Alaskan Journeys 2002 - New Perspectives of "The Great Land"

        
          by Wendy Johnson

“Polar fleece has got to be the eighth wonder of the world,” I thought happily as I packed for Alaska a couple of weeks ago.

I marveled at just how easy this “wonder fiber” is to pack, when all you have to do is roll those vests and jackets and pants up and stash them into the far corners of your duffel bag, without any regard whatsoever for wrinkles – it simply springs back into shape when you unpack!

I was allowing myself to think such mindless thoughts because it felt so darn good to be packing to head north once again – into the vast wilderness frontier that engulfed us a couple of years ago and never quite released its hold.

The flight from Minneapolis to Anchorage took five-and-a-half hours, but as we set our watches three hours back to coordinate with Alaska time, we felt as though we’d gained an entire lifetime.

My son, Jason, met us at the airport, and we were soon headed to the float plane base at Lake Hood to board the Cessna 206 that would take us to our destination – Wilderness Place Lodge on Lake Creek. After three years of guiding at the lodge, my son and a business partner were in their first year as owners, and so it seemed like we were seeing it through brand, new eyes. The woods and waterways below us were unlike anything in Minnesota. The wilderness there is vast, endless and all-consuming as far as the eye can see – during nearly all 40 minutes of the flight.

At one point, the pilot signalled off to the left, and below us we spotted two black bear cubs romping through an open plateau along the treeline. A few minutes later, Jason pointed out a pair of graceful tundra swans drifting along in the current of one of the meandering ribbons of waterways below us. Ahead, distant mountain ranges lapped at the horizon like petrifited flames from a distant fire. And as familiar as it had all become over the three years we have been going there, it still had the ability to captivate and overwhelm. Our plane dipped down from the sky and nudged the glacial waters of the mighty Yentna River, and we unloaded our gear on a sand bar along the shoreline. We traveled up Lake Creek to the lodge by jet boat, a watercraft designed to travel in as little as four inches of water in order to get into all the far reaches of this world-class salmon and trout stream.

We unloaded our gear into Cabin Four – our “home away from home” for our past three visits. Homemade quilts on the bed, pine paneling and a cozy woodstove gave us the Alaskan welcome we had dreamed about during the hot, humid span of the past summer.

Since we had gotten off to an early start that morning, Jason cooked us a hearty breakfast in the lodge before we eagerly dived into our hip waders and piled back into the boat to go upriver in search of trophy rainbow trout. We drifted to a stop after a bit, hurled the anchor over the side of the boat, and piled out into the salmon-rich waters. The last of the silvers and chums were still spawning, and frequently the males would somersault out of the water around us in that final, headiest of stages of their lives.

Knowing the rainbows were sure to be close behind, I popped my flesh fly into a particularly cunning pocket of backwater. Slam! – a rainbow hit it and immediately ran downstream, making my line whir piercingly. Jason shouted, “Remember to keep the tip of your rod up, Mom!”

But I was off in a world of my own, a world that included only me and the fish and the slim edge of control that lay between us. In my excitement, I forgot most of what I had learned the year before, however, and the fish won its freedom before I even got a decent look at it. But the Alaskan waters we fished in are the only waters in the world where native rainbows still remain, and I knew there were more in there – big ones – and I was determined to land one.

Before I had time to think much on it, another rainbow hit my fly, cartwheeled high into the air over the water, and made a run for it. Remembering the mistakes of my first catch, I kept my rod tip up, let him run when he wanted to run, and reeled on the uptake. And this time, I brought him in, and what a fish he was – a 27-inch rainbow in the height of the luminescent beauty that only cold, fast water such as this can produce. After a quick photo or two, making sure we did nothing to jeopardize his welfare, and we carefully released him back into the creek to live for another day.

I couldn’t help but heave a sigh of happiness as I stood knee-deep in the rushing waters of Lake Creek, thinking about all the stress-filled days and sleepless nights of the previous weeks, trying to get our lives in order so we could get away for these two weeks. “This,” I thought with satisfaction, “this is what it’s all about....”

      

Part II

Skwentna, Alaska, is everything “Northern Exposure” purported to be – and more.

Early on in our recent trip to Alaska, we had planned to spend a day fishing late-season salmon at the confluence of the Skwentna River and Eight Mile Creek, a distance of some 50 minutes by boat from our home base of Wilderness Place Lodge. Despite good intentions, however, we had a little trouble betting off to an early start.

