cannon beach

this photo and the header are of Cannon Beach in Oregon.  We will be taking a break and then posting old photos from Oregon where we lived after leaving Alaska.   Glad you enjoyed the Alaskan journey, it was fun for us too.

 

We woke up on our first morning outside Alaska in spectacular surroundings. We were in a pull-out area and right across the road were hills that had fog moving across them. Behind us was a gorgeous looking blue lake. I would’ve liked to gaze at those hills and see if it was possible to hike near the lake, but there were no facilities in the little rest area and the priorities were bathroom and coffee. So we took the dogs outside to do their business, got back in the truck and got back underway.

We were both tired all day, since we’d barely slept the night before. It was the wee hours of the morning by the time we found a place to stop and then Miki was stressed and needing attention. So when we saw a nice camp ground in the middle of the afternoon, we stopped. It was a lovely spot, the weather was perfect, and we set our tent up under a tree. The two people and the two dogs were thrilled. The dogs loved tent camping and were happy to settle into the tent on their blankets. As the journey went on, they got really excited when we’d stop and they saw us setting up the tent. Once we were done taking stuff out of the truck, we placed some food on the floor of the passenger side and the makeshift litter box in the space under the steering wheel, opened the sliding windows on the cab and the back of the cab, and let Pearl (the cat) out of her carrier. Once the four-legged furry kids were settled, Bill and I took turns in the showers. We’d been living without running water for the whole of the previous year and most of the year before that, so we weren’t really used to showers any more. Bill went first. He came back and said it cost a quarter to get the hot water, but it went on forever. I actually found this a bit stressful! I went in, stuck my quarter in the slot and the water began coming. I washed my hair and the rest of me and the water kept coming. There was no way to turn it off and I didn’t want to waste it, but I was unsure what else I could do, so in the end, I just decided to stand there and enjoy it. We made some supper and hung out with the dogs. It was a nice evening and we all slept really well. 

The next day, the rain came. It rained, rained, and rained some more. We didn’t want to set up the tent under the circumstances, so we stopped at a place with little cabins and hoped they’d let us in with the dogs. Bill went in and asked. The woman said she wasn’t really supposed to let dogs in, but considering the weather, she would if we promised to clean up well when we left. We did and were grateful. It was a cute little cabin with a small kitchen and bathroom and a very comfortable bed. 

It was quite an enjoyable trip south. We’d agreed we would not rush but wouldn’t dawdle, either. We were on schedule until what we thought would be the penultimate night. We were somewhere in British Columbia and planned to stay the night there, cross the border the following day, and stay somewhere in Washington before going on to our new home. We stopped at what looked like a beautiful camp ground—and it was quite breathtaking with big trees and a sort of deep ravine running through it. Bill paid for a site, but when we got to it and I got out of the truck, I was almost blown into the side of it by the wind! Clearly we were not going to be able to set up a tent under the circumstances, so we decided to walk the dogs and see if it eased up. It didn’t. We decided to leave, push on across the border, stay in Washington that night, and get to our destination a day sooner than expected. Back into the truck we all went. We stopped somewhere and got subs to eat later for dinner. We stopped for the day a few hours later than we’d planned and we were both so hungry that subs never tasted so good! 

leaving part 2

This realtor was a funny guy and a bit of a character. He had a round face with a prominent mustache. He had these commercials where he’d be standing with someone whose house he had sold, saying as he held up a SOLD sign, ‘If you want to have one of these on your house, (then holding up a company FOR SALE sign), you’ve got to have one of these on your house.’ Then the seller would say, ‘Jim sold my house in 3 weeks! Thanks, Jim!’ and they’d shake hands. As we sat upstairs in the cabin, having spent 5 minutes saying we wanted to sell and him deciding to buy it, I joked with him that this was way quicker than any of the sales in his commercials. He said, ‘Do you want to do a commercial?’ We agreed to do one, so a film crew showed up one day with Jim and his signs. He did his spiel with the signs and I said, ‘Jim sold my house in 5 minutes!’ Then Bill said, ‘Thanks, Jim!’ and we all shook hands. It was funny. No one had to know that he sold it in 5 minutes because he’d sold it to himself! We did get to see it once before we left. It was weird watching the news and then suddenly seeing ourselves in a commercial. 

And so we prepared to leave Alaska. It was bittersweet. I loved Alaska, but I knew it was time to go and I was excited to see what would happen next. It was painful to say goodbye to Bentley and J Frost E, but they went to a good new home together.

