ONLY IN ALASKA

ONLY IN ALASKA does “Have you been Outside?” refer to your travel habits rather than walking out your front door (“Outside” is anywhere that isn’t Alaska—most commonly referring to the lower forty-eight.)

ONLY IN ALASKA is Sourdough not bread. It’s non-native, Alaska-born person who’s been in Alaska so long she forgot she wasn’t really indigenous.

ONLY IN ALASKA would moose poop be jewelry. Pecan-sized nuggets of crap are varnished and made into ring, bangles, and even poo-pourri. Yes, I spelled it correctly, and I swear I’m not making this up. You can find a recipe for jellied moose nose there, and get a permit to hunt moose with bow and arrow in the city limits.

ONLY IN ALASKA is a junker car parked in the front yard used as an extra freezer.

ONLY IN ALASKA does the law read that dogs may bark for only five minutes or owners will be fined, unless the owner is a musher, in which case the dogs may bark for 20 minutes. Each. (Mushers usually have 50 to 200 dogs.)

Hmm, let’s see, six dogs x 20 minutes each + 120 minutes of legal barking.

 

 

SOME GRIZZLY TRUTHS

Grizzlies: big furry animals with waists bigger than heads. To me that means they eat first and think later. And grizzlies are omnivores. They eat the hiker, her belly button lint, and then right on down to her boots.

I’m sure there’s a way to hike safely among grizzly bears. I don’t know it, but I’m sure it would include the need to think like a grizzly. So I offer my human/bear translation guide:

IN HUMAN - IN BEAR

Bear bells - Dinner bell
Backpack - Appetizer
Hiker - Entrée
Pepper spray - Extra spicy
Hiking stick - Toothpick
Bootlaces - Floss

I like grizzlies. I like to look at them from the bus that goes through Denali National Park and National Preserve. If I’m on foot and the sign reads, “Bear have been seen in the vicinity,” I let the bears forage for the berries and the squirrels in peace. I like mammals I can outrun. Porcupines are good.

 

WINTER WEAR

When I moved from the Gulf Coast of Texas to Chicago, I learned what a “winter coat” really meant. When I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, I learned about “Refrigerwear.” If one harbors notions of glamorous furs in the frozen north share my shopping trip for proper Arctic clothing.

First: All thoughts of glamour pretty much bit the dust when the store most recommended was PROSPECTOR’S. I passed the coveralls and went to the women’s department and threw myself on the mercy of the saleswoman.

“Let’s start with the coat,” she said. I’m still thinking something faux ermine when she presented me with a coat that weighed approximately the same as small shed and pretty much resembled one. When I put in on, my arms wouldn’t hang down against my body, they sort of stuck out wondering what would happen to them next. The collar pushed up against my chin so that I couldn’t look down or even straight out, I could only see up, kind of waiting to see what would happen to me next. The sales lady pulled the hood over my face and I couldn’t see up anymore. Just a circle of light and the tips of the coyote fur, or possum pelt or rat fuzz that encircled the rim of the hood. The sales lady put her hand on the crown of my head and pushed down, my head bent and I caught a glimpse in the mirror. She let the pressure off and the collar pushed my head back to its previous slant. She shoved again and held her palm there. "The collar needs a little breaking in. All that down will compress soon.” I figured there must be about a jillion naked ducks around to have provided this much down. Down that wouldn’t let my head to do very thing.I wish I wouldn’t have looked.
By the end of the procedure this is what I wore: long underwear, top and bottom, sock warmers, ,thick wool socks, fleece liner pants, wind pants, shirt, sweater, coat/shed, watch cap, wool scarf, glove liners, gloves complete with "snot wipe" band and boots.
Boots. "Those are rated for seventy below," the helpful saleslady said and increased the pressure on my head so I could look down. "They’re so much more attractive than the old bunny boots. Those were huge and white. Really ugly." These were rubberized and padded. They looked like I had shoved my legs into a pair of fifty five gallon drums. All in all, I looked like a small monument.
"Inside the coat in a special pocket is a kit with a fire starter and chemical hand warmers. For when you get lost."
When, not if.
My clothes came with life support.
Where do I wear all this, one asks.