The early-morning air was far chillier than what we were used to in Minnesota in early September, so Ken gingerly rolled out of bed and built a roaring fire in the wood stove in our cabin. It didn’t take much coaxing to slide back beneath the quilts and let the sound of the crackling flames leaping against the stove’s cast iron sides warm us, in thought as well as in body.

Some time later, a we were once again considering “rolling out of the hay,” we discovered that son Jason, the proprietor of our wilderness hideaway, had left a thermos of hot coffee on the railing of our front porch – and so, we indulged in the leisure of the moment a while longer. By the time we actually got under way, it was well into the morning, and we had already sacrificed the peak fishing time. We decided to set our sites up river nonetheless, wanting to explore the little community of Skwentna, population: 80 (more or less). And if you go there thinking you’ll find anything like the picturesque main street – complete with its ambling, friendly moose of the fictional Alaskan television series, “Northern Exposure,” think again.

Instead, Skwentna is comprised of a smattering of rustic homes, cabins and buildings scattered randomly along the shores of the Skwentna River over a widespread area of wilderness. Many are far enough inland so as not to be visible from the river – due at least in part to a meandering roadway that threads through it, built during World War II when the United States government had ostensibly developed some sort of strategical mission for Skwentna in its defense plan. Likewise, it boasts a 3,400-foot airstrip as well. And since the area is accessible only by water or air, I was startled to see a pickup truck drive down to the water’s edge, but Jason explained that some of the residents have vehicles brought in by barge or other means, simply to drive from one house to the other! We nudged our boat up to a sandbar along the shore, tied it up and took the short, uphill climb to the Skwentna Post Office. We were greeted at the top of the trail by Max, a barrel-chested beagle who serves as part watchdog, part social host. Jason told us that Max, like many other of the hearty Alaskan backwoodsmen, has a tale of survival to tell, having reportedly been caught in a trap at one time, involved in numerous fights with other dogs and was once snatched from the jaws of a marauding wolf. Knowing this, I greeted him with some degree of awe. He walked away, bored.

The Skwentna Post Office is a beautiful little log building dating back to 1937. But on the day we were there, it was undergoing a transformation. Longtime postmaster Joe Deely and his wife were hard at work building an office addition to the back of the small building – apparently at the behest of the United States government in response to security concerns after last year’s incidents of 9/11.

They didn’t have long to talk, because they had to get it done before the following day’s mail delivery. Mail is delivered to Skwentna by plane every Tuesday and Thursday, and as you can well imagine, it is eagerly anticipated by the are’s residents. On those days, the post office becomes the hub of activity and news, with Deely (and Max) at the center of it all.

He took a few precious moments out to visit with us, however – though I could easily have sat and listened to him all day. Now in his 70s, he’s still lean and fit and well-spoken – and far from the grizzled, backwoods figure one might expect. He told us he’d been on his own since the age of 12. He headed north from Mississippi as a young man, intending to go to Yellow Knife in Canada’s Northwest Territories. “But they kept chasing me out of Canada on various vagrancy charges,” he chuckled, “so I headed up to Alaska, intending to get into Canada by the back door. I ended staying....” He carved a homestead out of the wilderness at Skwentna, where he has farmed and run the post office for some 50 years. Until recently, when he got a small raise, the government paid him just $24 a month for operating the post office, and any building or repair projects were done at his own expense. He and his wife raised both horses and cattle and grew their own hay to feed them, and also used to bed down the sled dogs that came through there (Skwentna is the first stop on the famous Iditarod Sled Dog Race). “For many, many years,” Deely said, “the weather remained pretty much the same around here. It always used to be hot and dry in August for haying – but not any more.” As the community’s official weather recorder as well, Deely said Skwentna’s August weather has been rainy and undependable in recent years and philosophized that global warming might well be the culprit for the region’s changing weather patterns.

We reluctantly bade him farewell, knowing he had work to do, and scrambled back down the riverbank to our boat. By then, it was practically noon, so Jason said he’d take us to the Skwentna Roadhouse for lunch. We traveled up river a bit and pulled in on the opposite shore, threw the anchor up on land, and set out on foot. As we emerged over the top of the river bank, we found ourselves on a vast airstrip – also the product of the U.S. government during World War II. We traveled down it a way before picking up the gravel road that unites much of backwoods Skwentna. After 15 minutes or so, we came to a clearing with several outbuildings, a large garden and older-two-story house. Once again, it wasn’t what we had expected – it was better. We were greeted by proprietor Joyce Logan, a pleasant, motherly looking woman who has operated the roadhouse for many years along with her husband. They, too, came to Alaska from the “lower 48,” working as fishing guides and operating a place on the Yetna River called Riversong Lodge.

