Local News: What Does it Reveal about Alaska?

(Laura welcomes comments through the comment field below each blog entry)

Whenever we travel, I love reading the local newspapers.  Each town and region has its own points of pride and subjects of division and derision from which a visitor or new resident can learn a great deal. Note the organization, relative coverage and topics featured repeatedly in its newspapers.  Such news can help to entrench or eclipse assumptions about the place. Clearly, Alaska thinks of itself as different from the rest of the US, as reference to “Outside” and “the Lower 48” indicate.  In several ways, this is very true.   

 What do the Alaska newspapers reveal about life up here?  To me, the primary impression from the Anchorage Daily News is one of a fully embraced outdoor lifestyle.  By way of example, consider this:  the “Outdoors” section of the on-line version (www.adn.com) includes the following permanent sections:  Bears, Excursions, Fishing, Iditarod, Mushing, Skiing, Snowmachining,  and Wildlife.  Readers are invited to submit photographs and there are whole galleries devoted to cabins, the aurora borealis, and “around Alaska.” By contrast, the Houston (Texas) Chronicle (www.chron.com) doesn’t even have an Outdoors section.  The only regular outdoor activity addressed is gardening).    

Two years ago, somebody or other surveyed Anchorigians regarding their satisfaction in living there.  Over 90% said that the setting contributed to their satisfaction.  Aside from the obvious fact that Anchorage’s setting, between the Chugach Mountains and the Cook Inlet, is one of the most visually stunning in America, the paper makes clear that residents enjoy its terrain, resources, and weather.  Everyone I meet in Alaska is happy to be here.   (By contrast, what might the percentage be in many other places?  Most people I know in Houston, TX, for example, say they live there “for the job” and plan to leave.  Complaining about some aspect of the city is a ‘warm up topic” at just about any gathering.)    I must say, it is nice to get away from the whiners!     

Easy, Free Due Diligence on Potential Service Providers, Clients, Employees

If you are a “glass half-full” person.  Read this carefully.  Dishonest people can be charming, or evasive, or manipulative, but all of them will waste your time or money.  “Trust but verify.”

If you are a “glass half-empty” person, you know to check out potential employees, service providers, investors, clients.  (I've even had friends who are utilizing dating websites ask me to check out people before they get too involved.)  The following list of liars and sources will save you time and reinforce what you naturally do to protect your business and wallet.    

                         

Below are two lists.  One is a list of lies learned from less than three hours due diligence of potential service providers, clients, investors and employees.  The other is a list of free or low cost public websites you can check to save you time, money, and “face.”  If you get a business card, a resume and take notes during conversations, you can ascertain a great deal in less than 3 hours of research, otherwise wasted by “big talkers.”   Some have been shameless liars who have, presumably, gotten away with this before, indicating that a lot of people DON’T do background checks. Think how much time you can save by learning this information early on. 

Preliminary due diligence is like a game.  The goal is to look for anything the person has told you (verbally or in writing, such as a resume) that is invalidated or contradicted in public sources.  If the person lied about something so easily discovered, what else might s/he lie about?  Red flag.  By asking for background information, the message you convey to the person is that it is “time to get serious.”   This can cut time wasted with big talkers.  Your time is worth money.

My First Snow Machine Ordeal (My Husband Loved It)

Bryan was probably as excited about his snow machine (same as a snowmobile in the Lower 48) as with his first tricycle at age 3.  (What is it with guys and powers of locomotion?  Residual memories of being ambulatory hunter gatherers?) When we returned home at 11 degrees outside to a 50 degree cabin and crawled, exhausted into bed with mugs of tea, he said with a sigh of great contentment, “That was a GREAT day.”  Noticing my stony silence, he put on his “attentive husband” voice and asked, as if winding up for a punch line in a comedy, “So which part of you was the coldest?” 

Snowmachine sled with building supplies
for future chicken coop

While Bryan felt like Nanook of the North, Man Merged with Nature, or Whatever, I felt like the Michelin Man on a bad hair day with a runny nose. Even with four layers of socks, pants, tops, and three layers of gloves, I got so cold that I shivered, teeth chattering for many minutes when we stopped at the only restaurant on the river for a mediocre hamburger (after 5 hours of being outside).  When we returned to the vehicle, maybe 30 minutes later, the wheels and tread had frozen up, and Bryan had to lie on the snow with a hammer and tap pertinent points on both sides before we could move.  Altogether, our round trip outing of 84 miles to get 750 lbs of gasoline (about 90 gallons) took 7.5 hours, about the time it takes to fly from Houston, TX to Anchorage, AK. 

I don’t know what heaven looks like, but I know what it feels like:  it feels exactly like the heated bathrooms at Deshka Landing after 3 hours on a snow machine across windy, bumpy terrain.

Arrival to Deep Snows and 15 degrees

While the lower 48 experienced a mild winter, the 2011-12 season brought record snows to much of Alaska.  Valdez and Cordova made national news with over 300 inches, but even Anchorage, which usually only gets about 5 feet of snow per winter, had double that amount by early March and expects to eclipse an historic record with the anticipated late season dumps of additional inches.  Several older commercial and church roofs have collapsed.  (I look askance at the number of flat and gambrel roofs, neither of which seems sensible in snowy country here.)   The snow berms around parking lots top building door height, and now that the afternoons are warming and the daylight lengthening, so too are the icicles, which from many eaves drip precariously two to six feet long, pointing toward unwary walkers on the sidewalks below.   Talk about the sword(s) of Damocles! 

