requirements for reporting kills, harvesting and preservation of meat and hides.  I think that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game tries to do a good job of preserving the wildlife of Alaska.

The rules are made by legislators.  They get the advice of biologists and other scientists, of commercial fishermen, of people who try to make a living by selling furs of animals they trap, of recreational hunters, of representatives of native corporations, of representatives from remote villages, of animal rights people.  Then they come up with a set of rules which may be slanted in the direction of any of these groups (or some other group I haven’t thought of).  They are not perfect.

I believe it is true that Canada regulates hunting more strictly than does any of the United States.  I have been told that bears cannot be shot in Canada.  Unfortunately I don’t have access to the internet for more than a few minutes at a time every few days, so I can’t look that up.

On the subject of comments: Tessa suggests that I block Wanda because she is tiresome.  (Wanda, by the way, is not the real name of the man who writes those comments.  His emails come out of Vermont, and I am surprised to learn that one doesn’t need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in that State, but perhaps he only spends part of his time in Vermont and resides in Arizona as Darlene suggests.)   Wanda is a friend or relative of someone who lives in Manley.  If I block him it would be like killing the canary in the coal mine.  He alerts me to when I have crossed the line of annoying some of my neighbors in Manley.

If I had understood this when he made his first comment about a year ago I might not now be banned from Manley Mah Jongg because of this blog.  However, his approach is one of crude, sledge-hammer insults, not pleasant, helpful advice.  So it took me some time to realize that he could be useful.  He says that I actually like him, and he is right in a way.  I can’t say I really like him (how could I?) but he does entertain me.  And I have to give him credit for faithfully reading my blog.

Wanda’s comments exemplify the collapse of civility in this country.  It seems especially difficult for many who call themselves “conservative” to disagree politely and quietly about politics and related social issues.

Wanda takes me to task for alienating my husband’s Manley “friends”.  In fact, my husband and I are very much a unit.  We talk things over, and we don’t do things without consulting each other.  That’s not to say he agrees with everything I do or say.  With hindsight we both wish I had been more careful about writing about Manley people.  I would not willingly hurt anyone’s feelings.

The post that Wanda takes issue with this time is not about specific people.  It does not mention Manley or anyone in Manley.  It is about public policy.  I discussed it with my husband when I was writing it, and he is essentially in agreement with it.  If his Manley “friends” are alienated by that, so be it.  I know the political stance of most of the people in Manley, and I like them anyway, even though my own politics are quite different.  I actually subscribe to the idea that this is a free country (or used to be) and we are free to believe and speak as our conscience directs.  I don’t talk politics with anyone who doesn’t want to talk about it and no one is required to read my blog.

So I won’t block Wanda.  He doesn’t really bother me.  I think he’s kind of funny, and I think that not all comments need be complements.  I am glad to hear from people who don’t agree with me.  If his comments get too insulting or crude I’ll delete them eventually.

On the subject of guns:  I do not like them, and I think the Canadian policy on guns is a sensible one.  On the other hand, my husband owns 2 guns.  One is stored in an out of reach place on our property in Washington.  We have no ammunition there and the gun is completely useless.  I have thought of persuading him to get rid of it, but it seems about as harmless as it could be where it now is.  If he got rid of it someone might actually use it.  The other gun is here.  I asked Jerry to get it because I am afraid of bears.  Almost as soon as I came here I saw a big black bear with a cub and a yearling by the road near our friend’s house.  I was driving, on my way to a Mah Jongg game, and I arrived breathless and excited.

My husband actually knew someone who was killed by a bear.  This man went outside his door one morning and a bear got him.  Just like that!

Now when we take our evening walk in the woods behind our house Jerry takes the gun along, worn on his belt.  He says bears are not likely up here on the hillside, they hang around near the river, which is where I saw them.  Nevertheless, I feel safer with the gun.  When we walk along the road he won’t take the gun, even though bears are just as likely there.  Unlike the supporters of “Open Carry” I think he would not like anyone see him carrying a gun, just as he would not wear camouflage or sew American flags on his clothes, or wear a pink shirt, or have insignia on his hat.  He’s a  low key kind of guy.