When I walk the dog. To the mailbox.

 

WINTER IN ALASKA

It’s getting to be that time—Shacky Wacky—when Chicken Little’s prediction finally comes true: The sky is falling. Winter comes to Alaska, and the dark comes with it. What to do? Move away. Lock, stock, and small bikini (or, in my case, orthopedic swimwear of the large kind). Put the snow remover on the front of your four-wheel drive, and as soon as someone says, “What is that thing?” you’ve reached friendlier territory and can stop and buy a house.

Not an option? Then make a list of the things that didn’t work out so well in the depths of last winter’s dark days. Don’t have? Use mine.

*It is a good idea to put your scissors in a safe-deposit box at the bank. For some reason, after many weeks of long, dark evenings a person wonders what she will look like with bangs, or short layers, or a crew cut. This always goes in the “doesn’t work out well” column.

*If you own a gun, place that in the safe-deposit box, too. It becomes the means of scientific experiments, usually a week or two after winter solstice. If one blows a nice-sized hole in the refrigerator, one can finally determine if the little light stays on or goes off when the door is closed.

*Buy sand. Get a beach umbrella, kiddie pails and shovels and a beach ball; paint a sun on your bathroom ceiling and make a fake palm tree. Paint the inside of your bathtub blue and throw in some plastic fish. Wear your bathing suit and crank up the Jimmy Buffett. At first you will be ridiculed. Then you’ll wish your gun weren’t in the safe-deposit box so you could get the neighbors out of your tub.

*Get one of those lights that make you happy—they’re kind of like a grow light for people. In face, get a grow light and some plants too. Stock up on bulbs for both apparatuses. But make sure you put the right bulb in the right light. Las year my violets were stunted, but they were okay with that. I was cranky and having erotic thoughts about philodendrons.

HOLIDAYS ALASKA STYLE

How do you spend the Holidays in Alaska? Well, if you have a lick of a sense you leave. It’s going to be DAD (dead assed dark) for twenty hours of the day and if the temperature manages to get up to –10 degrees, well, that’s your Holiday gift. So, it’s a cinch no friends from the real world are coming to visit.

If you spend the Holiday in Alaska, you have two options: You can get together with other Cheechakos (Alaska newcomers) and celebrate. That means you’ll talk about snow. You’ll find you have made up new names for snow: snizzle—combination snow and drizzle, fraks—the silver dollar sized snowflakes that land on your eye and convince you that you’ve grown an instant cataract---snitting—the little grainy, wind driven, pelting snow that gives you free facial peel and snad, the soft dry snow that won’t stick together. Frankly, not much fun.

Or, you will accept the invitation to a REAL ALASKAN HOLIDAY. When a Cheechako attends any Sourdough (person born in Alaska) gathering there is an understanding-at least on the part of the Sourdoughs. The Sourdough provides the food and drink. The Cheechako provides the entertainment—simply by attending. Cheechako baiting is time-honored fun. For the Sourdough.

Dress: Alaska formal. Your socks should match.

Hostess gift: A Sourdough only wants one of two things that a Cheechako could have: coffee or hootch. These are the only two liquids a REAL ALASKAN admits to drinking. Both are referred to as Alaska anti-freeze.

Arrival: Your host will insist that you check your firearms at the door. “Last year Ethyl tried to shoot that Cheechako that kissed her Fred under the mistletoe.” (The Cheechako baiting begins.)