After selling the lodge, they built the large, two-story house that is now the roadhouse, located a mile inland off the Skwentna River. Initially, they used to board area children there during the school year, since many of them lived in areas too remote to easily access the community’s small schoolhouse. The children ranged in age from first to twelfth grades, and the Logans fed them, imposed discipline and made sure they got their homework done on time.

After about seven years, the Logans decided to turn their place into a roadhouse instead, offering meals and overnight lodging to travelers passing through the area. Aside from summer fishermen, the area is also surprisingly busy during the wintertime, garnering lots of traffic from the nearby network of snowmobile trails and also because it is located on the trail of two major qualifying races for the Iditarod.

As we sat around the Logans’ kitchen table and Joyce fried hefty hamburgers for us, she happily settled into comfortable conversation, and we could begin to understand what made this type of life so intriguing... She told us their most famous guest was a rich society matron from the East named Mary Lou Whitney, who wanted to come to Skwentna to watch one of the sled dog races. “When her tour guide first called the roadhouse,” Joyce said, “he told me he wanted to reserve two rooms for four people – three men and Mary Lou. I flatly refused to rent her a room all to herself because we were so busy. I told the tour guide that she would have to share a room with the three men. I guess she was pretty angry about it, because she was still complaining about it when she got here. She told me, ‘I’ve never even had to sleep in a room with three other women – much less with three MEN!’” Joyce recalled laughingly. “She did it, though, and she must have not minded too much, because she came back again the next year and greeted me with a big hug!”

A couple of years ago, the Logans decided to retire, sell the roadhouse, and go live on a boat off the coast of California. It only took a short time before their buyers defaulted on the payments, however, and the Logans had to take the roadhouse back again. And so there they are, back in Skwentna once again, running the roadhouse. “It’s OK by me,” reflected Joyce. “That boat was just like a floating roadhouse anyway – all we did was pour money and work into it!”

      

Part III

It was nearing the end of our stay at son Jason’s remote fishing lodge in Alaska, and I was determined to distinguish myself as a fisherman before I left. It had taken me the better part of our stay to perfect my rainbow-fishing technique, and now, on our final day, I was ready to go after the big ones.

I made near-perfect casts, directly into the rushing current of Lake Creek. I kept my rod strategically positioned so that my fly free-floated naturally of its own accord. I held my mouth “just so.” And I wasn’t doing too badly. I had reeled in a couple of magnificent rainbow trout, both exceeding 20 inches in length. But that wasn’t quite good enough. Since our stay at Wilderness Place Lodge was drawing to an end, I was after trophy-sized fish -- or at least some decent photos of them to take back with us.

It was my husband, Ken, however, who snagged into one of the big ones, and he played it patiently downstream with Jason sticking close by to offer whatever assistance might be required. Our boat was anchored in about a foot and a half of rushing water, and I had been casting out of the boat at the time of Ken’s big strike. As he and Jason waded down current, playing the outraged fish, I was torn between dreams of personal glory and wanting to get a photo of the possible monster Ken might have on the other end of the line. Making my mind up, I reeled in my line, carefully laid my pole in the bottom of the boat, and bailed out over the side to go in pursuit of the perfect photograph.

As I hefted myself over the side of the boat in my bulky hip waders, the toe of one of my boots snagged briefly on the edge of the boat. It was just enough to throw me off balance, however, and with horror, I felt myself toppling over into the rushing waters. It took only an instant for my waders to begin to fill up with water, and I could feel the weight pinning me to the bottom. Fortunately, my embarrassment eclipsed my panic, however, and I was able to heft myself upright before I found myself in any real danger – and before anyone else saw me. But alas, the die had been cast, and I was soaked from stem to stern. Even the other two fisherman, still heavy in the throes of the battle, turned in surprise to stare at me, slogging damply down stream. It seems that in all the tumult of tumbling over the side of the boat, I had managed to hold my camera aloft, and it escaped high and dry! I got my picture, all right, but I was forced to endure the mortification of knowing I hadn’t quite yet reached the status of master fisherman.... The next morning was a sad time of parting, as Ken and I boarded the incoming Beaver float plane that was to take us back to Anchorage – and civilization. In our wake, the plane downloaded a host of eager new fisherman who were just arriving for a stay at the lodge, so that they, too, could try their hand at the autumn’s mighty rainbows.... After arriving back in Anchorage, we shuttled over to an RV agency and packed our gear into one of their rental units. We had planned to make the second week of our visit to Alaska a road trip, seeking out some of the heretofore undiscovered areas that we hadn’t visited before and playing the heady role of part explorer, part vagabond. As we headed out on the Glenn Highway, the scenery became spectacular almost immediately after we passed the edge of town. Mountain ranges began to sprout snow-covered peaks as the roadway narrowed down to two-way traffic and repeated warnings of rock slides and moose.

