The Adventures of Little Steve, Vol. 1

If you have ever floated swift water then you know that sometimes the only thing you can do is point your boat downstream and paddle hard with the current. Humanity may be graced with free will, but this frequently serves only to set us upon a course that no later action can alter. Still, let it be said that while such tides may well serve to steer us unto unknown waters, these voyages, however daunting, are oft considered the most rewarding of our lives.

I was still in Alaska when a chemistry test confirmed Brandi’s suspicion that she was pregnant. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. Her senses had been alerting her to the fact for awhile, haunting her thoughts both asleep and awake, and she had grown more and more convinced of its certainty with each passing day. Several less than subtle dreams indicated that my own subconscious mind had already sided with Brandi, and although I continued to maintain a skeptical facade, I was actually just as positive as she. But I didn’t tell her so.

We hadn’t really planned things to happen this way, and when Brandi called me with the news I’m not stretching the truth in saying that she wasn’t exactly ecstatic. Frantic would be a better description. She didn’t say hello, but rather greeted me with sobs.

Perhaps I grossly overestimate my own importance, but I think things would have gone better had I been there by her side. I know it would have made it easier on me. Having to face the situation alone was a terribly unpleasant experience, even from my perspective. When I imagine Brandi, sitting on the cold tile of the bathroom floor with only a plastic stick for company, I am awash with guilt. She is my hero, for that reason and a million others beside.

Until I was in the doctor’s office, staring with awe at an ultrasound image of what I’d begun affectionately referring to as Little Steve, I had maintained an air of plausible deniability about the matter. In keeping with my general approach to life, I preferred to consider Steve’s existence a myth, a legend akin to Bigfoot, until I had something more to go on than the opinion of a popsicle stick. But the tiny being swimming about Brandi’s insides was undeniable, and the silly look developing on my face while I watched Little Steve’s antics was even more so.

Now that we are back under the same weather pattern, with the full support of our family and friends, things are better. I’m still a bit concerned, about such things as the dirty diapers I accepted responsibility for by insisting we use cloth or emotionally scarring our daughter by calling her Little Steve, but I’m no longer worried about Brandi. She is like a tree in the storm. Though she may sway, she is quite unlikely to break.

Searching for Montana in the heart of Alaska

Nothing in life is the way you think it will be. No matter how diligently you strive to draft a perfect blueprint in your mind, the truth of the matter is rarely an exact replica of what you had envisioned. Seldom do even our best estimations ever amount to anything more than a close approximation.

Sometimes our imaginations lead us to be disappointed by reality, sometimes it comes as a pleasant surprise. Though it can often be frustrating, that is actually one of the beauties in life. Mystery is inherent to the human experience. How much fun would life really be if we already knew what was waiting for us around every corner, or could see what our gift was without first having to unwrap it?

I had always held a romantic view of Alaska. Like many, I was of the opinion that if things ever became exceedingly hectic in the Lower 48, there was always Alaska to run to. I imagined this incredible wilderness where a person could go and still find room to carve out an existence with little more than two hands. I maintained a belief that Alaska was the last bastion of pioneer spirit, the culmination of America's great trail of westward expansion, and in many ways it is.

All idealistic illusions aside, one thing is certain: Alaska is the end of the road, and that road is the Alaska Highway. Commissioned by the United States Army during the early part of World War Two, it continues to be the most amazing feat of highway construction ever accomplished. Its tales could fill volumes, and already have.

Officially, the ALCAN spans one thousand three hundred ninety miles from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, Alaska. In reality, it extends the length of Interstate 15 clear on to Fairbanks, passing through the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory along the way. It is one of the world’s most magnificent drives, and the road trip of a lifetime for many an intrepid adventurer.

Tok is the first American town on the Alaska Highway, and the road is the community's lifeline. A desolate ghost town when I arrived in February, Tok was a bustle of activity by mid-May. Fast Eddy’s was swamped. A literal army of tourists swarmed the cluster of gas pumps, RV parks, and motels that comprise the city center. They streamed along the Alaska Highway like a string of marching ants.

