Coming to an End

For several weeks now, a notion has been flitting around in my brain, one that made me a little sad and a little glad. This morning I awoke to find that the notion had become a solid conviction. After nearly three years of blogging, it is time for Tundra Medicine Dreams to end.

This blog has always been about life in Bethel, the Yupik Eskimo culture that enfolds it, and the practice of medicine in bush Alaska. It is not about Kenai and life on the road system, which is not so different from life in the rural Lower 48. Since I no longer live in Bethel, I find it difficult to continue writing blog posts in keeping with what Tundra Medicine Dreams has been about. And though Kenai is very much what people think of as classically beautiful Alaska, I am not inspired to write about it. Nor do I think that it is what TMD readers come here to read. Kenai is not the frontier of civilization that Bethel is.


I began writing this blog for two reasons: to create a portrait of a culture that is fascinating and very different from the one that most Americans and Western Europeans are familiar with; and to create within myself a discipline for writing. I believe that TMD has done that.

In three years I have written essays covering a wide range of topics on bush medicine and Yupik culture. These days, most visitors to the site arrive via searches on things I have written about: huffing, botulism, breast-feeding practices, Eskimo diet, dog mushing, kuspuks and many more. For that reason, the blog will remain open and available for people to learn what they can from it.


My occasional trips to Bethel and the villages may inspire a few more posts in the coming year; I certainly don’t rule it out. But my writing has taken a different direction, which is what I always ultimately intended. I am finally writing my novel.

For most of my life I have known that I had an ability to write in a way that people enjoyed reading; I simply never felt that I had a story to tell. Now I do. My life in Bethel has given me that story. It will be about a woman who is a physician assistant and a dog musher, who goes to live in a Yupik village to provide health care and to train an Iditarod-hopeful dog team. She will have many adventures, both medical and musherly, and she will learn much about the culture in which she lives and about herself. I am already many pages into it, and enjoying the process of creation thoroughly.


Perhaps when I think it is ready, I’ll post a preview here. I don’t have a literary agent, and don’t have a clue about how writers get one; I know publishers take a dim view of manuscripts sent to them without benefit of an agent. If Tundra Medicine Dreams can help me to open that door, it will have achieved far more than I ever dreamed.

To those few readers who have followed my progress here from early on, thank you. Your loyalty and support have meant the world to me as a fledgling writer. To those who took the time and care to comment, you have my deepest gratitude. As the author John D. MacDonald once wrote in a letter to my Dad, “writers drop feathers down wells and listen for an echo.” Comments on this blog have, for the most part, been positive and inspiring. And to those casual visitors who found this site through various search engines, welcome! I hope that the writing you find as a result of whatever search string you used peaks your interest to search through the archives and read more. A large volume of (I hope) interesting material awaits you there.



And so, for now, so long. May you each and every one go well.


Photos of Bethel by The Tundra PA:
1. My favorite trash dumpster
2. An old truck rusting into the earth in City Sub
3. Boats frozen into Brown Slough
4. Frozen Kuskokwim River just after sunrise in November
5. Sunset over tundra

Back to Work

After four and a half months off work—the longest non-working period in my adult life—I was afraid I had forgotten all the medicine I ever knew. Fortunately, such was not the case. I started working again in mid January, and everything has gone smoothly, with the help of several dedicated people in Bethel.

My entire job now consists of doing Radio Medical Traffic (RMT), which I described in detail in the early days of this blog; see this post and this post. The best part is that I am doing it from my home in Kenai. That is a luxury I have never had before, and I absolutely love it. The hospital sent me an industrial-strength printer/fax machine capable of cranking out hundreds of faxes per day without breaking a sweat. And the technology department is working to set up a laptop computer for me that will have the database for all 20,000 patients in our region on it.

This is not an EMR (electronic medical record). Individual patient visits are not electronically recorded into the database, which is known as RPMS, and I have no idea what the letters stand for, something about Patient Management. We are still handwriting patient visits! What RPMS provides is a health summary for each patient, with demographic information, chronic diagnoses, prescriptions filled, lab results for the past two years, radiology results for the past five years, surgical histories, and more. It is a thorough thumbnail of the patient; about the only thing it lacks are the details of any specific patient visit in the hospital. To get those, the hard copy of the chart must be ordered, which is something I can’t do from Kenai.

But if I really need those details, I can contact the medical staff’s administrative assistant and have her request the chart and fax me a copy of the relevant visit. So far, I have only needed her to do that once in the last three weeks. The process of doing RMT without access to RPMS feels somewhat like flying blind, as health aides often have questions about such things as availability of medication refills, or recent lab results. But the process has gone reasonably well even without access to the database since I started back. I am excited about getting a new laptop with RPMS on it, however.

And—what feels like icing on the cake—is that I will also have access to the telemedicine program on the laptop. Telemedicine has been in the village clinics for years, but most of the time was not utilized due to health aide resistance to learning the technology. That is becoming a thing of the past as younger people are entering health aide training who are more comfortable with computers.

The telemedicine carts in each village contain a computer tower/monitor/keyboard, a digital camera which can take still photos or short video clips, a camera mounted into an otoscope for taking pictures or videos of ear drums and other things located at the bottom of dark holes, an EKG machine, and all the software needed to transmit this info confidentially to Bethel or to Anchorage. It is an invaluable tool for doing distance triage on patients with things like rashes, where a picture is worth a thousand words, or patients whose complaint is simply “heart feels funny.”

The telemedicine carts in each village clinic have been replaced this past month with the absolutely latest and best that technology has to offer. And the health aide training program has made it a high priority to get all health aides trained up and comfortable in using that technology. It will help to make assessment of distant patients so much easier and more accurate.

Talking to health aides about their patients has always been enjoyable to me; I really like doing RMT. I have the greatest respect and admiration for health aides. They do a very tough job, and generally do it well.

All the 160+ health aides in our region are Alaska Natives, and most were born and raised in the village where they work. Given that most villages have less than 500 people in them, they are generally related (“somehow” as they say) to everybody who lives there. That makes it even tougher when the job requires attending to serious trauma or illness, and the patient is a loved one.

Health aides are trained to use language that is descriptive without being diagnostic. Lung sounds may be “snoring” or “scraping” or “popping.” Patients are “sick-weak-and-tired” or they aren’t. Really sick babies have “heavy eyes.” Translating these descriptions into accurate assessments can be challenging at times.

One of the more interesting comments I’ve received recently from a health aide was that a patient’s urine looked “thick.” I had to wonder what thick urine looks like. Honey? On questioning, the health aide said the urine wasn’t “junky” or cloudy, and dipstick test revealed a normal specific gravity (less than 1.020, therefore not concentrated, indicating no dehydration) and negative for nitrites or blood, indicating a low likelihood of bladder infection in a non-pregnant patient.

I asked the health aide to send a clean catch sample of the urine in to the lab in Bethel for culture and sensitivity, and a dirty catch sample for gonorrhea and chlamydia testing. The health aide and I agreed that the patient could be encouraged to increase fluid intake and be observed for new or increasing symptoms and rechecked in a few days—sooner if worse, as always.

Chief complaints for which patients seek care in the village clinics can also be puzzling. Last week, an otherwise healthy, twenty-something male came to the health aides for a complaint of “can’t burp.” He looked fine, had no complaint of abdominal discomfort or cardiac symptoms, and attributed his complaint to being “aired up.” In the Yupik concept of physiology, being “aired up” can explain anything from chest pressure to flank pain. It may mean nothing serious or it may mean time to medevac the patient in to the hospital.

In this patient’s case, a man who was young, looked fine, had no complaint of pain and had normal vital signs, I was not overly worried. I suggested to the health aide that he try drinking carbonated beverages for a day or so and recheck if he developed new or worsening symptoms. Our patients are generally very reliable for rechecking with the health aides when they perceive anything to be wrong; he has not returned to the village clinic in the subsequent few days, so presumably he is feeling better and burping away.

And then there was the best chief complaint maybe ever. “I want a pregnancy test.” The patient was a seventy-five year old woman. She was many years post-menopausal (or “menopaused” as the health aides say), but because she had all the reproductive parts, she was sure she could be. The health aide and I laughed about it as he explained that she is recently remarried and she and her new husband are “very active.” Good for them! The pregnancy test was negative.

Being back in contact with the health aides has been wonderful for me. It keeps me in touch with what is going on health-wise in the villages, and provides an opportunity to catch up on how the health aides I’ve known for years are doing. It has also made me aware of how much I miss doing hands-on patient care.

And for that, there is the best news possible: tomorrow I fly out to Bethel for a week of seeing patients at the outpatient clinics in the hospital. I hope to be able to make such trips about every other month. After four months away, it feels a bit like going home, and I’m really looking forward to it. Surely, a few blog posts will result.

Volcano Watching

Kenai awoke this morning to bright blue skies and temperature almost 20 degrees below zero. The entire range of mountains to the west, including Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Illiamna, were stunningly clear and looked amazingly close. To an untrained observer like myself, Redoubt looks just as it always has. But volcanologists are watching it closely, and continue to believe that an eruption is imminent. One of the glaciers on the north face shows signs of increased heat nearer the surface, with an expanding hole emitting steam and gases. So far, the expected increase in frequency and magnitude of earthquakes beneath the volcano has not happened, according to the experts.



Redoubt is about 50 miles west southwest of Kenai, so our view of it is of the east northeast face. In real life it seems much closer than this photo suggests. Even with binoculars, Dutch and I are not able to see any plumes of steam rising into the air. Kenai is the closest town of any size to the mountain, and experts are gathering here to watch the mountain. Last week, Dutch and other city officials were approached with the request to set up monitoring equipment at some of the city's buildings which are located on a high bluff at the edge of Cook Inlet, and have a gorgeous unobstructed view of the mountain. They were happy to comply with the request. The volcanologists are working to establish a ring of observation points around the mountain so that they can monitor its activity from all directions.

The air around town is one of watchful waiting for the shoe to drop. There is nothing to do about it except wait, and hope that, like a watched pot, if we watch hard enough it will never boil.

Photos by The Tundra PA

Redoubt Ready to Blow

Alaska is once again making the national news, and not, this time, because we are the "Coldest State with the Hottest Governor", as the bumper stickers say. This lovely mountain, which I am so fond of posting photos of, may be getting ready to explode. In the last week, Mt. Redoubt has moved from green to yellow to orange on the volcano alert scale; the only thing past orange is an actual eruption. That would be red, I guess.

The last time Redoubt erupted was almost twenty years ago. I was living in Seattle, working at Harborview Medical Center, and several of the physicians I worked with were avid mountain climbers. For several days there was little talk of anything else. That 1989 eruption was nowhere near as devastating as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980, but it did blanket the town of Kenai in a thick layer of ash. Dutch's admin assistant, who has lived here all her life, remembers it well. She says it was like driving through a black cloud, the ash was so dense, and it lasted for days.

The volcano has been burping gases at an increased rate since sometime after Christmas, and there has been a lot of small earthquake activity around Cook Inlet in that time. Last Saturday we had a 6.1 magnitude quake, which is a lot stronger than the 1- and 2-magnitude shakers that have been occurring daily, but nothing like the famous Good Friday Earthquake of 1964, which was a 9.2.

If she blows, I'll do my best to get photos.

Dog Mushing Season In Full Swing

Dog mushing is the official sport of the state of Alaska. Does any other state have an official sport? Surfing in California, snowshoeing in Maine? If so, I’ve never heard of it. Having a state sport seems to be another way that Alaska is unique.

I have written quite a bit about dog mushing over the years of this blog. You can see all previous posts on mushing by clicking the label at the bottom of this (or any other) post that says Dog Mushing.

Being January, the competitive dog mushing season is well under way and there are sled dog races happening all over the place, pretty much every weekend from New Year’s until March. Competitive mushing generally falls into one of three categories: long distance races of a thousand miles or more, such as the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest; mid-distance races of two hundred to five hundred miles; and sprint races of less than a hundred miles. There is a fourth category, stage racing, which is a variation of sprinting: teams compete in several consecutive days of sprinting with the winner determined by best overall time.

