How to Explain an Alaskan Summer (Alaska 1)

July 2010

Greeting family and friends!  Welcome aboard to my attempts to stay in touch with y'all from my cabin without electricity or water.  This is long (as usual) but longER because it covers a lot of time and there is a LOT of time when it doesn't get dark. I tried to divide it into sections so you can skim.  My favorite is probably the last.  

How to explain an Alaskan summer?

This is home

Start with some local live bluegrass, Robin Dale Ford or Sweating Honey.  The rhythm would be the spinning of bike wheels on gravel trails.  The temperature would be “layering weather”- irregular but hopeful.  We started one Frisbee game in pouring rain, played through a double rainbow (yes, I’ve seen the you-tube video), and ended in bright sunshine and a trip to Hot Licks for some homemade ice cream.  There are so many sensations to describe.  The surge of joy that I feel when I round the bend of the mini peninsula and see my prayer-flag decorated little (10 x 12 with a loft, woodstove, and mostly screen walls) cabin on the banks of Goldstream creek after a long bike ride with my “ready for anything” pack.  The warmth of gathering veggies from the garden and sitting on the mossy ground around the fire pit with friends as we cook dinner in our cast-iron skillet.  The excitement of being on the road, feet out the window, equipped with the three b’s (berries, beer, and buddies), seeing the world splayed before me, heading out on a new adventure.  The sensation of the wet tundra between my toes as I pick cloudberries in the spot I am sworn to secrecy about.  Melting them into simple jam and storing it in our “ground fridges” for winter.  The non-stop laughter that comes from dancing a jig with a Gwich’in boy from Old Crow or shirtless cowboy from Healy at the Anderson bluegrass festival.  Perhaps my favorite, “bathing” by swimming circles and floating on my back in my muddy swimming hole, watching the sun’s reflections dance along the tall spruce trees that frame my world like a snow-globe, full of light.

Stacey emerges from the swimming hole

No, really, what have you done?

In the first fifty days since my graduation from college, my life has been anything but ordinary.  After many, many goodbyes in Kalamazoo (including a farewell to my long hair), I went home to Milford and savored a few days riding bikes, walking the goats, and relaxing with my family.  On the twentieth I flew to Alaska, just in time for the longest day of the year.  On my first day, I realized that jet lag does indeed exist, as I attempted to navigate job training, reunions, and a midnight sun baseball game, all on the solstice. 

Larry and Sara cooking dinner

From then until now my pattern has been abstract and hard to define.  I have spent most weekends away from Fairbanks.  The first in Anchorage winning the party of the great Alaska jamboree ultimate tournament by bringing a giant slip n’ slide and dressing like “hand bananas.”  The second in Seward, where we visited friends at fish camp, hiked, beheld the spectacle of the Mt. Marathon race (the 5k course goes up and down the mountain), begged (successfully) for showers, and moved around at the pace you would expect for eight twenty-somethings and a dog in a car.  The third weekend I found myself  kayaking the silty Tanana River from Fairbanks to Nenana (which felt like an uphill journey on the second day, thanks to record winds), with the staff and board of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center and some very disgruntled dogs.

Fisherman processing fish on the docks in Seward

The next week the Arctic team flew to the Biennial Gwich’in Gathering in Fort Yukon.  I found myself lying on the beach crossing arms with Sarah James (famous Gwich’in environmental activist) and 150 others as a helicopter flew over us and took aerial photos of our message to protect caribou and salmon.  As one who loves stories, I hit the jackpot among the gregarious elders and spent the week absorbing bonfire smoke and history and deflecting no-seeums and overenthusiastic men (with a limited degree of success). 

Gwich'in dancers perform the Caribou Skin Hut dance

The next in Anderson at a bluegrass festival, getting sharpie tattoos from little girls and sleeping under the stars with hundreds of others.  This past weekend I drove down to Anchorage to play in the Daze of Disc Tournament on a team called Las Zetas against teams like Oil Spill (had BP hats and shirts that said “we kill stuff”).  On Saturday I met up with a friend and we found our way to an art benefit featuring chocolate body casting and a medieval catapult that shot glittery watermelons.  We spent Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday hiking, watching salmon spawn in a misty river, and chartering a sailboat (I got to drive!) and sailing around Seward’s misty fjords in search of whales.



Siri, Hannah, Daylen and I model our mud art at Anderson



Sailing around Seward

And what are your plans?