My original itinerary for the trip south called for another sailing on the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system, from the port of Whittier on the Kenai Peninsula near Anchorage back to Bellingham, WA. The “trifecta”, as Brandi calls it, of minor offenses I have acquired over the years effectively makes me criminally inadmissible to Canada, if you read the literature, which is in part why I chose to ride the ferry north in the first place. Still, passage during the peak of summer tourist season is expensive, and the sailing was scheduled to last ten long days. With that in mind, the ribbon of pavement extending southeast from Tok towards Montana had begun to appear terribly inviting, even after having factored in the poor exchange rate and the high cost of Canadian petrol. The border crossing was only ninety miles away. The worst that could happen was that I would get turned around and be forced to drive back to Tok. If that indeed was the case, I could still catch the ferry as planned, so there was no way I could lose, really. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I woke up early on Father’s Day. After a final sweep of the cabin to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, I loaded up the huskies and said my goodbyes. Leaving any place always contains its share of sorrow, especially if the experience was meaningful. Never would I forget this place or the things that I went through here. In my heart, I wanted to be back in Montana more than anything and I knew there was no way I was going to stay. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the subtle sense of mourning that settled over me as I closed the cabin door and drove down the drive.

Alaska was everything I thought it could be, and a million other things besides. Turns out, however, that I am not who I thought I was. Places, experiences, relationships; they all reveal things about ourselves we never would have realized otherwise. I didn’t go to Alaska to learn anything about Alaska. Seems I went to Alaska to find out that what I came looking for was back home in Montana.

Circle around a Midnight Sun

The bugs are out in Alaska. Along its circuitous route the sun dips only ever so slightly below the northern horizon, and it never truly gets dark. Salmon are running in the Copper River. Tour buses and RVs have inundated Tok, and motel rates in Anchorage have doubled.

There is a cycle to life. It is undeniable. It ebbs and flows, its flux as constant as the tide, and fighting it is futile.

A member of my dispatch staff, a native emergency hire named Sherlene, asked for a couple days off to put up the sixty salmon she had gotten from a friend’s fish wheel. Although there are a stack of fire records yet to clean up, I couldn’t help but acquiesce. The sustenance the fish will provide through the long cold winter is more valuable to her family than the money I am paying her. The paperwork could wait; the salmon would not. Spreadsheets don’t rot. Everything in its own time.

Like a spawning king salmon, my Alaska run is nearing its end. Monetarily, the experience has cost me more than I have earned, but I don’t believe that was ever really the point in coming. What I have gained is easily more valuable than what I have lost. My immersion in Alaska has been more akin to catharsis; shedding old skin for new. For the kings, the journey upriver contains a much greater sacrifice. Compared to the salmon, I’m getting off easy.

State of Things

Fire season has finally arrived in Alaska. Broken Snowshoe is burning outside of McGrath, and Tok Area’s very own Old Man Fire has grabbed the number two slot on the National Situation Report. Both burns are near human populations, the only real reason to fight fire in Alaska. Old Man is burning in thick black spruce forest, north of the town of Chicken. A classic example of stand replacement ecology, nothing is going to stop the fire until a heavy rain falls or it exhausts its supply of fuel.

It was only a matter of time. Weather has been warm in Alaska since the beginning of May, and during one particular heat wave early in the month, temps reached record levels. A few systems have moved through, cloudy and cooler but without any measureable precipitation. All that was lacking was an ignition source, summarily supplied by some afternoon thunderstorms over Memorial Day weekend.

Brandi was here for better than a week. It was great having her visit, even though watching her walk off into Fairbanks International Airport was absolutely heart wrenching. We went on several grand adventures, and learned quite a lot about Alaska, ourselves, and one another. Brandi wrote an excellent essay summarizing our exploits, so I won’t share them here, other than these two valuable lessons. There aren’t as many campgrounds along the Parks Highway as one might suspect and always top off your gas tank at every available opportunity when driving across Alaska.