My favorite has always been the mid- and long distance races. They are as much about strategy, dogcraft, and the musher’s relationship with the team as they are about speed.

Any musher who wants to run the Quest or the Iditarod has to prove his or her ability to manage a dog team over many miles of trail. Both races require rookies to have completed two mid-distance races with an accumulated total of 500 miles; the Iditarod rules further stipulate that the musher must finish the qualifiers in the top 75% of the field or not more twice the elapsed time of the winner.

January abounds with mid-distance races that provide qualifying opportunities for rookies and excellent training opportunities for both rookies and veterans. The Knik 200 was the first weekend in January, won by Ken Anderson. Then came the Copper Basin 300 last weekend, won by the incredible Lance Mackey. This weekend there are the Klondike 300 in Wasilla and the Kuskokwim 300 and the Bogus Creek 150 in Bethel. Next weekend will be the Tustumena 200, not far from Kenai.

Following the sport of dog mushing can be a challenge. It isn’t as simple as turning the television on to Wide World of Sports and watching interviews with your favorite mushers interspersed with gorgeous shots of dog teams traveling through jaw-dropping scenery. The Iditarod has become well known enough to garner some television attention, but that’s about it. Otherwise you have to be present for the races or follow them on the internet; almost all have websites and post photos, video clips and commentary. This requires more knowledge of the sport, as there is no commentator explaining things.

The Alaskan dog racing season so far this year has been beset with incredible weather challenges. First we had a high pressure cell take up residence over most of the state, bringing record-setting low temperatures that stayed what seemed like forever. It was -56 degrees around Fairbanks for three weeks, -65 degrees about a hundred miles north of Fairbanks, and even southerly Kenai had -33 degrees. It is difficult—if not impossible—to do much dog training in that kind of cold.

Then, as so often happens in Alaska in the winter, our prayers to warm up (just a little!) were answered by a visitation from the Pineapple Express (known other places as a Chinook, a Santa Ana, a Fohn), the warm, dry wind which comes in and changes everything. Be careful what you ask for! Kenai is now at +38 degrees, with rain, slush, and melting everywhere. Fairbanks was +50—more than a hundred degree change in a few days.

You might think we’d be so happy for a break from that deep, deep cold that anything warmer would be better. Well, we are, and not to get too picky here, but staying ten degrees below freezing is far preferable. Rain in the winter sucks. The world turns into an ice rink and every step outdoors risks busting your ass.

And where before it was too cold to train dogs, now it is too warm. Sled dogs get overheated from working in these temperatures, so only short runs are possible.

Colder temperatures have been predicted for this weekend, so hopefully we’ll be back to our ideal winter range of single positive digits. Zero to ten above is just perfect.

The Kuskokwim 300 and Bogus Creek 150 were supposed to start Friday in Bethel, but have now been postponed until Sunday in the hope of dropping temperatures and improved trail. Forty degrees and raining earlier this week made a mess of everything. My weather genie tells me that today it is +10 and sunny in Bethel, so things hopefully will improve enough for tomorrow’s start.

As usual, many of the well-known professional mushers are in Bethel for K-300: Jeff King, Martin Buser, Dee Dee Jonrowe, Ed Iten, Mitch Seavey, Hugh Neff, Aaron Burmeister. The K-300 has one of the largest purses in mid-distance racing: a total of $100,000, with the winner taking $20,000. Finishing in the top 20 means being “in the money” and this year there are 16 teams registered. That means the Red Lantern (last place) will take $2,300 just for making it around the course. Worth the difficulties of getting a dog team to Bethel.

I will probably post updates and comments here as I am inspired to do so. If you want a broader and more reliable info-stream, go to Sled Dog Central. They keep up with everything involving dog-powered sports.


Photo of musher and dog team by The Tundra PA.

Snowy Moose

This morning I was out sweeping snow off the front porch when I noticed movement in the woods just across the small road in front of the house; a moose cow stepped slowly out of the trees and stood browsing the twigs and small branches at the edge of the road. I moved quietly to a bench near the door, sat down slowly and kept very quiet and still, hoping she wouldn’t notice me there. She was about fifty feet away. Moose don’t have great eyesight, but their hearing is quite acute. An old Native American saying is that if a leaf falls in the forest, Eagle sees it, Bear smells it, and Deer hears it. Moose is the largest member of the Deer family, and those big ears tell you that they don’t miss much, sound-wise.

When I sat down, she stared in my direction for a moment, munching and waiting. I barely breathed. Detecting no threat, she continued walking and stripping bark and twigs from the trees. I cursed the fact that my camera was inside the house.



She slowly crossed the road and walked directly towards me, peering in my direction frequently. She was now about thirty feet away. While her back was turned to me, I slipped in the house and grabbed the camera. The movement did not scare her and when I came back she had not moved far; I was able to shoot a few photos as she continued her peramble of the yard for several more minutes. Then she disappeared back into the trees.

The Alaskan moose is the largest of the species, and this one was a beautiful big animal. The bark she was stripping was about eight feet off the ground. There is something almost magical about being so close to such a large wild creature.

Warmer At Last!

This morning Dutch and I awoke to a welcome sight: the thermometer was reading a warm and toasty +18 degrees! And we got about an inch of fresh snow overnight--to frost the two feet that have been around for weeks--so everything looks clean and white, like a storybook winter. The air smells moister and it is great to be outside. The dogs feel it too; they want to romp and play instead of running back inside to the woodstove. After weeks of 20 to 30 below zero, this is divine!



While it was still Very Cold, I took this photo of the river with the fog moving down it just before sunset. It seemed worth sharing.

Getting Close

About noon yesterday the sky began to cloud up and the wind to blow. "Change is comin'!" I thought. Hooray! By mid-afternoon our thermometer almost said zero, and wow, was it feeling warm. I went out for armloads of wood to feed the woodstove without even wearing a jacket.

Yesterday Yahoo News had an article about this hard cold snap throughout Alaska since Christmas. They said it was the third most severe period of winter weather in the recorded weather history of Alaska. I wish they'd mentioned what took first and second place.

My last thermometer check at 10:30 last night still said almost zero, and I was hopeful that we were on the way back up to the +20s for a nice rest from this bitter intensity of cold. Alas and alack! This morning we are back down to 21 below zero. But hey, that's better than 31 below! Two steps forward, one step back.

Enough Already!

Cold. Damn cold. Freezin’ ass cold (or FAC as Dutch, the retired Coast Guard Captain calls it). It was minus thirty-three degrees again this morning, as it was yesterday and the day before, plus or minus a few. It is as cold here as Fairbanks, and colder than Bethel! Where’s my maritime influence, for Pete’s sake? I don’t mind a quick dip into Really Cold—a few days, maybe a week. It’s been about three weeks since we last saw zero, and life is taking a beating for it.

The water pipes to the kitchen sink (on an outside wall) have been frozen off and on for two weeks. With a space heater on high under the sink, the pipes would thaw every few days, for a few hours, and then refreeze. I was hauling a five gallon bucket of water from the garage for dipping next to the kitchen sink.

On Saturday, for no known reason, all the electrical outlets in the kitchen lost power. Including the refrigerator. OK, drag out the coolers, freezer stuff to the front porch (no lack of freezing capacity there), refrig stuff to the garage. Turn garage thermostat down to 48 from 58, pour 3” of water in second cooler, set outside to freeze (two hours), then pack refrig stuff in with a thermometer and keep next to the car. OK, this works for a hopefully very few days.

On Sunday water returned to the kitchen sink about 3 pm. I had the faucets on so I'd know if water started flowing, and promptly turned them off. About 5 pm I heard water flowing somewhere. All water points in the house were off and dry. Not good. I opened the back door to the loud sound of water, not running but gushing. A six foot strip of wall under the kitchen sink looked like Niagara Falls. OMGOMGOMG!

I ran back in and turned off the water valves under the kitchen sink, which was dry. Of course, no change. I could hear it outside, gushing away and freezing into a rapidly-growing ice fall. I had no idea where the main water valve to the house is. What to do, what to do? I didn’t know anyone to call, Dutch was in Texas. And then another dread thought. The water is not all going outside the house.

Eeeewwwwwww, the basement. I had never been down there. The landlady retained possession of it, to store incredible quantities of junk. And a few weeks ago, Bear, the mighty hunter, killed a mouse that got into the house as it was trying to escape under the door to the basement (since stuffed with a draft puppy). I had no idea what I would find down there, and did not want to look.

The rickety stairs had my attention more than the low beam over the steps and I cracked my head good on the way down, which did not help anything. Despite the stars, I got to the bottom of the steps; at least it was well lit. And yes, water was pouring down the inside of the concrete wall, spraying cardboard boxes of junk, and standing about an inch deep in a widening circle on the floor. Boxes were stacked against the wall three deep and six feet high with various camping gear thrown on top. I could just see a water valve at the ceiling level; there was no way to get to it until I moved all the gear and boxes.

It went faster than I thought; adrenalin is an amazing thing. Once the wall was clear, the valve was still about five feet above my head and there was no ladder or step stool around. I finally found a chair under some other stuff and, standing on it, was barely able to reach the valve. It worked. The flood stopped. And what a beautiful silence followed.

I spent Monday calling plumbers and electricians. The plumber came Tuesday and said the hot water pipe to the kitchen sink was not just cracked; a three foot section of it was shattered. He replaced hot and cold pipes both, moved them further away from the outside wall, and recommended not closing the cabinet doors to the space under the sink when it is this cold. So I have running water in the kitchen again, and at this temperature, consider it pretty much of a miracle.



The electrician was to have come today, but now it will be tomorrow. At $75/hr, I’d rather wait another day than pay overtime. I’m just glad they can come this week. The frozen food is NOT a problem. And now I have no excuse to put off scrubbing out the refrigerator.

Everyone I see has a look of dogged determination about getting through this cold snap. And nearly everyone has heard that “it’ll only be a few more days” until we get back to our more normal temperatures of +10 to +20F. They said it last week and the week before. It has to come true eventually. The crystal blue sky outside doesn’t give me hope that it will be tomorrow, but maybe by the weekend. I’m ever the optimist.



Photos by The Tundra PA: sunrise on Mt. Redoubt, 10:20 AM; and moose at sunset, 3:56 pm. Are you tired of moose pictures yet?

C-c-c-cold!

When I awoke dark and early—well, dark anyway; it was nearly 8 AM—the deck thermometer cruelly told me that it was -30F outside. Yeah, minus thirty! That’s pretty darn cold. That’s when your nostrils slam shut and your hands go numb in about three minutes, despite gloves. I gave a silent thanks to the furnace gods for a warm house to wake up in.

No running water in the kitchen again (it came back yesterday for a few hours) and now the downstairs toilet’s water line is frozen. It will flush, it just won’t fill; so I have to do it manually with pitchers of water from the tub. Four pitchers per flush—I’m back to the Bethel maxim “when it’s yellow, it’s mellow”.



By mid afternoon we had warmed up to -12F, which actually felt quite noticeably softer and warmer. It is not painful to breathe once you get above minus twenty. Our perception of cold really is relative, and it doesn’t take long to reset your definition. Once we get back to zero it will feel balmy.

I was able to take some photos of the front yard where the moose have been visiting. The sign is cast iron, a Christmas gift from Dad and Stepmom. This yard is the perfect place for it. The moose have said so.

Happy New Year!

When the alarm woke Dutch and me at 5 AM, the thermometer on our deck read minus 25 degrees F. The sky was crystal clear, inky black and full of stars. This cold snap has lasted for a week, holding the big dump of snow we received in last weekend’s blizzard, and also causing our pipes to freeze up. I’m getting used to the sound of a space heater running underneath the kitchen sink.

The reason for such an early rising on New Year’s Day was to get Dutch to the airport. His plane left at 6:30 for a twelve-hour trip to Texas to spend a long weekend visiting with his boys. He hasn’t seen them in two years, and is really looking forward to spending time with them.

