First We Quit Our Jobs Page 8
Near lunchtime, as we traveled alongside the Klondike River, the road curved hard to the right. The river merged with the Yukon, and we arrived at Dawson City, metropolis of the North, population 1,852. (The place where the Alaska Highway had started was Dawson Creek. This place was Dawson City. It was confusing. Both were named for George Mercer Dawson, who had surveyed the region for the Geological Survey of Canada in the 1870s. People must have been very grateful to him.) A tiny outpost that had boomed to boast 35,000 residents during the gold rush of 1898, Dawson City had become a decrepit ghost town by the 1950s. From what we could see, Parks Canada was doing a good job revitalizing the town as a tourist attraction. The commissioner’s residence, a spiffy-looking yellow mansion with sharp white trim, welcomed us to town. In the summer, cruise ships that plied the Alaskan coast brought visitors up by the busload and kept a steady stream of people at the hotels, saloons, and gambling halls, all of which were required by law to have an accurate period look. In the water that paralleled Front Street, the S.S. Keno, an old ship that once brought supplies upriver, was still in its slip but immobilized. The streets were dirt: dust when it was dry, mud in the rain. The western-style storefronts were mostly just that: barnlike buildings with fronts attached for show. We were 4,750 miles from Manhattan, and it showed.
The weather was grim, chilly, and damp, so we looked for indoor activities. There was no movie theater, the gambling halls were closed for the day, and the burlesque show was too. Where were all the tourists? we wondered. We went to lunch in one of the hotels and found ourselves the only guests. Odd. It was the cruise ship’s off day, we were told. Not that many people drove here, it seemed. That explained the weird sensation of being in a ghost town of a ghost town. Plenty of amiable staff were available to bring us to our table and provide menus. We chatted with several of them about the weather, which colleges they went to, and how many summers they had been coming up here to work. Though they admitted to suffering from cabin fever, the weather having been exceptionally gray all season, they were happy to talk with us and took good care of us.
In order to cheer up his imported summer crew, the manager decided to declare Christmas in July (it was the twenty-fifth). The dining room featured a fully decorated tree and whatever decorations they could scare up. Candy canes replaced mints as we left. The service was jolly. The burgers, soup, and diet Cokes were superb. It was an altogether successful holiday season as far as we were concerned.
We commented to each other how different this simple dining experience was from going to some fancy “in” spot in New York, where one listened to a waiter give a dramatic recitation of items no one could possibly remember. Upon taking the order, he would have smiled unctuously and said, “Good choice,” as if entrée selection were a contest and we were well on our way to winning. As we left the hotel dining room that day in Dawson, we waved at the staff, and they smiled at us and did the same while we hollered “Merry Christmas” back and forth.
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In New York, the capital of culture, we rarely had (or made) time to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or any of the dozens of other museums and galleries in New York. It was easy to think of excuses. We were too busy, too tired, too scheduled. There was no place to park. Everything was too crowded. After Christmas lunch in Dawson City, there were no excuses. We headed for the local museum, not expecting much. Inside the impressive brick building, however, we learned about the beauty of isolation. Since we were the only takers, we had a private museum tour, complete with local lore, history, and details of the miners’ lives one hundred years ago.
While it hadn’t been easy for us to get to Dawson, it surely had been no struggle. I couldn’t help but wonder about the stamina of the miners who had come nearly a century ago. By land to Seattle, by boat to Skagway, then over high mountain passes in the deep snow. Each man hauling the required year’s worth of supplies with him—about a thousand pounds—in order to be admitted to the besieged territory. One display was a recreated miner’s cabin. It was bare in the extreme. It made me cold just to look at its rough-hewn airy walls and dirt floor. Clearly most of the hopefuls had been unprepared for the harshness of the environment. Still photographs of the town showed a bustle of activity difficult to imagine today, even on days when the tourist buses were in. The market area was just like anywhere else, full of buyers and sellers. Movies taken by Edison, jerky and silent, revealed a touching hopefulness in the faces of the men. Despite the hardship and remoteness, they came determined to find their fortunes.