Finally, I want to apologize for having reached an age that I not only repeat myself when I talk, but I find that I also do it in writing.  I have told the story of Jerry’s keeping a moose carcass on the roof at least twice in this blog.  Sorry.  I guess I was really impressed with that plan.

There is, here in Alaska, a controversy about hunting regulations.  People in Alaska like to hunt.  Just ask Sarah  P.  She hunts whenever she can take time off from her grueling (and lucrative) schedule of Tea Bag speeches and Fox News interviews.  She is particularly fond of killing moose.   Many Alaskans hunt moose.  Some of those who hunt them, eat them.  My husband, Jerry, tells me that for a period of 6 years when he was a young man he ate only moose.  During the 6 month winter he kept the dead animal on the roof of the house he built on his homestead near Fairbanks.  When he needed meat he climbed up to the roof and sawed off a bit.

Joee, our neighbor across the street, bags one moose each year when hunting season opens, and that provides him and Pam with meat for a year.  The rest of their staple food comes from the salmon Joee fishes and the vegetables Pam grows in the summer.

So Alaskans care about moose.  They want lots of them.  When hunting season opens the Eliot Highway, the road to Manley, becomes alive with pick-ups pulling trailers piled with 4 wheelers.  Burly men in camouflage toting guns rumble off into the woods on their 4 wheelers in search of moose.

(I read the above to Jerry who wants me to add this:  In the 50’s there were about 100 thousand people in Alaska, today it is close to 700 thousand, most of whom live in the Anchorage area.  Villages are larger too, because diseases that decimated them earlier are now controlled.  The hunting pressure is much greater and will keep increasing.  If the population of Fairbanks reaches 1 million, (now it is around 80 thousand) the Eliot Highway will be gridlocked with 4 wheelers.)

Human hunters compete, or think they do, with animal predators.  Wolves certainly hunt moose.  And Pam and Joee assure me that black bears also have been seen following cow moose ready to calve, preying on the new-born calves.  Jerry, on the other hand, thinks that black bears are not a big factor in moose predation.  They are omnivores, and a big part of their diet is berries and other vegetation.  They also consume fish and small animals and carrion.

The Alaskan Fish and Game Department goes in for “predator control” in a big way.  These programs are supported by the citizens of Alaska who love their hunting and, to a limited extent, depend on it for food.  When I first came here there was a ballot initiative to allow the shooting of wolves from airplanes.  It passed.

This year there is a new regulation that permits the killing of bear cubs and sows accompanied by cubs.  This is said to be necessary for “predator control.”  It is fair to say that not all the people in Alaska agree with this policy.  I heard a long discussion about it on a radio call in program.  A biologist and wildlife expert explained that the decline in moose population was not really a result of over predation by wolves or bears, but of poor timber-land management and unfavorable weather for a couple of seasons.  Possibly the latter resulted from global warming.

The National Park Service has disagreed with the Alaska Fish and Game and has prohibited the killing of bear cubs and sows accompanied by cubs in national park lands.  They say that this regulation will endanger the bear population.  Alaskan officials are vocal in their indignation.  States rights, they say, are being infringed.  They say they hope they won’t have to sue for the right to kill baby bears.

Alaska is also suing for the right not to have health insurance.  The governor declares the choice is between health insurance and freedom.

Meanwhile, in Alaska as well as in the lower 48, militias are prospering.  The lady in the liquor store in Fairbanks who was ringing up our two week supply of wine was discussing the gathering of a militia group the night before in Fairbanks.  She said they were pretty well behaved; only a couple were arrested.  I asked her what the militias were in favor of and she said, “Well, you know, community feeling, and, of course, keeping the government in check.”

A militia group in Wisconsin gained high praise in the media because they turned in one of their members who was planning, with others, to kill a policeman and then to ambush his funeral and kill more policemen.