Younger Son, now 27 years old and in Special Forces training in the Army, got married just before Christmas. Dutch had plane tickets to be there, but Mother Nature had other ideas. His flight out on winter solstice never even left Kenai (but not cancelled until after a two hour wait at the airport), and after we saw the news reports of hundreds of travelers stranded in Seattle, we were just glad he was not one of them.

He was disappointed to miss the wedding, but glad he was able to reschedule the trip before Younger Son returns to his Army base to resume training next week. Older Son is also around; he is in his last year of law school, and just finishing Christmas break as well. Older Son and his wife (who is also a PA!) are currently in training for a triathlon; Dutch just laughed when I asked if he would go run/bike/swim with them.

It will be a quick trip—he’ll be home early Tuesday. At least he was able to pack light. It’s seventy-something degrees there. Hope his blood doesn’t get thin. We might make it above zero by then. And maybe have running water in the kitchen.

Christmas Eve Moose Visitation

Does anybody ever get used to this? If I live here for twenty years, I don't think I will. I know, I know, it is so common around here people just yawn and say, "Oh, yeah, another moose." It is a frequent occurrence for people who live in downtown Anchorage, for Pete's sake (and Anchorage isn't really IN Alaska, though, as they say, you can see Alaska from there).



This does NOT happen in Bethel. In my ten years of living there, I never once saw a moose within a hundred miles of Bethel. Occasionally one would wander into the area and you'd hear about it all over town for days, along with plenty of envy for the guy who saw it first and got it into his freezer to feed the family for the next several months.



With the five-year moratorium on moose hunting on the lower Kuskokwim River, now in its fourth year, the moose population in the area is coming back strongly. A few miles upriver from Bethel where there are stands of cottonwood and fir trees, signs of moose presence are everywhere: bark stripped from the trees at the six-foot level, snow churned up, big hoof prints, and lots of piles of moose turds. But they don't wander into town, and surely are not browsing the shrubberies around people's homes.

Yesterday this young moose cow and her calf were doing exactly that. Mother and I were inside doing something or other when Mother looked out the window and said "Oh, my goodness! There is a moose right next to the house!"

And she was, just about two feet from the back door. She turned and looked directly at me, and was completely unperturbed. I was snapping photos like mad through the window while she continued to munch down our bushes around the deck. She reminded me of the young moose on the opening sequence of the old TV show "Northern Exposure" (which, by the way, is available from Netflix if you are interested). Clearly, moose have not been hunted around here for a very long time. She had no fear, despite having a young calf.



We never got a good look at the calf. It was on the far side of a downed tree, eating the tips. As mom moved off slowly, the calf trailed her, and I could see that it was very young and small, probably only eight or nine months old.

What a Christmas Eve gift! Mother and I were both elated to have had such a close encounter, and one that lasted a good half hour or so. I do have to admit to having had a few thoughts about how tasty that moose would be, but I am just not a hunter. Short of my family's starvation, I would not look down the barrel and pull the trigger on Bullwinkle. But I'm happy to eat him when someone else does, and extremely good eating it is, too.

It is an incredible feeling to have wild animals in your immediate environment. We have black and brown bears around here too, though I am a little less excited to see them next to the back door. Gawd, I love Alaska!

A Bit of Americana

When my grandmother died this past May, it was only a week before my scheduled trip to see her; I dropped everything and went immediately when I got the not-unexpected news, and was there with Mother and the rest of the family for two weeks. Mother and I were the only ones staying in her house, as everyone else lives in the area.

We spent quite a bit of time sorting through stuff, and what interested me the most was Grandmother’s huge collection of old photographs. She has images of long-dead relatives that go all the way back to the era of daguerreotypes. Fortunately, many have names and dates written on the back in pencil. It was the details in many of these images that fascinated me more than the subjects themselves.

The three photos I’ve posted here struck me as outstanding examples of quaint Americana. Mother could not remember having seen them before, and did not know why they were taken; they look like a photo shoot for a gas station ad. That’s my uncle, Mother’s older brother, second from the right in the first shot, which is why my grandmother had the photos at all. He looks about 18 or 19 years old, and Mother remembers him working at the gas station in town about then. It was 1947 or ’48.



I love the hats and bow ties. When was the last time someone even pumped your gas for you, much less wore a hat and bow tie to do it? And three guys—one to pump the gas, one to check the oil, and one to wash the windows! Mother says the window guy not only washed ALL the windows, and the mirrors, he also carefully wiped your headlights while he was at it.

Any old-car buffs out there know what make the cars are? The dark one on the right looks like a Plymouth to me, but I don’t have a clue about the lighter one on the left. There were no Rolls Royces in rural south central Kentucky in the late forties!

On the original full-pixel scans of the photos, I zoomed in on the gas tanks to try to read the price per gallon, but the detail was too blurred to make it out. The second tank from the left reads THIS SALE: $1.23, and GALLONS DELIVERED: 5 point something. That would put the price about 21 cents per gallon; Mother remembers it being less than that, more like 15 cents per gallon. The Gulf Valve Top Oil being seriously discussed with the driver of the dark car was 25 cents per quart.



These photos charm me in a way I can’t explain. My uncle looks so young and innocent. He’d have been 80 this year if he had survived the leukemia which took his life ten years ago. Perhaps it is just that the images speak to a simpler time when life was less hurried and complex. Especially this time of year, many people nostalgically think of that era as sweeter and more honest than now. It probably wasn’t; and I’d be hard-pressed to give up my laptop, my iPod, my microwave and my cell phone. But it still charms me.

I'm the Sixth Day of Christmas!

A blog I enjoy checking in with, Addicted to Medblogs, has been doing a series every so often called Calendar Docs. The Medblog Addict is an attorney who is fascinated by medical blogs and the portal into the world of health care that they provide. Last year she started interviewing different physician bloggers and posting the interviews along with sexy beefcake photos (most of the interviews were with male physicians).

This year for Christmas she decided to do one interview for each of the 12 days of Christmas. She chose 12 non-physician providers for this blogging bolus, and I am Day 6--the geese a-laying (is there significance to that?)!

She came up with some good questions, and I enjoyed writing answers. You can find my interview here. She has previous Calendar Doc interviews in a sidebar on the right. Enjoy!

A Mother's Blessing

For my entire life, I have been blessed by the fact that my mother has always been one of my very best friends. Even during my adolescence, the classic era of mother-daughter wars, we were very close. Possibly because I was such a goody-two shoes, I never gave my parents any problems. By the time my rebellious phase hit (such as it was) I was in college and too far away for them to directly observe any objectionable behaviors. My younger sister, on the other hand, was a constant source of chaffing for them from the time she was 12—which, now that I think of it, was probably something of a distraction for which I should have thanked her.

In all the traipsing around I’ve done (California, Washington State, North Carolina, Montana, Alaska) Mother has come to visit me in almost every place I’ve lived. Some were pretty marginal, but she never complained about them; before I knew it she’d be making new curtains. My friends loved her visits; she would cook a good old Southern fried chicken dinner with mashed potatoes, turnip greens and black eyed peas and we’d have a dozen or so people in to enjoy it.

Our visits have been less frequent since I moved to Alaska. It takes 24 hours of travel each way to get from Bethel or Kenai to her home near Pensacola; I usually try to visit when I am already in the lower 48 attending the national PA conference each May. She has been to Alaska a handful of times, usually for a two- or three-week visit. Her last visit was two years ago.

Toward the end of summer I talked with her about coming up to see the new place in Kenai and her son-in-law, whom she absolutely adores (and it’s mutual), but she was still dealing with the details of my grandmother’s estate since her death in May. Mother didn’t think she could come before next spring. But when I called her in October with news of the hip replacement surgery, she put everything aside and said, “I’ll be there.” She came on the first of November and is staying until after Christmas—two entire months. I am delighted, and so is Dutch.

We have a great time hanging out together, all three of us or just Mother and me. We talk about everything in the world. And for someone edging towards 80, she has amazing energy. It is all I can do to keep up with her. She is constantly tidying, mending, cleaning—“jes’ piddlin’” as she says. And everything in her wake is nicer, cozier, more organized. I turn around twice and she’s not only done another load of laundry, she has ironed all of Dutch’s dress shirts. Perhaps you’d have to see his closet to appreciate that, but the man must have fifty dress shirts* in size extra large. I figure at four shirts a week (Fridays being jeans-and-sweatshirt day) he’s good until April. I hate ironing. *She counted them: 61.

When she is at home in Florida, Mother leads a morning meditation group that meets from 6 to 7 am five days a week at a local church, and a weekly metaphysical group that studies the works of Emmett Fox. And then there are a few bridge-playing groups that she drops in on regularly. She leads an energetic life, my mom.

Having her here for this extended period of time has been wonderful. We’ve had time to talk over lots of old family stuff, things I remember from childhood, her childhood memories growing up during the Depression in the hills of Tennessee.

She always referred to her half of my lineage as “the hillbilly side”. She was born “up the holler” in a tiny town that no longer exists. She walked a mile or so to the one-room schoolhouse carrying an actual pail with her lunch in it. There was no indoor plumbing anywhere, and her mother did all the cooking on a wood-fired stove. Mother learned to iron clothes using a five-pound flatiron that had to be heated up in the fireplace.

Her family had all been farmers for generations. But Grandaddy was an enterprising man with a mind for business; when oil was discovered on his farm—kind of like Jed Clampett—he sold it for lots of money and moved the family to town. He and Grandmother bought a hardware and furniture store right on the town square and became merchants. I still remember that store; it had wooden floors and kind of a musty smell. I learned to roller skate on those floors.


Mother graduated high school at the age of 16 and went to college at Western Kentucky State College (now Western Kentucky University) in Bowling Green. There she met my Dad, and they married when they finished college. He went to dental school and she entered the secretarial pool of the work force. Two years later, I came along; and she was overjoyed. I was her love child. We have shared a very special mother-daughter relationship that goes back to the very beginning of my existence in this lifetime. I am so blessed in that.

She is forever teaching me something new. Need to get rid of an anthill in your yard? Buy a box of instant grits and pour them (uncooked) in a thick circle around the anthill. The ants have to eat their way through the grits to get out. The grits absorb all the fluid in their stomachs, swell up and explode the insects. No poison needed.

Like your cornbread crispy? Bake it in a waffle iron.

No matter what we’re doing together, we end up laughing a lot. I love that about her, she has a great, and sometimes salty, sense of humor; and with her soft Southern accent, everything comes out charming.

If it is true that we become our mothers, then I have some truly fine multi-generation footsteps to follow, and I fully expect to do so for another twenty years or so. When Grandmother passed away this past summer she was 94, as was her mother before her. The hillbilly side has produced some delightful old women, and given me great role models.


Photo credits:
1. Mother and me as a newborn, still in the hospital, taken by Dad. In the early 1950s women stayed in the hospital for ten days when they gave birth; I was nine days old when we came home.
2. Mother and me at about one month old, also taken by Dad. I still have that quilt with the circles on it, though it is a bit more ragged now than it was then.
3. Mother and me at age two years. This was our passport photo when we moved to Germany. Dad was stationed there as an Army dentist.

Bethel Update

My dear friend Joan, who gets periodic mention here on the blog, spent Thanksgiving week in Anchorage seeing friends and was able to make a quick trip down to Kenai for an overnight to visit with Dutch and me. We were delighted that she was able to come; Dutch hasn’t seen her since August, and I haven’t seen her since I left Bethel at the end of September. The visit gave us time to catch up on Bethel news.

For much of November I was watching my two weather feeds on Bethel and Kenai; Bethel was in the zero to 25 below range (usually closer to the colder end) while Kenai stayed in the zero to 25 above range. For nearly two weeks, Bethel did not warm up to 10 below, which is pretty harsh cold for November. Joan said that quite a few people were having problems with their houses freezing up, even the experienced folks who know how to prevent it. Two weeks of cold that severe will challenge the best of technology.

She pointed out, though, that it was great for the river. An extended hard cold early in the season thickens the surface ice on the river quickly, which makes for much safer traveling. Especially if there has not been a heavy dump of snow just before the cold hits; snow insulates the ground so that freezing takes longer. The ideal is a hard cold snap before there is any snow; the ground and the river get a good head start on freezing solid. Snow after that makes everything nice.