To be frank, Alaska has been kicking my ass. Unless you are in Anchorage, where life is downright cosmopolitan, living here is pretty much an expedition into the wilderness dotted with sporadic internet access and occasional cell coverage. I have run myself almost completely out of gas and fought dark clouds of depression. The dogs have gone native, regressing back to their predatory roots. Tensaw is as fixated as a junkie, constantly sniffing the air and regularly leading the charge in search of rabbit scent and caribou herd. Alaska is an incredible place, but there’s a constant sense of the struggle for survival. Livin' never comes easy here. It’s a battle I feel I wouldn’t win, even if I had a mind to fight it.

Montana is the greatest state in the Union. It boasts every resource imaginable, its wealth of raw materials second only to California in scope and magnitude. If each of the United States was its own country, I believe Montana would boast the wealthiest citizens. Its freshwater reserves alone would seem to dictate as much.

If Montana looked to fulfill all of its own needs from within its own borders, there would be little to want for, and much with which to parley. A fraction of Montana’s current hydroelectric capacity is enough to power the entire state. There is wheat and beef aplenty. Freshwater abounds, including the headwaters of America’s greatest river, the Missouri. The only staples lacking are cotton and corn, with oil, coal, gold, silver, timber and wool as trading stock.

This, however, is not the state of things in Montana. Rather than benefiting Montanans, this abundance of resources is controlled by outside interests, and residents receive little capital gain from them. Land value is exaggerated in Montana, and the cost of living is high compared with the prevailing wage. Little headway can be made by the average worker in the face of foreign capital. Most Montanans scrape by as servants and laborers. They toil to export their valuable commodities for pennies on the dollar, all the while paying market rates for items from their own backyard.

I wouldn't be suprised if one day Montanans take arms against this sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. Most of us are much too content to rock the boat, and should it be overturned by a violent sea, we would rather tread water somewhere recognizable than paddle into the unknown, so I'm guessing secession is a long way off. Until then, Montana's still the last best place to live, poor in cash yet rich in wide open spaces, and I for one can’t wait to get back there to her loving arms.

Fire, Oil, or Ice

Tok is cold, and there is no reason it should be inhabited. Surrounding lands don’t contain any economically extractable resources. The Coast Guard maintains a soaring antenna array here, but otherwise Tok exists as a junction of Alaska’s two most notable highways. Coming from Canada on the Alaska Highway, Tok is the place where you can either turn left and go to Anchorage or continue on to Fairbanks. Subsistence living and road kill keeps its thousand odd residents alive. Several nearby native communities contribute a few more souls to the census. Moose is common on menus, as is minus seventy on thermometers. Cut wood all winter through, and your house will still be cold in Tok.

Oil flows through Tok’s heart. Town smells of it. The oil burning furnace that heats my cabin spews exhaust fumes. All my clothes reek of burnt fuel. A carbon monoxide detector is requisite. I haven’t felt good since I got here, and I fear a minor case of monoxide poisoning. Not acute; just enough to give me symptoms enjoyably akin to dysentery. Still, it’s been negative twenty five most mornings when I drive to work. Poisoned has to be better than frozen solid.

Steamy exhaust pours from everything. A dirty pall drifts overhead. It isn’t as bitter cold as minus twenty five could feel, but standing around for long simply begins to freeze you. Burning oil holds the chill at bay. A scent of petroleum surrounds everything human. The electricity plant runs on it. Without it, little of Tok would remain.

Jeff Hermanns at Tok Forestry looks at countless acres of burnt spruce forest north of the Tanana River and sees another fuel source with which to satiate Tok’s appetite for combustibles. A massive fire scar, what remains of 2004’s Taylor Complex blaze, spans vast lands across the Tanana Valley State Forest. It is filled with standing dead wood, kiln dried by the fire’s intense heat. Jeff’s aim is to get Tok off North Slope oil and onto Tanana Valley biomass.

