Bucko’s Backyard – North to Alaska
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Thirty years ago I came to Vermont in search of something different, something a bit more adventurous. Having never lived north of South Carolina, a winter in Vermont was quite an adventure, but as it turned out, just the beginning of a long journey. It was only supposed to be for a winter. It turned out to be a lifetime. This past summer and fall, I went looking for a new adventure. I went to Alaska to spend two months “in the bush” as they say working as a guide at a fishing lodge.
While Vermont is still home, it now seems a bit tame, or perhaps it is me that is tame. My first tiny cabin in the National Forest has long been replaced by a much larger home in Dorset with insulation and plumbing that works. The storied and rusty old farm truck replaced by an SUV with heated seats, the woodstove by a gas model and the dirt road, though still dirt, fixed so that mud season is no longer worth mentioning. The adventure replaced by responsibility.Vermont and Alaska have about the same number of people. There the similarity ends. Alaska is 74 times larger than Vermont. There are wilderness areas in Alaska that dwarf the entire state of Vermont. Think about that for a moment. Vermont still has old dirt roads. Alaska simply doesn’t have many roads. Juneau, the capital, has no roads in or out. The only way in and out of my camp was either by floatplane or down a boulder-strewn, rapid-filled river in a boat. It gives new meaning to “running errands”. Need a quart of milk? Fire up the plane and fly roundtrip for an hour. Given the cost of $8 a gallon for aviation fuel at Moody’s in Alegnegik, (just a short two-hour ride down the rapids and across the lake) a burn rate of a gallon a minute in the DeHaviland Otter and that quart of milk costs $480 not counting the milk.
My 12 year-old Cooper went for the first two weeks to do a river trip with me. When we first got there we flew into the town of Bethel in the Yukon River delta, a town about the size of Manchester. Whatever was there either came in by barge up the Yukon and Kuskokwim River or in by plane. The best restaurant in town is built out of an old freight container and some spare plywood. Cooper commented with a wry smile “Not exactly Essex Green,” but the food was good, real good in fact. Zoning is not a big priority. They put it where they want it. There was a house someone was moving sitting in the middle of the road where they left it. Folks just drive around it. I stood there looking at this hardscrabble town and the people who scratch their lives from the surrounding tundra, looked at Cooper and thought of Dorset. I wondered what he must be thinking. It’s good for him to see the world is not all white clapboards and green shutters.
Vermont and Alaska both have bears. We rarely see our Vermont bears and they are essentially a threat only to our bird feeders. In Alaska they will eat you on occasion. This year there were three people attacked-in Anchorage, the largest city. Adds a bit of interest to mowing the lawn. I saw bears every day. I floated by them, fished next to them, held my boat in the river while the guests photographed them. They were everywhere on the rivers eating salmon and fattening up for the winter. Stepping in the woods to answer nature’s call took on an added dimension. They routinely wandered through the camp at night. You could hear them. And carrying a gun is standard practice. In general they were benign, but being a potential food source for a 1,000-pound carnivore has a singular thrill to it. To my knowledge the only thing in Vermont that will eat you is taxes.
It gets dark in the winter in Vermont. During the height of winter, it gets dark about 4:30 in the afternoon and the sun doesn’t rise until around 7:30 in the morning. In Alaska it gets dark around 4:30 in October and stays dark until sometime in April. Even while I was here, because of the latitude, we lost light at an amazing rate, close to 10 minutes a day toward the end.
Alaska is full of natives. Vermont has few natives, at least from the anthropological standpoint. Some Vermont families have been here for 250 years. They are considered natives. If you’re born in Vermont you can call yourself a native. Alaska natives have been there for 10,000 years. Many of them live a subsistence lifestyle that makes any back-to-the-land effort I experienced pale in comparison. If it swims in the river, or walks the land or grows wild in the bush, they eat it. I met a family on the river one day, Dad, Mom, the two kids and two dead moose in the boat. They’d been upriver for a month hunting and picking berries. Our camp maintenance man Bill is a native. I saw him fix a four-wheeler, rebuild an outboard, wire a generator and fix his wife’s pepper grinder (the nearest kitchen store is a four hour flight) all in a day. He taught me to call a moose with an empty oil bottle duct-taped to a stick. You scrape it on a tree trunk and slash it through the leaves. Sounds just like a moose scraping his antlers.
Self-reliance is a necessity here. There is no one else. After 15 years in an office, I found myself running a jet boat up brawny rivers, guiding, digging ditches, replacing struts on a snowmobile, patching boats, hauling fuel, cleaning and packing meat, serving as airplane ground crew, heavy equipment operator and whatever else was required. It was a needed re-awakening.
I love Alaska, but in fact I love the idea of it more. If only briefly I was me thirty years ago, young and strong and dancing with the unknown. But for all its magnificence, it wasn’t home. I’m back in Vermont, where my first adventure led me. It’s home, the sun shines on the snow in winter and if the plumbing needs fixing I’ll call Jack Stannard.