My First Trip to Alaska, Part Twenty

Dave took great care concerning the things he wanted to show me about his adopted home. One day, he said he wanted to show me what it felt like to be 80 miles from the nearest person.

To accomplish this, we hopped in his Cessna and he flew us to a place called Cottonwood, miles inland from Nome. Cottonwood was a collection of hunting cabins that lined a dirt road around 80 miles out from where the route originated in Nome. The cabins were used by hunters out searching for deer and elk to bring home to their larders. Used also in summer months by people wanting to get away from the daily grind of their jobs back in Nome, the cabins were boarded up for the winter when, using the roadway as a landing strip, we touched down to take a closer look.

The cabins, no more than a dozen or so, lined one side of the road. The surrounding area was mostly flat and devoid of any vegetation save the low-growing bushes and ground-cover ubiquitous to the area. The late-afternoon Arctic sun hung low in the southern sky, suffusing everything it touched in soft, amber-shaded tones.

The quiet of the place, once the plane’s engine had come to rest, was only disturbed by the sound of a slight breeze coursing through the bush. The mood was tranquil, as if the bustle of Nome had been instantly transfixed into something approaching a meditative state. The sense of anticipation created by Dave’s enticing sales pitch, if not fulfilled completely by the momentary calm, remained redeemed, nonetheless, until, after we’d been there no longer than 15 minutes, it was disturbed by the sight of a vanload of hunters headed down the road in our direction.

“That’s surprising,” Dave had said, or something to that effect, as he’d taken in the sight of 3 or 4 men piling out of the van to greet us. My thoughts ran more like “Well, so much for being 80 miles from the nearest person!” Dave recognized a couple of the van’s occupants from prior dealings he’d had with them.

No sooner had the van arrived when a second plane appeared, circling in the sky before it, too, landed on the roadway just as we had done. As that plane pulled up to join the party, a second carload of hunters arrived, this time coming from the opposite direction. The hunters all seemed to know one another.

The occupants of the second plane, it turned out, recognized Dave. They had come from a Catholic-managed retreat called Pilgrim Hot Springs that lay half a dozen air miles southwest of Cottonwood. These folks invited Dave and me to join them for a dinner at the Hot Springs—a meal of freshly-caught ling cod—so we bid farewell to the hunters and climbed in Dave’s Cessna to follow them to the retreat.

A muddy field served as the landing strip at the Hot Springs, the only way the placed could be reached, as no roads led to it. The sight of this muddy track, looking more like a cow pasture than an airfield, evoked memories of prior experiences I’d had attempting to maneuver cars over mud-slick surfaces. Dave reassured me the landing would be incident-free, which, to my relief, turned out to be true.

The retreat was situated within a grove of cottonwood trees whose presence was allowed by the absence of permafrost occasioned by the thermal activity of the area. This condition also favored the cultivation of potatoes, several of which had been exhumed to accompany our meal. Fresh produce in this part of the world, due to its scarcity, was a delicacy not to be under-appreciated.

The meal, which was wonderful and made me a life-long fan of ling cod, was prepared quickly, as the day had grown long and night-time wasn’t far off. Dave’s plane was not equipped with instruments to allow flying at night, so it was imperative we allowed sufficient time to arrive home safely, or else, as Dave had said in his characteristically off-handed manner, “We might crash and die.”

The flight back home included flying over the Sawtooth Mountains, so named due to the jagged skylines jutting skyward that defined them. The trip through the gathering darkness took no more than 45 hair-raising, fist-clenching minutes. We touched down in Nome just as the last light was fading in the south.

I was well-fed during my stay in Nome. Terry had a bunch of hungry mouths to feed, counting herself, Dave, her son Donald and daughter Suzie, all of whom were enthusiastic eaters endlessly enjoying her excellent cooking. I counted myself fortunate to be included among them, especially at the dinner table.

Excellent though it was, dining in Alaska was delightful in ways beyond Terry’s cooking. Maintaining adequate body heat in the face of the ambient Alaskan temperatures meant a person’s body needed more fuel than it would have in milder, more forgiving climes. The implications were that, in practical terms, it took additional helpings at mealtime to fully satiate one’s appetite.

I will never forget the Thanksgiving dinner I was lucky enough to be able to share with Dave, Terry and their kids that year. Returning for second, and even third heaping helpings was something I never could have managed under normal circumstances. The added helpings gave me multiple opportunities to savor each bite. This was one oddity of living at the leading edge of human endurance that I heartily endorsed.

Thinking back, I imagine that anyone attempting to follow the Jenny Craig diet under similar conditions would have been hard-pressed to obtain any appreciable positive results.

Tim Konrad

(To be continued . . )

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