So I am on sitting on my bed back at home. It’s 4:30pm and it feels like 4:30pm. Sorta. I think. A lesson I learned many moons ago from my cousin in Australia – always try to land at night when you do long flights across time zones. Go to sleep that night and when you wake up, you acclimate easier than if you did a red-eye or if you landed mid-afternoon. But two nights home and I am going to sleep at 2am, and waking at 11am. Today I feel like I need more coffee so I think jet-lag has caught up with me. Oh well, it was worth it.
As my last Alaskan entry this is a long one. So sit back, have a read and enjoy. It’s not going anywhere so if you need to do laundry (like I do), then g’head.
My last weekend in Alaska was tremendous. We spent it in Nate’s ‘lodge’ in the woods south of Denali. Nate York created and runs a Humanitarian Aid/ Development Organization with his wife Marlo. It’s called Solace International. The two of them are do-gooders in the greatest, most complimentary sense. They help the poor and needy. The sick and struggling. The persecuted and endangered. They built schools for girls in Afghanistan until the Taliban regained power. They now build schools for orphaned children infected with HIV/AIDS in Malawi – as well as other countries. And recently-returned-from-Malawi-Marlo is recovering from malaria. Cerebral malaria. YIKES. Listening to them speak about their work makes you want to donate money or your time. It makes you want to write to a Congressman or Senator to ask for help. But this is a bit normal around Jason’s friends. Most of them are do-gooders. Even the lawyers. And I think he knows every lawyer under 40 in Anchorage.
So Nate’s lodge… Like I said, it’s in the middle of the woods near Denali and 11 of us, plus four dogs gathered for the weekend. With Nate, Marlo and their dog Chloe, there was Scott (Executive Director of a sustainable energy business nonprofit), Polly (runs Alaska Youth For Environmental Action), their dog Charlie, Tamara (Prosecutor), Rob (Real Estate and the sommelier for the weekend) and their puking puppy Zev (wolf in Hebrew) Emily (Environmental Planner), Mara (Judicial law clerk and soon to be prosecutor, Justin the Fisherman (freelance attorney), Jason (lawyer for ACLU), Josie and myself. To get to Nate’s place, requires a half hour seaplane flight from Willow – flown by a disgruntled pilot who I believe will never be bitten by a mosquito (or sexy woman for that matter) because he smells like a dead of summer NYC cab with no air and no functioning windows.
Before boarding we had to place everything on a giant scale – including ourselves, to make sure we didn’t exceed the capacity of the little sea plane. There were two full size dogs (neither wanted to be on the plane) and five passengers, a smelly pilot, backpacks and lots of food and beverages. LOTS. In fact, we were overweight so sacrifices were made and left behind for the second group of lodgers to bring with them. In the end wine was chosen over water. Chips and salsa over apple pies.
Despite the desperate need for a shower or cologne or even a green, pine-scented air freshener dangling from the steering column, the flight out was lovely. Blue skies for miles and we could see Denali though from my camera it looks like low clouds (chalk it up to dirty windows and crappy 3.2 megapixel camera).
The lodge continues the theme of my trip – perfect locations for a horror film. Though he has a neighbor with a big slobbery dog, the cabin is basically isolated. No roads. No electricity. No running water. The lake we land on in our sea plane has pike and beavers. Plus lots of reeds. Perfect hiding place for zombie like serial killers. It’s framed by marsh which was continually trampled on by the dogs. We unpacked our bags from the sea plane and proceed to haul our gear up a not so steep incline to the lodge.
We passed a single room cabin on our right with a loft space – this is where Jason, Justin, Mara and myself stayed. It had an outhouse but it was not working so it was either anywhere in the woods, or the other outhouse behind the tool shed which housed spikey sharp objects, mechanical equipment to ride on and drag fallen trees.. and quite possibly – maniacal chainsaw massacre killers and victims. I am not sure about the latter but it looked ideal.
The lodge has a surround deck – though 2/3 is either under renovation or is off limits because as Nate warned, “if you walk on it, you’ll fall and die.” The lodge interior is comprised of a large kitchen/dining/living area and is flanked by two bedrooms. The main room has a wood burning stove and the floor, redone with pergo and linoleum, and is covered by a giant red Afghan rug. The bedrooms have similar rugs that cover plywood floors. Each room has a queen size bed. The cabin has bunk beds, a sitting room area with sofa and arm chairs, a sink a broken wood burning stove (no heat here) and then an upstairs loft with two queen size blow up mattresses. So it was roughing it but not rough roughing it. Quasi rough. Sorta rough. I mean there was no electricity, no running water and no flushing toilet or showers… but we weren’t sleeping in sleeping bags on dirt floors or on mattresses made of straw. This wasn’t 14th century Scotland. It was merely rustic. Yeah. Rustic.