The two dogs and Pearl the cat were coming with us. Mikiruaq, the sled dog, was not good with change or being in a vehicle. She would get very agitated. The day we left, we’d gotten a later start than we wanted and it was afternoon before we were ready to get the critters and ourselves into the truck. First came Pearl. We had to get her into the cat carrier, so we played some sort of trick on her to get her in there. She glared at us in return, but she was safely tucked in, so into the truck she went. The black lab, Chunkman, was fine. He was very mellow and laid back. Miki the sled/bed dog was a different story, though. She was very agitated, even with the sedative the vet prescribed for her. She crawled under the cabin. We could not coax her out, even with food, although Chunk was happy to have a snack while waiting in the truck for her. Bill had to crawl under the cabin and get her. She kept backing up until something blocked her way and he was able to reach her. We got her into the truck and hoped she would settle in on the blankets and rest. She didn’t, but we were off. We crossed the border with no incident, but when we got to the place we’d planned to stay—the same place we stayed at the last night of our journey to Alaska a decade earlier, we found that they would not let us in with the dogs. So we drove on. It was late and just about dark when we saw the pull-out where a couple of RVs were parked. We pulled in there and tried to get a bit of sleep. We didn’t get much, because Miki was vocalizing a lot and we were trying to keep her quiet. When it got light a few hours later, I saw that our surroundings were breathtaking. There were craggy hills across the road with fog partially obscuring them. There was a bright blue lake behind us. It was some compensation for the twinge of sadness I felt at leaving the far north. We didn’t have time to linger and enjoy the views, though. We needed to find a bathroom and some coffee. Priorities, you know. 

leaving part 1

 As we regrouped in North Pole after our post-Fairbanks plans changed, we were still thinking about the same things that had led us to sell the house in Fairbanks. The issues had not changed and we still needed to figure out what we should do next. Once Bill had learned that he could get Irish citizenship by descent, he began gathering the documentation he would need. He first got birth, marriage, death certificates from the United States. Once we had those, it was time to try to get the documentation needed from Ireland. When we looked into how to do this, we discovered that we would need to send in a form with a year on it. They would look for records from that year and the year before and year after as well. We were left to guess a bit here, because we weren’t sure about his grandfather’s year of birth and while we had a date for his grandmother, we were aware that this might not be accurate, since somehow we learned that she had lied about her age on her marriage certificate as she was a bit older than her new husband. So we guessed for both of them and sent in the paperwork. They found nothing for that time frame for his grandfather. Records were often lost and at the time, Ireland was still colonized by the British, who were extremely brutal towards the native Irish people in many ways, including exporting food while Irish people starved to death. Birth records were easily lost or destroyed. It was suggested that we could try church records or submit another form with another year. This was not necessary, though, because they did find records for his grandmother. That’s all we needed. Even though we had all the documentation, we decided to wait until we knew what we’d be doing and where we’d be before sending in the citizenship application. It said it could take 18 months. Who knew where we would be by then? We were pretty sure it wouldn’t be in North Pole.

We went around and around about this until finally we had a plan. We called the realtor who’d sold us the place a year before and he came over to chat. We told him we wanted to sell and asked whether someone else could take over the contract or how we should go about it. He said he’d have to talk to the owner, but throughout the time we were sitting there and while we were talking and he was answering, he was looking around. Suddenly, he said, ‘Maybe I’ll buy it. Yes, I think I will. I’ll buy it!’ This was a surprise! He whipped out his calculator and tapped away. He looked up and offered us $5000 more than we’d paid for it a year before. Stunned, we accepted the offer. 

transfer station

 

photo courtesy of KUAC

When we lived in both Fairbanks and North Pole, there was no home garbage collection. Instead, we brought our trash to the transfer station, a fenced in open area lined with dumpsters. Shortly after we got to Fairbanks, in an effort to discourage dumpster diving and encourage re-use, they built a covered platform where people could leave things they no longer wanted, but could be used by others. One day when I wasn’t feeling well and was only half awake, I heard someone on the radio talking about the transfer station mall and my muddled mind struggled to figure out where that was. Then I had a chuckle when I realized what she was talking about.

We used the transfer station ‘mall’ both ways. We would sometimes find useful items there. Once, in North Pole, we had a funny experience. Daughter and I had a running joke for years about kitty couches. Patterns for crocheted kitty couches were all the rage at the time and she used to tell me over and over again that I needed to make several for our cats. I resisted. Not my kind of project and besides, they had many boxes lined with crocheted blankets they seemed to like just fine. By the time we were in North Pole, she had moved away from Alaska, but one day as we were driving out of the transfer station, I suddenly spotted something. ‘KITTY COUCH!’ I yelled, ‘STOP!’ Poor Bill jumped so high that he almost put his head through the truck roof as he slammed on the brakes. I jumped out and went to examine the miniature couch. I think this miniature couch was for children and not cats, but it could become a kitty couch and so it did. We brought it home and put it upstairs in the cabin by the door to the porch. Two of the cats, who normally did not want anything to do with one another, shared that couch, always one on the left side and the other on the right. A truce was called when the kitty couch was in use and each of them had their spot.

