sonora2sonoma

(continued from yesterday)

Between Anchorage and McGrath lay the perpendicular Alaska Range, a jumble of sharp, inverted triangular peaks  interspersed with equally sharp triangular canyons, tooth-like and threatening in appearance. There were no flat areas to be seen anywhere. One massif in  particular appeared to display several thousands of feet of sheer, vertical wall.

The Cessna’s lone engine revved  higher and louder as we ascended to the altitude necessary to clear the peaks, at times sputtering as if it were about to quit. Each time the engine began to sputter, I looked about in hopes of spying a flat area where we could land if the engine didn’t recover its equilibrium, finding nothing but sharp points sticking up menacingly at every turn. Dave, meanwhile, pulled on what looked like a manual choke knob each time it misfired to smooth the engine to a more assuring hum.  Unlike a choke, Dave explained, the engine was “icing up” and pulling on the knob was a “de-icing” procedure.  

After what seemed like an eternity of verticality, the mountains gave way to more hospitable terrain. 

We were still some ways from McGrath and the sun was growing nearer the horizon, casting long shadows over the landscape sprawled below. Dave reached down into a compartment and pulled out a large flight map, spreading it open across his lap and perusing it thoughtfully.

I had assumed that Dave’s flight to Anchorage to pick me up was something if not routine then certainly not novel. I now learned my assumption had been dead wrong. His pilot friends had urged him beforehand not to undertake a journey of that length until he’d logged more flight time. I recalled my unease upon learning earlier that day that his plane had required maintenance prior to our return flight to Nome.

“I think we’re about here,” he’d said, pointing his finger to a spot on the map. It wasn’t reassuring to now learn that we were somewhat off course and he was attempting to locate us on his map in order to get us back on the right path to McGrath.

This wasn’t the last time I would recall the words he’d spoken in enticing me to come to Alaska “We’ll have some fun, do some flying and, if we’re lucky, we won’t crash and die.”

My ability to recount this tale these many years later attests to the fact that Dave did succeed in getting us back on course. We made it to McGrath and landed without incident.

While at the airfield, I received my first lesson in the importance of meteorology in a region where the accuracy of weather forecasting is a matter of life and death. I was amazed by the sophistication of the weather apparatus servicing such a small community literally in the middle of nowhere. From the conning tower to the weather radar to the video monitors reporting live footage from various airstrips across the region, the array of equipment present was more like one might expect to see in a busy metropolitan airport.

I recall standing in the conning tower that evening looking out on the airfield and seeing the assortment of tundra-camouflaged bush planes parked beside the tarmac. I asked the official in charge of the operation the purpose of the camouflage. His reply: “That’s what Fish & Game would like to know too.” I was surprised to learn the area was a magnet for international trophy hunters and supported a thriving business for wilderness guides, not all of it legal.

I was all in favor of dropping in for a beer at the only tavern in town before going on to our hosts’ home, but Dave had other thoughts. Arriving at our destination, our hosts were very gracious and happy to put us up for the night.

Tim Konrad

(To be continued . . . )

My first trip to Alaska, now nearly forty years ago, was borne of an urge to “get out of Dodge,” an attempt to flee the scene before my ex-wife did likewise, taking the kids with her, to Idaho, with her new boyfriend. It was 1981 and I was sorely in need of a change.

I had grown up in the same house, in the same neighborhood, from infancy to adulthood. Over those years I’d formed many friendships only to see each of my friends move away, leaving me with the sense of loss such forced separations often engendered. 

This time I was determined not to be the one left behind—the pain would have been too great—so I decided it would be me who would do the leaving. Friends in Alaska, Nome to be exact, had been encouraging me to visit for several years. I had always resisted the journey because the idea of leaving someplace temperate for somewhere colder seemed a crazy choice for a person who, like me, worshipped warm weather.

But it was the first of October, and, with the prospect of winter’s cold drawing nearer regardless, going north seemed, under the circumstances, not too great a price  to pay for a change of perspective. And besides, wasn’t the temperature a matter of relativity anyway?  So, I went.

The trip involved a number of “firsts” for me. I had never before flown on a commercial airliner, had never ventured so far from home, and the only international boundary I had crossed at that point was the one between the US and Mexico.