Down the road, we ate a makeshift supper in the RV while sitting in the parking lot of the visitor center at Palmer, grabbed a quick espresso on our way out of town at a place called the Purple Moose, and hit the road once again, eager to find a campsite for the night. We found what we thought would be the ideal spot at a place called the Matanuska Glacier Recreational Site, with a distant view of the blue-white Matanuska Glacier winking at us from the distance.

We made up the bed, set up our lawn chairs outside, and settled in to sit and read a little, breathe in the pure, glacial air and absorb all we could of pristine, backwoods Alaska. I was completely transported..... “I can hear the highway from here....” It came as merely a quiet statement from Ken, but I know my husband well enough to realize that that was going to be an issue for him. Casually, he asked me to hand him the “Milepost,” the Bible to all Alaskan travelers. A few moments elapsed. “Hey, look at this!” he finally exclaimed. “There’s a place just down the road from here that has camping, a gift shop (he knows my weakness), and access to the glacier itself!” And though dusk had already begun to settle, I knew I was in for a change of scenery.... We pulled up stakes and drove down the road a mile or so. And sure enough, there was the aforementioned gift shop (already closed for the day), with a gravel access road heading downhill from it. Now, a road in Alaska seldom leads simply “downhill.” It usually drops off precipitously, in a series of blind switch backs, with no guardrails to keep in honest, and no way of knowing just where it was going.

And this, it turned out, was one of those roads. I gasped, I put my hands over my eyes in sheer terror, and I shrieked as though I was plummeting down the first hill of a roller coaster. Normally, I’m not squeamish about such things, but dropping down the side of a hillside in a 30-foot RV is a different experience entirely. But Ken was determined, and so he threaded his way around the switch backs (praying to God, I’m sure, that we didn’t meet anyone!). As the road, mercifully, began to level out at the bottom, I breathed for the first time since the harrowing descent. My relief was short-lived, however, as we approached a rickety bridge over a rushing river, with only two wooden tracks over it for our tires. I screamed again. By then, Ken was so determined he would have forded the darn thing before turning back, and so of course, we made it.

By then, it was dark, and we took a couple of wrong turns before finally finding the overnight camping site. I heaved a mighty sigh of relief before dropping into an exhausted sleep that night, trying mightily not to think about how we were going to get of there..... We awoke the next morning under the influence of an unusual force field. I raised one drowsy eyelid, for a moment uncertain just where we were. And then, both eyes flew open in surprise. In one direction, the steeply sprawling mountainsides glittered with the rich gold of full-blown autumn at their feet. And in the other loomed the Matanuska Glacier as it beckoned hauntingly to us just beyond our doorstep, so close at hand that we could feel its bone-chilling cold coming through our open window. We eased into jeans, boots and sweaters, and after a hurried breakfast, eagerly headed down the trail and out onto the glacier itself.

At one point, I was startled to find a tiny shell in a craggy outcropping of ice and as I held it in my hand, I wondered how many eons it had traveled to get here. It was breathtaking to stand there, with the pithy ice and gravel of the mighty glacier beneath our feet, realizing that we stood upon the centuries of time.

      

Part IV

Life had, at last, established an easy rhythm as Ken and I meandered through the stunning back country of Alaska. We were crossing new territory on this trip that we'd never seen before, and at the same time, we were discovering new territory within ourselves as well.

From our memorable campsite on the Matanuska Glacier, we scaled the steep cliff road back up to the main highway once again (this time, blessedly, by the light of day!). Soon we were skimming down the historic Glenn Highway, headed toward the small town of Glenallen. We stopped for the night just outside town, at Eagle Trail Campground on Clearwater Creek.

As the rush and roar of the creek beckoned to us from just beyond our campsite, Ken longed once again for the feel of a fly rod in his hand, but to no avail. He vowed that when we come back again, that will be first and foremost among his travel itinerary....