We also used the transfer station to leave things for others. When we were leaving the house in Fairbanks, thinking we would be going to Maine, we brought a lot of stuff there, including a set of dishes. I had them in a box and was carrying them to the platform when I was stopped by a guy just hanging out there, spending some time sitting on the tailgate of his large pickup truck. ‘Whatcha got there?’ he asked. I tilted the box so he could see what it contained. ‘Go ahead and stick it right in here, please,’ he said. So I did. He had other things in his truck, so I guess he’d been there for a while.

The woman I heard on the radio that day had picked up a beautiful doll house and many accessories at the transfer station—her daughter loved it. Of course, people put junk there, too, but mostly they were good about what they left there and it was always neat and clean. Because it was covered, it was protected from the elements. We could use such a place right now as the books pile up around us. We have boxes of books that we’ve read since the lockdowns began. We don’t want to keep them, but with charity shops closed and no wee free libraries in this town, we have nowhere to bring them. We have considered putting a box outside with a sign saying ‘free books, help yourself,’ but we have not had enough dry weather to do that yet. Meanwhile, new books somehow seem to keep coming and the piles keep growing! Every time we go to the recycling centre with our tins and glass, we think about how great it would be if there was a covered area for people to leave some of the things they bring up there. Many times we see perfectly good items that people could use, but they get rained on and ruined. Sad.

the north pole

 when we first saw this, we thought it was funny, a north pole in North Pole but not The North Pole. :).

the cabin

the cabin in north pole

one side of the living room

the other side

kitchen

one side of upstairs

the other side

checking the oil

I love this shadow from a candle holder we had

a filet crocher dog that Shari made

adaptation

 And so we all settled into life in our new cabin. Bill was working at the university again, but now he had to drive 25 minutes to get there, instead of just heading 3 miles down the hill. I was at home, trying to adjust to non-academic life—a life I’d been a part of one way or another for almost all of my adult life up to that point (I’d started at a community college when I was 25 and our daughter was starting first grade). I was somewhat lost for a while, but I did have a lot of time to think!

The critters had their own adjustments to make. Our sled dog, Mikiruaq, (who let it be known early on that she was actually a bed dog, not a sled dog), was nervous. She was not one for change and she wasn’t keen on this one. The cabin was great—I loved the way things were set up and organized to make use of the small space. There was a living room, small kitchen, and bedroom downstairs and an almost ladder-like set of stairs. Upstairs was an open space, with a bed on one side and open space on the other, where we set up our computers, back when big desktops were the thing. The dogs could not navigate the stairs, which was an issue for Miki. She did not like for us to be out of her sight. She had to adjust, though, and she did. She and her brother liked to sleep on opposite ends of the futon couch. 

It was not long before I noticed that she knew when Bill was cominghome from work. She would suddenly sit up, turn around, set her chin on the windowsill and look out the window until she saw his truck turning into the yard. By paying attention to how much time elapsed between her sitting up and Bill’s arrival (about 10 minutes), I knew that she somehow knew when he was getting off the Richardson Highway. It didn’t matter whether he stopped for groceries, gas, or water on the way home and was a little later than usual or left a little earlier—she knew.

The cats also had a change in personality. Bentley became a madman, racing around the cabin with his bent leg, getting into stuff, and generally being crazy—a big change from how he behaved in the previous house! One day, I came home to find poppy seeds all over the floor. He’d gotten into shelved cart where I had them and ripped open the package. Another time, I found that he’d gotten into my basket of crochet thread and chewed/clawed some of it to shreds. We got lucky on the night he decided to eat some yarn. I saw a piece dangling from his mouth, so I grabbed it and started pulling. I pulled, pulled, and pulled some more. It just kept coming. He was gagging. But we eventually reached the end. I started calling him Pest Elvis, but I still loved the little guy.

J Frost E had his routine. He loved the duster that was supposed to be Bentley’s beloved toy. The latter had no use for it when he started living with us, but J really took to it. He had a system for the cabin. He played with it off and on throughout the day. But at night, things got more intense. He would start playing with it upstairs, then at 10 o’clock every single night, we would hear the thunk, thunk, thunk of J carrying his duster down the stairs to get wild with it there. You could set your watch by it. Who knows why 10 was the magic hour. He knew.