Every year there are several (or more) deaths by drowning on the Kuskokwim River from people traveling on snowmachines that break through thin ice. These tragedies often occur early in the season, when people anxious to travel do so before the river ice is thick enough. This year’s early cold will help to prevent such accidents.

Most people in Bethel are just grousing about the harsh cold; two weeks of 25 below zero is really tough. Everything about living your life is just harder in that kind of cold. It is so like Joan to focus on the positive aspect of it.

She also told us that the outcome of the City Council election in October has had a hugely positive effect on the general feeling of the people of Bethel. (I wrote several posts this past year on the outrageous and despicable behavior of four of the seven City Council members; the last one has links to the previous ones.) The Block of Four (a.k.a. the Four Thugs, the Four Malicious Idiots) lost two of their members and, thereby, their dominance of the City Council. Tundy Rodgers (the Blustering Bloviator) and Willy Keppel (the Newly Appointed (last December) Council Member) both ran, but barely got a handful of votes each.

Tundy’s defeat is a huge statement from the people of Bethel. They are just tired of his pomposity. He sat on Council for something like eighteen years, and all he ever did was roar with negativity. I could not find a single person in Bethel who could name one thing Tundy did in those eighteen years that was positive for the Council or the town. And Willy? Jeez, what a loser. Dutch and I heard from numerous people about him showing up rip roarin’ drunk to a Council meeting; everyone knew he was drunk, but the Mayor (Eric Middlebrook) did not ask him to leave or indicate that there was any problem with Willy participating fully in Council business despite his inebriation. Yes, Eric, this was another example of your incompetence and spinelessness.

Another happy outcome of the October election was that Middlebrook was soundly routed in his bid for Mary Sattler Nelson’s seat in the state legislature. He would have been a disaster in Juneau; he has no political savvy at all. Mary threw her support to Bob Herron, who won handily.

And the really good thing that happened in this wake-up call to Bethel is that really good people stepped up and ran for Council. There are three new Council members, as two positions were up for re-election, and one seat had been recently vacated by Yolanda Jorgenson, the Jolly Restaurateur, who moved away. The new Council members are Beverly Hoffman (mentioned in my bird watching post), Joe Klejka (physician and father of Jessica, who won the Jr. Iditarod this year), and La Mont Albertson (director of the adult learning center, and a man Dutch likes and respects individually).

These three join the four remaining from the previous Council: two sad remnants of the Block of Four (now essentially castrated), Eric Middlebrook and Raymond Williams—for whom the nickname “Thor” is ironic, since he has at times been compared to a box of hammers; and two of the three “white hats” who tried to stand for honesty and decency against the Block of Four, Dan Leinberger, who I never gave a handle to, and Tiffany Zulkowski, the Voice of Youth. And to top the good stuff off, the new Council elected Tiffany as Mayor at their very first meeting! Dutch and I did a spirited little happy dance when we heard that news! And sent her a card of congratulations on her victory. Good has triumphed over evil in this case.

The issue of the recall petitions on Middlebrook and Williams died without ever coming to the people, despite plenty of signatures, due to what I believe was the completely unethical behavior of the City Clerk, Lori Strickler. She gave out wrong instructions on how the petitions should be turned in, and then declared them all invalid because they were turned in according to her instructions. We called in the ACLU, who told her to give them back and allow the signature collectors to turn them in correctly (i.e., all at once), but she refused and then lied and said she never gave us wrong instructions. I fully believe Middlebrook "encouraged" her to find a way to make the petitions go away, and fearing for her job, she did.

The other loose end to this ragged story concerns the former City Attorney, Sharon Sigmon, whose wrongful termination by the Council last January marked the beginning of this year-long debacle of corruption. She quickly obtained another job, but there has been no news of her lawsuit against the City Council and the individual members (Williams and Middlebrook) who treated her so despicably after the meeting at which she was terminated. Separate from the Council’s action, those two should be sued for defamation of character by action for the way they called in a uniformed police officer and hustled her out of the building like she might steal the pencil erasers. She wasn’t even allowed to retrieve personal items from her office. I’m still hoping she’ll sue the britches off ‘em, and win big time.

Joan says that overall, it is like a cleansing wind has swept through Bethel. People are no longer ashamed of their elected representatives, and are hopeful once again about moving forward. Middlebrook and Williams have one more year on Council before they must stand for re-election; without their corrupt cronies they can do far less damage, and my bet is that come October next, they will be left standing when the next Council is seated.

The View from my Deck

At the risk of boring you with tedious repetition, I just had to throw up this photo of the view from my deck yesterday afternoon. It is similar to the photo on Monday’s post, though that view was taken from the mouth of the river. This one does a bit more to convey the incredible vastness, though it still falls short of reality. The two volcanoes, Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Illiamna, seem much larger and closer in the actual view and dominate the scenery far more dramatically than these photos suggest. And that sense of wide-openness that falls away with the curve of the earth? Nothing captures that. The huge bald eagles soaring through it show up only as specks on the photos.

Lest anyone miss the obvious here, let me just say yes, I am totally enthralled with this view. It is mesmerizing. I can gaze at it for hours. Preferably without window glass between it and me, but at yesterday morning’s frosty five degrees below zero, I was glad to appreciate the view from inside. By afternoon the temperature had risen to twenty above, and with no wind blowing it was quite pleasant to sit in the sun on the south-facing side of the house and gaze into the endless distance.

I am now four weeks out from hip replacement surgery for idiopathic avascular necrosis. Overall, my recovery is proceeding quite well. I am off crutches and getting around much more easily, though always mindful of hip precautions: don’t flex the hip more than 90 degrees, don’t cross the body’s midline with that foot, don’t internally rotate that hip (point the toe in). I go to physical therapy twice a week and do exercises at home to regain strength in the leg and increase range of motion. It is slow going, but there is steady progress.

The pre-op I went through prior to the hip replacement included an MRI of the hip. Eighteen months ago I had plain x-rays of that hip which were normal; by this past July, x-rays showed essentially no joint left (which validated the excruciating pain I was in, but otherwise was not reassuring). My surgeon, Dr. L. (dubbed “the turtle” by Jody for his slow and measured approach), wanted the MRI to distinguish between incredibly rapid progression of arthritis and avascular necrosis. It indicated the latter.

It also revealed an incidental finding of an ill-defined mass in my abdomen. The MRI was followed by abdominal and pelvic CT scan, with and without contrast. The mass remained ill-defined, though appeared to be located in the retroperitoneal area (behind the abdominal cavity, not inside it) and appeared to be cystic (fluid-filled). Both are strongly encouraging that the mass is not malignant. But it does need to come out.

Dr. L called in a general surgeon he thinks highly of, Dr. M. Dr. M reviewed the studies and came and spoke with me while I was admitted for the hip. He said if he had any suspicion of malignancy, he would wait no more than two weeks from the hip surgery before taking me back to the OR. As it was, he was comfortable waiting six to eight weeks.

So as the hip heals, I’m preparing for the next hurdle. Tomorrow I drive up to Anchorage for ultrasound-guided needle biopsy of the mass. I’m not queasy, but I don’t look forward to that procedure. Hopefully the full surgical removal will follow shortly after that. Then another four weeks of recovery, and I hope to be back to work by early January.


And for those of you who are wondering in just what direction Tundra Medicine Dreams may be going now that I no longer live on the tundra, I have to tell you that I wonder the same thing. Today it sounds as though TMD is becoming a patient blog, though that is not my intention and I promise to keep this part short. I’ve become so erratic about posting that I felt some explanation was due.

A Beautiful Place

It really is beautiful here in Kenai, both the area in general and the spot where our house is located. I can’t imagine a more restful and healing view to gaze at while recovering from surgery than this lovely image of mountains and sky. Sometimes the clouds obscure all of it, but when they clear, Oh! They take your breath away. I can watch for hours as the light shifts on the face of the mountains while the sun moves in a low arc across the southern sky.


October and, so far, November, have proceeded as they were planned. Jody and I managed (thanks mostly to Jody) to finish up in Bethel on schedule. We even had time to squeeze in a steam bath at Henry’s on our last night there. The last bunch of packing and mailing happened, gifts were distributed to friends, utilities and services terminated, everything taken care of.


We showed up at Alaska Airlines for our one-way trip to Anchorage with a large and motley assortment of belongings which Jody had creatively packed in three 33-gallon Rubbermaid trashcans with the lids strapped and duck-taped on, and a burn barrel made from the tub of an old washing machine and packed with tools and stuff. We had regular suitcases too, but the trashcans and burn barrel were an outstanding element there in the Alaska terminal. We handed them up for weighing and checking in, and the gate agents never raised an eyebrow.

“What??” Jody said to them. “We don’t even get a smile for this? We’re packed in trashcans and a burn barrel, for goodness’ sake!”

The agent just shrugged and said “Hey, this is Bethel. We’ve pretty much seen it all around here.”

My friend Joan, who was there to see us off, took a photo to commemorate the trashcan departure.

Leaving Bethel for the last time was very bittersweet. I know I will be back, so it was not really the last time, but it was the last time I would leave as a Bethel resident. When Jody and I landed there the week before, it already felt different. For the first time ever, it did not feel like coming home. Watching the town grow small as the plane lifted off felt like a door closing, the end of an era.

Ten years. I grew and changed a lot in that time. I went from the emotional wasteland of an ill-fated, never-should-have-happened, emotionally abusive relationship to the lush garden of the soul-mated love that I share with Dutch. I was married for the first and only time in my life, right there in Bethel. I became a writer, something I’ve worked toward my whole life, but never managed to accomplish. I created this blog, which is something I am proud of. In the two-plus years of its existence, I have written essays on a wide variety of subjects concerning bush medicine and Yupik culture. Even in the last six weeks, when I have not written a single word, the blog continues to capture seven to eight hundred hits per week, just from people searching the internet for subjects related to things I’ve written about. That is truly satisfying to me.

I will go back to Bethel to work and to visit dear friends there, but it won’t be the same as living there. I won’t be a member of the club anymore. Bethelites have an esprit d’ corp that comes from surviving the isolating location and harsh winter weather. If you only come to visit, it doesn’t include you.

But I will look forward to those visits, because Bethel will always be special to me. In its own way, it is also a beautiful place. Bethel forever changed my life, in ways which were all good. I wouldn’t have it any other way.


Photos by The Tundra PA.
1. The Alaska Range at sunset, from the mouth of the Kenai River
2. Mt. Redoubt, from my deck.
3. Mt. Illiamna, from my deck.

Bethel Wrap Up

The whirlwind that I have lived in for the last month continues unabated, but I am not totally overwhelmed by it so far. For that I can thank the help and support of several dear friends. In the last month I have had moments of profound exhaustion as well as moments of exquisite joy. My life continues to amaze me.

The spirituality conference in California at the beginning of the month was remarkable in several ways, not the least of which was spending three days beneath the towering redwoods of the coastal mountains south of San Francisco. Those massive trees have such strength and antiquity that just leaning against the trunk of one leads me to a feeling of calm and peace.

I was reunited with old friends I haven’t seen since my post-college years of the 1970s, and that was wonderful. But the most remarkable and somewhat miraculous thing was being reunited with the twin girls I co-parented for five years, from the time they were four until they were nine years old, and whom I have not seen for nearly twenty years. They are now 36 years old, and they are beautiful, caring, considerate and passionate young women. They are truly the daughters of my heart, las hijas de mi corizon, and I am so incredibly proud of them.

For three days we laughed and cried together, and did all the catching up that such a long separation requires. I last saw them in 1991, when they were in their first year of college at the University of Washington, where I was also in my first year of PA training. Our paths diverged from there, and I was unable to locate them in all the years since. They found my name listed on the conference’s website as one of the presenters and showed up. I was blown away to see them again, and joyous beyond measure.