We flew out to our cabin about 10 am, seeing four moose along the way.  Our goal was to make use of all the remaining daylight hours before sunset at 6:30 pm to get settled and to warm up the ice cold cabin before bedtime.  A cabin in the Bush is certainly not a turnkey operation.  Onto the frozen lake we unloaded weeks’ worth of supplies and a new piece of furniture, stationing them beyond the wingspan of the Cessna 206 ski plane’s turn radius.  The day was overcast but bright, and from repeated, recent snow falls, the snow was pillowy soft not only on the ground but also, since it was so still, in little bubbles of white remaining on the spruce and birch branches.  Once the plane took off, Bryan pulled on his snow shoes to tramp up to the cabin to retrieve the little plastic sled we use for hauling groceries et al.   

It has snowed so frequently this winter, and at such optimal temperatures for powder, that even in big, flat snow shoes Bryan sank 12-16 inches with every step.  When he couldn’t find my snow shoes, I knew I’d have a tough time traversing the snow in the boots I was wearing, but it had to be done.  Besides, at 15 degrees, my feet were getting cold so I was motivated to get to the cabin and start a fire.  Bryan carefully retraced his footsteps, stomping down with each foot to compress the snow further so I could follow more easily, but even so, the smaller footstep of regular boots caused me to sink below my knees with most steps.  Halfway to the cabin, huffing and puffing, I decided to crawl, in order to disperse the weight better across four limbs than two.  That helped.  Welcome home.              

 Once I stepped carefully across the spiky bear mat into the dark cabin, I was able to light a fire quickly in the woodstove, and feed it for about an hour with tinder and kindling to get a good bed of coals so larger chunks of birch wouldn’t suck up the heat and put it out.  In two hours, the cabin had warmed up from +15 to +40 degrees F,  but there the temperature sat for the next several hours.  I shed my gloves, parka, and hat, but retained three layers of socks and tops and two layers of pants as I went about my interior tasks. Someone told me that the log walls have to warm up before the air within can do so.  Perhaps that is the reason that it took the next five hours (!) for the temperature to inch up from 40 to 53.  Meanwhile, I started a ham and pea soup (with water brought from town) in a cast iron pot on the woodstove. My theory is that half of staying warm is smelling warm scents – like smoke from the chimney and cooking and the cider I offered my thirsty husband when he rested occasionally between a dozen round-trip sled deliveries.  Fortunately, he was able to retrieve all of the food before it started to snow.  We left the new furniture on the iced lake until the next day. 

All needs and wants are clearly triaged out here, and groceries are no exception.  First, Bryan hauled the foods most vulnerable to freezing, like fresh produce and eggs.  Once those priorities were completed, he left the products that could freeze and shifted to cabin projects.  As he unscrewed the bear shutters from all the windows, he brought in welcome light and the illusion of warmth. Packed down under its own weight, the fourteen feet of snow that had fallen in this vicinity reached about 8 feet high along the sides of the cabin.  Since this height is about even with the bottom of the first floor windows, Bryan was able to walk from window to window with a screwdriver -  making the task much easier than in the summer!    The lovely views of the frozen lake and the mountains beyond helped remind me of why I was enduring this chilly homecoming. 

Next, Bryan carved makeshift steps through the snow down to the back porch.  His goal was to clear away enough snow from the back door to remove the bear bar and mat and open the door to reach the ten days of wood we had piled next to it.  (The main woodpile is buried- a task for another day). Then he chopped steps down to the doors of the outhouse and the power shed.   He was relieved to find that the battery bank, which stores power from the solar panels and wind turbine, was fully charged.  In the outhouse, the toilet seat and top were frozen together and to the wooden bench below by a three inch deep circle of frost.  I eased up the seats, knocked off the frost and installed a two inch thick ring of Styrofoam, which we use instead of the wooden seat in the winter.  (The air pockets keep it from getting cold).   

  

Needless to say, we were tuckered out by early evening.  After a meal of Manchego cheese and easy homemade dishes of ham and pea soup, coleslaw, and bananas with a chocolate rum sauce, we tumbled into a very comfortable bed under a very thick comforter and a sound night’s sleep.  Tomorrow is another day. 

Reflections on Recent (and upcoming) Alaskan Movies

In the past several years, probably since Sarah Palin jumped to the attention of folks in the Lower 48,  numerous movies and TV shows have been set in Alaska.  Below, I won’t critique them or give away any plot elements, but I thought I would address some of the questions that may have occurred to viewers of two recent movies, The Grey, with Liam Neeson and Big Miracle, with Drew Barrymore, and mention an upcoming one still being filmed, Frozen Ground, with John Cusack. 

1)    The Grey 2012, Liam Neeson. 

Plot: A southbound plane from the North Slope crashes somewhere in remote Alaska.  The motley group of survivors is menaced by an aggressive pack of wolves as well as inclement weather and topography.