Biomass is not going to save western civilization. It would take many times the amount of arable land available in America to grow enough soybeans to fully replace diesel in the United States. All current biowaste production can account for only a fraction of what is necessary to keep us operating at existing capacities. Even if every possible acre of productive land in the world grew crops for energy, it wouldn’t be enough to power the grid.

Not so in Tok.

Tok, Alaska, is off the grid; its electricity comes from a diesel fueled generator at the AP&T power station downtown. Alaska Power and Telephone, who is significantly vested in oil futures I must assume, provides electricity to town and several native villages by burning petroleum. Jeff looks at the millions of board feet around him, considers the amount of electricity used by the local community currently, factors in the generation capacity of modern technologies and the cost of infrastructure, and still believes he can cut the price of electricity in half by fueling Tok’s power plant with biomass.

Because population is low in Tok, Hermanns believes Alaska’s state forest can sustain the local community’s fuel needs using just the timber harvest currently allowed. In theory, the allowable cut should leave forest reserves in quantities ample enough that at no time will another cut be precluded. A biomass fueled power plant in Tok would be capable of providing for all of town’s electrical needs while providing cheap district heat to entities such as the library, university extension, and emergency services.

Forest literally carpets Tok. It continues unbroken in all directions like a blanket. Spruce as thick as dog hair comes up nearly to my doorstep. Fire has threatened to raze town on several occasions, and potential exists for exactly such an event at any time. In defense, Jeff’s fire crew at Tok Area Office, funded by National Fire Plan money, treats hundreds of acres of urban forest, reducing fuels and creating fuel breaks along roads. Around Tok School, biomass from treated acreage is piled and left to dry. It awaits the chipper and biomass boiler Hermanns and Tok School’s grant writer, Scott McManus, intend to purchase with funds they have been granted.

It all makes great sense. Oil delivers more bang for the buck than biomass and is more easily transported. Despite AP&T’s resultant loss of revenue within the local market, biomass power in Tok frees up oil that could be sold elsewhere or, better yet, saved for future generations. An added benefit is timber industry in Tok, employing local workers to provide for local needs.

Tok School biomass project is smart and progressive. It lowers the threat that Tok School will be destroyed by wildfire and essentially guarantees the facility will be heated for the foreseeable future, oil or no. After the fuel reduction wood is consumed, chip wood will be purchased from local vendors.

The problem with Jeff Hermanns’ vision is that this is America. We’re not socialists. Education is about the only thing we are guaranteed, other than death and taxes. In theory, State of Alaska can’t develop infrastructure. That’s a service provided by private sector, for profit.

One might hope that native corporations in Tanana Valley would see the opportunity to invest in themselves by both funding and constructing infrastructure that benefits their own communities, but so far that appears unlikely. Subsidies foot much of residents’ heating and power bills, so most Alaskans simply continue status quo. Every tax dollar Alaskans give Washington is returned to the state twice fold in the form of federal funding, which minimizes the impetus to change. The constant flow of North Slope oil south is worth that much.

What Jeff in his role as Area Forester and the State of Alaska can do is continue to develop the potential for sustainable biomass harvest and extraction from the Tanana Valley State Forest and promote biomass industry within the local community. Someday rising oil prices will force Alaska to look to its forest resources for light and heat. For now, Jeff is running ahead of the curve, which is the definition of progressive.

The handyman called today to report what he found wrong at the cabin. I have no experience with oil furnaces, but my gut feeling that it was pumping exhaust gases into my living space was confirmed. Bad layout had caused the outlet pipe to collapse where it made a right angle. Fumes were backing up into the house, a potentially fatal situation. Pretty bad air, was how he described it.

Lost Bearings

In Yakutat, a native man stopped his truck to tell me that, for huskies, the dogs were very well trained. It was a nice thing to hear. Sometimes because they’re not perfect I get fixated on their flaws and forget how wonderful they truly are. When you’re in heaven, I imagine it doesn’t take long before you forget you are there.