Instead, we decided to work off the steaks we had grilled over the campfire for dinner that night by hiking a nearby trail to a spot referred to on the guidepost as merely “The Overlook.” We trekked for what seemed like miles, mostly straight uphill, among mighty trees, exquisitely colored underbrush, and jade green moss. Occasionaly we came upon bear scat – a stark reminder of the warning to keep talking and making noise as we traveled along, in order to let any bears in the area know of our presence and give them a chance to “get out of Dodge” before they got too excited about the whole thing. Strangely enough, we suddenly ran completely out of things to talk about, so I suggested a few choruses of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall....”

To make a long story short, we never did quite make it to “The Overlook,” but in our collective minds, we were nonethless standing on top of the world. And though we never ran into any bears, either, we felt we had looked danger in the eye -- and conquered it! The next morning, we piled out of bed and hit the road, going as far as Glenallen to eat breakfast at a place called Fast Eddie’s. Andthough the steaks of the night before still sat thickly around my middle, I couldn’t resist ordering something called the “Musher’s Omelet” – a concoction of eggs, fresh mushrooms and reindeer sausage, with a side of biscuits and gravy.

After breakfast, we went to a nearby RV campground and paid $5 to take a hot shower before hitting the road once again. We were headed for the Canadian border, with our sites set on the fabled Yukon Territory of gold rush fame. Despite the usual trepidation that comes with border crossing, everything went smoothly, and we were soon in Canada. And no sooner had we hit the road again than we spotted two gangly forms bobbing down the road ahead of us -- a mother moose and her calf. As we scrambled for cameras and binoculars and tried to catch up to them without scaring them away, we realized it was a futile mission and resigned ourselves to simply sitting on the side of the road and watching them disappear up the side of the ditch and into the woods. Ken got one quick picture of them that no one else will ever recognize as being moose – but us. Not far down the road, I spotted an unnaturlly black spot along the treeline at the side of the road, and it turned out to be a black bear, munching on berry bushes. And as we pulled the RV up along the side of the road, he seemed oblivious to our presence as we excitedly shot pictures of him.

We later spotted a coyote crossing the road in front of us, dall sheep grazing on the steep, mountainous hillsides, and trumpeter swans floating regally on a remote lake. We fell asleep that night to the hooting of a nearby owl.

By midday the next day, we had arrived at our destination of Whitehorse, one of the historic frontier towns that figured prominently in the tales of the Klondike Gold Rush. It was nestled between dramatic mountains and along the Yukon River, which served as the main trafficway to the gold fields of Dawson City for many years. We explored the famous log “sky scrapers” of the picturesque town, which still retains much of its frontier character. It seemed as though everyone there had a dog with them, sitting calmly on the tailgates of trucks while their masters were inside a store doing their shopping, or walking obediently along beside them through the streets of the city.

We had heard there was a local coffee shop that had an internet cafe, and since we were eager to let the folks at home know we were OK, we decided to seek it out on foot in order to take a little respite in the afternoon. We had trouble finding it, however, so we stopped at a little barbershop to ask directions.

“It’s straight down the street a few blocks,” the barber said. “It’s called the Midnight Sun, and it has coffee so good it’ll keep you up til midnight!” I sipped on a rich blend called “Ordinary Joe” as Ken sent our messages home via e-mail. And though he’s normally not a coffee drinker, he took a couple of sips of mine, just to see what the old guy had been talking about.... We ate dinner in town that night at a place called the Alaskan Salmon and Rib Bake, an authentic Yukon watering hole that we were told had its beginnings in a tent in 1902. While Ken feasted on halibut, I succombed adventurously to something on the menu called “Wild Stroganoff,” which turned out to be a delicious concoction of sour cream and brandy sauce over cubes of wild musk ox, served with sage “smashed” potatoes and foccacia bread. We washed it all down with some of the locally brewed Chilcoot lager, which they served in frosted tankards, and felt that we surely must be just this side of Heaven.... The next day, we drove a half hour out of town to the legendary Lake LaBerge, made famous by poet Robert Service in his memorable poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” It went like this: “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who mail for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales, that would make your blood run cold; The Northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, was the night on the marge of Lake LaBerge I cremated Sam McGee....” We hiked for a distance along the shores of the massive lake before settling down in front of the campfire. And I’m not sure if it was the musk ox I’d eaten, or perhaps the strong coffee I drank that afternoon, but I found myself still wide awake at midnight – listening for the ghost of Sam McGee.