Appetizers: A plate will arrive. Everyone will wait to watch you eat. It’s the official appetizer of Alaska. Pilot bread, a hunk of Spam, a piece of canned pineapple and a toothpick. The toothpick will be the best part. Pilot bread has the taste and texture of cement. The Alaskans have placed bets to see how many teeth you will crack. Eat the pineapple, feed the Spam to one of the many dogs that will be milling about the Sourdough’s cabin, put the tooth pick behind one ear, and save the Pilot bread for a weapon in case the party gets frisky later.

Dinner: Texans like tall tales. Alaskans like them taller. Dinner will consist of food and stories of how the food was gotten. The moose roast being served was from a moose that was wrestled to the ground one handed. The salmon was tricked into the creel by reading Robert Service poetry aloud. The blueberry cobbler was made from blueberries snatched from the claws of a grizzly. All the dogs present have run the Iditarod, every man present has planted a flag at the top of McKinley, caught the prize winning halibut, been buried in an avalanche and has some jolly scars he’d be glad to show.

But first the presents. Earrings for the lady made of varnished moose poo. Swizzle sticks topped with moose poo. Moose poo pourri. Little figurines of mosquitoes made of moose poo. Lots of moose poo paraphernalia. Then comes the wooden moose. You push his head and jelly beans come out of his—um—poo place. That’s a big hit. And if you’re from Texas, there’s the double gift: a metal bear trap looking thing about the size of a quarter: Alaska mosquito trap and a small can or insect repellent for Texas mosquitoes. They’re too small to trap. See? This is accompanied by the famous bumper sticker: See Alaska. Spend your money. Leave with a Texan under each arm.

The last present is always the bear safety kit. A bear bell and a pocketknife about an inch long. That’s all a REAL ALASKAN needs.

Farewells: There are three signals: The liquor runs out, the host passes out, or someone ignores the NO SHOOTING IN THE HOUSE rule.

THEY CALL IT SKIJORING

Moving to Alaska was a big risk. I figured if I survived that, I would take another. I would learn a real Alaskan outdoor sport. Skijoring. I found a weekend program that taught mushing and skijoring for women. I signed up. I bought cross-country skis, gathered my outdoor clothes and drove to my weekend retreat. Where I found the clone parade. About a hundred, overweight, under athletic, women of a certain age, just like me. Was this great or what? Saturday morning I donned my combination shed/monument coat, long underwear, top and bottom. Sock warmers. Thick wool socks, fleece liner pants, wind pants, shirt, sweater, watch cap, wool scarf, glove liners, gloves, walk-like-a-Yeti boots and lurched toward the barking. There are dogs involved in this sport. Just as I arrived, about ten sleds, with a surplus of dogs hauling ten screaming women ripped past me. One woman, the dog handler/musher was on her knees. “God, I hope some of them come back.” Some of them? Women? Dogs? Oh well, not my sport.

Skijoring is more than a word with too many dots on it. One dog pulls one woman on cross-country skis along a groomed trail. No herd of dogs to overpower you. No sled to careen out of control. Just me, one dog, two skis. Happy. Happy.

Until they started hooking me into my harness. I stepped in and wriggled and hooked and tied—darn this thing looked a lot like a cat’s cradle. There was a big hook thingy right at about—well thingy height. It looked and felt very, um peculiar. I got into my skis, adjusted my hat and the instructors brought the dog. A dog obviously afflicted with ADDS. The most hyper dog I have ever seen. The instructors led the bouncing, quivering, pulling, jittering dog to me. He wore a harness that had hook thingy on it. The instructor handed it to me. “Now just snap that in.”

“In where?” I asked. She pointed. Right at about thingy height where MY hook was.

“No way,” I said. “Am I going to be pulled around this trail with a dog’s leash attached to my crotch!”

“Hike means go. Whoa, means stop, Gee, means right, and Haw means left.” And she snapped me up and shouted “Hike!”

The dog hiked. Jerking away like, well, I don’t know, like a dog yanking an old lady around by her nether parts. I went about three maybe four inches and crashed to the ground. “Shit!” I shouted. That was not in the dog’s repertoire, so I’m assuming he substituted,” Hike.” To make a humiliating story as short as possible. I did not go skijoring—I went ass joring. The entire loop. On my butt. There are several pictures. In each—the dog--I swear this, is grinning.