On our first day there I’d helped Nate and his friend Jay (he was leaving that day) pull apart one side of the deck, which had wood rot. It was the first time I got to really use a pry bar. Pretty cool. And pretty tiring. For the rest of the afternoon, I pretty much hung out in the cabin and on the deck. Nate had a middle-eastern water pipe called a hookah (sometimes known as shisha and in Turkey it’s a nargela) from Quatar and we lit it up and smoked grape tobacco. You can get lightheaded from water pipes and it took awhile to get the grape flavor going but it brought back nice memories of traveling through the mid-east years ago. The mosquitoes arrived before the second plane carrying Justin, Mara, Rob, Tamara, their puppy Zev, and the rest of the food and supplies. Alas, two apple pies I bought were left behind.
Scott prepared dinner. Roasted potatoes and smoked goose with a mushroom port wine sauce. He carved the geese while wearing a Petzl head lamp since we had no electricity. I never had goose before. It tasted pretty much like ham. Divine saltiness. That night we played charades and then the cards came out. Texas Hold ‘em and I think something called HORSE and I have no foggy clue what else because I don’t know poker and I wasn’t playing poker.
What I do know is that at the end of the night, Jason was the big winner though it was with Mara’s money – he took over her hand when she tired of playing. That night I went to sleep and after settling into bed, all nice and snug, I knew I had to get up to go to the bathroom. That though, was not going to happen until morning. Suffice to say, I did not go into kidney failure. Whew.
Day two, Justin and I went out on the canoe to fish. There wasn’t much biting going on, but he did reel in a small pike and I got to fillet my first fish. Pike are very very bony – the bones are thinner than fishing wire and just as translucent. All we needed was whitefish and we could have made gefilte fish.
Later in the afternoon, Polly, Marlo, Emily and I took the dogs on a walk to a lake/pond/ice cold body of clear, pike-free water for a swim. We walked through brush that hadn’t been cleared yelling out THERE BEAR. HERE BEAR. BEAR BEAR. SOMETHING BEAR. Basically making noise to ward off bear. Then we finally came to a clearing of marsh and a lake. (But it wasn’t the lake we wanted. Ours was the next lake.)
Now when it comes to travel, I’m into activities. I like the action. Scrambling, climbing, jumping, and many other gerunds. I don’t retain the nature show explanation of what I am seeing because I am too busy ‘doing’ I guess. And when it comes to the outdoors, If it’s green and grows outside there is a 99% chance I am allergic to it. I only want to know if it will sting, itch, burn, or poison me. But Emily….Emily was like a kid in a candy store jumpy up and down on marshy ground (which soaks through your sneakers by the way) oooh oooh ooooh pointing out stuff that can make tea. And Polly was pointing out wolf or coyote skat – that’s wild animal crap with grass in it. And Marlo, as you can see from the photo below, pretty much looked like a nature girl hippy back in her element.
When we got to the lake, they all went for a very short swim. There was no way I was jumping or sliding into water that cold and I sure as hell wasn’t going to walk barefoot on the gooey, mucky ground. Outside of the tzzzz tzzzzzz tzzzz from little flying kamikazee mosquitoes which come out in droves when you are standing still near a body of water, it was incredibly peaceful.
We got back and it turns out while we were gone the guys played .22 golf – which is shooting targets on trees with a .22 caliber gun. I think they also used a rifle. I kinda wish I stayed to play. I like target shooting more than nature walks. And if there is a chance I might run into a bear I think I’d rather have a gun in my hand than a swimming towel.
That night we dined on rib eye, veggies and grilled pike, which Justin caught. One of the pike he caught had a rodent in its belly. I don’t think we ate that one. At least I hope we didn’t. Sometimes the circle of life is undeniably gross. But the pike was amazing. The evening was spent playing charades, a guessing game called Boticelli and of course there was wine. I like red wine as much as I like port which is to say, I don’t like either and think they taste like cough medicine. I guess all of Jason’s friends have an affinity for cough medicine. Of course some of them start drinking Tecate beer at 10:30am – what else is there to do in the middle of nowhere?
Day three in the wilderness. I made breakfast burritos for everyone and then got lazy. Tamara, Rob and Emily had to head back to Anchorage so they were around until late afternoon. The guys sat outside on the deck drinking wine and playing poker, the girls went for a walk back to the lake to swim. I stayed in the cabin reading a book called “Eat. Pray. Love.” Emily and Polly had both brought the book with them. Emily was halfway through hers and said I had to read it because I lived in Italy and the author lived in Italy. There were similarities, but my life in Venice was very different than hers in Rome. She gained a lot of weight from eating there. She really really studied Italian. She didn’t meet and stay in Italy cause she was dating a ridiculously gorgeous man who did nude body modeling for ‘art’. But hey, we both lived in Italy. The book is a good read. (Gilbert’s writing style is similar to mine in that it’s conversational and witty. Well, I hope mine is witty. I’m told it’s witty. I didn’t just wake up one morning and proclaim myself a wit. It was dubbed by others. Ahh, I digress. As I do with this great photo of Zev and a stick.
I finished reading the part of the book about Italy and gave the book back to Emily as she was leaving. Polly, Mara and I joined the boys outside for a game of Texas Hold Em. I’ve never played poker before but it seems sorta like playing Bullshit, just not as fun. At least for me. I think the gambling affinity corresponds to the drinking affinity (which likely corresponds to the football affinity) and since I don’t have that, I guess I don’t have the gambling one. Casinos and gambling just don’t give me an adrenaline rush. As soon as I fold I have lost interest in the game. And there are better ways to throw my money away. But that’s me. And apparently not Jason. Or Nate. Or Scott. And certainly not Justin.