During winter nights, we could watch the northern lights from bed, which was cool, if we didn’t feel like getting dressed and going outside in the middle of the night. The cabin had a septic tank, but no running water, so when we had a holiday weekend where the temperature got down to -50F, we didn’t really have to worry about freezing pipes. Bill did have to go out and start the truck each day so it could run for a while, but by the Monday, even with that and keeping it plugged in, it wouldn’t start. He called the auto club people around noon and they said it would be 3 before they could get there because they were backed up.  We weren’t planning to go anywhere, so that was fine. Time passed. Three o’clock came and went. Hours went by. The evening passed. It warmed up to almost 0(F) so we went outside in T-shirts and started shovelling some snow. The guy showed up at midnight. It took a few tries and the guy almost gave up, but they got the battery going and we left the truck running for a while to warm up. 

Winter turned into spring and we continued our discussions about how we wanted to proceed. We were soon to come to some conclusions.

selling and buying

 Approximately a year after we got our septic tank replaced and Neighbour had inquired about our plans, we had decided we wanted to move on. Bill had grown tired of the oral history job—not the work itself, but the uses to which it was put. Both of us saw potential in bringing the kind of work he was doing to a wider audience. He was combining interviews with photos and scanned documents into a computer program that could be viewed like a website, but offline. The way these were structured at work was for the benefit mostly of researchers, which was valuable, but not how we would do it for people who wanted to document the life of their grandma, for example. We did a test project with the local quilt guild, which was fun for us and them and quite fascinating. They loved the end result, which was promising. We wanted to pursue this idea, but for various reasons, the university was an obstacle, particularly when it came to funding community projects. Also, I’d joined an online writing community and had gotten inquiries about being brought to local writing groups as a speaker, but the cost of my travel would have been prohibitive for them. We decided that staying would place us in a kind of a holding pattern. Since Daughter had graduated from high school and was moving away herself, everything seemed to point us in a new direction. 

We dithered about timing, but finally made a decision to call Neighbour on a particular weekend, since we’d promised to let them know when we were ready to sell. That Saturday, the phone rang. Imagine my shock when it was Neighbour asking us again about selling. I told him, ‘You won’t believe this, but we were planning to call you tomorrow!’ He went on to say that he was in Tennessee at his parents’ home. He wanted the house for them. They had no other family, were elderly, and had just gotten scammed. He’d been trying to get them to move to Fairbanks for years and they’d always refused—until that weekend. They were ready to head north. Neighbour said he and his wife would be over when they got back home later in the week. We sort of walked around in a daze, marvelling at how things were unfolding.

The neighbours came over to look around the house. I kept pointing out all the things that were wrong or would need work. He kept repeating, ‘This place has great chi.’ I laughed and commented that we were each taking on the wrong role. I was supposed to be gushing about how great the place was while he pointed out the many problems. He made an offer for a cash sale. We accepted it. That was that.

We started preparing for a major move, for ourselves and Daughter. Bill quit his job and they had a farewell party for us. I’m not sure why or how we decided we’d check out Down East Maine, but we booked a flight to Bangor and headed for Ellsworth. We talked to a realtor about what was available. It quickly became apparent that nothing there would suit, so we just enjoyed the rest of our trip and went back to Fairbanks. With about a week left until we had to vacate so remodelling could begin to make the house more comfortable for Neighbour’s elderly parents. We arrived home in the middle of the night and Daughter was flying out later that day. We got some of her boxes mailed off to her new address and then drove down to North Pole, a town 20 miles south of Fairbanks, to look at a cabin that was for sale. We’d picked up one of those real estate booklets that they had at the time and found it in there. It looked promising, so Bill called the realtor and set up an appointment for a viewing the next day. Later that evening, we drove our daughter to the airport and said a tearful good-bye. Then we went home and crawled into bed.

The next day, we viewed the cabin and said we wanted to buy it (it was another owner contract, so we didn’t have to deal with a bank). We went back to the realtor’s office and explained our situation, saying we’d need to move in the following week. He was surprised, but he said he thought he could make it happen. He did. So a week after we got back from Maine, a little disappointed but open to whatever was coming next, we moved into our new home. It was a holiday weekend and we’d rented a U-Haul. It broke down in front of the cabin. The office where Bill had rented it was closed early for the holiday, so he had to call the national number. A flatbed truck was sent to haul it away. Our truck was at the office, so Bill called someone to pick him up and bring him to the truck. I hauled some boxes until he got back, then we went back to Fairbanks for one more night, bringing the dogs and cats to their new home the following day. We were exhausted, but got settled into life in North Pole. When Neighbour’s parents moved in, they invited us to visit them. They were lovely people and we became friends, visiting them regularly. 