Information about wolves:  The wolf is the largest canine, but not enormous.  Female wolves rarely top 110 lbs and males tend to weigh about 115 but some can reach 140 lbs.  By comparison to dogs, that means that wolves rarely reach the weight of a Rottweiler, and are certainly smaller than big dogs like St. Bernards and Great Danes. Some are mostly black, and others mostly white ones, but in general, their coats are multi-colored: black, gray, white, beige, like the first one the viewer sees. Wolves are opportunistic carnivores.  Depending on what is available in their vicinity, they hunt caribou, moose, deer, sheep, goats, beavers and share them with the pack, generally hunting every 2-3 days, according to tagged, observed wolves.  They also eat small mammals, birds and fish.  Generally they pursue the youngest, oldest, weakest animals available, and when they can find no live food, they will scavenge.             

Starting to Say Goodbye

Well, we have sold our home in the Lower 48 and will move to our little cabin in the woods of Alaska as a full time home in six weeks.  The sale prompts me to consider two historical analogies.  One is Cortez burning his ships in Latin America, to ensure that his men would commit to their new venture, no looking back.  The other, which more likely occurred to you, too, is Henry David Thoreau. But he only lived in his cabin on Walden Pond (land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, by the way) for two years, after which he moved back into town.  My husband’s goal is to live at our off-the-grid cabin F-O-R-E-V-E-R, but we both realize that health and other matters (like wanting a real bathroom) may trigger a future change.  Now, while we are both healthy, is a good time to embark on this adventure, and never say never or forever. 

Certainly we have been working toward this step over several years of learning and actions and increasing periods of time, both summer and winter.  The cabin and outbuildings and some raised gardens have been constructed and furnished and used and tweaked.  The power systems of solar, wind, and lake pumps have been tested and adjusted.  We’ve taken classes in welding, master gardening, flying, shooting, ham radio, and first aid.  We’ve bought books on relevant “how-to” subjects.  We’ve built up our inventories of supplies with a healthy set of redundancies for every breakdown of communication, power, heat, potable water, and food we could think of.  Perhaps most importantly, we’ve read lots of stories of naïve people moving up to Alaska to do exactly what we plan to do.  I hope we have learned something from their hubris and mistakes as well as their perseverance.  Perhaps most usefully, we have also developed a network of friends and service resources in South Central Alaska who are knowledgeable, resourceful, and have a good sense of humor in general, and about us! 

 

Winter Sights, Scents, and Sounds in Rural Alaska

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

My strongest visual impression of a rural Alaskan winter is the narrow color palate.  It is a black and white world. Deciduous birch and willow, and black and white spruce trees stand still and strong in a landscape of white snow and mountains against a thin blue sky.  Even in snowy cities and suburbs, the color range is expanded exponentially by brick and painted houses, cars in parking lots, colorful billboards and shop signage, and the colored lights of stoplights, seasonal decorations, and flashing “open” beacons.   Out in the bush, we have none of those things.  The only color, really, is our laundry.

The impact of this view is a greater awareness of shapes - the triangle of a bleached out sky outlined by bent branches, shadows cast by an icicle or a corner of the cabin, or shallow or deep animal tracks puncturing the snow.  The landscape is so still, that movement startles, as when the wind blows snow.   We can track animals more easily than in the refulgent summer: snow shoe hares tracks dive under the snow, martins tracks skitter among and up trees, river otters slide along the banks of water courses not yet frozen.  One day we came across a mass of dark blood at the base of a tree.  As detectives, we looked for predatory footprints and found none, concluding that an owl or other raptor had swooped down and impaled a hare with its sharp claws and beak before the furry fellow could dive into its warren below the tree.  The long, straight lines of diagonal trapping poles and horizontal supports of hunting stations catch our eyes as foreign objects we do not see the rest of the year, when they remain hidden in the woods.
    

Weather, Light, and Temperature at Latitude 61

Storm coming in fast

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)


One joke I've heard about Alaska weather is the defensive line, "We do, too, have four seasons:  June, July, August, and winter!"  Read below to see if you think that is true or close to it.

Here in South Central Alaska, it is not as warm and rainy as South East Alaska (Juneau) and it lacks the extreme temperature fluctuations of the Interior (Fairbanks). Naturally, any place with as many mountains and bodies of water as Alaska has a huge variety of micro-climates. Anchorage, for example, is warmed by the Cook Inlet and gets only about 5 or 6 feet of snow per winter, and is protected from deep temperature drops.  Where we are, inland, summer temperatures range from 50 - 70 degrees and winter temperatures can sink to -40 (but the coldest I've ever felt was -30). It starts to snow in October and my impression, although we haven't yet spent a whole winter there, is that normal winter temperatures tend to range between -20 and +20. March is my favorite winter month, when it is sunny and the snow sparkles as it crystalizes when the afternoon temperatures rise above 32. Over the four winters we have partially spent there, snow depth has varied from 5 (winter of 2010-11) to 14 feet (winter of 2011-12), depending less on accumulation than on whether the snow warmed up enough times (or if it rained) to compact significantly. 

Bears: Hunting, Cooking, and Coexisting

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Although there is no black bear hunting season in Alaska (they are considered a pest species), my husband and his friends tend to hunt them around Memorial Day.  The idea is that the bears have shed 1/3 of their body weight in hibernation, so they are lean and hungry.   People who ask, "Aren't they greasy and gamey?" may be thinking of fall bear, since during the summer, bears prefer to eat fish, which imparts a flavor, and are consuming 20,000 calories a day to fatten themselves up for warmth and calories during hibernation.