      

Part V

Ken and I awoke at 4 a.m. It seemed that the relaxation of our trip to Alaska – and the three-hour time difference – had finally kicked in, and we were wide awake. After discussing the problems of the world, the upcoming day’s itinerary, and the vastness of the stars, we finally fell into a deep sleep that took us (shockingly) up until 9 a.m. A relaxing breakfast around the campfire lulled us still further into our lethargy. We had to spring into action in order to ready ourselves for our 11 a.m. pickup time at the boat landing on the edge of Lake Laberge in the fabled Yukon Territory.

We had arranged for a day’s outing with the Cather family, who live on the far shore of the vast Lake Laberge in a secluded, wilderness “kingdom” all their own, that includes no one but their family of four -- and their 71 sled dogs! We were met by Brad Cathers, the adult son of the family, who arrived by boat right at the crack of 11 a.m. As we motored down the length of the lake, he pointed out an island where sled dog teams, who once plied the length of the 30-mile lake to transport goods and people, used to spend the summer. He said the dogs were allowed to roam free on the island – some 500 of them – and whichever ones still survived by the following winter were rounded up once again to go back to work. In the summer, the preferred mode of travel down the mighty lake was by paddle wheeler, and after the day of that mighty craft was over, many of them were sunk to the bottom of the lake to dispose of them. The shores of the lake still bear the flotsam and jet some of those very boats. We were met at the opposite shore of the lake by Ned Cather, the patriarch of the clan, who helped Brad land and secure the boat. As Ken and I stood watching on the rocks along the steep shoreline, much to my embarrassment, I suddenly felt my feet rolling forward on the loose rock and then slide completely out from under me! (In a moment of deja vu, I recalled the moment only days before as I tumbled over the edge of the boat and into the waters of the trout steam!). As I slammed downward onto the rocks, I flung my right arm out behind me to break my fall. Mortified, I scrambled back up to my feet to the solicitous utterings of both men, assuring them that I was “perfectly OK.” It was several minutes later that the blood started dripping down my wrist, and as I pulled up my sleeve, I discovered I had punctured the skin of my hand on a sharp rock and was, indeed, “wounded.” After cleaning it up with an alcohol swab and applying a band aid, I gamely sluffed the injury off and turned the conversation to other things.

Ned ushered us down the shoreline to a picnic table. Soon, we were joined by his wife, Mara, who immediately treated us like family and served us thick sandwiches, hot coffee and homemade brownies.

Without much effort, we lapsed into the comfortable sort of conversation usually reserved for old, familiar friends. It felt good.

After the meal, we followed the path up the hill to the Cathers’ house – and the dogs. Oh, those glorious dogs! All of them were various combinations of Alaskan husky, and all, to a dog, were joyful and friendly, as is typical of that breed. Each was tethered to his or her own, individual yard, with a dog house at its center. One, however, was housed in a wire kennel, and when we asked why that particular dog was penned up, Ned offhandedly remarked, “Oh, otherwise he eats rocks...”

Ned singled out six of the eager dogs, which he set free from their tethers to join us on our hike through the surrounding wilderness. He explained that unlike their cousins, the Siberian husky and the Malamute, Alaskan huskies are not prone to run away or even go very far afield from their peers or their master. It was fun to watch the dogs bound up the trail ahead of us and then come flying back, covering two or three times the distance we did. They ran in much the same manner they pull a sled – in ones and twos – and looked distinctly wolf-like in their movements.

We scaled the high ridge that sheltered the Cathers’ home and then held our breath in awe as we looked back over the valley and the glass-calm lake, which mirrored the dramatic mountains beyond. No king’s ransom could ever buy so grand a kingdom!

Our route took us down a steep path to one point where a coursing stream laughed its way over twin waterfalls into two pools below. The dogs were ever-vigilant, dashing well ahead of us and then working their way back again along the stream’s precipitous shores. We followed the trail (one of many used by the Cathers in the wintertime to train their teams for the famous Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race), through mountain meadows, spruce forests and open hillsides that boasted plentiful bear and deer sign.

Ned paused frequently for us to catch our breath in the high, thin air, regaling us all the while with stories about the movies that have been filmed on their land and tales of how he and his daughter have worked as stunt doubles for some of the treacherous dogsledding scenes in those movies.