Bill got his old job back and we tried to decide what the next plan would be. One day at work, someone came in for something and mentioned that he’d gotten Irish citizenship because his grandparents were born in Ireland. Bill’s ears perked up and he started asking questions. When he got home, he looked into it further, saw that he qualified, and started gathering the required documents. I am writing this today in my home in rural Ireland partly as a result of us not going to Down East Maine, but going to North Pole instead, and Bill returning to his old job. And we weren’t done with Maine, yet, either, although that was almost a decade in the future. 

issues and the septic tank

 After leaving academia, I took some time to pursue other interests. I was particularly happy to have so much more time to be creative and pursue my passion for fibre arts and doing my own reading about the history of knitting, embroidery, crocheting, etc in women’s lives. I joined the local needlework guild, where I learned new techniques. I taught myself needle tatting—a skill that would be useful in a practical way a few years later when I was hired to teach this and other skills at a local yarn shop. I was having to adjust to a new sort of life, which was sometimes difficult, but I was glad to be out of academia. However, after a year or two, when it was suggested to me that I start an interdisciplinary PhD course of study with a focus on language preservation, I allowed myself to be talked into it, against my better judgement and in spite of my misgivings. I was also offered a job in the Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC), which I accepted.

This all turned out to be a mistake, of course, for a few reasons. Some of the same old stuff would turn out to be an issue again as far as the Native-White tension goes. One day, I had a frank discussion with a younger faculty member in ANLC, who had brought in close to a million dollars in grant money. Under normal circumstances, this would have provided him with a secure track to tenure, but in this case, because he was a White guy, he was not even on that track. He finally had to apply for a position in the education department as a threat to ANLC before they relented and put him on the tenure track. ANLC had a bunch of White guys as senior faculty, but they were trying to get more Native people in there. This was a commendable goal, but was often counterproductive. In the case of my teacher, for instance, she was not given proper teacher training and did not know how to proceed. Students dropped away after the first year.  That wasn’t the only problem, however.

In this new program, which I was building from scratch, I would be working with her again, but long fieldwork trips to Village would not be required—we could work together in Fairbanks. But then she got arrested again. She and her husband had started drinking again during their first year in Fairbanks. He stopped, but she had difficulty controlling her drinking. As someone who used to have the same problem, I understood this and had some empathy. She’d gotten arrested for driving under the influence a few years before and had continued to get caught violating her probation. So it was again. At a committee meeting, where we were discussing how I should proceed under the circumstances, one of the members suggested I could work with her in the jail. I wondered what the hell I was doing. 

In the end, it didn’t matter. I was gaining a deeper understanding of my mistake when one day at work, when she was out of jail and back in the office, she called me over. I went in and wondered what that smell was. She reached around into a bookcase, pulled out a plastic cup, and took a long drink, before telling me that she’d just learned her contract would not be renewed when it was up, so she wouldn’t be back. I knew I was done with academic life.

I stayed at the job, though, as the pay check came in handy. Bill was continuing his work in Oral History and the Film Archives and we were starting to develop ideas for future projects of our own. In the meantime, we needed to have our septic tank replaced. We didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the start of a new chapter of our lives. As the work was being done, our nearest neighbour came walking over to chat with Bill, asking him what was going on. Bill told him and Neighbour asked whether we were moving. Bill said we weren’t then, but it was possible that in another year or so we might be. Neighbour said that if we ever wanted to sell, to call him first before placing the house on the market. Bill said we would do that. 

I left the job at ANLC when one day, my pay check was not in the pile. When the admin person inquired about this, she found out that someone had not submitted the proper paperwork or something. I was told not to worry—it would show up eventually. Indeed. I told them they could combine it with my last check, because I was done.

trapped in the bentley mall

One night at a meeting of the Fairbanks Needlework Guild, a woman sat down next to me, nodded towards another woman across the room, and said, ‘She told me to talk to you.’ As I asked her what she wanted to talk to me about, I was curious about what her answer would be. She proceeded to talk about a black cat, less than a year old, named Bentley. He was given that name because he was found as quite a young kitten stuck in the door of the Michaels craft store in the Bentley Mall (the northernmost mall in North America). When rescued, he had leg injuries so needed to have some surgery. His leg was saved and he could use it, but it was bent in a funny direction (another tie-in with his name!) and he limped a little. Nonetheless, he had recovered well and his injury didn’t impede his movement in any way as he grew. The problem was, this woman’s daughter turned out to be allergic and they needed a new home for the little guy. I was apparently seen as an easy mark, so she was pointed in my direction.

