On Becoming Alaskan

16 Sunday Oct 2011

Tags

Alaska residency, Fairbanks DMV, moving to Alaska, Trapper Creek DMV

I’ve been in a hurry to switch my residency from California to Alaska. Of course I want to be treated as a partial-year resident for tax purposes, as there are no state income taxes in Alaska. An added advantage is that after one year I will be eligible for the Permanent Fund dividend, which could be a couple of thousand dollars per year. But I also wanted to get the California plates off my car. It seems the reputation of Californians in general and San Franciscans in particular is just as bad here as it is in Oregon or anywhere else–maybe worse.

When we went to Anchorage a few days after my arrival to take Richard to the airport, we stopped in Trapper Creek to get my Alaska driver’s license and plates. The DMV there is a combination DMV and gift shop as well as provider of office services. The gift shop was small but nice, with some great wildlife cards and cookbooks specific to local fruit and game. I had plenty of time to peruse the merchandise, since several customers were ahead of me and the proprietor, Mary, served all functions.

This is our nearest DMV

A sixteen-year-old sat on a bar stool at the counter. Mary quizzed her on DMV test questions. The girl had already failed the test and this interchange wasn’t going to make a difference until she was eligible to test again, but Mary wanted her to learn how to think about the questions.

“What would be an example of less-than-ideal road conditions?” she asked the girl.

“I dunno,” the girl answered. In fairness, this kind of grilling in front of six or eight onlookers might not put me in a learning mindset, either.

“OK, think about a less-than-ideal condition for a Friday night date. What would that be? A big pimple just appeared on your chin, your hair isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do. What else? Now, this isn’t about a date, but can you think about what a less-than-ideal road condition might be?”

Mary was working hard. The girl was, well…let’s just say she was uncomprehending.

After about five minutes and several aborted attempts, the hapless teen successfully identified snow as being less than ideal for driving. This painstaking process was repeated for the remaining five questions the girl had missed on her test. I was not next in line.

When I finally got the nod, I pulled out all the documentation I thought I needed. Mary gave me the bad news that I needed my social security card and the title, not the registration, of my car. Still, she administered the test and gave me my completed paperwork.

“Take this to any DMV within the next 12 months with your social security card and title and they’ll be able to help you,” she told me.

I tried again at the Fairbanks DMV a few weeks later. Gary had gone through the ordeal with me in Trapper Creek, so this time opted to wait with Ella in his truck. The DMV was an oasis of calm compared to any other DMV I’ve been in, with just a few young drivers and unfailingly polite military personnel ahead of me in a quiet, spacious room with a video display running wildlife footage. Still, it took me an hour to get to the counter. All the workers seemed happy and friendly, save one: an otherwise attractive woman in her forties with a peevish look on her face. I felt relieved when the monitor above her station called for number 196. I held number 197. But number 196, from neglect or wisdom, failed to surface. I got the grouchy lady.

She insisted on reconfirming everything Mary had signed off on, although I didn’t have to take the test again.

“Proof of address?” she asked.

I confidently pulled out my cell phone bill, which Mary had signed off on.

“P.O. boxes are not acceptable. I need proof of your physical address. Mail, a utility bill, a pay stub from your employer,” she said.

Once I convinced her that I am retired and living beyond the service area of the U.S. Post Office and the utility companies, she sent me to wait for a manager. While waiting, I remembered I had arranged delivery of fuel from a company that had e-mail. The manager agreed that an invoice with the delivery address would suffice. But I would have to get it faxed in and start over in the back of the queue.

I never did hear back from the fuel-delivery people, but Gary suggested I contact Alaska Satellite Internet, the folks who had arranged for the installation of our satellite dish. While he shopped for the wind turbine, I called them. April promised to find my invoice with the delivery address and fax it to the Fairbanks DMV.

The delivery address is just the milepost on the road near our cabin. It isn’t an address, really. It isn’t in the town or even the borough where our post office box is, and we’re not actually on the road; it’s just what we tell people so they know where to start looking for us. But now it’s my physical address, complete with erroneous town and zip code.

An hour later we went back. The first fax was cut off and didn’t show my address. The second fax, same thing. I found a copy of the invoice on my iPad, but they would only accept it if I forwarded it to the manager. I did, but their system didn’t like my system and delivery failed. I was bounced back to waiting mode again and again. Finally, I asked April to put the delivery address on the cover sheet, and at that point even the manager was sufficiently tired of me to accept it.

Five hours from the time I walked into the Fairbanks DMV, I was the proud holder of an Alaska driver’s license and new license plates, and a registered voter to boot. The photo wasn’t horrible, considering it had been a while since I washed my hair. Then I saw it: the woman had added five pounds to my weight. At least some things in life are free!

Last week I got my voter registration card. No fools, the folks at the Division of Elections understand I’m not in the same borough as my P.O. box. So they’ve assigned me a polling place at the farthest reaches of my borough, over five hours away. I can’t wait to see how long it takes to get that fixed!