Other than that compliment, port call in Yakutat was disappointing; brutally so. As we were entering the bay, I kept checking my cell phone, hoping to see bars. No such luck. I hadn’t spoken to Brandi since Wrangell the night before, and I was feeling low. After Yakutat, we were heading out to sea, across the Gulf of Alaska, and there would be no talking with her until Whittier. I let the dogs off leash and watched them dive head first into snow banks along a lonely road leading God knows where.

When you are busy shaking a selfish fist at the world, it isn’t always easy to keep in mind that you were the one who put yourself in this predicament. There being no cell service in Yakutat is to blame for keeping me from a conversation with Brandi; never mind the twenty five hundred miles I put between us by taking a job in Alaska. Wireless transmission makes much more sense than buried or overhead cable in a tiny isolated outpost like Yakutat. A wireless infrastructure would be cheaper to install and easier to maintain than a traditional wired one. There is no reason why there shouldn’t be cell coverage here.

Necessity is the mother of invention they say. Later, while I sat on the ferry struggling with the mounting sense of estrangement I felt as we sailed away from just about everything I hold dear, I came up with at least half a dozen technological advances that would have allowed me to connect with the world outside. None of them were going to close the distance, but several had the potential to bridge the gap.

A cell phone is simply a low power radio which transmits its signal to tower antennae connected through computerized exchange switchboards to the cabled phone system. Each cell phone has two channels, one that transmits the conversation and a second that communicates with the cellular system. As the cell phone moves away from one tower and closer to another, this second channel informs the cell phone of signal strength and directs it to switch its transmit frequency from the far tower’s weakening signal to that of the closer, stronger tower.

Since the dawn of communications, repeaters have been used to carry messages over long distances. The Great Wall of China was designed so that each guard house would be within sight of another, so that signals could quickly be sent back and forth along the wall. In fire communications, radio repeaters bounce signals from mountaintop to mountaintop, providing contiguous coverage over vast and isolated ranges. Why not apply this concept to phone networks? Cell phone users in the United States number approximately 200 million. Add another channel to those handsets, and that’s a whole lot of repeaters.

If every mobile telephone handset was enabled to repeat signals, transmissions could be piggybacked through multiple handsets over distances much greater than a low power cell phone could ever hope to reach on its own. Cell phones are idle most of the time; software could be developed that detected nearby mobile radios and essentially turned each individual handset into a separate cell. In all but the most unusual circumstances, there would always be a chain of handsets linking an end user to an exchange.

In theory, that basic restructuring could also help me as I bobbed across the Gulf of Alaska aboard M/V Kennicott. Certainly technology exists that would allow the ferry to offer cell phone and wifi connectivity with the mainland via satellite, but a repeater concept could be utilized to turn each marine vessel into its own floating cell. A message could be bounced from craft to craft down a shipping lane rather than being beamed to a satellite or carried on a transoceanic cable. Would the investment in technology and infrastructure be worth it just to allow me to talk to Brandi? If you asked me that day, when I was cut off from my world by endless ocean waves, I definitely would have contributed my share to make it an option.

Personal concerns aside, it simply makes sense. Our entire understanding of economics requires revision if we expect all to enjoy a comparable standard of living. Traditional models for determining the economic viability of infrastructure development simply don’t account for the duality that arises between the local and global marketplace, between short term feasibility and long term practicability. Calculated vision must drive capital investment, not the whims of consumer demand and commodity pricing. A goal must be set; plans lain; and deliberate steps taken. What it is we are attempting to accomplish should be the compass needle guiding development; not whether an endeavor creates a financial profit over a finite time period.

As we approach Whittier, messages from Brandi stack up thankfully on my cell phone. Sharp biting wind roars down off surrounding mountains and drifts snow against a massive structure on the hillside overlooking the port. Institutional in appearance, the concrete and glass construction is acutely reminiscent of Cold War era Soviet architecture.

