GREENUP (Report 3)



Leaving Coldfoot for Deadhorse.  This is the last stop, folks, for 240 miles.



Spring came this week.  One morning there was still snow on the ground.  The next morning we walked out of our cabin and it smelled like summer had arrived.  I could see the willow leaves opening from hour to hour.  One of the Wiseman residents said this was the fastest he has ever seen spring come.



I don’t have much in the way of pictures from this week because we are settling into the routine at the Visitors Center.  Compared to Toklat we have very few visitors, maybe fifty at day.  There are more than enough of us, two to five at a time on duty, so time moves slowly. 

AIVC display

travelers' room at the AIVC

AK GEO bookstore



Another display at the AIVC



Also this is the usual week for me to feel at bit out of place.  Young friend Jeff called his mother to complain and she said, “Sweetie, if you chose to go out of your comfort zone, don’t be surprised if you are uncomfortable!”  I’ll adjust.  I always do.  My roommate, Annie, is great company and everyone is super –accepting of each other’s little quirks.

For eight hours a wildlife biologist from Fairbanks instructed us newbies in bear awareness training.  The information was all good, particularly the fake moving bear target that we got to practice spraying.  Fish and Wildlife folks in the field have to have a designated shooter in all their groups so the F & G people got to practice with 12 gauge shotguns.  From studies, though, bear spray is actually more effective.  Yesterday a man down in Delta was killed by a black bear.  The black bear attacks here in Alaska are much more feared than back home in Montana.  Word is that Alaskan black bears are less predictable and more predatory than the grizzlies.

My bike commute is still the loveliest I’ve ever had:  flat, paved, incredible, one to three vehicles per trip.  Luckily I always seem to have a headwind to remind me that there is more to life than biking to work, e.g., getting off my bike and showing up at the AIVC.  I don’t see the moose as easily now that the greenery has come.

The day spring came, Whitney, Caylon, Annie and I had a lovely hike after closing at 10:30.  We strolled across the road, over the pipeline and down to the river.  The light is soft at this time of day. I learned that unfurling willow leaves are extremely soft.

On Saturday Meadow took the Dalton Express up from Fairbanks.  It took eight hours plus another hour for the flat tire.  Kumbaya said they should charge extra for letting the customers change tires and get the true “Dalton Experience”.    Meadow and I walked the lovely paths around the center and the unlovely pot-holed dirt roads.  The Koyokuk River is full and  moving speedily along. Caylon presented her with her Arctic Circle certificate.

She and I had the buffet over at Coldfoot.  All the food is good but the salad and the veggies are the real treats.  I can’t wait until our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) boxes begin arriving via AirArctic.  Rosie Creek Farms is behind because of the late spring.  Here we don’t have the greenhouses we had in Toklat but some AIVC folks are trying tub veggies.  They have to compete with the snowshoe hares and voles.  I hear that folks in Wiseman have lovely, bountiful gardens of greens, turnips, cabbages and other cold weather veggies.  I'll have to ask how they keep out the nibblers.  Pet lynx?

After supper we listened to Caylon’s “Kumbaya with Bears” interpretive evening program at the AILC.  I never tire of bear stories but after the Bear Aware Training I’m now more afraid of black bears, big, old grizzlies and bears in general.  At the end of the program we sang “The Other Day I Met a Bear”, an old song we sang in Girl Scouts.  It was hokey but fun.

Wiseman Post Office, now closed.

The program was over by 9:00, just the start of the evening.  Enlisting Annie and Jeff, a server from Coldfoot Camp, we drove up to Wiseman, the historic town that Bob Marshall lauded in his book Arctic Village.  Bob came to town in 1930, ostensibly to survey timber in the boreal forest of little, spindly spruce trees. He grew bored with trees and secretly recorded the lives of the villagers.  Reading the book and seeing the life of the Wiseman folks today gives me a great deal of respect for the Alaska native and the white pioneers.  Jack Reakoff had just finished a Northern Alaska Tour Company tour so allowed us to visit the unlocked museum.  Now that it is warmer, the smells inside reminded me of our old home in Shelby:  dead animals, old wool, dust, smokers, hemp rope, and old leather.

Craig and I drove the 60 miles south to the Arctic Circle to welcome visitors and pass out Circle certificates.  Since this is the only place in the US where one can drive to the Arctic Circle we make a big deal out of it.  For many people it is a lifetime goal.  I enjoyed their delight at the crossing.

When I opened one day this week, I thought to post the sunrise/sunset times on our visitor board.  Then I learned that here in Coldfoot from May 31^st to July 13^th we have no sunrise or sunset.   Duh!