I enjoy target shooting, but have never hunted myself, just baited a bear stand.  So the following description is a wife's version of a husband's hunting experience.

The neighbors who own a seasonal hunting/fishing cabin fly in a group of Anchoragians for a long weekend of hunting.  During the week before the hunting weekend, Bryan and the hosts bait several hunting stations.  The rule is that these locations have to be at least one mile from any habitation (which isn't hard to do in Alaska) and, since bears tend to be solitary and roam over large areas, the stations are about a mile from each other, too.

Fishing

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Most people who visit Alaska, whether by cruise or car or plane, will save some time for fishing and many will have their catches flash frozen and shipped back home for a future barbeque with a tale and a tail or two.


Fishing looms large in Alaskan history, whether commercial, subsistence, or pleasure, and it is a big issue today, too.  An entire section in the Anchorage Daily News (and other papers) is devoted to it.  Seattle business interests are often derided in the news for rapacious use of the state's natural resources.  Every sporting goods store posts pictures and comments about recent catches by shoppers. Anchorage businessmen pull on waders and take a lunch break at Ship's Creek downtown when the salmon run.  Even I, of all people,  subscribe to the fish and game automatic emails about updated fishing regulations for my part of Alaska, and have written both those administrators and the Alaska Daily News fishing editor with comments and questions (and they promptly wrote back.) 

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A rockfish caught in Prince William Sound

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Every Alaskan has lots of outdoor, seasonal "grown up toys" and the summer ones relate to fishing.   I've seen garages larger than houses.  In 2010 or 11, more than 100,000 (adult) fishing licenses were issued to Alaskans (out of a total population, kids included, of 700,000). Friends spend time and a lot of money on boats, shrimp pots, rods and reels and lures for every fish in the sea.  The real afficianados build separate kitchens for canning, smoking, wrapping, freezing, storing, packaging, and labeling the fish they catch.  Families preserve locations of fish wheels and fish camps for generations.  Many city-dwellers engage in what is called "combat fishing" on road accessible rivers on the first day of fishing season.  Every household has its own special recipes for the most delicious piscatory concoctions I have ever eaten.

Float and Ski Planes - No Roads, No Cars

A Cessna 185

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura) 


Because Alaska is so vast, and because any arbitrary straight line intersects more mountain chains and bodies of water than people, it is sensible that Alaskans rely so much more heavily on air transportation than roads. A look at a map reveals very few highways, with numbers like Hwy 1 and Hwy 3!   Since the capital, Juneau, is squeezed in between mountains and the sea, it is accessible ONLY by air or water (and that is true for many communities).  Its grand total of 42 miles of road lead nowhere outside the municipality.  To drive elsewhere, Juneauans load their vehicles onto the Alaska Marine Highway ferries in order to depart at Haynes or Skagway for highway connections to the rest of the continent.  It is no surprise, therefore, that Alaska has the highest per capita ownership of private planes in the country, most of them small, old, beaten up, and beloved.  

With about 280,000 residents, the largest city in the state, Anchorage, contains about half of the state’s population. Logically, the city also hosts several airports for private planes.  The ones that visitors are likely to encounter for flight tours are Merrill Field, primarily for wheeled planes, and Lake Hood, the largest float/ski plane airport in the world, adjacent to Ted Stevens International Airport (ANC).  We fly in and out of Lake Hood on float planes and ski planes to get to our bush cabin, because we have no roads or grass strips for a runway. 

What is it like to commute by float plane?  What would your experience be?

Building a Log Cabin 40 miles from the Nearest Road

(For specific details, on plumbing, solar and wind power, furnishings, and storage, see other articles on this site)

Building a home in a remote location without road access is a long, slow process with very careful planning.  You can't run to Home Depot when you lack a bolt or tool.  Fortunately, our only full time neighbors had constructed a few kit cabins and were willing to tackle a "real cabin" from spruce trees they could harvest on our property, as well as a small 8x10 dock and two sheds.  They did a great job, but the simple box structures took 2.5 years to finish!  

The first was an 8x12 plywood shed on the high point of the property. Its most important function was to hold the battery bank for the solar panels and wind turbine, that were installed the first winter by my husband and two nimble, brave people who climbed the 120 foot power tower they assembled in -10 degree weather.  This little shed also provided much needed storage for the ever increasing number of hand and gas powered tools we needed to accumulate for future projects.   During most winters, the snow on the roof eaves touched  the “ground” level and we have to dig down another five feet to open the door. 

Another initial outbuilding closer to the cabin is the outhouse/storage shed.  Our strong teen neighbor dug a 5x5x6 ft outhouse hole (which was awfully large just for the two of us, but he was a human steam shovel), over which was quickly built an uninsulated, unheated 8x12 building that serves as an outhouse in the front third (4x8) and a storage shed in the back (8x8) for items we needed close to the small cabin.  It contained dry goods, seasonal clothes and supplies, a propane refrigerator (that unreliable purchase and its low tech replacement "cold hole" form another story) and chest freezers, powered by solar/wind.  In a fit of pique to exert some control over something, somehow, I firmly announced the rather ridiculous demand of two stained glass windows for the outhouse, and I hired a friend to design them with Alaskan flowers.  