That was once the biggest building in Alaska, a fellow passenger tells me. Vacant and deserted, it now more closely resembles the Bates Motel. Ghosts of bygone values peer from behind its empty windows. Previously deemed essential, it is now dispensable; a monolith to the fallacy of economics. Indifferent and unfeeling as dinosaur bones, its fossilized remains pay tribute to the high cost of false vision.

Between Two Worlds

We are closing in on Juneau. It’s colder here. The mountains are taller, climbing right out of the water’s edge. Before, the sea was black. Now it is clearer; a frigid blue green. A strong crosswind has turned the water’s surface to chop. White caps throw their cold mist into the air.

I miss Brandi. She has been my boon companion for the past six months, and this trip seems almost unreal without her. Practically, handling the dogs without a second set of hands is a chore, but that’s the least of it really. What I truly miss is her company; that bond of shared experience one develops with a genuine partner. It’s nice, the way we complement one another. We make a good team.

Yesterday, we made port in Ketchikan. Heart of Alaska’s great salmon fishery, the town occupies a vertical plane between mountain and sea. Most of the city is waterfront. There are no roads connecting Ketchikan to the rest of the world, still everyone seems to feel the need to drive their car.

Port call was over three hours long. The dogs and I walked the entire length of town in that time, from the ferry dock to the cruise ship berths and back. A constant flow of traffic traveled the single street. Vehicles congregated at the Lutheran church, but the Safeway parking lot was nearly empty.

Ketchikan has two faces; tourist and Alaskan. Eerily, the ordered facades of the curio shops in the tourist quarter stand over silent streets of a ghost town. From the sheer number of stores selling salmon, one can only assume that the district is thronged with people during the summer season. A Sunday in February finds it as quiet as Tombstone.

Downtown Ketchikan sports a clean appearance and a fresh coat of paint. The rest of the city is weathered and worn. Advertisements scattered among shuttered windows downtown speak of another world where real Alaskans seldom venture. I feel like a shade caught in limbo between two realms; not really a part of either. A raven that seems to believe dogs need not be feared taunts Tensaw from a distance less than four feet. It leaps into the air with an odd caw whenever he moves closer, but mostly it appraises me with a single judicious eye. This gaze gives me that same feeling one gets when a word is stuck on the tip of the tongue. Am I’m missing something here, I ask the black bird. Aren’t you, he replies.

Back on the boat, next stop Wrangell. It is dark when we arrive. We go ashore where I am confounded by the dogs. Normally, they do reasonably well on their leashes, but this evening is a jumble of tangled lines and unheeded commands. I want to call Brandi, and they seem to want to tie me up in leaders and leave me stranded. I know they need to run, but I’m afraid to let them free in a dark, unknown location with only thirty minutes. I let Kona off leash while Blue and Tensaw circle me endlessly until the ferry horn calls us back aboard for the push past Petersburg on to Juneau.

Inside the Passage

So far the most amazing thing about the ferry to Alaska has been the fact that I have had cell coverage almost the entire way. Of course we have been skirting alongside Vancouver Island, BC. We’ll see how things change once we get a bit further north.

The boat is pitching hard to the right as we turn portside. I am sitting in the cafeteria, eating a banana while I wait for morning deck call. There is land close on either side of us, comfortably within swimming distance. Could probably make it if the water wasn’t so cold. Later today we will cross a couple sections of open sea, but to this point we have been weaving thru narrows created by the archipelago lying along the northwest Pacific coast. Even without land in sight, the throbbing diesels seem reassurance enough that we will make our destination.

Constantly the entire ship pulses as her power plants push the screw through the water. It is a world continuously in motion; the boat vibrates, wind whistles, waves splash against the hull. Water, sky, and shoreline slip past at a sure steady pace. A white capped arrowhead spreads from the prow, pointing out our course. A foaming footprint follows behind.