Immediately greedy to have more time with them, I told them about the Women’s Harvest Celebration in Montana, and invited them to attend. They read my post about last year’s Harvest and decided it sounded like just what they needed. A quick check with Susan Rangitsch, who leads the program, confirmed that there was—just barely—space for them to participate. I was delighted.

A quick trip back to Bethel to wash clothes and repack, in my nearly empty house, as the movers came on September 1st and removed about 96% of my belongings. A quick visit with Dad and Stepmom in Anacortes before picking up the twins in Seattle to drive to Montana with my dear and long-time friends the Drum Maker and the Stained Glass Artist. The old friends and the new-found daughters hit it off immediately and we had a great time trekking together across Washington and Idaho to Montana.

The five days of Harvest were, as always, exciting, challenging, healing, and renewing. There were 32 women attending, and the weather at Black Tail Ranch on the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains was perfect. The full moon shone at night from a clear and cloudless sky, the days were warm and sunny, the air was crisp and smelled of fall. We danced, we sang, we cried and laughed together, we opened our hearts to each other, we held each other gently and hummed the theme of our common strength and power.

I delighted in watching my beautiful daughters insert themselves into this close circle of flowing woman energy, make new friends, open and expand themselves like sunflowers greeting the sun. We had many moments of loving closeness and reconnection, and many of the women there remarked on the joy radiating from the three of us together. It was a profound experience for me.

After Harvest I had a few glorious days in Missoula with my dear friends Susan and Jody (both were part of the Arctic Expedition in April), and then Jody and I flew back to Bethel for the final packing and details of moving. Jody has been a diva of organization, sorting, list-making, and packing in this final push, and her help has been invaluable. We are so on schedule that we may even have time to take the boat out this afternoon for a spin on the river. How great is that? And we are having such beautiful weather for it. Hard frost in the mornings, about 26 degrees, and sunny clear afternoons. The fact that we can do it does mean, unfortunately, that the boat has not sold yet. I will leave it here in storage for the winter and hope to find the right person to buy it next summer.

The wrap up will be complete on Tuesday morning, when Jody and I hop aboard the morning jet to Anchorage. A bit of fun and business there, and then it is on to Kenai to rejoin Dutch and all three of the dogs, who are anxiously awaiting our arrival. On October 1st, the long Summer of Solitude will finally be over.

Photos: Redwood trees in California by The Tundra PA; portrait of Susan Rangitsch by Linda Tracy.

Moving. Ugh.

Packing. It consumes every waking non-hospital minute of my life. I’ve been in full-on combat mode for over two weeks. If I had to make a list of things I most detest in life, very near the top would be moving, or moving house, as the British say. It is just such a huge amount of work.

Dutch and I have lived in this house for four years—one of my longest stints, five years is my record for one house. I’ve moved a lot. We’ve had four great years here; it’s a wonderful house, with a beautiful west-facing view of the tundra and a large deck that catches the afternoon sun.

Over the last two weeks I’ve watched the house slowly come apart, as pictures came down off the walls, bookcases were emptied into boxes for shipping (my precious few) or for donation to the library, shelves were emptied of their Yupik artwork. I’m about down to bare furniture, and the house is feeling empty.

Despite a good amount of heartless tossing of old things, there are still stacks and stacks of boxes to be picked up by Bob the mover guy on Monday for delivery to the city dock and loading on a barge to Seward. Leaving Bethel is not as simple as renting a U-Haul.

When I’m not actually packing boxes, I’m thinking about what needs to be packed, and when, and how to organize the great help I’ve been receiving. Breezy and Summer have been lifesavers of infusing energy and get-er-done attitude. And they’ve moved lots of heavy stuff, too. They brought their friend Liza along, and she’s been a big help. Joan and the boys came over last night for pizza, and they made short work of some big boxes full of camping gear. One shed now completely empty {dusting her hands and feeling satisfied}. Second shed nearly so. Third shed holds all the boxes packed so far. By the end of Labor Day weekend, the house should be nearly empty.

Three days later I leave for a spirituality festival in California, at which I have been invited to speak. So along with all the packing, I’ve also been putting together slide shows, scanning lots of old photographs I have going back more than thirty years. I will see old friends there that I haven’t seen for a very long time, including two young women that I love dearly, and had a hand in raising for about five years when they were children. I think of them as my nieces, but I love them more as my daughters. I haven’t seen them since 1991.

On the way back from California I gave myself a short visit with Dutch in Kenai before flying to Bethel. Then it is a two-day turnaround (during which I have to go to the dentist and take both dogs to the vet for their health certificates) to fly out to Seattle to see Dad and Stepmom before driving with a friend to the Women’s Harvest Celebration in Montana. Whew. Then back to Bethel with my friend Jody (mentioned previously on the Arctic Adventure and the post Jody’s Trials) for five days to clean the house up completely, distribute the last of the wine collection to friends, and ship the dogs to Kenai. And have any more dental visits that are needed (there’s this one tooth…).

By October 1st Jody and I will be in Anchorage, hopefully picking up my new (to me) car, and then going to see the orthopedic surgeon about hopefully replacing my hip. Like the next day. The injury I wrote about in April of 2007 caused a rapid progression of arthritis, to the point that my hip is now bone-on-bone with no joint space left. For the last three months, it has been constantly painful, at times awful. So I’m thinking hot lights and cold steel. To cut is to cure. Everyone I’ve talked to who has had a hip replacement, and is more than a year out, says they are only sorry they waited so long to get it. Besides, I’m behind schedule. Both parents and my younger sister have had six hips replaced between them. It definitely runs in the family.


Stating the obvious here, but posts will be pretty sporadic for a while.

Online Again

After two full weeks without a computer in my house, I have a new appreciation for the roll of my laptop in my life. Every time I turned around, I was missing it for something.

The internet, of course. Couldn’t check my email accounts. Couldn’t make my airline reservations, hotel reservations, car reservations for two upcoming trips next month. Couldn’t shop for a new laptop backpack when my old one permanently popped its zipper. Couldn’t take a Google Earth tour of my niece’s new address to see what kind of neighborhood she’s moved herself into. Couldn’t do my online banking/bill paying. Couldn’t keep up with my favorite bloggers, Dr. Dinosaur, the Cranky Professor, MDOD, Ambulance Driver, and a few others. A dozen times a day I was reaching for my laptop to check something out, and coming up empty handed.

Of course I have a computer at my desk at the hospital, and was able to at least keep up minimally with my email. But doing anything more requires going in early or staying late, and neither of those am I inclined towards. As my friend Dr. H says, “the longer you are here, the longer you are here.” I certainly did not want to spend the kind of time there that I usually put into the writing of posts for this blog. And I can’t post photos from there.

Separation from my laptop also allowed me a new appreciation of my non-internet dependence on technology. I will be a guest speaker at a festival next month and am currently going through hundreds of old photographs to put together three different Powerpoint presentations; without the computer I couldn’t start scanning and organizing the photos I want to use. Visitors in town from the lower 48 were over for dinner and wanted to see some old photos of Bethel I had scanned and saved before returning the originals to their owner. Nope, sorry.

But mostly the dependence is connected to writing. Without my laptop I have not written anything for the last two weeks. Zip. Zilch. It feels so…weird. Empty. I’ve had several pieces planned in my head and wanted to capture them before they drifted away. The right brain said “OK, so take a pad of paper and a pen and start writing. You remember how to do that, right?” And the left brain answered, “What?? Actually press pen to paper and leave a trail of ink? Do you know how SLOW that is? Whole sentences evaporate before I can capture them!”

The truth is that I can type about as fast as I can think, while gazing pensively at the tundra, which helps to transport me to that alternate mindspace in which my best writing happens. I don’t have to think about the process which transforms thoughts in my head to retrievable files which can be stored or printed. Handwriting with pen on paper requires far more focus on the process, and far more energy. Maybe I am just lazy, but I allow it to keep me from writing. I think back to those authors of the pre-technology era, like Jane Austin and Charles Dickens, and I wonder how they did it. As much as I would love to visit them during their times, it would have to be with my laptop and digital camera.

So it was with great joy and anticipation that I finally welcomed my laptop home last night. The wonderboy computer geek at Bethel Alaska PC managed to figure out the bizarre problem with my laptop, after disassembling the entire thing down to its component coils and wires.

As he explained it to me, the power button, in the top center of the keyboard face, is connected to a plug-in on the inside under the keys at the top right by a small wire. This plug-in is adjacent to the right hinge for the screen face. The wire is held in place by a piece of tape. Yeah. A piece of tape. Over time, the heat generated by the laptop in use made the piece of tape sticky on both sides instead of just one. When closed, the top of the tape was sticking to something above it; opening the laptop was pulling the wire out of its connection. So I couldn’t turn it on.

While Rich had the computer broken down he cleaned it all up, used some kind of silver compound to dissipate heat from heat sensitive parts, and secured that troublesome wire in a more reliable fashion. Final result: computer is working beautifully again. And I am so glad to have it back. What’s more, it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Rich doesn’t charge for diagnostic time, even though he spent nearly two weeks trying to track down the problem. Final bill: $116. Way better than the two grand I was anticipating having to spend to buy a new computer.

I am ready for a lighter and more streamlined model than this seven-pound clunker (Dell Latitude D800), primarily so it is easier to carry in a backpack when I am traveling. But when I am sitting at home, this one works fine and has given good service for the last two years. Dutch just had Rich put a brand new hard drive in it a few months ago with a basket load of gigabytes, so baring other bizarre hardware problems, it should last me a few years yet. Maybe I just need more upper body strength.

Stay tuned for actual TMD blog posts with pictures coming your way soon, as I am able to squeeze them out between packing boxes. Forty-five days until my one-way trip from Bethel to Kenai. Of that, I’ll be traveling for 23 days. Not much time left for packing. I’d better get cracking…

Computer Blues

Last week my computer went belly up. One minute it was working fine; I put it in "sleep" mode, and when I came back it was frozen with the desktop being displayed. The cursor would move, but I could not click on any icons, and if I positioned the cursor on the bottom tool bar, the hour-glass appeared. The start icon did not work. Control-alt-delete did nothing. Holding down the on-off button did nothing. I literally could not turn it off. Dutch suggested unplugging it over night so the battery would run down and it would shut itself off automatically; then, hopefully, I could simply turn it back on. So that's what I did. By the next morning the battery had run down and it had turned itself off. So I plugged it back in and came back four hours later. Unfortunately the second half of the solution did not work. It would not turn on.

So I carried it (laptop, thank goodness) in to Bethel's computer geek and he is trying to resurrect it. At this point he is in the process of taking the entire thing apart. I should know by Friday whether there is any hope of continued life. If not I'll have to shop for a new computer, which wasn't really in the budget right now. My fingers are crossed.

Any insights out there as to why and/or how this happened? My computer guru is baffled by it.

And thanks to Joan for the loan of her computer so I could post this. I figured a few of you might be wondering what had happened to me.

Update on Princess's Puppies

Recently a TMD reader left a comment asking for an update on the litter of puppies that Princess gave birth to last spring. They are now 15 months old, vigorous young dogs full of strength and energy. Photos of them during their first month of life are included in posts from the May '07 archives, here and here. In that first post I was mistaken about the gender split; there were two males, the gray and one of the blacks.

Of the six pups in the litter, three went to good homes when they were two months old. Henry kept the gray one, the white one, and the black male to train as sled dogs.

All three did well in early training, but the white one and the black one didn’t quite measure up to what Henry wanted as top sled dogs. He has since given them to a local sprint musher who is looking for different qualities in his sled dogs. The remaining gray dog is turning into a top notch long-distance sled dog.

His name is Silver. He looks very much like his mother, but is bigger and a bit more aggressive; Princess is very shy for a sled dog. At his house when he is on the chain, he is friendly, curious, and loves to be petted. But put him on the gang line in front of a sled and he is all business and rarin’ to go. He is already running in lead position, working with an old leader who is very dependable in taking commands. Silver has learned gee and haw (right and left) pretty well for a youngster. He is not afraid to cross shallow water and he pulls hard all the time.