It eventually got dark and buggy so that meant it was time to once again eat. Actually eating never really stopped during the weekend. Except to sleep. Dinner that night was simple. Scott made pasta with pesto and pine nuts and salad. More wine. More Boticelli. And then philosophical ‘Would You?’ questions like how much for you to row row out to the beaver lodge and stay overnight? How much for you to walk over to the next cabin (far away) without a flashlight or weapon, touch the door, take a photo of the place and then head back? Justin was ready to do most anything for $20 bucks. I wouldn’t do anything that meant walking in the dark alone much less walking in the dark, alone when there are bear out.
Day four was clean up day and don’t forget to sign the guest book. I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then we proceeded to get rid of perishable food from the root cellar. We’d all be leaving today but Nate was going to return so we had to take stock of what food was left and what had to be tossed. We sweeped, cleaned and then Nate turned on the generator for a whopping ten minutes to vacuum. Justin decided to row out to the beaver lodge, for free, and go fishing one last time. And as my previous post showed, he caught a 34-inch pike as the seaplane was landing. His bags didn’t make it on the flight because we were weighed down (smaller lake means less runway means less things can go on board) but we did bring the fish. And that night, after we drove back to Anchorage, after a long steam shower and several loads of laundry…. Justin and Jason had friends over and we grilled the fish – preparing it several different ways. All yummy. A great last night in Alaska.
My last day in Anchorage was spent buying souvenirs and packing and repacking my bags. I visited the ACLU of Alaska and the office bears a striking resemblance to and office building of Russia. Circa 1972. I’ve never seen such a depressing office. Cold fluorescent lighting. Nasty orange carpet. Wood paneling that belongs in a basement or playroom.
How are they to protect our civil liberties when the office itself is so oppressive? I am thinking of writing to ABC Extreme Makeover Home Edition to see if they can help. Nothing ostentatious. But perhaps less communist bloc and more hopeful.
My trip to Alaska ended on an altercation of asinine proportions. Although I packed and repacked, I unwittingly left my toothpaste in an exterior pocket of my backpack and it was confiscated by airport security. There was nothing left in the tube but the tube itself was more than 3oz and I guess the FAA thinks I might flouridate the crew to death. The 3oz. rule does nothing to keep anyone safe and everyone knows it. I think it is merely a marketing ploy between Ziploc, the travel-size item industry and the airlines. The woman working security was nasty and hung up on semantics with this whole ‘Are you forfeiting the toothpaste.’ And I said. Well you just said I couldn’t take it and you took it……. So ummmm…. take it.’ And I try to walk through the security gate and this other woman barricades me and pushes me back asking the first woman if there is a problem. The first woman says, ‘Mam, if you want the toothpaste (she literally throws is back at me) then go over there and check it with your bags.” And I look at her exasperated and say “Listen, you said I can’t take it. So take it. I can buy new toothpaste. Do whatever you have to do with it. It’s really not a big deal, OK? ” And I try to walk through and the other woman won’t let me. Both agents start this verbal exchange over my wording (which is ironic since I am a writer and semantics stickler) and they are insisting my toothpaste was not taken from me and are demanding I announce aloud that I have freely and willingly relinquished my toothpaste – which I did several times over but they were consumed with power at this point. Finally, I am let through and am thinking good thing I didn’t bring the ice packs. I can just imagine the solid v. liquid debate with these two check-out register cashier stand-ins. But when my flight finally boards.. I tell you….I was overcome with a great sense of relief… I felt so much safer knowing I don’t have toothpaste with me.
The two flights were relatively uneventful. Relatively. You know how some people have reported sleepwalking, or getting in their car and driving to work, or eating all the food in their fridge with no recall at all when they have taken Ambien? Well I just might be one of those people. The airline host said I could put my fish on ice after she finished serving beverages. (THANK YOU AMERICAN AIRLINES ONCE AGAIN). Since it was a red-eye I took an Ambien and figured I’d wake up when she passed by, get the fix out of the bag in the overhead compartment, give it to her, and then go back to sleep. And I did. But I have no recall of this. At all. Nothing. I woke up and walked over to the other air host saying I need to put my fish on ice and when he looked over to the other host she pointed to the ice cart. He opened it up and there was my fish. I literally gasped and jumped back. There was no way they could have done this on their own… they wouldn’t know which bag was mine. Which means I did it. And I have no memory of it. Which means I am one of those people that needs to hide my keys if I take Ambien. I was taking it at the cabin. Good thing I didn’t go off wandering then or fall down the loft ladder. I dunno… perhaps even in an un/semi-conscious state I still maintain reasoning and logic. Or fear of bears.
And that concludes my great Alaskan Adventure. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks again Jason for showing me such a good time. I had an incredible time and am so glad to finally get to visit. Sneezing as I am, I need to do some laundry now – the last thing I did in Alaska was play with Josie. Go figure, ten minutes unpacked and all the dog hair on my clothes caught up with me. Welcome home Jo.