Before

Embarking on this construction was a complicated logistical puzzle, since there is no road here.  By that I don't imply even a gravel path.  We fly 20 minutes over three rivers or snowmachine 3.5 hours to get to the nearest road.  So every tool that our neighbors did not have and every part we needed to buy, had to be scheduled for delivery by plane (small and light parts) or by snowmachine during an 8 week hauling season when the rivers were frozen hard enough to serve as an ice highway.

Glass windows, plywood, polystyrene insulation, trusses, 2x4s, log screws, roofing metal - all was triaged and delivered over two winters in the order the builders thought they would get to that stage of construction.  And during the summers, we hacked at alders, devil's club and downed spruce and birch to clear small spaces for these structures, disrupting millions of mosquitoes and thousands of wasps and bees in the process. One summer, we encountered a nice big, steaming pile of bear scat almost every morning near where we were working, just to let us know that he/she was watching us through the high grass.   It was hot, dirty, buggy work.  I, for one, was not a happy camper, although my husband was thoroughly enchanted by each day's exertions.      

Once my husband finished the power tower and determined that he would be able to work by Internet and phone from that location, construction on the cabin commenced.

We positioned the cabin exactly where the old homesteader had built his shed, on a little elevation about 50 ft from the lake’s edge.  Our 750 square foot home has two stories, with one room up and another down, subdivided into functional areas, but not rooms.  It is 16 x 24 feet, plus covered decks (10 x16) for all those days when the temperature is pleasant enough to be outside except for the multi-day light drizzles we get here.  The front of the cabin faces west, with views of the lake, two close mountains beyond and a more remote, higher mountain range to the north.   The front door is a sturdy 3 foot wide, 4 inch thick door outfitted with a cast iron bear bar that looks really impervious to intruders until you glance left to the 5 foot picture window next to it! (which we cover with bear shutters when we leave).  (Note: for human intruders, most hingers are on the inside of doors.  To deter bears, the hinges are on the outside, so they can't push a door in as easily). 

Power #3: Our Solar/Wind/Generator Power Compared to City Power Costs

Power #3:  Besides solar and wind power, our other fuel sources are wood and propane (and a backup generator). 

How do our costs contrast to traditional utility rates in a similar climate?  For comparison, I looked at municipal utility/service costs for an average single family home in Anchorage.  It is not an apples-to-apples comparison, because those residences are surely bigger than our little cabin, and sport a flushing toilet (those lucky people) but by adding our outbuildings (the shower/wash house, outhouse, pantry shed and tool/power shed), many of which have electricity and one of which has water service, it may be an informative comparison.  

The results of the analysis: On all utilities/services that can be accomplished by human labor or portable devices, our costs are far lower than city rates.  However, on those utilities that require infrastructure, our costs far exceed those of city folk...for the first several years.  See below for details and conclusions. Do you find any ideas for your home?

Power #2: How Well Do Our Solar/Wind Power and Communications Work?

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Power #2: With the bases and tower built over the prior two seasons (see blog entry, “Building the Power Tower,”)  the second summer’s project focused on installing the power and communications components that we bought from Susitna Energy of Anchorage.  These items were hoisted, tested, repaired, and in some cases, replaced over the next few seasons by the skillful remote power team at H and K Energy of Anchorage who flew out with every conceivable tool they might possibly need for each project they anticipated, as well as for troubleshooting any surprises (since the only way back to their shop or Home Depot was by plane).  We all know how important it is to trust and maybe even like the repair people who work in your home.  It is even more important when, in a remote situation, they sleep on your living room floor and eat with the family!  H and K Energy has stayed with us for several days each, once or twice a year, remaining until like magic, I could call my mother and turn on a lamp.  Over the years, I have come to look forward to their companionability as well as yet another high-tech enhancement.  

(Note:  the following article is much more technical than any other on the site.)

How Do We Get Stuff with No Roads?

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)
 

Brrrr!

Because our home site is remote, everything we use has to be:
(a) local, like wood for building or fuel, or water, from the lake or
(b) expensively transported from elsewhere.  Transport is determined by weather, weight, and dimensions.  This means that shopping lists are developed for needs anticipated a year in advance, and have to include a hefty supply of redundant parts and equipment and dry goods. 

During the winter, the rivers (the –na suffix in names like Yentna, Chena, Susitna means "river: in the Athabaskan language) become “highways” for remote areas, allowing snow machine trailer transport of large, heavy and flammable items, like mattresses, or 55 gallon drums of diesel fuel that are not allowed or are prohibitively expensive to transport by ski or float plane (usually Cessna 182s, 206s, or de Havilland Beavers and Otters).  As of 2011, the planes from Anchorage charge $0.50 per pound unless you charter the whole plane.  Since a whole plane charter costs from $300 – 600, there is an obvious incentive to fill it with over 150 pounds of goods, since a 50 lb bag of groceries will cost $25 to transport by itself.   Each air taxi service has a shed or two at Lake Hood (the largest float plane airport in the world) for accumulated piles of purchases by bush cabin owners like us until time to fly them out.   