Imagining the swell of excitement created by the cry of “Gold!” we looked at the facts. In April 1897 the population stood at 1,500. By the winter of ’98, there were as many as 40,000 souls in the immediate vicinity. A year later it was back to 2,500. The majority were either dead, discouraged, or distracted by other finds. These days mining was still going on around the area, but only on a small scale and when the mood struck. I thought about what Manhattan would look like if it were abandoned suddenly. It chilled and somewhat frightened me that a place could have had such currency, then in a flash be dust again. No matter how impressive the buildings, how important the monuments, how incredible a feat of engineering the roads, the culture and its trappings had just melted away.
I was glad we were not in Dawson City in January, when the mean low temperature was –30 degrees Fahrenheit. It was raw enough in July. I was wearing long underwear and ski pants most of the time. The climate wasn’t doing much for our sex life. I had a new sympathy for women who were called frigid. Maybe they were just cold. Even when we turned the heat on and got some of the dampness out, I couldn’t get evenly warm for any length of time. Sandy would press his palm against my nose to gauge how I was doing. We both wondered how people lived in this climate in winter. We were eager to get going, to get to Alaska, but decided to hang around to wait for the rain to stop. Since we were about to embark on the road with the best view—so it was said—in the world, we thought we would pick a day when we were able to see it.
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One of the quaint (read: annoying) reminders of the way life used to be in the gold miners’ days was the lack of bridges crossing the rivers. In order to get across the Yukon, we had to take the free ferry shuttle service. The only catch was that it was capable of holding only two vehicles at a time. One morning, when the clouds parted, we got on line and waited. There was a sense of excitement among the travelers, despite the iffy weather and the line. As we emerged from our vehicles (many were RVs), sipping coffee together and telling road stories, we found it difficult to know whether it was the snap in the air or the sense of anticipation that was making people hop from foot to foot. At home a wait like this would have made us both crazy. Before long Sandy would have been at the head of the line directing traffic, and I would have been on the phone, returning calls, frantically trying to make use of the wasted time. In the Yukon we both looked around, read a little bit, had some more coffee. After two hours it was our turn to make the crossing. We were on our way. Of course we had been on our way to Alaska all along, but now it was real. And just across the mountains.
The Top of the World Highway runs almost magically from ridge line to ridge line without seeming to dip into the deep valleys below. There are no man-made distractions along the way, only range after range of mountains disappearing into the distance, or the mist, as the weather permits. While we had known the road would be gravel, we hadn’t counted on the ruts and the dips that made us slow down to thirty-five miles an hour most of the time. The good news was, this gave us more time to enjoy the incredible views. As we bounced along, splashing mud nearly to our roof, the world seemed to fall away beneath us. Squinting into the distance, we found it difficult to determine where the layers of mountains turned into layers of clouds. Aside from the gravel road itself and those of us on it, virtually no sign of civilization was to be seen. We pulled over at a rest stop so we could take in a full 360-degree view. We looked down on trees, mountain ranges, and valleys. A
long the horizon was a sea of sky. All the clichés about scenery taking your breath away came to mind. Perhaps this was permanence, I thought as I pondered the direction our lives would be taking. Towns, cities, and man-made shrines could evaporate and die, just like the people who built them. Sandy reminded me that even nature allowed no continuity—Alaska had been the site of three of the century’s ten most violent earthquakes. If the only constant was change, why did we humans seem to resist it so vigorously? Only while we were traveling did changing and accommodating to circumstances seem easy. Maybe we would stay on the road forever.
It was no exaggeration to call this the Top of the World Highway. As we drove west, the concentration of RVs increased noticeably. We began to recognize certain vehicles, creating the impression that we were part of a loose alliance of fellow travelers. Information about road conditions was passed to those coming from the opposite direction. The longer you’d been traveling, the thicker the coat of mud on your vehicle. The badge of courage in these parts seemed to be brown, not red.