He is also a good eater, which is an important quality in sled dogs. They need to gobble up their food quickly. On a long race the rest stops must be utilized efficiently: eat their meal quickly and then sleep until it is time to go. A picky eater often won’t consume the calories needed for hours of work and may start to lose weight, which is not good. Princess is a reasonably good eater, but she is naturally thin, and has passed that trait on to most of her pups. The white puppy, Queenie, doesn’t eat well enough to keep her weight up for long distance mushing, which is why she went to the sprint musher; it matters less in sprinting.

Another quality that Henry considers important for sled dogs is that they have good feet. In the old days of mushing, nobody used booties much, and having tough pads meant that the dogs did not get sore feet. Henry believes that black pads are tougher than white ones. He uses booties when necessary, but prefers not to if possible. Dogs with good feet don’t need booties as often. Professional mushers just use booties all the time and don’t worry so much about tough pads. But booties are expensive—about $1 each, bought in bags of 100. And even with elastic and Velcro closures, nearly every dog loses one or two on every run; with a heavy training schedule, it adds up quickly. And it takes time to booty an entire team, several minutes per dog. For a musher on a tight budget who doesn’t have the luxury of handlers to help, tough feet save both money and time.

Silver has black pads, and he doesn’t have a lot of fur between his pads. Dogs with furry feet tend to form ice balls between their toes from snow sticking to the fur and congealing from body heat into rock-hard little nuggets. Like having a rock in your shoe, it quickly leads to a sore foot.

At this point in his young life, Silver is showing all the attributes of a great sled dog. He has beautiful conformation, a good gait, and enthusiasm for his job. He is a good eater, has good feet, and is a strong and consistent puller who never has a slack tug line. He is not afraid of poor trail and is willing to plunge into overflow if necessary. Which means he likely has the mental toughness which his granddaddy, Riker, was known for, and that is one of the most important qualities of a great lead dog. Silver could turn out to be one of the greats as well. Henry and I both have high hopes for him.

Photos by The Tundra PA: Princess, now 8 years old; and Silver at almost 15 months old. If you clicked on the links to the new puppy posts, he is the newborn in my hand, and is easily identifiable as the only gray pup in the group photos.

Cold and Miserable July

When I returned home to Bethel on July 7^th from my all-too-short visit with Dutch for the holiday weekend, people were raving about what great hot weather there had been for the 4^th and 5^th. Bright sun and temperatures in the mid-80s; and no wind, which means lots of bugs, but no one was complaining about that. It had just been fabulous, I heard over and over.

I was hearing these tales as rain lashed the buildings, blown sideways from the winds which whipped unrelentingly and pounded everything flat to the earth. The landscape had no color but gray, and the clouds were so thick there was no hint to the sun’s position in the sky. It went on for four days. The rain came and went but the wind never stopped blowing, night or day. Flags stood board-straight from bent flag poles, fringe whipping, looking like they had been painted on a dark gray canvas.

It is an amazing creature, this wind, like a live thing. It can suck the breath right out of your lungs. The sound of it gets on your nerves after a while. People get irritable when it doesn’t stop for days. It becomes an enemy you can’t see directly, but evidence of its presence is everywhere.

A few weeks ago some new friends came over for the first time; they are recent transplants to Bethel from the Midwest. They had been reading and occasionally commenting on the blog prior to coming up, and I was happy to meet them in person. I think of them as Breezy and Summer. They noted my large plastic garbage cans on the deck, leashed to the railing with bungee cords which also hold the lids on.

“Is that to keep out critters, like raccoons or fox?” Breezy wanted to know.

“Oh, no.” I responded. “That’s for the wind.” I’ve chased more garbage can lids across the tundra than I care to recall.

The windstorm finally passed, and was replaced with heavy rain. The clouds were just as thick, the sky just as gray, and rain poured down every day for a week. A different sort of misery from the constant wind. And with temperatures hovering on both sides of 50 degrees, there is just a damp coldness to everything. The roads become a pothole-filled washboard that rattles your teeth to drive over, even at 10 mph.

And people’s sore spirits sure weren’t getting any better. The memory of those two hot summer days during the holiday weekend were rapidly becoming dim. Lots of weather-grousing was going on. It was beginning to feel like we had had a two-day summer which was now over and gone.

But just when you are sure you can’t stand it any longer, a break comes. Friday afternoon, after two solid miserable weeks of cold, gray, cloudy, windy, rainy weather, the clouds parted and the sun shone in a deep blue sky. A light breeze helped the sun dry up the roads and remove the waterlogged feeling from everything and everyone. We were all praying that it would just last for a little while.

Saturday morning gave hope to our prayers. More blue sky and bright sun, and the thermometer nudging towards 70. The wind was gusty and the horizons held some thick clouds, but it looked like a great day was in store for southwest Alaska.

My priority for the day was to get my boat out on the river. It has been docked at the small boat harbor for several weeks, but my one attempt to take it out had been unsuccessful: I couldn’t get the motor started. I called one of the boat shops and talked to the guy there about the sound it made when I tried to start it; he thought I probably just didn’t have the electrical cables screwed down tight enough on the battery poles. My friend Henry and Joan’s son Michael (the new grad who just turned 18; congratulations!) went down to the harbor on Friday afternoon while I was at work and dinked around with it some. They cleaned the leads and screwed them down with a wrench and voila! The motor cranked like a champ. I was greatly relieved not to need a new starter or something.

So a shakedown cruise was in order. I had promised Breezy and Summer a trip on the river; Summer had to work, but Breezy was excited to come. Joan agreed to come too, which gave me additional peace of mind. Any trip on the Kuskokwim River, at any season, is not without risk; this IS the wilderness. It helps to have experienced people along.

The three of us had a delightful few hours on the river. The trip went without a hitch. The motor started right up at every turn of the key. The new gas tank and line worked perfectly. The tide was going out as we left the harbor, so water level was on the low side, but no sandbar problems ensued. The wind remained gusty all afternoon and was a definite influence on boating, but wasn’t too bad. My boat has fairly high sides and is easily affected by wind.

We ran upriver to the bluffs to show Breezy the sparrow colony that has drilled thousands of holes in the mud face of the cliff. Our arrival brought lots of birds winging into the sky. It is fun to pull up at the base of the bluffs to watch them, but with an ebbing tide it is easy to get seriously stuck in the mud there. In just a few minutes we were already getting into trouble; had we waited much longer—and if Joan weren’t as strong as she is, pushing us off—we’d have been waiting several hours for an incoming tide to float us off.

So we decided to get farther out in deeper water and just drift with the current. We had sandwiches and coffee, fresh fruit and trail mix to munch on, and the sun felt great beaming down on us. The wind was strong enough that it blew us across the river faster than the river carried us downstream, so before we knew it we were in danger of grounding on the other side. But the motor cranked instantly and with a quick reverse we were back in deep water.

Our trip home was uneventful until we got back to Bethel. The water level was higher than when we left, so the tide was coming back in. We were right in the middle of the narrow waterway that leads from the river to the boat harbor when with a loud THUNK we hit something very solid. It sounded and felt more like metal than a tree stump. Whatever it was didn’t kill the motor, or even break the prop, thank goodness. I’ll call the Port Director’s office tomorrow and let them know. Whatever it is needs to be hauled out of there.

With the shakedown cruise a success, I am ready to put a For Sale sign on the boat and begin actively looking for a buyer. My hope is that someone in a nearby village with lots of people and/or supplies to haul will recognize what a perfect boat this is for that application. It is a workhorse, not a beauty queen, built by my dad out of flat sheets of aluminum, completely welded. He wanted me to name it “Skookum”, meaning “a good and lucky thing” in the Salish language of the Northwest Native people; but I call it “The Chuckwagon.” At 22 feet long and 7 feet wide, it holds literally a ton of gear; and the Honda 110 four-stroke has plenty of power to push it fast without gulping the gas. I just have to find the right person to appreciate its handcrafted uniqueness.

My hope was to take the boat out again today with Breezy and Summer and perhaps a few others, but in a few short hours we are back to last week’s weather. Heavy clouds, harsh wind, blowing rain and cold. I am once again wearing fleece-lined jeans, wool socks and a heavy sweatshirt to stay warm inside the house (kills me to burn expensive heating oil during the summer). So call me a fair-weather sailor if you like, I won’t deny it. For me, boating is about having fun. Today is not the day for it. I’m just hoping it won’t be quite so long before we get another infusion of summer weather.

Photo of The Chuckwagon taken two summers ago, on our fishing trip up the Kisaralik River.

Bethel's Saturday Market

There is a long tradition in western culture of cities and large towns holding an open market on Saturdays where farmers and craftspeople gather to sell the products of their labors. Bethel has had a Saturday Market for several years now, and it is a delightful way to spend an hour or an afternoon.

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It is important to understand the context in which the Market exists. There is just not a whole lot to do for entertainment in Bethel on a Saturday afternoon. I’ve listed before on this blog all the things we don’t have that lower 48ers take so much for granted—no shopping mall, no movie theater, no bowling alley, no skating rink, no swimming pool, no highways to just go for a drive on, no amusement park, no gaming arcade, no tennis courts, no golf course (well. The die-hards go out to the sand pit and knock balls around, but it’s not what you could really call golf.).

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There are not even a lot of options for bicycling: one six-mile loop of partially paved road which is the major traffic artery around town. Not exactly a cyclist’s dream.

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So the Market fills a social need completely aside from the products available for sale: it is a place for people to gather and visit, and they do. Whole families come to spend a few hours.

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The Market is held inside the Cultural Center (which is nice when it is rainy, and it frequently is during the summer) on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month during the summer. In winter it drops to once a month, on the last Saturday, with additional Markets around the holidays. The hours are from 10 am to 3 pm. One of only three espresso stands currently operating in Bethel is also in the Cultural Center, so those with a penchant for fancy and expensive caffeine can get their fix when they go to Market as well (ummmmm, double tall skinny mocha no whip).

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One of the Saturday Market’s most important functions is that it provides one of the few local opportunities to buy hand-made Yupik crafts. Our regional craftspeople do not have many venues to sell their work; this is one of them. Dolls, baskets, carved ivory, and beaded jewelry are popular items, though on any given Saturday, not all different things are available. Many craftspeople only show up occasionally; some Markets have lots of vendors, and some are less well attended. You just never know, and if you are in search of some particular item it may take weeks to come across a vendor who has it.

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I have been in search of a particular thing for some time now. After my post on the Cama-i Dance Festival, in which I mentioned having found a small owl carved from ivory, a TMD reader wrote to me and asked if I could find him one. I’ve been searching ever since and have not yet come across another one, but I will. Hang in there Randall, I haven’t forgotten your request!

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In addition to crafts, there are usually vendors selling fresh vegetables from their gardens, live plants, tickets to various raffles, furs, leather, things made from wood, useful household items like long-handled dippers for the steambath, crocheted and knitted hats, gloves and blankets, dry fish, agutuk, fresh eggs, homemade soap, jam made from tundra berries, sometimes even collections of garage sale type items—books, records, clothes, pots and pans. Every Market is different, and even if you don’t think you need anything it is worth stopping by; you never know what you’ll come home with.

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And you’ll always run into people you know and can have a few minutes of enjoyable conversation with. Entertainment in Bethel is what we create for ourselves, and usually involves time spent with friends. It is one of the things that make Bethel such a special place.

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The photos for this post were taken by my friend Peter Ashman, who is an amazing photographer. He has a huge collection of photographs on Flickr; you can access his work and see more great photos of Alaska and other places from his travels by clicking here. Thanks, Peter!

4th of July in Kenai

It has been nearly two months since Dutch left Bethel to take his new post as Public Works Director for the City of Kenai. We miss each other dreadfully, but round trip air fare is a little pricey (just under $600) so we haven’t been traveling back and forth on weekends. Since the Independence Day holiday fell on Friday, it was all the justification I needed to make a trip over to see him. Besides, his birthday is four days later, so of course I had to go. And the best birthday present of all (besides me!) was that I could take him his big dog.