I told her I’d talk to Bill about it and when I got home, that’s the first thing I did. He was not hostile to the idea, but he wasn’t overly enthusiastic, either. We’d just adopted white rescue cat named Frosty from the Humane Society (we quickly renamed him J. Frost E.). We weren’t sure about introducing another cat into the house so soon, but Bill emailed the woman and asked a few questions. After she’d answered, we talked about it and agreed that we’d bring Bentley home. We needn’t have worried, because J and Bentley became friends very quickly. Bentley came with a feather duster, because he loved it, we were told. He was uninterested in it when he came to our house, but J loved it! He would flop onto his back, holding the feather duster with his front paws, then bite it and start to attack it with his back paws. It was funny. Bentley, although younger than J, was kind of mellow. It all worked out beautifully and we were glad that we’d agreed to become Bentley’s people. 

combat fishing

can be a very frustrating way to fish.  People get tangled up with their lines every now and then.  Others move around to find a better spot.  Needless to say, it is a very popular sport in the summer months.  

welcome sign

A beautiful carving of the bear somewhere in Soldotna.

 

fishing community

Ken's Alaskan Tackle has been open for over 35 years providing the community with a go to tackle store that carries everything you need for fishing.  We stopped to get some fishing supplies because our friend wanted to fish for salmon.

Denali National Park

 we drove to Denali which was about an hor drive from our house.  We were going to take a bus tour with our foreign exchange student and her dad, who was visiting from Norway.  I have a few images from that bus ride. 

I always liked the signs that tell you how far certain places are

photo taken from the parking lot.

once on the bus, you can get off anywhere and just flag another bus.  We had stopped at the place below for a break.  Some people took a walk and didn't come back on the bus.  You don't have to ride the same bus to return.

the only bear we saw, photo taken from the bus

murphy dome

Murphy Dome is now a recreational site most popular with ATV riders and hikers. It lies about twenty miles outside of the Fairbanks, most of which are traveled on Murphy Dome Road off of Sheep Creek Road which can be accessed from the UAF campus. Murphy Dome Road turns to packed dirt and gravel just past Cache Creek Trail. The average car can still make the drive, but obey the speed limit and watch for potholes, road debris, and frost heaves on the way.

You’ll enjoy scenic vistas as you wind through lowland forest and climb up toward the Dome, with views opening up over the valley. The road curves around the outer rim of the dome toward the end with pullouts for photos or a brief stop. It’s a good idea to use your flashers, as the dust kicked up from the road can make it hard to see a stopped vehicle. At the top, park in the dirt and gravel lot in the center of the Dome. On one end stands a communications tower and on the other, the last operational remnant from the Air Force Base. ATV trails are scattered throughout, and also work for a quick day hike if you feel like stretching your legs.  Also a great place to pick blueberries.

This Dome is a popular place to watch sunsets in the summer and fall, or to observe the northern lights in winter. Mosquitos come in droves here during the summer, so bring your bug spray.

Info courtesy of alaska.org

leader board

 for the North American Champion Sleddog Race

getting ready

getting the dogs ready to race.  It took a few hours to get everyone organized and ready to go.

 

dog transport

each dog has its own section in these trucks.  I thought it was pretty cramped but the dogs weren't big and probably were used to it.  They seemed anxious to get out and run once they arrived.  

mushing 2

 getting ready

mushing

the north american open sprint race .

pike's aviator greenhouse and sweets

 built in 2000.

hot licks ice cream

on a cold day.  Their ice cream is homemade and there is a huge line in warmer weather.  No waiting in the winter though. :)  You can visit their website Hot Licks

early morning

 in Soldotna, Alaska

the uaf library

The Elmer E. Rasmuson Library (often referred to as Rasmuson Library) is the largest research library in the U.S. state of Alaska, housing just over one million volumes. Located on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, it is named in honor of Elmer E. Rasmuson, who served on the University of Alaska Board of Regents from 1950 to 1969 and was the board chair from 1956 to 1968. He was a major supporter of expanding the library and moving it to its present location.  (Wikipedia)

UAF Film Archives

When you enter the library, you are on the fourth floor.  There are two floors above it and three below it.  I worked on the third floor in Oral History and on the second floor in the Film Archives.  I always thought it was weird going to work at 8 in the morning when it was dark and leaving around 2ish and it was dark again.  So I used to wear my sunglasses to make my mind think it was light out. :)  Of course when I opened the door it was dark.

The library always had some issues to deal with and they were placed in the deferred maintenance section of the budget which meant it wouldn't be addressed anytime soon.  At one point, they decided they had to do something about the flooding problem. Because some of the library was below ground level, this was a major problem. Offices and departments had to be moved to higher floors. Books and documents had to be shelved elsewhere. Work commenced and went on for months. About a million dollars later, people and books moved back. And the following spring, there was a flooding problem once again.

decision time

 sunset taken from the university.

After my attempts at working in Village failed, and I decided it was not worth spending any more of my life on, I headed in a different direction. I faced some pushback from my committee chair, but had support from another committee member, who told me that if necessary, he would take over as chair, but politically it would be better for the current chair to remain, so he and his wife, also a committee member, would work together to steer the next meeting in the way I wanted it to go. They did and I was able to proceed. 