The alternative mode of transportation is by snow machine cross country and up river 42 miles, about 3 hours.  That is 42 miles to the boat launch.  Not to Walmart.  Before we bought our own snow machine, our neighbor charged us $300 per day for hauling everything he could carry on his trailer, which holds up to 1000 lbs. He snow machined up river, switched to his truck, stored near a river landing, and then made up to 13 shopping stops (for construction supplies, fuel, furniture, and anything else we could think of) before returning to the pier, loading up his snow machine trailer, securing his truck, and then traveling home, down river and cross country.  That $300 works out to about $0.33/lb for shopping and transportation.  It was well earned and easily paid! 

Power #1: We Build an Off the Grid Power Platform

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

(Power Article #1)  This is one of several articles on this blog describing the power platform my husband built off the "grid" with skillful Alaskan service providers.  This article describes the building process (without power tools).  The other articles describe the cost and functionality of the components we installed (and what worked and didn't), and how much power we use. 
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Building it piece by piece

Want Power?

For many city/suburban people, the conundrum to overcome in installing wind or solar power is the upfront cost and pay back time vs current monthly utility bills.    On the other hand, in dilapidated towns in northern India, with, presumably, unreliable energy, every hotel we stayed in had solar powered water heaters dating back to the 1970s. For us, out in the bush, closer to Rajasthan than Rochester, we had fewer cost/benefit issues to debate.  Want power?  

Two choices: 

A: gasoline or diesel powered generator or B: some combination of wind and solar power.

 As a matter of fact, after we bought our remote property in South Central Alaska, the first building goal, before cabin, outhouse, or any other structure was power for communications. Since my husband is not retired, the determiner of how long we could stay out in the boonies was the quality of communication technology.  His goal was not heat but Internet, not water but a phone.  As the project evolved, it seemed like many a man’s dream:  he could pee behind a tree (well, a million of them) while checking his blackberry.  From a wife’s perspective, those are two of the worst scenarios combined, but I digress.

The Land is Prepared for Buildings But I'm Not Prepared for this endeavor

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Although my husband had the vision to anticipate what this property could become and what it would mean to him, I definitely didn’t.  Our first few seasons felt like the absolutely bleakest way to spend a summer, like some chain gang of convicts clearing swamps for future county roads to nowhere.  I was hot, sweaty, bored, humiliated, sore, and lonely, particularly when he would disappear for a week at a time on business.  I had absolutely no confidence that Bryan had any idea of what he’d gotten us into.  One day, when the weed whacker’s head spun off, sending in who knew what direction all the little screws and washers under ferns and devil’s club leaves, I sat down in the middle of the forest and cried.  “What are we doing here?  You don’t know anything!” 

We didn’t have any of the right tools and we invariably broke the old ones our neighbors loaned us, in what started to seem like a canny plan to get new replacements from hapless cheechakos, as neophytes are known.  We certainly were naïve.  Each replacement required expensive arrangements to fly them out by air-taxi, along with anything else we suddenly realized we’d need, although we as yet had no place to store them.  Weren’t husbands who bought land in Alaska supposed to intuit all this stuff?   

Long Term Food Storage

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Those of us who have lived in Hurricane vulnerable parts of the country get annual reminders at the onset of storm season every June.  Media and supermarkets offer pragmatic lists of supplies to keep on hand. My family took such suggestions seriously, and the resulting preparation came in handy during ice storms and flu season as well as hurricanes and flooding.

I encourage people in the rest of the country to follow suit for whatever reasons make sense to them. I’ve been astonished to read how few households maintain even three days (9 meals) worth of food. For $20, $50, or $100, think of the shelf stable foods that could have enhanced the quality of life for the millions of people trapped by extensive 2010-11 power outages in areas as disparate as San Diego, Cedar Rapids, Tennessee, and Vermont.

The flowers are bok choy, Siberian
wallflowers, and asters 

In Bush Alaska, we stock up on long term food and supplies, primarily because to reach a supermarket we have to fly to one and we don’t do that very often. But, like “Hurricane Alley” residents, many Alaskans, city or rural, are wise enough to be prepared when a tree falls on a power line or a snow plow can’t get through. In one story that sounds like the Arctic version of Gilligan’s Island, friends flew out with another couple in their ski plane for a winter weekend at their hunting cabin. An unseasonably warm storm struck and it rained for days! This softened up the lake ice so much that it was not safe for the ski plane to depart until the temperature dropped for a sustained period, so the foursome was stranded in a very small cabin for s-e-v-e-n-t-e-e-n days. Fortunately, they had bulk storage of grains, pasta, and beans, but surely after a while the menu got pretty dull and the Canasta games pretty boring.

Below is information that I think may be useful for urban or rural folks who can envision a variety of reasons to bulk up on food supplies. You don’t need to be a “prepper”; you might want to have food on hand in case of inclement weather, illness, power outages, transportation glitches, food price inflation or a sudden influx of guests. Some of the products and information are based on personal practice and others are based on websites (see two listed below).

Kayaking Happy Hour

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

I love to hear the rhythmic slap of lake water pushed by the breezes toward our little dock.  Floating around the lake in one of our kayaks, sometimes with a book, sometimes with my husband, is a frequent, leisurely pleasure. 