We entered Alaska at Poker Creek, the northernmost land port in the United States. We took pictures of each other, the signs, and the view. A simple little log-and-mud structure at the border was the government building. Ellis Island this was not. Beyond Poker Creek we passed our first Alaskan town. After the gorgeous scenery it was something of a letdown. The community of Chicken, population 37, was supposedly named by the original settlers for their favorite fowl, the willow ptarmigan. However, since no one was sure how to spell it, they gave up and settled on Chicken instead. There was an immediate sense of being on the frontier. The town’s facade was rough, and its streets were dusty. We pressed on, declining to stay in Chicken or take the dead-end cut-off to Eagle. Our destination was Tok, a big town with a population of 1,250. We arrived, dripping mud, after a grueling yet exhilarating 191-mile, eight-hour drive. It took as twice as long as New York to Boston usually did, but what a different trip it was.
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We actually got a physical rush from arriving in Alaska, a sense of a job well done, a personal milepost. We found a campground, appropriately called the Sourdough, and went directly to the do-it-yourself RV bath. The Sue was up to her ears in mud. We took turns doing the soaping and rinsing. At first we splashed ourselves and each other accidentally, but we continued with intent until we were soaked and breathless from laughing. Executives are not supposed to do this sort of thing. Parents discourage this kind of behavior in their adolescent children. Hah. What do they know about fun? Finally the RV was clean, we were filthy, and we headed for hot showers, warm dinners, and dry beds.
Later, exhausted and elated, I padded off in my bare feet toward the bedroom.
“Omigod!” I screeched. I felt the distinctly repulsive squishing of icy liquid between my toes. My dreamy mood was shattered. I hollered for Sandy and together we patted down the carpeting around the platform bed. It was soaked. We dismantled the bed and bedding, Sandy using his old reliable electric drill to remove the screws that held the plywood platform top in place. Under it, we knew, was a fifty-five-gallon freshwater holding tank. We inspected it carefully but couldn’t find a leak. Sandy went outside to look at the hose that fed the tank from the fill opening. At one place the flexible plastic pipe sat on a piece of unfinished, roughly cut wood that separated the interior of the cabin from the “basement” storage space accessed from outside. It was dribbling. Clearly it had not survived the Top of the World Highway as well as we had. After mopping up as much as we could with towels, I used my old reliable tool, the hair dryer, to blast away some dampness. In the end we had no choice but to sleep on it.
The next morning after sourdough pancakes at the RV park’s breakfast room, we inquired in the office where we might get the appropriate parts needed to fix our pipe. Although we’d seen plenty of gas stations, garages, and windshield-repair places on the way in, none of them had what we needed. There was no RV supply place in town. Joyce, our hostess, made a few calls for us, but no one had what we needed. Thanking her, we headed into Tok on our bikes to see what we could cobble together.
The unexpected interruption made clear something that had been percolating inside us. One of the changes I noticed in both of us was a relative increase in patience. That’s not to say that we had enjoyed waiting on line for the ferry back in Dawson, but our plumbing problem seemed an adventure rather than a pain in the ass. We didn’t get crazed about having one day in our precious vacation “ruined.” It wasn’t a problem to stay another night, since we didn’t have a slew of other reservations to juggle. Fixing the pipe became a challenge and an opportunity. This was a very strange new attitude indeed. Besides, it gave Sandy the opportunity to apply some of the information he’d picked up from all those years of watching This Old House.
While a busted water pipe wasn’t something either of us would have chosen as an amusement, it gave us a good excuse to get to know Tok a bit. Unlike towns in New England, the South, and the Southwest, this one had no center or plaza. Just east of a strip of gas stations, stores, and services was the junction of the road we’d come in on from Dawson and the Alaska Highway from Whitehorse. Just west of the new information center, the Alaska Highway continued north to Fairbanks, and the Glenn Highway took off in a southwesterly direction for Anchorage. Shamrock Hardware was somewhere in between. Bob, the non-Irish proprietor from New Hampshire, absorbed the details of our problem. He reminded us of Bob Vila, complete with Yankee accent. He asked many questions about the size of the pipe, the opening it went through, the way it was currently sealed, and what tools we had with us. It was clear he enjoyed this sort of puzzle, a sort of mechanical equivalent of nail soup. We walked the aisles of the store together, looking for items that might be conjoined to create a new pipe and leakproof fitting. The PVC we found was either too large or small, but we thought we could engineer a good seal inside a looser opening. The exact joint we needed wasn’t there either, but we substituted. We also snagged a small saw with which we planned to create a larger opening for it, so it wouldn’t have to rest on unfinished lumber anymore. Bob sent us off and wished us good luck. We pedaled back to camp and got to work.