 

HOW DO ALASKANS PLAY

How do Alaskans play in the spring? They watch the ice melt. I swear. There’s a festival dedicated to it. The Nenana Ice Classic. Run to your computer and Google it. You’ll see.

Back aways when the railroad wasn’t?the railroad builders were spending the winter in Nenana, which is on the Tanana River (and those two names don’t remotely sound alike). They were waiting for “break up” that magic time when the ice on the river thaws, breaks and the river flows again, so that they could get back to work. Bored, and my guess is, partaking of the great Alaskan pastime of drinking, they began taking bets of exactly when breakup would occur. Bingo, a classic was born.

The person who bets the exact day, hour, minute and second that breakup occurs wins somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000. Bets come in from all over the world.

And it all starts with the tripod. In March, the tripod is erected with full festivities at the Nenana Ice Classic. The whole town is involved. The whole town involves about two city blocks, in fact you can get your hair cut and go to trial in the same building, but for the Classic, lots of neighboring towns come to play and there’s a crowd. Tall black and white poles are taken out to the ice and put together in the tripod. Well, there’s four main poles and a fifth pole down the middle and three little support poles. So the “tripod” has either four, five or eight sides depending on how one counts. A rope is tied to the tripod, it runs to a clock on the bank. When the ice breaks and the tripod falls, the rope trips the clock, stopping it. A siren will sound. All of Nenana will come to watch the tripod float downriver and spring has officially arrived in Alaska.

Back to the fun. In addition to the tripod raising there is a dog sled race, line dancing (the Texans building the pipeline taught them, but not too well), face painting, a rigged tug of war, the ever popular beer scramble, and a banana eating contest. There is also a tricycle race. Who knows how many wheels are on the tricycles?

And the bets are taken. There’s a big book. Honest. You can go see it. There are studies done by really smart people on dew points and temperatures and Georgian calendars and charts and graphs trying to predict the exact time of break up. And then again, if you look, every single year there are few souls that place bets on April 31.

 

JUMPING OFF A PERFECTLY GOOD CLIFF

When I lived in Texas I didn’t feel I had to do risky Texas things. I didn’t ride a bull. I didn’t buck a bronco (or does the bronco buck?) So why when I took up residence in Alaska did I think I had to be an ALASKA WOMAN—all caps intended. Anything you do in Alaska is risky. Just taking a deep breath when it’s minus forty is risky. But could I just stay home and read in safety. No. Something about Alaska sends you out to do insane things. Like rappelling.

Oh, yes indeedy. Summer came around and I read about a weekend of adventures. At a Boy Scout Camp there would be instructors to teach beginners the art of rappelling, fly fishing, kayaking, canoeing and assorted other fun things. I signed up without thinking. It’s the way I do things.

Rappelling is the fine art of jumping off a perfectly good cliff. Okay fine, for you purists, one sort of scrabbles down the side of the perfectly fine cliff. In a harness.

But first, one has to haul one’s self up the cliff. Climbing up the cliff renders it not so perfectly fine. It becomes rather hellish. It becomes perpendicular. Now most of my weight is settled south of my waist and north of my knees. My legs find it hard enough to move this mass laterally, and hauling it vertically is –well, can be go back to hellish? Even to my unscientific mind it seemed that physics was against me.
Once up on the cliff, the instructor handed the participants a strip of strap. Really nylon strap stuff. “Now,” he says. “We make a harness.”

“Whoa,” I say. “We entrust our life and limb, not to speak of our butts to something we make?”

“You betcha!” He said.

What have I gotten myself into? I don’t do this. When I take packages to the post office, they laugh and rewrap. If Martha Stewart ever eyeballed my Christmas bows I would be banned from watching her program.