Car deck call is coming soon. We’ll see how the puppas are fairing. Wait … they are fine. The girls refuse to do business on the deck yet, but Tensaw voided a very full bladder on a truck’s tire without much provocation. They seem to be doing perfectly well. Owing to the number of dogs on board and tight quarters, they were very excited; otherwise they were in good spirits. One of them used the newspaper inside the truck. Another 24 hrs in there may improve their opinion of deck call.

I am on the SS Malaspina, making way north along the Alaska Marine Highway. We left Bellingham, Washington, at sunset last night; Ketchikan our next port of call. Weather has been superb; clear, calm, and moderate when we cast off lines and got underway beneath red skies. Now a blanket of high clouds covers the entire expanse overhead. Water, trees, and rocky shorelines surround us. In the distance, jagged mountaintops climb, breaking up the horizon. To be perfectly honest, it is the most alluring landscape I have ever seen.

We have sailed past several solitary cabins standing silently on steep slopes overlooking the water. Several smaller craft have drifted by; large container barges being led south by tugs, a few fishing boats. I sighted a couple of remote human outposts on the horizon this morning, but now seawater has us almost completely surrounded. Seemingly infinite ripples cover the ceiling of the world’s greatest wilderness.

No cell tower in sight, still several bars of reception show on the cell phone display. Perhaps the ship is its own cell. Maybe the stretch of open water it appears we are about to cross will reveal the answer.

Cell phone coverage aside, sailing is certainly the most amazing part of ferry passage. In deeper water the ship pitches and yaws even more than when she does inside the narrows. A seat in the forward observation lounge rises and falls in constantly changing rhythm as the prow cuts the sea. In rough water it is nearly impossible to stand when we cross here, a steward tells a nearby passenger. Today we sail under fair skies, and the seas are calm.

I am going north for work. Although I often refer to it as an unnecessary endeavor, I actually like what it is I do to earn money for dog food and truck payments. Wildland fire management sometimes seems extraneous, but it’s extremely addictive. It combines just the right amount of physical and mental challenge to satisfy both. We don’t really do anything, but we don’t really hurt anything either. The money’s not bad. It’s a career that nicely mimics the criteria laid out in Lloyd Dobler’s answer to Diane Court’s father in the film Say Anything. I don’t want to make anything bought or sold, sell anything bought or made, or buy anything made or sold; and in fire, that statement pretty much holds true.

One perk about the dispatch position with the Alaska Division of Forestry at Tok Area Office is the opportunity to do resource work in addition to fire. Jeff Hermanns, area forester for Tok Area, is an ambitious, progressive resource manager, and he has more projects than people. To manage an area larger than Massachusetts, Jeff’s staff at Tok Forestry numbers less than a dozen. I’m guessing there will be plenty to do.

The ship continues to rock its way through Queen Charlotte Strait. Three more hours until next car deck call. Land is back alongside. High hills once again shelter the passage. My cell phone battery is nearly dead; its reserve exhausted from listening to music. It hasn’t seen coverage for awhile.

A Film Worth Its Cost

It’s always hard to completely resolve the conflict that arises from using technology as a platform for discussing environmental concerns. The simple fact that one has the technology available to use implies that it was manufactured somewhere out of something. Where did the gold contained within the computer I am using to post this come from? If you don’t know, then I’ll tell you; from a mine. And along with it came all the associated environmental implications that accompany mining operations.

As it was me who created a demand for its product, I am responsible for that mine’s existence. Yes, I would like to tell you that mining has a significant impact on the environment and that I am against the proposed mining operation looking to tunnel under my local wilderness area, the Cabinet Mountains, but that would only serve to further reveal my hypocrisy. “So you’re telling me that you don’t like mines via a network of copper wire.” Yeah, no one is buying that.

Still, here and there, gems come shining through that, despite the impact of their manufacture, speak loudly enough to our sensibilities that they drown out the hypocrisy ensured by their existence. One such example is a recent documentary film about the proposed Pebble Mine near Alaska’s Bristol Bay entitled Red Gold.