In particular, he told of the making of a 1996 CBS Television movie-of-the-week called “Murder on the Iditarod Trail,” and how he and his dogs helped produce a scene where actress Kate Jackson was to have accidentally driven her team over the edge of a steep precipice. Ned told how he trained three or four of his dogs to dangle in mid-air, suspended only by their harnesses, in order to lend realism to the scene. It was great stuff. After three hours or so of hiking, we wound our way down to the shores of Lake Laberge. The dogs immediately plunged into the icy, glacier-fed waters and almost smiled with happiness as they lapped giant mouthfuls of water. We trekked down the shoreline for a mile or more as we headed back toward the Cathers’ homestead, over stones much like those along Lake Superior and driftwood worn smooth and silver by eons of waves and water. From time to time, Ned pointed out bits and pieces of the ancient paddlewheelers that had washed up on shore, part of that long-ago day and time.

And as I scanned the beach for pretty stones, my eye caught on something brighter, and I bent over it, only to discover a beautiful blue and white marble, well worn to a soft patina. Perhaps some picnickers with children had left it behind sometime during the summer. But I, caught up in the mood of the moment, preferred to think it may have dated back much further in time – and held the mysteries of the early Yukon within its glassy heart.

Part VI

For centuries, the Finns have reveled in the practice of heating themselves up to “well done” in the sauna – and then running outside, hell-bent-for leather, to jump in the lake or a nearby snowdrift. I don’t know if the Finns have a name for that practice, but I recently discovered just the opposite phenomenon!

As we journeyed through the wilderness areas of the Yukon in September, my husband and I stopped for the night at a campground called Takini Hotsprings. It’s located at the site where a natural mineral hot spring comes out of the mountainside. The completely odorless, bathwater-like spring is used to fill an outdoor pool that is very popular with the campground’s guests.

Our reason for stopping at this particular spot had more to do with the fact it offered horseback riding than for the hot spring itself, however, but we thought a soak in the warm water sounded kind of good after a rugged trail ride.

We ate a quick dinner and hurried to meet the lady wrangler who was going to accompany us on our 7 p.m. trail ride. She invited us to help out as she rounded up the horses in the corral, and after we saddled and bridled them, we set out into the surrounding hills to watch the sun set on horseback.

We long ago discovered that seeing the world from the top of a horse is like none other, and this night, we ventured far off the beaten track and high up into the forested foothills. As we emerged out onto a grassy, high plateau, the full blaze of autumn hit us full bore, backlit by the sinking sun. And seeing it from the top down was a totally different experience than merely looking up at it from the highway....

The temperature began to sink with the sun, however, and by the time we unsaddled the horses back at the corral, we could already see our breath hanging in the frosty air. We waffled for a moment over our earlier decision to change into swimming suits and head for the hot springs, but we decided to go ahead and take the plunge. It was kind of an out-of-body experience to sit there in the steaming water, our noses red with the cold and our toes rosy from the water’s warmth. The hardest part, of course, was coming back out of the water and heading to our campsite!

We awoke to bone-chilling cold the next morning, our wet towels and swimsuits from the night before frozen solid on the line outside our RV. The next thing we noticed was that our RV was nearly as cold as the outside air. And despite our boastful claims that “Minnesotans can survive anything,” we turned up the heat!

As we pulled out of Takini Hot Springs, we set our sails on a tack that would lead us back toward Anchorage and eventually homeward. We drove for about nine hours through gray, pouty clouds and occasional showers that felt like they could turn to snow at any time.

The next day was September 11. Exactly one year earlier, we had awakened at our son Jason’s remote Alaskan fishing lodge to discover the horrifying news that our world had been attacked by terrorists. This year, we were totally out of range of both television and newspapers, so at the nearest pay phone, I called my mother in Grand Rapids to see if all was well in the world. It was. Thank you, God. Craving one last Alaskan backwoods adventure, we had decided to drive deep into the remote wilderness of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park that night. The Wrangell-St. Elias is one of the country’s newest, wildest and least accessible national parks, and it whetted our appetites just reading about it in “The Milepost.” After replenishing our firewood supply at the ranger station and getting some advice on hiking and camping in the park, we headed down the Nebesna Road – and into oblivion.

We bounced and jounced along the minimally maintained roadway, determined to make it as far in as the Caribou Creek Trail – about 20 painstaking miles. We parked the RV in a gravel pullout, strapped on our packs and cameras, and headed off through the wilderness toward the mountains beyond.

At first, we passed through sphagnum bogs, heavy with wild cranberries and blueberries. Along the trail, we saw tracks of hikers who had gone before us – including one very large moose! Around each bend, we wondered if we would meet up with the big fellow himself. We walked right up to the base of the hills and snowcapped mountains, and if we hadn’t begun to run out of daylight, we would eagerly have continued up beyond the tree line. We sat for a time along the Caribou Creek, deep in the foothills, wondering if any of the gold dust remained from the torrid rush of a century ago that made this region so famous.