The instructor was demonstrating how the rabbit goes into the hole with the end of his strap.

“Umm, sir,” I interrupted. “My rabbit never goes into the hole, He runs away with the cow and the spoon and ends up on the moon.”

The instructor was not amused. “This is serious business,” he said. “Your safety is at stake.”

“But sir, I’m knot challenged.”

“If you’re not challenged, you shouldn’t have. . . “

“Not, NOT challenged, KNOT challenged with a K.”

The instructor tried to keep his composure. “If you need remedial help please go over there and I’ll see to you after I’ve helped the others.”

I went to my area of banishment. Two other women trailed after me. Pretty soon all but one woman was in the remedial section.

The instructor stared at us. “Don’t any of you know how to tie the basic knots?”

One brave soul said “None of us were ever Boy Scouts.”

We finally made our harness. After a lot of wailing and with mostly closed eyes we bounced off the cliff and rappelled. I even picked a wildflower on the way down.

Hey, this time physics was with me.

WHERE EAGLES DARE(so I couldn’t get a pic of an eagle.  Chill a little.)

If you want to see eagles, bald or otherwise, Alaska is the place to do it. You want ‘em, we got ‘em and there’s an entire industry devoted to helping you see them. From beaches, rivers, planes, even your bed and breakfast windows there’s someone in Alaska willing to take your money and show you eagles. But that has gotten to be a problem. See, the eagles are getting a little bit used to the tourists. The eagles are getting some of that old Alaskan entrepreneurial spirit themselves and are regarding the tourists as prey.

I have yet to witness a single eagle attack on a tourist, but have been told the stories numerous times. I have yet to have these stories substantiated. I think they are told as part of the tradition of Cheechako/tourist baiting. An attempt by real Alaskans to sort the herd and send the unworthy back to the lower 48 where life is soft. Now that I’ve lived in Alaska awhile I’m reporting the stories as truth. So there.

The most famous story concerns the most scorned of all things a tourist’s miniature poodle. Alaskans don’t like anything miniature and poodles--don’t even talk about it. Now, a life long Alaskan might be forgiven for having a small dog, kind of like having a peculiar cousin, but for a tourist to bring one into the state is sacrilege. If this story didn’t actually happen someone would make it up. Ahem.

Said tourist was filling the RV tank at a roadside gas station. Poodle was poodling, leg lifted, nearby. Cue the eagle. Eagle swoops down, grabs lifted leg, sails away with poodle. Moral of story: Don’t bring your sissy little dog to Alaska and certainly don’t let him lift his leg in our state. Spend your money and go home. In fact, there’s a bumper sticker that says something like that.

There are also stories of eagle toupee captures. Obviously tourists again, real Alaskans don’t wear toupees I’ve heard rumours of a wig or two, but I’m not sure I believe them. What self respecting eagle would wear a toupee? Especially an Alaskan eagle?

I do have an actual reported news story. In Homer, Alaska (bumper sticker: A quaint little fishing town with a drinking problem) the town council is contemplating an ordinance against eagle feeding. People have been throwing fish around hither and yon to attract the eagles and it’s been a bit too successful. The eagles now assume all humans have food and want to search their raincoat pockets. Not good. A woman was walking her two large dogs and an eagle attacked the smaller, ninety-pound animal. The woman a REAL Alaskan woman, had to kick the eagle to make it release her dog. The article did not relate what the larger than ninety pound dog did.

I’m guessing the dog had lived with that kicking woman awhile and felt reasonably assured.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: To those with pens poised for the “Shame on the poodle hater” letters, I do not hate poodles. No poodles were harmed in the writing of this article. I am personally against eagles grabbing poodles by any of their poodle parts. Also, I have never, and will never kick an eagle. I am a shameless animal lover with two dogs and three cats. My dogs are Great Pyrenees, but have shared kennel space with a poodle. Charmed with her, they still refer to her as their “Kitty dog.”