Alaskan summers are full of choices.  As I glance back at my calendar, many days I was triple booked with options.  An endless stream of potlucks, lectures, $5 yoga, guitar lessons, live music, hikes, berry ventures, oh yes- and work, have filled my days before I have a chance to take a breath.  This past week I saw the moon for the first time since leaving Michigan.  It was a Tuesday night and I was walking out of a Trampled by Turtles concert in Denali.  There it was, looming bright above the Nenana River below me.  I would have jumped for joy if my toes weren’t so numb from the glacial river.  The moon has returned as a reminder of what is to come.  So much of my carefree life- the lack of electricity and water, (or closed walls for that matter), car (I traded berries for a mountain bike!), normal refrigerator (I have a cooler in the ground), and the simple idea that enough blankets will keep me warm, are becoming slowly more complicated with the coming of winter. 

Olin and Aaron relax by the river before Trampled by Turtles concert

As you can probably tell, Alaska is a place of incredible opportunities.  In the North open seating means you can probably fly the plane.  So after much soul-searching and sun basking, I have decided to stay in Fairbanks at least until May.  It was one of the easier decisions I have made, I simply can’t imagine being anywhere else. I look forward to the challenge of winter; the negative fifty weeks, being forced to curl up with the untouched books that I lugged here, rethinking my concept of light and dark and enjoying the aurora borealis.  So far in my winter stock I have a good amount of jam and some firewood. For a job I have been offered to stay on working at the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.  I am currently working with our ED to create the job description, but my position will involve working on the Arctic program to help celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and protect it from some very scary new drilling proposals, and perhaps writing a history of the Northern center!  The former president of our board is letting me take an oral history class that he teaches at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for free, so I’ll get my school fix.  For transport my every generous “landlord,” Larry, (we pay rent in bagels and cabbage) has offered to let me have their very sweet husky named Chandalar for the winter while they travel and set up a permaculture non-profit in the Amazon.  He is perhaps the most relaxed dog I have ever met and I look forward to learning to skijour with him.  For warmth (in addition to the dog) I have a crew of wonderful friends including two potential roommates, Adele and Sara.  Together we will have four dogs.  We’re stalking Craig’s list for a cabin as I write.



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This is our "family shot," me, Chandalar and Sara in Telulah



And what have you learned?

So how can I describe my summer so far in an e-mail?  It can’t be done.  Perhaps its one of those things you can see in my eyes.  I’ll post pictures soon.  My original concept for this e-mail (before I lost my flash drive) was to write about what I have learned since graduating this June.  Here is the abbreviated version:



This is how we get home (beneath me is goldstream creek)



1. Balance is everything.  In life and in my daily crossings of the log bridge (approx 20 feet long and 15 feet up over the river).  I am currently training for the log bridge Olympics which will take place between my friend Kaarle and I.  He claims to be able to walk it backwards with no hands, no vision, and flaming chainsaws.  I am working on a will.

2. Shoes are crap. Life is better without them, see above. 

3.  Beer is the universal currency, it can beat the Euro any day.  So far beer has gotten me a bike tune-up, cabin in Denali, concert tickets, tools, and a nice pair of boots.

4. Its all about the karma.  One day I was riding home and stopped to grab a stray dog that was running by the road.  In the process, my cell phone took leave from my backpack and was found on College road.  Before I even got home and noticed it was gone, someone had found it and returned it to my roommate.

5. Bathrooms with doors are crap.  As are ceramic seats.  The woods trumps all.

Hannah and i hiking angel rocks

6. Life is for sharing.  My friend Sara helped me move my stuff into my cabin.  She really liked the place and I told her she was “welcome to crash here whenever she wanted.”  The next day around 6 she called me and asked when I was coming “home.”  “Home?” I probed.... “Yeah, I moved my stuff in today,” she replied.  I smiled and have been doing so ever since.  She is the ideal Alaskan roomie.

7. The power of saying no.  This may seem like an ironic end to an e-mail full of me saying yes to random adventures, but I really feel that I have gained the most by virtue of my decision to abstain from electricity, running water, a car, and an immediate transition into more schooling.  Saying no to these things makes me appreciate the things that matter- the wonderful and generous people around me, the spontaneous beauty of life without a clock, and the freedom of going with the flow.

Me in the best seat in the house, overlooking Goldstream Creek