Things did not run smoothly, though. I faced pushback along with some crazy behaviour on the part of supposedly mature tenured professors. I was finding satisfaction in teaching, and I felt I was good at this (my course evaluations backed this up), but other aspects of academic life were becoming less and less satisfactory and teaching is the least valued part of what is required. The thing is, I really should have known well before then. Well, the truth is, I did know, but I tried to rationalize this knowledge away.

When we went to Fairbanks to look for a place to live, the semester was over, but I called in at my new department anyway, and introduced myself to the two admin women in the office, one of whom gave me a tour. My heart felt increasingly heavy, and when we went back to the rental car, I got in and burst into tears, much to Bill’s surprise and dismay! ‘It’s horrible!’ I spluttered through my tears. He kept trying to assure me that it was just because it was new and it’d be better once I got used to it. Time would prove me right in the end. It was a horrible department. It was colonial and exploitative. I soon learned that focus was turning away from Alaska Native communities and towards Russia, because the former no longer wanted to play along, as I found out. Even on a personal level, the behaviour of some people was appalling. For example, when I told my advisor that I’d been given the name of my teacher’s sister, her response was, ‘Ooh, you’ll be able to get lots of information now!’ When she asked where I got my parka and I told her my teacher made it for me, she literally rubbed her hands together and said, ‘You’re definitely in now.’  I was repulsed. I later learned that both she and her husband had experience in being opposed by the Native people they were working with. In both cases, statements were made in books (before publication) that the Native people felt misrepresented them. Instead of fixing these mistakes, they opted to ignore the concerns and publish anyway. This was a lesson to me about what kind of work would be expected of me if I continued. I tried to thread the needle for a few years altogether, looking for a way to satisfy the committee while still remaining ethical, but I wasn’t having much luck.

There was some ridiculous stuff, too. I was doing an independent study with a guy Bill worked with and we were sitting in his office when he decided to start baring his soul. He was well aware of my feminist ideas, that gender was one of my main areas of interest, and that I was teaching the Gender in Cross Cultural Perspectives course, so when he started off with, ‘I probably shouldn’t say this to you...’ I was already thinking, ‘Yeah, probably not. Stop talking now.’ But he didn’t and proceeded to tell me that he felt that his job was far more important than his wife’s job. I was thinking that since he didn’t do very much, and what he did do was underwhelming, this was a delusional statement, but this was the same guy who was having a temper tantrum one day when Bill and I walked into the office—he was angry because he’d forgotten his email password, so couldn’t access it. This was somehow the fault of the tech people. So I wasn’t expecting much of an answer when I asked him why he thought he was so much more important than his wife. He replied that he got paid a lot and was proud of bringing home the bacon. He said he would sometimes think, ‘Wow, look at all that bacon.’ I burst out laughing in response and it took me a minute or two to be able to respond. When I did, it was to poke holes in his theory. I emailed Bill when I got home and was telling him about this episode and starting laughing all over again. From that day on, we called the guy Bacon Man. 

The same guy commented on how much ‘service’ I was doing—more than was usual for someone in my position. He was right about that and one of those projects was what finally brought things to a head. I was on the dean search committee and we were going through the normal procedures. We made our choice, which was not a person from inside the university. This angered some people in the communications department, where their head had applied—and not made the final three. Things got quite nasty. One member of the search committee got threats on her voicemail. We all got a nasty email from a professor in the communication department. This hit my last nerve and I replied, basically ripping him a new one. He apologized to all of us and to me personally, admitting that he should not have sent the email. Others on the committee thanked me for doing what I did. But I’d had enough. 

When that year was done, I went home to make sure, but I pretty much knew I was done. When the next academic year started, I informed my committee that I was withdrawing. They tried to talk me out of it and my chair had me in her office, reading a letter she wrote when she was a new anthropologist, expressing some of the same concerns I had. ‘See,’ she said, ‘We all go through this. Please reconsider.’ I told her that in spite of her misgivings, she decided to go ahead anyway and to ignore her concerns, but I couldn’t do that and I knew that if I went ahead and ‘got the piece of paper’ as some were encouraging me to do, I would feel ashamed of the degree. I am proud of the work I did as an undergrad and in my MA program. I would not be proud of this. So I walked. It was hard and I went through a tough time afterwards, even though I never doubted that it was the right thing to do. I’d spent most of my adult life up to that point in academia and I wasn’t sure what would be next. But I knew what I shouldn’t do and that was a start.