Bear and I flew out of Bethel Thursday evening, had a quick wait in Anchorage where my new cell phone actually works, and then made the very short flight down to Kenai, arriving just before midnight. Dutch was very glad to see us both, and Bear was crazed to get out of the man-made hell known as an airline kennel. Once out the front doors of the airport terminal he raced around like a mad dog and peed on every stationary object he could find; that done, he was ready to greet his poppa and proceed to the next adventure.

Our new house in Kenai sits on a tall bluff above the Kenai River with a gorgeous view—clouds permitting—of the Alaska Range and the big volcano shown above, Mt. Redoubt. A bit further away to the south in the Range is Mt. Illiamna. Both are over 10,000 feet tall. So far in my brief experience of being there, all six days of it, the clouds have not been terribly cooperative. Dutch says the mountains come and go suddenly; now you see them, now you don’t. I was happy to get this quick view of Redoubt on the fourth of July. It wasn’t visible for very long; most of the weekend was cloudy and rainy.

Despite a late night on Thursday, Dutch and I managed to get to the Fourth of July parade in downtown Kenai by 11 AM on Friday morning. We found a good parking spot and then were amazed to see huge crowds of people trudging up from further away carrying all manner of portable chairs. By the time the parade started there was a gallery of chairs two and three deep lining the parade route.

The parade started with just about every fire truck the city owns, all with lights and sirens going. It was pretty loud there for a while. We were close to the start of the route, and fortunately they turned the sirens off after a few blocks. It served to get people’s attention that the parade was under way.

The civic and charitable organizations were well represented, there were a few floats, people throwing candy, lots of flags and folks dressed in red-white-and-blue. The VFW drove a real-looking (probably is) train engine on tires with a coal car behind it. A Dixieland jazz band performed from a large flatbed being hauled along. There were antique cars and tractors dressed in bunting, a dance school performing as they walked, a guy on one of those old-fashioned bicycles with a six-foot-tall front wheel, a very tall stilt walker, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle division (potato-potato-potato), rollerbladers in formation wearing Uncle Sam hats, and local candidates for public office shaking hands and passing out vote-for-me flyers. The crowd loved it all.

My big hope was for a marching band, the thing I most miss in Bethel’s Fourth of July parade. Having cut my parade teeth on Mardi Gras in Mobile and New Orleans, it just ain’t a great parade without a marching band or two or three (big, incredible floats don’t hurt either).

Kenai’s parade didn’t have a full marching band, but they did have a “drumline”, the percussion section of the high school band. There were more than a dozen drummers and cymbalists (?) marching in uniform, creating very intricate percussive rhythms that were great to listen to. Just made you want to dance right there on the street. And easily heard for several blocks.

After the parade was over, we discovered why so many people walked in with their chairs. So many roads were blocked off for the parade and the festival afterwards that we had a hard time getting out.

In my two brief visits to Kenai, my most dominant visual image is of moose. It seems like they are everywhere. A day rarely goes by that Dutch doesn’t see several. Usually it is cows with one or two calves grazing beside the roads. They are obviously unmolested, as they seem to have little fear. But they are in some danger from the cars whizzing by at 60 mph paying no attention; I saw one sign that said “151 moose road-killed this year.” I don’t know if that means since January of 2008 or some longer time, but it seems like a LOT of moose to me. I also don’t know what they do with the road kills. People here in Bethel would go crazy if that much yummy moose meat is being wasted.

Bald eagles follow closely behind moose in terms of wildlife prevalence. They seem to be all up and down the river. From our deck on the bluff we see one flying over or sitting in trees at the river’s edge every few minutes. Sunday morning we awoke to one sitting in a tree at the edge of the yard. He (she?) perched there for about two hours as we drank coffee and watched. At first I was concerned that the big bird had been injured, as s/he sat for the longest time with the left talon stretched in front of the branch and all weight borne on the right leg. Through the binoculars I could see the left talon clinch and unclench repeatedly. Eventually the bird shifted weight to the left leg and went through the same routine with the right talon, so I guess it was just a stretching exercise. When I came back later the eagle had flown.

The weekend was filled with chores as well as fun. Some combat shopping for household goods for Dutch. Establishing a Bear-restraint system in the yard for the big dog. Ditto the back of Dutch’s brand new truck, after repairing the chewed seat belt where the big dog expressed his displeasure at being left in the cab when we went out for breakfast. His life nearly came to a premature end on that one. And, on the fun side, going to a minor league baseball game to cheer for the Peninsula Oilers, the local team.

Of course the three short days went by in a flash and all too soon it was time to come home. In the effort to extend the visit as long as possible, I made the rash decision to catch the early plane on Monday morning and go straight to work from the airport. That meant being on the 5:10 commuter flight out of Kenai, which meant getting up at quarter till 4, and no time for coffee before racing to the airport. Painful.

In my sleep-deprived state as I was checking my bags in, I found the airline’s sign taped to the counter somewhat humorous. The murderous treatment of English in signage is one of my pet peeves. The sign said:

One carry-on bag allowed, weight not to exceed more than 20 pounds.

Am I just weird, or what?

83 days until October 1^st; one more visit planned before then. Photos, as usual, by The Tundra PA; sorry I have no shots of the parade. For once I forgot my camera.

Fish Camp

The king salmon (Chinook) are running strong on the lower Kuskokwim River now, and many people have left Bethel and the villages to live in their fish camps. This is a busy, hardworking time in the subsistence lifestyle.

The king salmon run will last for a couple of weeks. During that time, people who live by subsistence must catch a year’s worth of salmon for their family, fillet it, cut it into strips, brine it, dry it, and smoke it. A family of eight or ten will dry and smoke about 60 large fish. Fish camp is the best place to do it.

The lands along the rivers are held by the various Native corporations and leased to individuals on a yearly basis. There is no power or water service, just access to the river. Families build smoke houses and drying racks for the fish, and cabins to sleep in. The same land often stays in a family for several generations and is added to over time. Some fish camps have elaborate houses and outbuildings and are very comfortable camps to live in.

With over twenty hours of daylight, work goes on almost around the clock. Boats go out with drift nets just before low tide (twice a day). The ideal is to have the net in the water when the tide turns and the salmon surge upriver on their free ride. In a thirty-minute drift, the nets can fill up quickly. Many fish camps also have a set net in the river, anchored at both ends, which is checked several times daily. If it is well placed, a set net may supply several large fish per day.

Most of the fishermen are men, and most of the fish cutters are women. When the men bring the boats in, the women come forth to begin the next step. Fish cutting tables are set up at the river’s edge. The fish are gutted right into the river, saving the egg sacs, and then brought to the table. With brisk efficiency and very little wastage, the fish are filleted and then cut into long narrow strips. Each strip is about a half inch wide and three feet long (or as long as the fish was from gills to tail). The strips are dipped into a salt water brine—for which there are many Secret Family Recipes—and hung on drying racks under a tarp for several days. Once dry, they are moved into the smokehouse for two to three weeks of smoking over a cottonwood or alder fire which is kept constantly burning.

Cutting the fillets into long, even strips can be time-consuming. Some people prefer to make “blankets”. A blanket is one entire salmon fillet (as much as one foot wide by three feet long) in which the bright red meat is sliced down to, but not through the skin, on the short dimension—from back to belly, not head to tail. The slices are made a half inch apart, and when the blanket is laid over a pole to dry, the wedges of meat between the slices fan apart, allowing for even drying.

The product of this work is “dry fish”, the staple of the Yupik diet. The strips have a jerky-like consistency, chewy and full of smoky salmon flavor and oil. Good strips are just divine. It is said that an astute elder can taste your strips and know whether you let your fire go out during smoking—for which you are a lazy slackard, though no one would say it to your face.

Life at fish camp is fun for kids, but they have chores to do too. Five-gallon buckets of water must be dipped from the river and carried to the cutting table for washing fillets, ulus (curved blade knife) and hands. Ulus must be sharpened frequently. Brine buckets full of strips must be carried to the drying rack and hung. Buckets full of dried strips must be carried to the smokehouse and hung. The finished product must be carried into the cabin and packaged for storage. When the mosquitoes are thick, smoky fires are kept burning around the edges of camp to repel them; gathering wood and feeding these fires are often the older children’s responsibility. And with the river right there, the younger children must be watched carefully.

In the old days, the Yupik Eskimo were far more nomadic than they are today. They spent early summer at fish camp, late summer at berry camp picking berries, and fall at moose camp hunting moose. Each camp had a different location, and each family had a traditional place that was their camp for each activity.

Most of the people that I talk to have wonderful memories of their time at fish camp while growing up, and still very much enjoy going there. Fish camp has become a symbol of the freedom of the subsistence lifestyle, living on “river time” and moving with the rhythms of the sun and the tide. And eating salmon fresh from the river at nearly every meal. Fish camp marks the beginning of summer, the favorite season of childhood. And it comes just when everyone is greedy for fresh salmon, and there is plenty.

Photos by The Tundra PA:

1. Fish camp on the Yukon River.

2&3 Fish camp on the Kuskokwim River.

4. Drift net ready to catch fish.

5. Average Kuskokwim king.

6. Filleting salmon with an ulu.

7. Many strips and a few blankets hanging.

Birdwatching on the Gweek River

Most of this area where I live in southwest Alaska is a huge wildlife refuge, the 19 million acre Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. The headquarters for the Refuge are here in Bethel, a fairly long way from the Yukon River, leading some of us to feel that it should be named the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta NWR.

The Y-K Delta is the summer home to a huge population of migratory birds, particularly waterfowl. Birds come here from all over the world—as far away as Malaysia and South America—to mate, build nests, and raise their young. Such a long trip is worth their effort because of the tremendous untouched habitat available in this region of half land/half water, and because of the bounteous food source that our famous Alaskan mosquitoes provide them.

Those of us two-leggeds who share the habitat with them are certainly appreciative of the degree to which the birds reduce that pesky population, though they could eat five times as many mosquitoes as they do and still barely make a dent in the numbers. I read once that if Alaska’s summer mosquito population were condensed into a solid block, it would be a cubic mile of biomass.

Just as birds fly great distances to get here, so do birdwatchers. Avid birders and even ornithologists come away from a birdwatching visit here with new additions to their Life Lists (birds they may only see once in a lifetime).

But despite the huge summer avian population, Bethel is something of a well-kept secret when it comes to the development of birdwatching tourism. There are not a lot of ways for visitors to get out where the birds are and see them. One local company, Kuskokwim Wilderness Adventures, is working hard to change that.

KWA is owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Bev Hoffman and John McDonald, two of my long-time friends, and Bev's brother and SIL Mike and Jill Hoffman. Bev was born and raised here, and brought John back here with her from college more than thirty years ago. They are both excellent dog mushers, fishermen, and skilled outdoors people. For years I have planned to go on one of their spring birdwatching trips but just never got around to doing it. Yesterday I finally did.

We had an absolutely gorgeous day. The sky was brilliant blue with a few scattered shreds of cloud; the sun had some real strength to it, which gave us temperatures in the low 70s; and there was a light and steady breeze on the rivers which mostly kept the mosquitoes away. It just doesn’t get much better than that!

A group of seven of us, with John and Bev as our guides, left the small boat harbor at 6 AM in two boats with comfortable enclosed interiors. Our destination was the upper reaches of the Gweek River, a tributary of the Kuskokwim whose mouth is about ten miles upriver from Bethel. The Gweek is a tundra river some forty miles long which drains a huge area to the west of the Kuskokwim; as such it is not a salmon-spawning river as it does not come from the mountains and therefore contains no gravel, which the salmon require for their redds. The water of the Gweek contains so much tannin from the thick tundra plant carpet that it looks like tea. It could aptly be named the Lipton River.

At that early hour on a Saturday morning there was no one up and about either around town or out on the river. We did not see a single other boat until we got back to the Kuskokwim in mid afternoon. To me, true wilderness is not just the lack of human-made structures; it is also the absence of other humans. Even a wild location, such as many of our national forests, doesn’t feel like wilderness when there are people around other than whatever group I am with. I feel incredibly fortunate to live in a place where such true wilderness is not just available, it is everywhere around me, and as easy to access as a quick boat or snowmachine ride.