During the summer months, even if it was foggy in the morning and raining during the day, it invariably clears up around Happy Hour.  Often, but particularly if we have felt cooped up earlier in the day, we will grab  glasses of home made beer and wine and some peanuts, turn the tandem kayak over and have happy hour on the water.  Usually, we will paddle upwind to the far "corner" of the lake and then drift back toward home, betting on how close we'll get to our dock with no adjustment whatsoever.  From that far corner, if it is particularly clear, looking past our cabin, we can see Denali and Denali's Wife, otherwise known as Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker.  These are the brightest white of any natural effect I have ever seen, other than expansive cotton fields in the South.  Since the peaks often rise above a lower layer of clouds, they appear to float, like giant wedding cakes.  Really breathtaking. 

How a High Rise Couple Ended up Living in an Alaskan Log Cabin - The Purchase

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

In 2002, my husband and I took the Inside Passage cruise where he fell in love with Alaska.  Soon he was reading blogs about the state, and engaging in conversation any folks who had lived there.  He even invested in a business near Juneau.  I bought him a subscription to Alaska Magazine so he could coo over its gorgeous photos.  Soon, he started reviewing real estate listings for remote properties, none of which looked particularly realistic to me, given that we lived in a high-rise in Houston, TX and lacked the funds for the attractive or even the ramshackle log cabins featured in the listings. Still, if he was enjoying internet real estate “porn” instead of other websites, it seemed like a harmless enough diversion. 

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Four years later, when he was particularly missing the state, he decided to return to Alaska with his dad for some fishing and good father/son time.  I immediately called my dear father-in-law and prevailed upon him to ensure that Bryan would NOT buy any property without my seeing it first.  This was an ironic request since this is exactly what my father-in-law had done to my incensed mother-in-law decades before, when he returned to their suburban Chicago home after a weekend of hunting with the announcement that he had just bought a 140 acre tree farm in the middle of Wisconsin!  After their fishing trip, Bryan was ecstatic.  He regaled me with delightful stories of their flying into a different fishing camp every day or so, of the lovely scenery they had seen, and the down-to-earth people they had met.  He returned with the thrill of the hunt to his remote real estate websites, trying to entice serious enthusiasm from me for what I still regarded as his version of a fantasy football game.  

What Do You DOOOO All Day?

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Over the past four years of transitioning from a high rise Southern lifestyle to a bush Alaskan one, we have received quite a number of quizzical looks and questions.  Virtually all of my relatives and close friends have said, at one point or another, "Laura - I never thought you would do this" and I certainly don't disagree.

Some of the questions can be divided by gender.  For example, from male friends, Bryan heard two opposite ones:  1) "How on earth did you get your wife to go up there with you?" and 2) "Why on earth would you want your wife up there with you?"  I'm not sure whether the sentiments say more about the questioner or about their impression of me, but I can say that I have never had any women ask me those questions about my husband!

The questions from women fall into two camps, too.  One group is interested in how we do things.  I think of these as the Laura Ingalls Wilder questions.  The other group is made up of individuals, who, for the most part, have no interest in words like "kayak" or "bonfire."  I think of these as fish-out-of-water questioners, like Eva Gabor in "Green Acres" because that is how I first felt! They ask, with a disbelieving shake of the head, "What on earth do you do all day?" Each one finds some particular aspect of our life appalling. 

Fire (including starting one at 10 below)

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

We think about fire all the time, all year long.  Heat, cooking, light, bug deterrent, danger.  Thank goodness for Prometheus!  

Living in a log cabin in the woods, off road and plumbing system, means that we need to be particularly careful about fires. There is no such thing as home insurance in such a situation!  Alaska wildfires ANNUALLY burn about one MILLION acres.  Last year, there were 495 wildfires in the state.  Most of these are in the interior, near Fairbanks, started by lightning or humans and fueled by high winds. 

Below are examples of our fire prevention, fire as bug deterrent, and starting a fire at -10 below F.

Hope for the Promised Land

What does the word, hope, mean to you?  We bandy the word about, hear it in passages like “faith, hope, and charity” but how do those first two words differ, for instance?   I realized recently that I had never really defined it for myself.  Have you?  I think that is a good project for January, particularly in an election year, when we’ll probably hear a lot about it!  Let me share some of my thoughts on the etymology of the word and its use in the Bible – a book that’s all about hope -  in order to encourage you to determine your own definition and to think about what other people may mean when they use the word.

 In my mind, hope is weaker than faith or belief.  Like the story of Pandora’s box, hope arises as a positive antidote to the impediments of life.  Children, for example just want, they don’t hope, because they don’t yet sense the possibility of “no.”   If I express a sentiment like, “I hope that Mom will get better” that is vaguer than “I believe she will” or “I have faith or confidence that she will.”  You can see that my impression of the word is rather lame and floppy, so political rhetoric about “hope and change” or “hope and progress” make me roll my eyes.  They seem like easy platitudes to trot out with Uncle Sam and apple pie.    

 However, I realize that people use the word in different ways than I do and I wondered if that was true historically, too.  If so, that might change my interpretation of significant documents.

The etymology of the English word, hope, is unknown, but it seems to be from a North European, Germanic source that may have something to do with the English word, hop.  I love that connection.  It suggests that hope does not mean something I can reach from where I stand; rather I have to take a little leap toward the object of hope in order to reach it or perhaps even to see it.   