Adventures in Fieldwork Part 5

 Adventures in Fieldwork Part 5

Note: This essay is about my own culture shock and is not in any way intended to be disparaging towards the people in Village. The conditions there are complex and I am not being critical of the place or the people. My focus is on my own mindset and shortcomings in this situation.  Photo by Shari Burke.

the village late July sunset 

As I lay there fully dressed on top of the bed, I was thinking over everything that had happened to me in my degree program.  I was thinking of my last trip to Village.  I thought of what I would tell my advisor and my friends.  I realized I didn’t really care about any of that.  I had to be realistic. Now that I had a better understanding of the reality of Village life, I had to admit that doing extensive fieldwork, which would require me to live in Village for at least a year was probably not a good idea. Bringing our high-school-aged daughter to such a place was out of the question and I was not keen on being away from her and Bill for that long, even though I could’ve gone home for visits. Since there was no way I was going to sleep at all that night, I had plenty of time to think about the situation, the kind of work I wanted to do, my sense of ethics, and more. As I lay there fully dressed and on top of the covers, with my parka over me as a blanket, I listened as the son came home and was intercepted before he could enter his room and be instructed to sleep on the couch.  I heard people screaming down the streets on their snow machines.  I wanted to go home.  I really had no interest in fieldwork anymore.  I had changed my subject after the last trip from motherhood to language preservation thinking it would be less emotionally charged, but suddenly I knew that it was all emotionally charged. To my friends in Fairbanks I was Kuukpiaq.  To the people in Village, I was WHITE, which automatically made me suspicious. Could I overcome their suspicions? Maybe. Did I want to keep trying for even longer than the few years I’d already invested? I rather thought not. I watched the hands on my watch move closer to the time when I could get out of bed and leave.  I planned my strategy and what I was going to say.  

 As it turned out, most everyone was up and out early—there was a game. I got up as soon as they had left. Because I thought there might still be one person in the house, I pretended to call home and learn that someone was ill, so I could use that as my excuse for leaving without causing hard feelings. I called the airline to change my return ticket. I had a choice of a flight that was leaving in 2 hours or one that would be leaving in 12 hours.  The idea of 12 more hours there was not penetrating my brain, so I reserved a spot on the flight a mere two hours away.  Because I had no idea what the address was, I could not call a taxi, so I prepared to walk. I threw on clean clothes, brushed my teeth, wrote a note, left it with the gifts I’d brought, picked up my suitcase in one hand and my carry-on bag in the other and stepped out into the dark –25 F degree Village morning. Village is above the arctic circle and it was January, so there was not going to be any daylight for a long while. I began to walk toward the airport.  The streets were deserted. I could see the airport in the distance and it seemed to pull me toward it, but when I got to the gate that we had driven out of the night before, it was closed! My heart sank, but I doggedly kept on. I was determined to get to that airport.

 I put my suitcase down and looked around.  I spotted a road that seemed to go in the right direction, so I grabbed my suitcase and headed that way.  Suddenly there were headlights coming toward me.  “Please let it be a woman,” I repeated over and over as the headlights got closer.  The car stopped and an older woman rolled down her window.  “Where are you coming from?” she asked incredulously. She was apparently unaccustomed to seeing large white women hauling luggage down the street on foot in the dark and cold winter mornings.  “Back there somewhere,” I answered as I waved my hand in the direction I had come.  “Does this road take you to the airport terminal building?”  She invited me to hop in and I gratefully accepted.  I felt like hugging her, but settled for thanking her about a million times as she pulled up to the door of the terminal building. 

I went inside, checked in and called Bill.  He was still asleep, but woke up quickly as I told him in a quiet voice, lest I be overheard, that I would be home later that day.  I felt a bit silly, speaking in hushed tones hunched over the receiver with my hand cupped over my mouth and the phone, but it’s a small place where everyone knows everyone. It seemed a bit dramatic, but I was very tired and focused on getting out without hurt feelings. I knew the flight from Anchorage was already late, but I was not at all concerned about that.  I would have happily spent days in the Anchorage airport as long as I was out of Village.

I only had to spend three hours in Anchorage, and I did have to go buy a novel in one of those airport shops, because I’d foolishly brought only academic reading with me and given the small amount of sleep I’d gotten for the previous week or so, that wasn’t gonna cut it. The novel filled the time and I was soon stumbling off the plane and into the terminal in Fairbanks.  My husband greeted me with a rather wide-eyed look and explained that a friend had brought him because it was so cold (-45F) that the truck battery had frozen.  We walked up to the friend who had the same wide-eyed look about him as his mouth fell open.  I guess I was looking a little worse for wear.  

 Friend went to get his vehicle and we headed for home. On the way, I told them both what had happened. When I got to the end of the story, I said it out loud for the first time. ‘I won’t be going back to Village again,’  I stated. I watched our friend’s wide eyes in the rear view mirror as he slowly nodded.