The thing about being in Alaska, aside from the huge country, bald eagles, moose roaming down town centres and bear stories, is I feel I meet a new hero every day. The people are extraordinary. It feels that almost everyone has a remarkable ‘how I came to Alaska story’ whether it was as means of evading war or the law, or both, or because they read about a 3month canoe expedition on the Yukon at an impressionable age and wanted to try it, or they passed through and decided to do whatever it took to stay. For those it suits, the Alaskan way is as warm, comfortable, easy, and moulded to the soul as any goose feather filled down jacket and old felt boots. Personally, I enjoy that I can have not seen a shower for a week, smell of moose fat and wood smoke and go grocery shopping in my work dungarees and winter boots and no one bats an eyelid because they probably look and smell even worse. This is a place where you soon find if you are comfortable in your own skin because you’ll be denied the usual exteriors statements, and the weather will have something to say about how often you get to visit anyone. Neighbours are your safety net, so better you rub along and make sure they are your ‘IT crowd’.
Our last night in Homer we went for a meal of king salmon and moose burgers at Jim and Mary's huge log house which sits high on the mountain ridge. The logs are over 50cm diameter and were shipped in specially from Canada. It is a dream house in a dream spot. I found myself literally giggling out loud as I sat cross legged on a leopard print cushion, holding the sides of a plastic toboggan, while being towed (backwards to avoid the exhaust fumes)by high speed snowmachine between the car and their front door. I love a place where I have to snowmachine to the neighbours. The night sky was phenomenal and I was able to make many wishes on shooting stars and track a satellite or two. It was a perfect evening in with friends to close my too short trip to Homer.
The next day Emma, Linda and I drove the 5 spectacular hours up to Anchorage, stopping for donuts at The Moose is Loose cafe, and for a ski in Turnagain Arm where the sun was so blinding on the snow my eyes were streaming without sunglasses. I was reunited with another old friend in Anchorage, Marybee, but had to say goodbye to Emma as she continued her drive to Tok, onward to Bellingham to pick up the ferry to Vancouver.
Linda, Marybee and I made the best of our reunion, drinking sake cocktails in Anchorage museum at lunchtime before working our way around the Mammoth and Mastadon exhibit, perhaps enjoying the children interactivity bit with more gusto than we would have ordinarily. Again, as ever, I was amazed by the vast collection of pieces from all the native tribes, but was especially drawn to the Yup'ik section because of my dear friend Wesley, who while now in his 70s, enchants me every time I meet him again.
At dinner the previous week I has asked Wesley what his Yu'pik name is and he told me it is Tulukaru, which means Raven. The Yu'pik believe the clever raven created everything around them and the museum had a quote from one of the Yu'pik elders: The legendary creater, Raven, strode across the sky and burst a light filled bladder to make the sun.
Wesley amazes me with his knowledge, kindess and warm humour that he can express in very few words yet is evident every times he talks of hunting and the wildlife he lived with, hunted and believed with. It is evident in the way he drew simple sketches for me of different types of fish and the traps and lines the used to catch them. The drawings were sparse but for that the exact curve of the fin, and the placement of the eye relative to the body and the arrow to show the flow of the fresh water as it meets and swirls with the less dense salt. His is a kind of animation of connectedness, rather than movement, noise or disturbance. Wesley always tells be he love me, but I think it is because he loves the world.
I have many heros in Alaska but Malamute man is another. He lives next door and has a team of 12 malamutes, weighing between 130 and 160 pounds each with names like Massive and Buffalo. He read a book and decided to move with his wife and two sons, aged 2 and 5, high into the arctic circle to live in a sod house and live off the land. He created everything around him. He built his house, his sled, his tools, he learned to hunt and trap, they made clothes, they built boats, they became commercial fishermen off the horribly dangerous waters of Kodiak despite a history of being landlocked, they had another 5 children. His wife told me she felt fine about having children up in the bush because she's already had 2 without any problem and they had a copy of the New York Fire Service guide to emergency childbirth.
Malamute man, Dave, now in his 60s and still mushing and fishing told me something that many people have said to me in Alaska - that the biggest fears we have are those we internalise and allow to become monsters in our mind. Thousands had lived in that terrain, for thousands of years so for him it was all about humility and being willing to learn, work hard and accept that very often once we commit, those things that we were scared of turn out to be not nearly as bad as we feared. I always leave Alaska feeling ready to live outside my boundaries. I think perhaps that is because of Ella. Ella is not a person, but another Yu'pik word. It means 'awareness' and that is what Alaska, its people, its landscape and the dogs does for me.
Onward again. Hopefully Ella has come with me as I've travelled into Northern Alberta and tomorrow I will set out to explore a completely different town, set on the very wide and still very frozen river that is its namesake - Peace River.
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