Finally, in the current scary silliness of the political landscape we have the so-called movement for the right of “open carry.” That is, there are lovers of guns who wish to go around with their guns showing.  In the touchy-feely world of California they seem to be particularly eager to display their guns in Starbucks, and Starbucks says it will let them.  I imagine one of these guys, in a militia uniform (probably camouflage with American flag patches), pearl handled pistol hung from his belt, swagger into Starbucks, stride up to the counter, and order a dark cherry frappuccino.

On Sunday Jerry and I had dinner with 3 of our Manley friends.  We have been away for a year, and so we had a lot to catch up on.

The new airport, which had been planned last year, was not funded, and so its construction has been put off.  Perhaps it will be started next summer. Our friends think that it will ultimately go. The road to Nome, which the Fairbanks Daily News Minor had shown a few months ago as probably going through Manley, turning on the Tofty Road and passing right by our house, is another matter.  Our friends said, basically, that’s not going to happen, at least not in our lifetimes.

In a way I’m sorry, because I would like to travel that road, but on the other hand, I dislike the little bit of mining traffic that passes along our road now.  It seems that most of the mining is moving from Tofty to Livengood.  Every night when we walk the dogs we see big trucks going up the road pulling  empty lowboys.  They come back the next morning hauling heavy mining equipment.  Jerry thinks there hasn’t been much gold at Tofty for a long time.

But the big event of the past year was the death of Bob Lee which happened just before Christmas.  Of course, we had heard about it, but last night we got all the details.

Bob Lee, a towering man, was a pillar of the Manley community.  He came here in the early 70’s and bought the lodge.  Before he came here he had been a state trooper.  He had a seemingly endless supply of stories about when he was a trooper.  I have heard him tell some of those stories, and they were always entertaining.

Before Bob bought the lodge it had gone through several owners who were unable to make a viable business from it.  In the first few years he owned the lodge it did well.  There was commercial fishing on the Yukon and a small processing plant here in Manley.  There were 2 or 3 Japanese fishermen here processing roe.  That was going on when Jerry came here and bought the store and the electric company.

Bob was the postmaster when Jerry got here.  The post office was in the bar and there were complaints about that: some people objected to having to enter the bar to pick up their mail.  Jerry ran the store for a couple of years, but shop keeping was not really to his liking.  Jerry started a telephone company since at the time there were no telephones in Manley.  Bob bought the store and moved the post office from the bar into the store.

Mining in Tofty brought business to Bob.   The store sold groceries, liquor and a few basic necessities.  Fire crews and construction crews used the lodge which include over night facilities and a restaurant.

Bob prospered with the years.  He had one child, David, who grew up in Manley.

David Lee had a job on the pipeline road near a small airport and he often flew his airplane to work.  One day about 3 years ago he left here in marginal weather and never arrived.  Jerry saw the initial FAA accident investigation report and it appears the plane came apart in the air.  This can happen in severe weather.  It was a dreadful accident and, as someone said, David must have had an “Oh Shit” moment.  He was the only one in the small single engine airplane, a Piper Cherokee 235.

It was a terrible blow to Bob to lose his only child. For a long time he could talk of nothing else, and his planned marriage to Lisa, his third wife, was postponed for a year.

Over the years that he owned the lodge Bob improved it.  He carefully kept it in the old style, collecting articles and decorations in keeping with its tradition and he furnished it with antiques of its period.  The bar was lovingly restored and improved. I am told that Bob’s son David did much of the carpentry work on the bar counter, which is really a work of art.

I have no pictures of the bar counter and the lodge is not open at this time of year.  It is closed during the winter from the end of the hunting season until May. But here are some pictures of the restaurant and bar from my archives.

The lodge

The bar in the lodge

The lodge dining room

Another view of the lodge dining room

The wonderful old lodge makes a trip to Manley worth while.

Last year Bob was medivaced out of Manley, and when he came back he was attached to an oxygen supply.  He told us that he would probably have to be on it for the rest of his life.  Just before he died he and Lisa made a trip to the Mayo Clinic.  He was told at the clinic that he was doing well but as almost as soon as they came back he collapsed and died.