Excited but apprehensive, I boarded an Alaska Airlines flight bound for Anchorage with a layover in Seattle to change planes. I was surprised to learn the distance I would travel was nearly 3,500 miles. Since much of the distance from Seattle northward would take place over water, I paid rapt attention to every detail of the flight attendant’s explanation concerning  the safety measures in place in the event, however unlikely, that we might experience an ocean splashdown.

My close friend and host-to-be in Nome, Dave, had used stark imagery in enticing me to come to his part of the world. Dave, a former Marine paratrooper turned general contractor and aspiring bush pilot, embodied an ironic pragmatism in his approach to life. I remember him telling me, by way of dangling what he viewed as an attractive proposition to persuade me to come visit, “Come on up. We’ll have some fun, do some flying and, if we’re lucky, we won’t crash and die.”

Oddly, considering the turn my life had recently taken, his sales pitch hadn’t sounded that bad.  

When I deplaned in Anchorage an experienced, if not seasoned air traveler, Dave was waiting for me, having flown down from Nome in his single-engine Cessna 180. After stowing what little I had brought with me in the plane’s cargo hold, Dave proceeded to pay the mechanic for the work he’d just completed on the aircraft. Sensing my curiosity, Dave explained that the plane required two alternators, and that one of them had malfunctioned on his trip down. Asked if that sort of thing happened often, and if it was something to be concerned about, He assured me it wasn’t any reason for worry.

The approximately 500-mile flight to Nome, Dave told me, would take two days, with a stopover in a village called McGrath. We would be largely following the route taken by the famed Iditarod dogsled race. We would spend the night in McGrath with friends, he explained. McGrath sat practically in the center of the sprawling state, on the banks of the Kuskokwim River.

(To be continued)

Tim Konrad

Columbia was a lively place to inhabit in the 80s. The St. Charles Saloon, or the “Charlie,” as we locals called it, was a mere five-minute stroll from the house where I lived.  The Charlie was the hub of a vibrant social life graced by the offerings of a varied collection of talented musicians. The revered band, Fiddlestix, performed routinely on weekends, wowing and, at times, mystifying the hordes of tourists who passed through town on their weekend escapes from suburbia.

Of the many adventures I had there, one of the more interesting memories from my time living in Columbia involved not musical escapades but a cross-species interaction I observed between a squirrel, a cat and a flock of about a half-dozen woodpeckers.

The scene where the event unfolded was a telephone pole that stood at the edge of an open field across the street from my house. My roommate, Mike, and I happened to be sitting on a couch on the front porch one summer afternoon when a young and inexperienced gray squirrel decided to scale the pole in the hopes of raiding a woodpecker nest that clung to the base of the upper crosspiece near the pole’s top.

Our perch allowed us a great view of the business that unfolded before our eyes that afternoon.

When the hapless squirrel began its climb, it set in motion a series of events in which the squirrel got much more than it bargained for.

The prospective purloiner’s push into the birds’ domain did not go unnoticed by the woodpeckers, who quickly sprung to alarm and began swooping perilously close to the squirrel, attempting to dissuade it from further advancing its position.

After the birds had made several sorties, punctuated by pauses to permit their brethren to parry, the squirrel, appearing to have second thoughts about the efficacy of his enterprise, began descending the pole in retreat. By this time, however, the action had caught the attention of my cat, Jack, who had positioned himself at the base of the pole in order to snatch the squirrel on its descent.

The squirrel, comprehending the threat lurking beneath, now began climbing upward again, only this time to escape the cat, who had started his own climb upward to close the gap between him and his prey.  As the beleaguered beast ascended, the birds renewed their aerial assault against him with newfound vigor, taking turns as they repeatedly dive-bombed him, forcing him to inch downward just as the cat was narrowing the gap between them.  

This push-and-pull continued, the birds carrying on their coordinated aerobatics while the squirrel grew more frantic as it repeatedly retreated downward from the threat above only to have to then flee upward to escape the peril menacing it from below. At one point, it nearly fell to the ground. Unnerved and exhausted by being beset by foes on all fronts, both feathered and furry, the misguided mammal appeared entirely out of its element.