With thermoses of hot coffee and binoculars in hand, we left Bethel behind and were soon cruising up the Gweek River. This was the last of John and Bev’s four Saturday trips, and they had locations of particular interest plotted on their GPS units. We pulled off into several small sloughs, cut the motors and just drifted with the slight current, listening to a myriad of bird calls. John’s ability to identify birds from their call is phenomenal. He quickly named a half dozen birds we were hearing, which to me just sounded like a conglomerate chatter of bird noise.

At several places on the river we pulled over to the bank and all climbed out of the boats to hike through birch groves and up on to the tundra in search of several specific species with known nesting spots. John and Bev have been doing these trips for over fifteen years and are intimately familiar with the area and the birds’ patterns and locations of nesting. We walked right up to a small tree which had a Great Horned Owl nest with two half-grown chicks in it. They were so fuzzy they looked like little ewoks from Star Wars. They never moved the whole time we watched them, but just sat in the nest about twenty feet off the ground looking down at us. The previous two Saturdays, John said, the adult owls have been close by, watching us watch them protectively. Yesterday we did not see them near the nest, but saw one of them later one slough away.

Great Horned Owls are big birds with strong wings and are amazingly efficient predators of small animals. Here in the Delta, they mainly eat rabbits, but they are omnivores who will eat just about anything. My dad told me an interesting story this morning which I have to divert briefly to relay. A couple who are good friends of his, the Rocket Scientist and the Birdwatcher, visited a wildlife refuge in California where the park rangers told them of a Great Horned Owl within the refuge who was closely monitored for twelve years. When the bird died, they took ladders to get to its large nest, and in the nest they found 120 cat collars. Owls are not only efficient hunters, they are opportunists. They will make dinner out of whatever is easiest to catch.

In addition to seeing and hearing lots of birds, we also hiked over some beautiful land that I had not seen before—huge lakes, wildflowers, thick stands of cottonwood and birch trees. And it was such a gorgeous day to be out. When we were on land the mosquitoes found us pretty quickly and would have been crazy-making if not for the bug shirts which John and Bev provided.

They are called The Original Bug Shirt—Elite Edition, and they are the ultimate garment to have when bugs are out. They are very light weight, have elastic drawstrings at cuffs and hem and a hood with zip-up fine-mesh face screen roomy enough to fit over a bill cap which holds the mesh away from your face. Side and underarm panels are mesh as well, allowing the breeze to keep you cool when the weather is hot. They can be worn over a tee-shirt or under a jacket. The shirt folds up into its own front pocket for easy storage. It comes in tan and dark green and costs about $70 from the Bug Shirt people. For those readers in the Bethel area, the K-300 Feed Store (which John and Bev operate) sell them for $60. There is also a camouflage version which is slightly more. In my opinion it is the best thing out there and well worth the money. Dutch and I both have one of each color.

When we finally stopped for lunch, it was just past noon and we were about thirty miles up the Gweek. We anchored in the middle of the river, tied the two boats together, and feasted on a lunch of deli sandwiches, home-made killer potato salad, chips, cookies and beverages. John brought out copies of the wildlife refuge’s list of known bird species within our area so we could count the ones we had seen that day. Of the 102 birds on the list, we spotted 39:

Tundra Swan

Green-wing Teal

Mallard

Pintail

Shoveler

American Wigeon

Lesser Scaup

Black Scoter

Osprey

Bald Eagle

Rough-legged Hawk

Sandhill Crane

Greater Yellowlegs

Lesser Yellowlegs

Common Snipe

Long-tailed Jaeger

Glaucous Gull

Arctic Tern

Great Horned Owl

Alder Flycatcher

Tree Swallow

Bank Swallow

Raven

Gray-cheek Thrush

Swainson’s Thrush

Robin

Orange-crown Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Myrtle Warbler

Blackpoll Warbler

Waterthrush

Wilson’s Warbler

American Tree Sparrow

Savannah Sparrow

Fox Sparrow

White-crowned Sparrow

Slate-colored Junco

Rusty Blackbird

Redpoll

Birds from the list that are frequently seen here but just not around yesterday are Pine Grosbeak, Phalarope, Willow Ptarmigan, Canada Goose, Common Loon, Harrier, Peregrine Falcon, Black-cap Chickadee, Shrike. And then there is my pair of Pacific Golden Plover near the house which I saw yesterday but the rest of the people on the trip did not.

One bird that we had great hopes of seeing was the Hudsonian Godwit. There is a nesting area for these shy birds around a small tundra pond a short hike from the Gweek. John and Bev saw them two weeks ago, but they did not choose to show themselves to us yesterday. In the previous two trips, John said they also saw moose and black bear, but we had no such luck; the only mammals we saw were beaver.

With lunch done and equipment stowed we made a straight shot back to Bethel in about an hour and half. Once we got back to the Kuskokwim there were quite a few (maybe a dozen) boats out drift-netting for salmon. The king (Chinook) run is starting to get strong and the reds (sockeye) are just beginning to come up the river. Several friends were out fishing yesterday and this morning and I was delighted to be gifted some fresh salmon—my first of the season, and I am so hungry for it.

So for any of you birdwatchers out there who are interested in the avian populations here, you couldn’t do better than to contact Kuskokwim Wilderness Adventures. John and Bev are excellent guides who will take great care of you.

Photos by The Tundra PA. I was feeling too lazy to make 39 links for your easy clicking pleasure to Wiki all the birds we saw, but they are there if you are interested. The last photo is a Tundra Swan in flight, and yes, the sky was that incredible color all day long. The only photoshopping I did was to reduce the pixel size, no color enhancing was done.

Summer of Change

Long time readers of this blog have probably noticed that it has changed quite a bit since I first started writing it two years ago. It is less about bush medicine and more about bush culture. And, frankly, it is more about me than I originally intended. The first change has evolved out of a general concern for patient confidentiality. The hospital decided that I could not post any pictures taken in their facilities, and that made me less interested in writing the medical stories. There was so much to write about the culture that I hardly noticed the shift.

The second shift, to writing more about myself, came more gradually. As much as I thought the blog was not about me back in the beginning, it was to some degree. It is just a little more so now.

The biggest change of all is now happening, and I am not sure just how this blog will go on after it is done. This is my last summer in Bethel. And I am already spending it alone.

Dutch and I have been feeling for the last few months as though the time was coming when we would be ready to move on, to turn the page, to live our life someplace different than Bethel. In April he applied for a position with the City of Kenai; it was offered, he accepted, and a month ago he moved there to start his new job. I am required to give much more notice, and can’t leave here until the end of September. Four months apart until I can join him there. He started exactly five days after our wedding.

Kenai (KEEN eye) is a small town (population 7,400) in southcentral Alaska, about 60 air miles and 150 road miles south of Anchorage. It is on the Kenai Peninsula at the mouth of the Kenai River. It is on Alaska’s limited road system, therefore not “in the Bush”. And it is in the land of tall mountains, big trees and beautiful ocean—the “picturebook” part of Alaska.

We found a wonderful house through serendipitous good fortune: a friend here had a relative there who was looking for some reliable people to lease the house for a year. And dogs welcome! It was perfect. It is right on the Kenai River, has a great fenced dog yard, and moose wandering through the property on their trails down to the river. The deck on the back looks out over the tops of tall fir trees, eagles flying up the river, and the Alaska Range marching straight into the Pacific Ocean. I am so ready to put a hot tub on that deck.

One of the best things about this change is that I will get to keep part of my old job, one of the parts I like the best. I will continue to do Radio Medical Traffic with the health aides in the villages by fax/phone from Kenai. And I hope to be able to fly back for an occasional village trip as well.

Once fall comes, I will no longer live on the tundra, but I will always be The Tundra PA. The beauty of the tundra has taken up residence in my heart, and it will always be part of me. Tundra Medicine Dreams will continue but may be a completely different type of blog. My interest in writing and what I want to write about is shifting along with all of this. It is time to start writing my novel.

Leaving Bethel is a huge change in my life, along with the loss of my grandmother and the acute loneliness of being separated from Dutch. The second two are a deep ache in the heart, lessened a little by all the planning and details for the first. There is much work to do, sorting, packing, cleaning, and selling off the big things like the boat, the snowmachines, and my truck. I’m not a packrat, but I’ve managed to accumulate a fair amount of junk in my ten years here.

All three dogs have stayed in Bethel with me, but now that Dutch is somewhat settled in to his job and our new house, it is time for Bear to go and keep him company. I’m planning a trip over for the 3-day weekend of the 4^th of July, and he’ll go along as part of my checked luggage. After that it will be just us girls here in Bethel—me, Pepper and Princess.

And if I stay busy, the summer will go by quickly; there are fish to catch and berries to pick, as well as patients to see. It’s all good.

109 days until October 1^st. Not that I’m counting.

Photos of moose by Dutch: the first just outside his office at City Hall, the second about a block from our house. Isn't it just such a Cecely moment? Feels like Northern Exposure all over again.

Coming Home

No matter where I’ve lived in my adult life—including a few “iffey” spots in my younger days—I’ve always loved coming home. From a trip, or just from a day at work. Being greeted by dogs who are happy to see me, sitting in my comfortable chair with a hot or a cold beverage depending on the weather, sleeping in my own bed if I’ve been away overnight, I just love coming home. No where has that been more true than since my home has been in Alaska.

Trips to the lower 48 are a huge culture shock to me. I wrote about it last year after my trip to Alabama in this post. This year felt much the same. There is such an incredible density of people everywhere; parking lots are crowded, freeways are packed with (mostly new) cars, restaurants are full, and everyone seems to be in such a hurry. Billboards are everywhere, yelling consume! Consume! Consume! And people are rushing to do it at a breathtaking rate.

There is so little wilderness anywhere. Even driving through the countryside, the land is fenced, tilled, cultivated. Roads are paved, lawns are manicured, everything is just so. The evidence of human occupation is practically inescapable, and that is what feels so different from Alaska.

Here we have pockets of civilization amid a gazillion miles of untouched wilderness. Here I don’t feel constantly squeezed by the joint pressures of population and consumer culture. Life down there feels to me like living in a pressure cooker. If you’ve never known anything else, then it seems normal, but the longer you’re away from it, the harder it is to go back into it.

And then there is the climate. It was 97 degrees with moderate humidity in San Antonio, and 94 degrees with horrid humidity in Alabama. Without air conditioning, you sweat just sitting still. At night it gets darker (so early!) but not much cooler. And as hot as it was in early June, it will be so much hotter in July and August. It felt like full-on summer to me already. How did people live there before air conditioning?

Arriving home in Alaska was jumping back half a season. We are having early to mid spring; the temperature was in the mid-forties this morning, and the air is clear, dry and cool, even at midday. The snow and ice are gone and the tundra is a thick green carpet in the early surge of flowering. Trees have tender green leaves beginning to soften the hard lines of their branches, and birds of all sizes are everywhere. The air is alive with their songs. The golden plover pair has returned for their third summer and is nesting about 200 feet from the front deck. The previous two summers they successfully raised a pair of chicks, and I am so glad to see that they are back.

The Kuskokwim River is in full river mode with boats, skiffs and barges plying its waters. The first barge arrived about a week ago, bringing our new gasoline supply; gas prices went from $5/gallon to $6/gallon overnight. The king (Chinook) salmon run has started and I hear that a few people are catching them. I can’t wait for my first taste of fresh, yummy king! Such delectable fish…

The hospital’s incredibly hectic pace throughout the winter has started to slow a bit as people move out of town to go to their fish camps for a month to cut, dry and smoke the salmon that will sustain them through the coming winter. We generally get a breather for late June and early July, as the daily census in the outpatient clinics drops by nearly half. After the intensity of the past winter, the slow-down is sorely needed by the staff, and gladly welcomed.

So as always, it is good to be home, and even more than I previously remember. For the last three evenings I have sat on my front deck at midnight, watching the sun keep his date with the horizon, filling my eyes and gladdening my heart with the wide sweeping view of tundra that rolls out endlessly to meet it. I love Alaska. I love coming home to it.