Sawing the wood was awkward but simple. Since I was the smaller of the two of us, I won this assignment. I couldn’t get good purchase, wedged into the basement lying on my side, or much swing to my upward stroke, but I grated away at the opening. Once it was big enough, Sandy got to work removing the old pipe and fitting the new one. Meanwhile I worked on blow-drying the carpet. Six years earlier, when we’d bought our first house, Sandy had warned me that every plumbing job he’d ever attempted had to be done twice: the first time and the right time. As I turned on the hose to test the fix, I kept my fingers crossed that he would defy his own prediction. When I heard “Stop!” I knew it was not to be. Back to town for a second consult with Bob.
First, however, we were introduced to a fine Alaskan tradition: the salmon bake. Combining the best of a barbecue and a clambake, the concept at the Gateway restaurant was simple. We placed our order for freshly grilled salmon, halibut, or ribs with Cleta, who passed it on to Dave, her husband and the chef. Meanwhile we were directed to help ourselves to soup—salmon chowder. Next stop was a salad bar. Since only cold crops grow easily this far north, there were mounds of cole slaw. Other salads, as well as sourdough rolls, iced tea, and lemonade, were plentiful. Since it was vaguely sunny, we opted for an outside picnic table. When Dave called out, “Marilyn and Sandy from New York,” we fetched our food and were invited to scoop up a ladle of Alaskan baked beans. As we sat facing the road and the sun, other diners came and went, nodding hello and peering at our selections. I felt as if I were eating salmon for the first time. A slightly sweet, light glaze on the fish made it crispy on the outside while keeping it moist within. Juice dribbled down toward Sandy’s wrists as he hoisted hefty beef ribs. We licked our fingers and traded plates. The ribs were excellent: beefy and not too slathered in sauce. We ate as much as we could and bundled u
p the rest for another time. I thought about all the pretentious, expensive meals I’d had and shook my head at their inadequacies. This was surely Northern Nirvana.
Thus fortified, we headed back to the Shamrock. A different size pipe, other clamps, some Space Age glue, another “good luck” from Bob, and we got back on our bikes. On the way we noticed a bakery and couldn’t resist picking up a few sourdough rolls to go with our leftovers, and a pair of bearclaws—doughnuts by any other name—for breakfast. Back at the ranch Sandy got into position to do the plumbing deed. After a lot of cursing, screwing, and drilling, it was time to test. I opened the water flow gradually, waiting for the shout to stop. It didn’t come. Our leak was history, and we were victorious. We had jerry-rigged a home improvement that Tim Allen would have been proud of.
Even though we had spent an extra day in Tok doing unexpected chores rather than hiking or moving on, it felt as if we’d achieved something miraculous—a survival test of sorts. The pipe no longer dripped, the carpet was dry, and we were as giddy about our success as if we’d just struck gold in Alaska.
Baked Alaska
We had been in Alaska only two days, but already we felt an enormous freedom. Driven by silliness, we called for a calendar check—something we did regularly at home to make sure we hadn’t double-booked ourselves for dinners or committed the other one to attending an event they couldn’t make because of a conflict. Opening our respective day books, we noticed just three appointments for the coming five weeks: a ferry reservation from Valdez to Seward on the fifth; a date at the airport in Anchorage on the tenth to pick up my dad; another ferry reservation in Haines at the end of August. We tossed our calendars into the deep recesses of our closet and toasted our brilliant getaway with diet Cokes. We’d already been on the road four weeks, longer than any previous vacation, including our honeymoon, and it felt as if something fresh were just beginning.