As the encounter drew on, the birds began to show fatigue too, tempering their tandem thrashing with longer and longer periods of rest, their tongues drooping beneath their beaks as they gasped for breath. Jack also began to show signs of tiring, but not sufficient to put him off his pursuit.

Lost in a limbo of its own invention, the repressed rodent, now harried, helpless and hopelessly hemmed-in after a full forty-five minutes of flak, finally appeared to realize that the cat posed the greater risk. It resumed its ascent once again, only this time hunkered-down and humiliated, no longer interested in the woodpecker’s nest; now, solely intent on seeking shelter from the cat, birds be damned.

The similarly worn-down woodpeckers offered less resistance than before, allowing, albeit grudgingly, the squirrel to inch closer to their territory, but only to the top of the lower of the pole’s two cross-pieces, where it huddled, flattening itself as best it could against the corner where the cross-piece met the pole, two feet short of the nest, remaining there while the birds fluttered about it authoritatively, surveilling it regularly lest it attempt further intransigence.

At that point, Mike and I grew tired too, and left the battle to the birds while we adjourned to the ‘Charlie’ to recount the saga we’d just seen over beers and nachos.

Tim Konrad

January 30. 2021

One day, when I was around thirteen, I came home from school unexpectedly early. Upon arriving, I was puzzled to find our family veterinarian was there. The vet, Dr. Burns, seemed equally surprised to see me, as was my mother. I stood by and watched them while they both scrambled in discomfort trying to find the words to explain that the purpose of the vet’s visit was to euthanize our family’s dog. Prince had been my companion for most of my young life and the news, while not entirely surprising, caught me entirely off-guard.

I had known for a while that Prince, or “Princie,” as I often called him, was not well. Somewhere over a dozen or so years old, a goodly time for a cocker spaniel mix, there had been prior discussion around the dinner table that Princie was nearing the end of his life. But my parents had given no clear indication beforehand that they had set up a course of action to address the situation.

As we gathered around Princie in the back yard, Dr. Burns told me that quality of life for our pet was no longer an option. Putting him gently to sleep was the only humane choice, he explained. Perhaps I might consider going inside while he went about his task, he suggested, the underlying, unspoken message being to save me the pain of having to watch my childhood companion while he was being humanely “sent to a better place.”

I didn’t want to leave my old friend, I told him. I wanted to be there, to cradle and comfort Princie while he inserted the needle into Prince’s forearm and emptied the syringe of its life-ending contents.

So that’s what I did. I sat down beside Prince and held his decrepit body in my lap, comforting him and easing him through his fear of this stranger’s presence and his suspicious behavior. Prince had never liked going to the veterinarian’s office; it had always included, in one way or another, an element of pain for him; it was ever a source of alarm. Even though this encounter with the vet was occurring on his turf for a change, those old associations were not lost to him.

I held Prince and stroked his head until he fell asleep and his life slowly ebbed from his body.

Had I not accidentally stumbled upon this scheme my parents had hatched to “save me” from experiencing first-hand loss in all its rawness, forgiving them for so mis-reading, as benevolent as their intentions were, the import of the event and its potential impact on me, would have been very difficult.

Had I come home at the usual time, the vet would have already been there and gone, taking Prince’s lifeless body with him and leaving me to grapple with having been deprived of the opportunity to provide comfort in Prince’s hour of need, say my proper good-byes and obtain whatever modicum of closure can be attained under such circumstances.

There’s a subtle and not intended cruelty inherent in actions designed to save people from having to experience pain. Such acts, usually motivated by concern or love, nonetheless interrupt the natural flow of consequence. By prohibiting the occurrence of “closure,” they deny those being “protected” the opportunity to experience the range of emotions accompanying such events, thus interfering with their ability to fully process their feelings and achieve the emotional state of acceptance necessary to move forward following the event’s completion.

As difficult as it was to be present when Princie was dispatched to the spirit world, my sense of loss would have been far greater had I been denied that experience.   In such moments, there is no better substitute for simply being honest, no matter how painful it may be to do so.

The truth is always the better course of action.

Tim Konrad

January 25, 2021