Alaska Blogs 4 & 5

Blog 4  A gaggle of unshaven men in coveralls trooped into the mess hall, each holding his coat and gloves, some carrying hardhats. They dropped their things at the oversize tables, draping their coats over their chairs before walking to the chow line, grabbing a tray and cutlery, and marching through the buffet line. These were North Slope oil workers, truck drivers, and camp staffers (cooks, clerks, maintenance men, janitors…) all on two week on / two week off schedules (two-and-twos). The men wiped their hands with sanitizer, they ran their forearms against sweaty brows, they scratched their unshaven cheeks with dirty fingernails. After sitting down with their meals, they shoveled mashed potatoes and meatloaf into their mouths and made small talk as they watched the Fox News Channel on a large screen television. Some rose from the table and walked off with cell phones, calling a wife or a family member, making plans and counting the days until their return home. I observed the scene silently from the corner, absorbing what I could, trying to understand, to empathize with, to visualize the lives of these men. After the last workday of each shift the workers are ferried via private plane back to Anchorage or Fairbanks depending on their employer. The workers do well for themselves, own their own homes for the most part, many of them also owning hunting or fishing cabins elsewhere in the state. I can imagine the lives of these men, working that extended schedule oscillating between work and vacation, perhaps a spouse and some kids at home…. The breaking story of the day was of a Colorado boy believed to have been trapped in airborne silver weather balloon. The chow line was loud with everyone’s opinions and relevant experiences being shouted back and forth. There was little resolution to the discussion. The lunch hour ended on the hour and the ‘balloon boy’ story continued, blaring from the television speakers in the empty cafeteria. We filed out not long after the workers.   Blog 5 We never did reach the Arctic Ocean, at least we didn’t get to on this trip. After covering the entire eight hundred mile, single lane Dalton Highway (known as the ‘Haul Road’ as it is used almost exclusively by eighteen wheelers towing drilling equipment to the North Slope on chained tires) we were told to turn around by a guard at a gate station just nine miles from the shore of the Arctic Ocean. The coastline was closed to all non-workers for winter, a general safety concern in our post 9/11 world. In the summertime, when tourists are somewhat regular, the state runs guided tours to the shoreline. But in the wintertime, when the only passersby are wandering fools like my buddy and me, they don’t employ guides to ensure against terrorist attacks, etc. So we turned around, but not before rambling around the work camps, looking at the huge trucks on tank-like treads. There seemed to be some sort of victory in our drive north; we’d driven as far north as we could on any road on the continent, possibly in the world. Now our mission was to head south. Our plan was to cover as much of Alaska as the roads would allow. (Much of the state is only accessible via bush plane or boat.) We spent one more night camping in the Arctic Circle, uneventful except for the many times I awoke shivering. We had no thermometer but when we finally hit Fairbanks in the evening the temperature was in the high teens. Making matters worse, the foot of my sleeping bag was still wet from melted snow the previous night. I slept – or attempted to – in a tight ball, keeping my feet from the bag’s icy bottom. The worst temperatures, however, were yet to come and I had to remind myself what all the truckers had told me on the North Slope, “Come late November, temperatures get down around negative seventy.” Even still, camping in the low teens was wearing on me. After driving through Fairbanks to replenish our fuel and provisions, we pitched our tent on a ledge overlooking a valley just outside the town of Nenana. Finally off the arctic tundra, we were able to light our first fire of the week, using again my buddy’s small camp stove to boil some noodles then heat up our Jack Daniels infused tea. Again the frigid temperatures woke me with shivers and again I woke in the gray morning to see my breath rise in the wind. We were out of the cold though. That day we’d be heading back to Fairbanks for a few dead morning hours then we’d be heading south to Trapper Creek where we’d be picked up in an amphibious vehicle and driven to a snow machine lodge where my friend would be working for the winter. For the first time in a long, cold week we’d finally be sleeping indoors. In the forty-eight hours that followed I listened to the lodge owners stories about his business. I asked him questions about snow, local politics, seasonal businesses, his guests, winter sports… He was a repository of knowledge to some degree and I was amassing whatever details I could to make possible the non-fictional and fictional stories that I knew would spring from my trip. I filled what I could of my notebook, disassembled then repaired my phone charger (which had busted during the journey), took one shower, then hitched a ride with my buddy back up to Anchorage for my flight out of town. During the eight days I spent here, we covered nearly 2,000 miles of roadway, driving nearly from Alaska’s northern to southern tip and back. My fiftieth state is completed and I’m ready to commence international travel.