Lisa is working hard to run the store and the lodge.  There is a temporary postmaster, and the job is now being advertised. Untangling Bob’s affairs is a huge job for Lisa.   First the settlement of David’s affairs must be completed, something Bob was working on before he died. David left a child, Bob’s grandchild.

Bob was generous with his employees.  He did great good for this community, and his loss will be felt for a long time.

Another development that our friends told us of is the plan by one of the owners of the land around the hot springs (where there is thermal activity) to establish some commercial greenhouses.  That should be a big boost to the economy of the community.

In the meantime, since we arrived a week ago, most of the snow has melted.  We took our first walk in the woods.  The poodles, who clearly remembered this place, were overjoyed.  I know that they remembered because almost as we walked in the door Fluffy found his favorite toy, a cong and Daisy took up her perch on the back of the sofa, scanning the yard for rabbits.

As we walked up the hill in back of the house, through the birch forest Fluffy streaked back and forth through the trees sniffing all the exciting scents.  Poor Daisy can’t be let off the leash.  She is naughty and doesn’t come when called unless she feels like it.  The forest floor is already beginning to green.

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The last time I was in residence in Manley I wrote a number of posts about this small community.  My husband spent his prime here, and those years I believe were his happiest.  I came here with him almost 4 years ago, we were married here.  Later we bought a small house here which we worked hard to fix up.

I write about things which interest me.  There are many things that interest me; too many, I often think, which may be why I never really excelled at any one thing.  Besides writing, I am interested in politics, rocks, painting, birds, dogs, opera, biology, gardening, microscopic things and more.

People interest me.  People of all sizes, shapes, colors and ages, of all religious or political persuasions.  I like most people.  I liked the people here in Manley and I wrote about them.  I thought many of them were smart, resourceful and funny.  They struggle with a harsh climate and make a good thing of it.  I tried to convey that when I wrote about them.  Somehow, without meaning to, I managed to offend a number of them, and for that I am truly sorry.

It starts with a confession.  We were wimps.  We didn’t sleep in the camper.  As soon as we were north of the Fraser River it got really cold.

As the road winds up the canyon created by the Fraser , the landscape gets progressively starker and drier.  By the time you get to Cache Creek it is desert like, treeless with grey sage covered hills leading to bare rock mountains.  The geology shows.  We kept wondering whether some formation was caused by the action of ice, volcanism, plate collisions or erosion.   We wished we had a geologist to travel with us the way John McPhee did when he was writing the books of Annals of the Former World.

The first night we stopped in Lac La Hache BC at a pleasant motel and RV place beside a lake.  The lake was not frozen, but the wind howled and it felt bitterly cold.  We were still debating sleeping in the camper as we entered the motel office and I left it up to Jerry.  He opted for the motel room which had a kitchen.  The room was really nice, with a separate bedroom and living room with a full kitchen and dining area.  The window looked over the bleak and stormy lake.  It snowed during the night.

The next night we stayed in Smithers, BC.  That is a biggish town on the Yellowhead Highway.  As you travel west on the Yellowhead the land becomes more ruggedly mountainous.  Early spring is not the loveliest time in the north.  Much of the snow has melted, and the leaves have not yet begun to appear.  The world looks dead.  Again it was cold, in the low 20’s, and again it snowed in the night.  The motel was a notch below the one in Lac La Hache, but it was acceptable.

The third day we drove the full length of the Cassiar.  I love driving the Cassiar: it has the grandest scenery I know.  The mountains rise directly from the road, their towering peaks still gleaming white with snow and ice.  Dark fir forests grow along the highway, edged by pale barked birch and willows whose tips are just turning pink and orange and yellow.

The Cassiar Highway

The Cassiar Highway

Most of the many lakes and creeks are still frozen, with melting only where there is swift running water.