What about in the Bible?  That book is full of hope for the Promised Land in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and for Salvation in the New Testament.  Were the word choices in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament as loosey goosey as my understanding or something stronger?  ln Biblical Greek straight through to modern Greek, the word for hope is elpida.  It is often used as a girl’s name. The word is more assertive than in my definition.  It encompasses a sense of expectation.  When you hope for something, you do not have it in hand but you expect to get it.

Financial Transitioning from One Lifestyle to Another of Your Choosing

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

To most people who have asked how on earth we have managed to move from a city life in the South to a bush cabin in Alaska, my quip has been “my husband’s mid-life crisis.”   Some nod sagely, as though they KNEW it had to be something like that, and then turn to other subjects. Others, though, don’t let us off the hook so easily.  They lean in and inquire, “No, really, how?”  I sense a plaintiveness in the question:  Maybe it means: “I once wanted to do something like that.  Maybe it means:  “How does one let go?”    My impression is that the subtext of these questions is how do you shed a lifestyle loaded with heavy financial and time commitments, like mortgages, car loans, tuition payments, business and social obligations, and all the things we think we are “supposed to buy and do.”  

We did not transition quickly.  It took many years, starting before Alaska was even considered.  While other blog entries describe our life off the beaten path, this entry attempts to reconstruct concrete changes we made that anyone might implement, in advance, in the city, on the job, in order to enable lifestyle changes of their choosing.

I think of the process like brushing a dog.  You’ll be surprised by the amount of light weight dead hair you remove from a dog.  Afterward, s/he looks exactly the same (or better) and you don't miss the dead hair. 

My three pieces of advice follow, with examples for each:

1)    Shed expenses you don’t value

2)    Shed commitments that cost more in time and money than you value 

3)    By doing 1 and 2, you will become more intentional.  You will create a “values map” that makes either/or choices clearer, enabling you to free up dollars and hours you can allocate in different ways more to your liking.

Business Benefits Accrued from Life in the Bush

Sometimes, we encounter an absolute culture block about our life in Alaska.  Usually it is because the person perceives ours as a life of such privation, analogous to a New Yorker who can’t imagine living in New Jersey, or a couple with children who can’t imagine a home without them.  Another culture block is from those who can’t envision working remotely.  However, as more and more people do the latter (I read that 1/3 of all IT professionals work remotely),  we encounter less resistance from workers than from retirees whose life experience required a commute to an office in order to be paid.

This blog entry describes time management/business benefits we gained from living in the Alaska bush that we never expected, largely from something very simple: intentionality.  Another entry describes non business gains (physical, psychological, and marital).

Money and Conflict: Spiritual Challenges and Gifts

One of my big pet peeves about churches is that the only time they seem to talk about money is when they want some!  It’s not that I begrudge their need.  Any organization that occupies a building has utility bills, insurance, maintenance.  Anyone who values that organization and its facility should contribute to those payments.

No, what bothers me is something else.   If Churches are supposed to help us wrestle with personal and social demons and sort out ethical dilemmas and inspire us to do good in the world, and if, surely, a central figures in many of these human dramas is the role of money – sometimes as the good guy and sometimes as the bad guy, then money seems a very worthy topic on a Sunday morning - not to ask for it  -but to help the congregants deal with it!  And yet, in the churches I have attended, I don’t believe I have ever heard such a sermon.  Have you? 

Instead, many religions proclaim negative images of money:  Buddha gave up princely wealth,  Gandhi gave up his job as an attorney.  Jesus has mixed messages about money.  So I endeavored to make something up!


I started with some research, as I always do.  I discovered that a number of churches and religious leaders do talk about money, and interestingly some of these are large and growing congregations, like Lakewood and the Unity congregation in Houston.  These are described by some people as “churches of abundance” and “ministries of prosperity.”  I’m sure I’m simplifying their messages, but they seem to be that God wants you to have a life of abundance, which includes financial prosperity.   Norman Vincent Peal wrote: Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system.”

Now I don’t feel particularly comfortable with these points of view, so my thoughts turned to what people actually do with their money.  Money doesn’t appear on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs alongside water, food, shelter, safety, but isn’t it really shorthand for all of them?  Money is a way to measure and secure so much water or so much food or shelter.  This transactional role of money is pretty clear cut. 

But it also occurred to me that if the number one reason cited for divorce is not love or sex but money, it must have other roles or meanings, too.  Earning, accumulating, sharing, spending, and saving money are freighted by symbolic meaning for people, and that meaning may differ for a husband and wife or a father and son or employees in different departments of the same business, or for political figures.

So here is my approach:  It seems to me that money means four different things to people, and each one has a spiritual challenge and a spiritual gift.  These four meanings are safety, power, opportunity, and  affection.  It can hold these meanings for different people, or to the same person in different circumstances. I hope that as I speak, you’ll consider what money means to you, and what challenges you face because of that and what gifts you gain.  Maybe you’ll come up with meanings altogether different than the ones I list.   

Because financial arguments often line up with safety on one side and the other three opposite it, I am going to talk longest about saving money as a safety strategy, and then more briefly about the other three.