If you dig deep enough into Red Gold you will find it is filled with just the stuff I am referring to; it took a helicopter to get that shot of the Bingham Canyon mine. But the power of the film is undeniable. Yes, we need gold mines, it says; but maybe we don’t need one right here. Perhaps fish and fishermen have a rightful place beside video cameras and computers. If it takes a film to get us to ask ourselves this question, maybe it’s worth leveling another hilltop to make it.

Someday, we are going to be forced to make some really hard decisions about what it is we truly must safeguard. It isn’t today, but it is definitely coming. At some point, a choice will have to be made between things that sustain us and things that merely convenient. Its inherent hypocrisies (you can’t run a fishing boat or float plane on salmon guts) notwithstanding, Red Gold is just the type of dialogue that needs to take place on the subject. If you get the chance, I highly recommend it. And if at all possible, walk to the theater.

Don't Be Scared, Cobe

I’ve been hanging out in Hamilton with Brandi. We met this past summer while we were both working wildland fire in Kootenai Country. She is pretty amazing. When I first met her, she was quite the conservationist, but I’ve been doing a real good job breaking her of such sensible habits as only driving when she has to, walking to the store, not buying things she doesn’t need, and turning off lights when she leaves a room. We have been getting along very well, and I have high hopes for us, if we can only get past Alaska.

As I mentioned, I was working on the Kootenai when I met Brandi. I’ve been working in fire management since 2000, and one day I had an opportunity to take a new position within the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, working dispatch in Lincoln County where I grew up. At the time I took the job, I was working in Missoula and getting awful tired of that town. The job on the Koot seemed like just the ticket; I could stay at my pop’s cabin for minimal rent and get the dogs out of the city. Besides all that, I had planned on moving back to Troy anyway, to research and write a novel. This was perfect.

That attitude didn’t last too long. A funny thing about hometowns; no matter how much you change while you’re away, or think you do, they always seem to bring you back around to who you were. By the time fire season 2008 was getting started on the Kootenai, I was looking for a way out. One day at the office, my buddy Slick Rick and I got talking about Alaska. Working in a dispatch office, you’re always trying to find something new to Google. That’s what I should do, I said. I’m gonna Google jobs in Alaska.

One Google search and two emails later, I was filling out an application for a new dispatch job with the State of AK Division of Forestry in Tok, Alaska. If I thought the job on the Kootenai was good, this was great. The job announcement was for the position of lead dispatcher, which meant I would get the supervisory experience I hadn’t been getting a chance at here in the Northern Rockies region. And talk about peace and quiet to write; Tok was literally in the middle of f’n nowhere, despite its dubious distinction of being the first Alaskan town after Canada along the Alcan. I’d already gotten all I needed out of Troy as far as research for the novel. When they offered me the job, I was on top of the world.

Not because of the job, however. The job offer had taken on a rather bittersweet flavor, actually. No, the reason I was on top of the world, as I told my pops the afternoon it happened, was because Brandi McCoy called me. Sure, I’d been subtly pursuing her, but it was more due to the fact that I couldn’t NOT pursue her than through any belief that it would truly amount to anything. Still, it had amounted to something, and that something has turned out to be much more worthwhile than I could ever have imagined.

So now we’re preparing to say our goodbyes. The ferry to Alaska pulls out of Bellingham, Washington, on February 20th, and the dogs and I will be on it. How’s that going to work out, you ask. I don’t know. Brandi is an absolute beauty, in every sense of the word, so I’m feeling a bit insecure about the situation, as you might imagine. We have been at each other’s throats lately, to be perfectly honest. We’re both just scared, I guess. It’s been pretty good, this thing we’ve found, and we’re worried we might lose it. And we might.

Brandi is going to get her own dog. I’ve been fighting it tooth and nail, but I couldn’t tell you why if you asked. I would give you a lot of reasons, but I couldn’t really tell you why. My best guess goes something like this: Siberian huskies were what I brought to the table; if she has one of her own, where does that leave me?

In Alaska, I guess, but there will be plenty more on that later. Check back.