Sights and Surprises

It is not unusual to see military jets overhead. But I was surprised to hear something I don’t think I’ve heard since elementary school: sonic booms. One night there were four, then two the next night. On the bright side, my wood stacks are still standing!

Northern Hawk Owl posing on a spruce on the hill just above our cabin

I didn’t see the Northern Hawk Owl that flew two feet over my head until Gary pointed it out where it had landed on the top of a spruce tree.

Dogs and dog mushers are in serious training mode now.

Look very carefully, and you'll see part of the dog team pulling an ATV

There is not enough snow yet for the dogs to pull sleds, so they pull ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles). This crew of about 16 smallish racing dogs was pulling two men in an ATV down the road near our cabin. Judging from where we saw their truck (complete with kennel), they had a full day of it, about 60 miles round-trip.

Weather: High 37, Low 28
Sunrise: 8:44 a.m.
Sunset: 6:38 p.m.

Making It Home

14 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by Barbara in Background

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alaska, moving to Alaska, off-the-grid

It’s a small cabin with sky-blue metal roofing. You don’t have to look closely to see it’s been built in installments. Gary added on to the tiny original building years ago, moving the kitchen and adding a porch. A new addition is underway; he’s building me a shower and adding storage.

After months of anticipation, I am excited to see my new home. Stepping in the front (and only) door for the first time, I find myself in a full kitchen with a sink, propane refrigerator/freezer and—to my surprise—a propane stove (I thought we only had a wood stove).

The kitchen has plenty of counter space and storage but just a tiny, faucet-less sink. On the floor next to it are two, five-gallon, covered buckets of water; two well-dinged metal pans–one a bit larger than the other–hang above them to ladle water for dishwashing or cooking or drinking. In summer months we pump water from the campground well nearby; otherwise it comes straight from the creek, and we will have to filter or boil it for most uses.

As I step into the main room, the view grabs my attention. Windows on all sides take advantage of the glorious setting, with the most dramatic being the Alaska Range to the north beyond an expanse of tundra and spruce.

Looking around the room I notice how each wall, beam, and bench, each space under a counter, table or sink, is storing something. No fewer than six fishing rods hang on the ceiling beams; boots, jackets, wet socks, tools, towels and kitchenware hang from the ceiling, on walls, over the stove, and at the tops of window frames. I see my books among the many lining the shelves along the uppermost part of the wall. Along with my books, I had mailed part of my large collection of boots ahead, and find them hiding in a small chest under the dining table. Though the table is small, Ella’s bed fits under it too. It will take me a year to discover all the art hanging on the walls and in every window and corner.

We keep huge stockpots of water on the wood-burning stove centered in the main room. Soon we will keep the fire burning throughout our waking hours, but days are warm enough now to let the morning fire die and heat water on the stove.

A long wide desk-height counter runs the full width of the cabin on the north side, with two rows of shelving underneath. I use the left side for my workspace, and Gary has the right side for his. On the wall opposite the dining table is a sink—a bathroom sink, but for want of a bathroom.

I climb six steep ladder-like steps to the bedroom loft, bumping my head on arrival. Even so, my first impression is that the room is huge. The loft shares the contours of the A-frame roof sheltering it, and its high ceiling peak makes up for the low outer edges. There are no closets; storage consists of trunks and cardboard boxes under the bed and beneath shelves built along the low walls of the room. Only the chimney coming up from the wood stove below interrupts the sense of openness.

We read long into the evening without artificial light. It used to make me crazy when, in our San Francisco apartment, I would find Gary reading in the dimmest evening light; now it seems natural to conserve when we don’t know whether tomorrow will bring sun for our generator. Last week Gary put in a lamp over the dining table, a big improvement over the propane lamp that is dim and too high for me to reach.

You can’t go home again. But when you go there for the first time, is it home yet?

My mother used to say, “It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house to make it home.”

I see all the work Gary’s done to create space for my things, to make a place for me. Knowing how much I enjoy my showers, he set out to build me one. He’s worked hard these last three months to make this a place we could call home. For a few days I did feel like a guest, unsure where things were, where they went, or even how to manage washing the dishes or bathing. But the care that shows itself in all that has been done or is planned for my comfort, for our comfort—that is the heart of a home. I still have a heap o’ livin’ to do here, but this spot of light and warmth in the wilderness is fast becoming my home.

Driving Miss Lazy

05 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by Barbara in Background

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Alaska, moving to Alaska, Road trip, San Francisco

My brother, Richard, volunteered to fly out from Atlanta to make the long drive from San Francisco to Alaska with me. It was his bride Gloria’s idea. Gloria has too much good sense to think it was smart for me to make the trip alone, and is too generous for her own good. I accepted Richard’s offer before Gloria could find out how long it would take to both make the drive and give Richard a couple of days respite before heading home.

“I said you could borrow him, not adopt him!”

She was joking, but just.

Richard and I drove for nine days. Actually, Richard drove for nine days. He drove more than 4,000 of the 4,375 miles from San Francisco while I nodded in and out of consciousness like someone who had retired during the Nixon administration instead of last week.