The trip back down took far less time, and we were soon sitting down back at our own dinner table. The campfire that night was other-worldly. As the rest of the nation was wrapping up a day of commemorating the valor of last September 11, and remembering its terrible tragedies, we had spent the day enjoying the absolute solitude of a wilderness that knows nothing of man-made tears and hatred. Here, it’s all about the land and the eternal workings of the earth itself. Somehow, some way, one has to hope that both worlds might someday merge.

Sheep Mountain Lodge. Even the name had a certain charm to it. It conjured up images of warm, cozy rooms, scenic landscapes and hot showers.

We had started the day in our remote campsite, far back in the Wrangell-St. Elias wilderness of western Alaska. We awoke to a slight stirring of the treetops and a restlessness in the underbrush that was subtle but persistent.

By the time we eased our way out 20 miles of gravel road and onto the blacktop once again, the fretful breezes had kicked up into a full-fledged gale. It buffeted the sides of our rented RV, screamed in the cracks of the windows, and virtually rocked us from side to side as we cautiously made our way along steep mountain tracks and back toward Anchorage.

At times, the wind gusts were so extreme we were convinced we would become a casualty of the roadway. It didn’t take us long to reevaluate our plans for the night, which had included a campsite along a small river not far outside Palmer, Alaska. A quick check of “The Milepost” reminded us of a picturesque lodge that had caught our eye on our way out to the Yukon Territory of western Canada several days before. We stopped at a gas station and used the pay phone to call ahead to Sheep Mountain Lodge to see if they had a room available for the night. We were somewhat reluctant to give in, because this was to be our last night “out on the trail” before we arrived back in Anchorage to catch our flight back to Minnesota. A few more gusts of the incessant wind convinced us otherwise.

We arrived at the rustic little lodge toward the end of the afternoon, checked into a cabin perched on the side of the hill, and settled in to assess our surroundings. After days of living out of a duffel bag, with only an occasional shower at some wayside rest, and meals cooked over a gas burner or blazing campfire, it felt a bit foreign to our psyches.

We learned that Sheep Mountain Lodge was owned by a young couple -- she, a plant biologist, and he, the veteran of several Iditarod sled dog races. In fact, they still kept a few sled dogs tethered out behind their home, including a litter of pups and one old veteran who was allowed the privilege of roaming the grounds.

We stashed our bags in the cabin and immediately hit for the hills that loomed behind the lodge, in search of the Dall sheep from which it got its name. We were sheltered by the surrounding mountains -- the first relief from the driving wind that we’d found all day.

As I watched the path for signs of moose and bear, Ken scanned the hills for signs of sheep. He was not disappointed. The tiny white specks on the opposite range turned out to be sheep who had found precarious shelter there for the night. At first skeptical about believing that the specks were actually sheep, I became a believer as I saw them begin to wander about, grazing. We rambled further afield than we had planned, and it was well into the evening before we arrived back at Sheep Mountain Lodge. We found we were the only customers in the lodge’s tiny restaurant, but we selected a table in the far back corner of the restaurant so we could be alone. You see, the mournful feeling of having to leave all this behind had started to settle in, and we knew that the next day we would be back in “civilization” and forced to take on the cares of the world once again.

We buried ourselves in self pity – and the menu. It seems that the young owners did all of their own cooking and baking, and the menu was enticing. Ironically enough, though we were about as far north of the Mexican border as we could get, that was what they specialized in, and I ordered chicken quesadillas that turned out to be out of this world. I finished the meal out with a excellent cup of French-pressed coffee, while Ken dived into a wedge of homemade Three-Berry Pie. Quite a surprise out in the middle of nowhere!

We luxuriated in a hot shower that night – our first in a number of days – and slept like babies on the bed’s thick mattress. The next morning, we awoke to the warm, even heat of our room’s electric furnace, and we headed back to the restaurant for a breakfast of giant, fresh-baked cinnamon rolls.

And it was then that we realized it – we had subtly begun to shift back to the ways of civilization once again. Without even realizing it, we had started to leave the make-believe world of our vacation in the wilderness behind and started to ease our way back into the world as we once knew it. And as melancholy as it seemed, we knew that was the way of things. But we knew there would always be that longing – that longing to go back again, deep into to the Alaskan wilderness.

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-Wendy Johnson is the chief manager and columnist for the Cloquet Pine Journal located in Cloquet, Minnesota. To submit feedback on this article she may be contacted at wjohnson@pinejournal.com

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