Dease Lake

creek along the highway

The sun was shining as we stopped for lunch in the camper beside a small frozen lake.  I still hoped it might get warm enough to sleep in the camper.

the view from where we had lunch

We arrived at Dease Lake at about 3 in the afternoon, and I was in favor of stopping.  Jerry wanted to drive on for a while.  But there is no place to stop or stay for many miles.  We had discovered that all the camping places are still closed for the season, and anyway it was getting colder as we went north.  We would probably need a motel again.  But we carried on.  The Cassiar is an excellent road until you get north of Dease Lake.  Then it becomes rough and the shoulder drops off in a way that I find scary.

There were dark clouds ahead of us.  Soon it began to snow.  Every half hour or so we saw a car or truck driving south.  No one but us was going north. The visibility was poor, and we crept along at about 15 miles an hour.  The snow was coming down heavily by the time we reached the junction with the Alaska Highway.  Everything at the junction was closed.

Jerry decided to drive 30 miles south on the Alaska Highway to Watson Lake because we were sure of finding a motel there.  We found one that had a kitchen and would take pets, but it was, without doubt, the worst motel I have ever stayed in.  At first it was cold, cramped and dirty, and then it was hot, cramped and dirty.  The sink in the bathroom leaked.  It was the most expensive place we stayed.

The next day we started out on a snowy, unplowed Alaska Highway.

The Alaska Highway

We stopped for breakfast at a place we have stopped before.  A trucker came in who was driving from the north.  He told us that the road ahead was clear.  He and Jerry chatted about driving the Alaska Highway.  The trucker said he had been driving it from the 60’s.  But Jerry and I have achieved an age to usually get back farther than others.  Jerry said the first time he drove the road was in 1952 when he got out of the army.  There wasn’t any pavement then until you got to the Fraser River and Hope BC. That’s almost 2000 miles of dirt road.  The road in the Fraser River canyon was terrible and in 1952 had only been open for a year.

The trucker was right.  The road and the weather improved quickly.  We made good time, and the fourth night we stayed at a comfortable motel in Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory.

Destruction Bay is on Kluane Lake.  That is a beautiful lake, surrounded by majestic mountains.  The mountains are the home of wild sheep.  I did not see any sheep this time, because they come down the mountain in the mornings; in the afternoons they go up the mountain too high to see.  On a previous trip I got some fuzzy pictures of the sheep quite high up.

Sunrise over Kluane Lake

We chatted with the waitress in the restaurant.  She told us she had come from Manitoba and had found the job on the internet.  She agreed with us that Watson Lake is a miserable place.  She looked very young, but said she had grown children.  She thought she would stay at Kluane through the summer.  She loves her job.

The next day we drove to Fairbanks.  Just over the border to Alaska we finally saw the only wildlife of this trip.  There is a heard of caribou in that region.  I missed the biggest one of a few that dashed across the road, but snapped a few pictures of a smaller one.

Caribou crossing the road

The next day, after some shopping in Fairbanks, we drove on to Manley.  There is much less snow this year, and when we got to our house Jerry was able to drive the truck up to the door with a minimum of shoveling.  The yard was criss-crossed with moose tracks in the snow, but there were no rabbit tracks to be seen.  I think the rabbit population must be low this year.

The new key refused to work in the lock, so Jerry had to hike across the road to get the old key that we had left with Pam.  I waited on the front porch and looked through the window into our living room.  It is almost a year since we left, but it looked as if we had just walked out.  It was bright and clean and pretty.  Jerry and I had worked hard to change it from the dump it was when we bought it to the comfortable cabin it is now.

I watched Jerry, in the distance, climbing the steep driveway to Pam’s.  I thought, how did I, Old Woman that I am, find myself in this remote place near the Arctic Circle, watching an old man I met on the internet trudge through the snow, listening to Pam and Joee’s sled dogs sing their howling song?

A troublesome lock is not the sort of thing that stops Jerry.  I had a comfortable feeling that soon we would be inside with a fire crackling, celebrating with a bottle of wine and a steak.

And so we were.