Those final weeks in San Francisco had taken a toll: physical, mental and emotional. Packing on nights and weekends, I looked at everything I owned to decide whether to take, store, sell, donate or dump. There must be some equation explaining how hundreds of small decisions are the equivalent in stress to a number of much larger decisions. The weekend before we left I rented a trailer, hired a guy to help me load it, and drove my furniture and everything non-essential to life in Alaska up to Oregon for storage. Between the packing and work and goodbye dinners I was already exhausted, and with the trailer the seven-hour trip took me ten hours. When I got back I had one day to get out of my apartment. It took three. With no bed and no apartment, I was lucky to have dear friends who put me up and put up with me and all my remaining belongings and even, on that last night in town, my brother! At work I tried to tie up all sorts of loose ends I had successfully procrastinated during my 15-year tenure. But that wasn’t the hard part. Leaving my friends and colleagues, knowing that however close we remain it will never be the same – that was the hard part.

The road trip itself was a lot of fun. When else would I ever have had the chance to spend so much time one-on-one with my brother? We laughed, cried, talked about our shared past and saw the same old stories through new eyes.

On the way we saw stone sheep, bison, black bear, moose, caribou, fox, coyote, deer, free-range horses, trumpeter swans, osprey, northern harriers and a bald eagle. And sometimes they saw us.

If you ever drive from the lower 48 to Alaska, you will find you have many routes to choose from. We were visiting friends and family in Washington and Montana, so crossed the border near Great Falls, Montana. Not knowing exactly how long the whole trip would take, as we headed into Canada we decided against the scenic route via Banff and Jasper along the Columbia Ice Fields. Instead we headed past Edmonton, Alberta to Dawson Creek in the Yukon, which is Mile Zero on the Alaskan Highway. Neither of us had seen Muncho Lake or the Liard Hot Springs in the northern part of the Yukon Territory, so we headed that way.

As we approached Muncho Lake we saw more wildlife than on any other day of our trip. We got a good soak in at nearby Liard Hot Springs. At Haines Junction we stopped at one of the good bakeries there for coffee and wifi. Getting back on to the highway we missed what is possibly the largest, least subtle junction road sign in all of North America.

We began to suspect something was wrong when we re-entered British Columbia, since our next border should have been customs at Port Alcan. Well, Richard began to suspect something was wrong. Still drowsy, I espoused the theory that British Columbia had just put up the sign in the wrong place. About 45 minutes from Haines Junction we were stopped by a flagman (woman) to wait for a pilot car to lead us through the construction zone. In a land where there are only a few short months to improve the roads and correct for the roller-coaster-like frost heave, we found ourselves waiting for pilot cars a number of times. Richard got out and asked:

“Is this the road to Haines?”

We did not want to go to Haines. The woman confirmed his suspicion and laughed, not unkindly, knowing how long we had come out of our way.

On our last day of travel, more than 4,300 miles from our start, a hazard light on the dashboard warned of a flat tire. We were in the final stretch, on a dirt and gravel road 20 miles from a B&B that ostensibly offered tire services and free coffee. A visual inspection showed nothing amiss, so we decided to go on 10 more miles and check again. Sure enough, my left rear tire had lost its characteristic firm, round quality. We felt every rock and bump in the road acutely as the Forester limped the final 10 miles.

We drove up the steep dirt driveway of the B&B. A man with a gray beard looked handy, standing as he was on a ladder nailing tarpaper onto some sort of extension to the main house.

“We seem to have a flat tire,” I told him.

“You’ll need to talk to Jennifer” he said, motioning toward the lodge-like house.

I found Jennifer at work in the kitchen. She offered coffee, and we accepted. Jennifer conferred with the man on the ladder, who confessed to being less handy than he looked. As he and I were similarly useless in this situation, we passed the time chatting about his real passion: bow-hunting. He was working for his room and board in order to be able to stay in this caribou and caribou-hunter’s paradise.

Jennifer emerged from the house with a young man in his early 20’s; Benedict said he had fixed three or four tires in his life. That was more than the rest of us combined, so he got the job. It took a while to unload the car sufficiently to get to the jack and spare. Richard positioned the jack, and Benedict took over from there. A rock emerged from the tire; it was the shape of a nail but considerably thicker. Benedict patched the tire, and the three men decided to put a lot more air than was called for, “just to be safe.”

“What do I owe you?” I asked Benedict. He shrugged and sent me back to Jennifer.

“Whatever it’s worth to you,” Jennifer told me. “Just pay the kid.”

Whatever it’s worth to me? That was not the answer I was looking for. I was less than 40 miles from my destination, the cabin where Gary was waiting for me. We had emailed ahead a few hours earlier and told him we’d be there for dinner. The going rate for the tire fix? Probably twenty dollars. What did I pay? Sixty dollars. What was it worth to me? Priceless.

When we got to the cabin, Ella found us first. She wriggled and wagged and talked and leapt. Her paws on my shoulders, she hugged me and kissed me copiously. Who knows where her mouth had been, and who cares? This language we share, and after almost three months apart we had a lot to say to each other.