In the 1970’s, Hope was a small town consisting of about 40 structures, with a small country store, a log “social hall”, another store selling gas and sundries, and a small one-room schoolhouse.  A small number of permanent residences surrounded the main area of town which was at the mouth of the Resurrection Creek.  A State campground area sat overlooking the Creek and town. 
Hope sat opposite Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula and required a visitor to travel 90 miles around Turnagain arm, up Turnagain Pass, and then down a 19-mile dirt road.  The trip was scenic and always punctuated by some excitement, whether it was a moose siting, a pass closed due to avalanches, or a porcupine crawling under your car as you stopped to observe him.  A side trip to Portage Glacier for some “Russian Tea” and a glacier viewing was always called for.  (Today, a wonderful visitor/observation center replaces the old log lodge. Named after Senators Nick Begich and Hale Boggs, who were lost in a plane as they crossed the glacier, it is an impressive structure for tourism. But the glacier receded and is no longer viewable across the lake.  After a massive search, the Senators were never found.)

Resurrection Creek had been a source of gold at the turn of the 20th Century, with several thousand hopeful miners congregating along the road into town and claiming rights to mine along the creek.  While some miners were finding gold, when the Yukon became accessible, most moved north, leaving little more than a ghost town behind.  In 1970 there were probably less than 50 year-round residents.  Only later did it become developed enough to have a proper school. Today there are several people re-working the old mining tailings, and tourists and locals can pan for nuggets.  I tried this once but never again.  Hours bent over with hands in ice-cold water did not produce enough gold flakes to warrant the effort!


Hope was off the beaten track.  I was a summer and weekend resident as were a number of us who built cabins a few miles outside of town near a small airstrip.  The road that led to our cabin area went on for a mile to end at a spot further up Resurrection Creek where there was still an active mining operation as well as the trailhead for the popular Resurrection Trail System managed by the US Forest Service. Our time in town was sporadic, usually visiting the town store for a few incidentals and to schmooz with Coolidge Fuller and his wife, both living above and managing the store.  They were a friendly older couple who subsisted on little, but made the town a friendly place for all visitors.

The few permanent residents occasionally interacted to try to bring tourists to the area to support hunting and recreational fishing.  Pink salmon spawned in Resurrection Creek, and it was not unusual to find dozens of families lined up along the creek opposite the store, casting and catching salmon easily.

These same residents often interacted with the “summer residents” who had cabins in the wilderness and in the Forest Service lots.

Three interactions – events – have always reminded me of the Alaska that was the Wild West of the 20th Century.

The first and most notable was an infamous New Year’s Eve party held at the Hope Social Hall in 1978.  It was a party my family did NOT attend due to heavy snowfall beginning. I feared being trapped in Hope if the snowfall was deep, keeping me from returning to teach on January 2nd.  Indeed, the snow fell hard enough that even as we left, 9 miles from civilization, I found myself pushing snow with our station wagon’s bumper.  By the time we managed to get to the main paved Seward Highway, only first gear was operational in the car, and I had to travel back to Anchorage in first gear.  A new transmission was required, but we had returned safely.

Meanwhile, back in Hope, the party commenced.  It was a raucous affair, attended by hard drinking locals and cabin residents.  Everyone was deep into the music and liquor when two locals named Rusty and Chuck decided to kill Goose.

To explain…. Rusty was not only alcohol impaired, he was also somewhat mentally impaired.  But he had a large .357 pistol and thought of himself as the “protector” of our cabins.  He was often welcomed with barbecue and beer at our cabin sites as his presence indeed kept strangers from visiting our properties.  Chuck, meanwhile, was lesser known.  He had a back condition that had him in a half-body cast at the time of the party.  Like Rusty, Chuck had some limitations but also owned and used firearms.

Meanwhile, squatting in an old miner’s abandoned cabin outside of town, lived Goose with several lady friends.  He had a large goose tattooed on his right arm, hence his name.  During our winter visits we would often encounter Goose and his friends at the store covering for Coolidge and enjoying discussions with visitors.  Several nights we spent in town playing board games with him and his women friends, enjoying hot popcorn and soda.  They seemed like nice people, like many who found Alaska to be a place to escape whatever ailed them in lower 48 society.

Sometime during the New Year’s Eve party, Chuck and Goose crossed paths and had words.  I don’t know of anyone who knows exactly what transpired, but the cabin residents I later talked with explained what happened this way:

Chuck decided he had to kill Goose.  He left the party to retrieve his firearms of choice… a shotgun and a .44 pistol.  Rusty backed him I heard but wasn’t actively involved.  Since Chuck announced his intentions, the partygoers who were not too inebriated relocated Goose behind a 50-gallon drum two doors away, behind the store.

When Chuck returned, several people tried to talk him down.  He would have none of it and threatened several with his pistol.  He walked them backwards toward the store, believing Goose was in the store with Coolidge. He marched up the stairs onto the deck in front of the store’s main doors. There he encountered Coolidge, who tried to face him and calm him.
As Coolidge had the attention of Chuck, Goose emerged from the corner of the store, came up behind Chuck, and conked him over the head with a beer bottle.

Chuck went down, but in so doing, involuntarily pulled the trigger of his .357.  A bullet emerged and passed directly through Coolidge’s colon.  Coolidge went down.  Someone jumped on Chuck, who promptly bit off the end of his little finger.  Someone else picked up the shotgun Chuck had dropped and broke it over his head.
Chuck was subdued and Coolidge injured.  A call was made to the nearest lawman.. a State Trooper in Seward.  It took the trooper three hours to arrive at the store, at which time he was able to call for a helicopter to be dispatched from Anchorage to pick up Coolidge.

The outcomes of this incident were that Coolidge, with no vital organs or arteries involved, ended up with a colostomy.  He left town with his wife.  Chuck got off lightly since the shot was involuntary, and he still lives in Hope today.  The bullet was located two years after the incident, lodged inside the leg of the wood stove in the center of the store.  A visit in 2014 was interesting when I asked a resident of that time what she knew of this story.  She knew Chuck and had heard a rumor that he had once killed a man in town.
 Almost.

Wilderness?  Wildness?  Alaska can be dangerous as well as offering awe-inspiring beauty.
 
The second event is not as graphic, but still of interest.  In the summer of 1978, a few enterprising town residents decided to hold a “bluegrass festival” in town.  They advertised this as a weekend event throughout Anchorage and surroundings.
Several hundred people came, which of course swelled the town population by at least double if not more.   Wagons were set up for music groups to play and a very large firepit was established on which a large grate was placed.  There, over the two weekend days of the festival, large chunks of prime beef were slow cooked to provide large slices of barbecued beef to paying participants.
 
A row of porta-potties was set up to accommodate the crowd.  Given the amount of alcohol being sold and consumed, this was a most necessary addition.

Sometime late Saturday night, after many festive rounds of music, beef, and beer, a local resident who preferred the quiet of the wilderness, took issue with the Festival sponsors.  He left in a huff to return to his mining operation just south of town.
By the morning, he had walked his small bulldozer into town to take revenge upon the promoters.  Still inebriated, he was able to mow down the whole row of port-potties before other locals were able to jump on him and remove him from his weapon of choice.

Fortunately no one was using the facilities at the time.

And we had left the party early Saturday after partaking of a fine slice of beef and some foot-stomping bluegrass music.
 
The third event was not as exciting as these two, but definitely memorable.

This happened on a summer day when all the cabin dwellers were hearing rumors that the Kenai Native Land Corporation was going to “select” our Forest Service land as part of the Alaskan Native Land Claims Settlement.  We knew that the US Government wanted to divest itself of this land and program.  So, what would happen to our leases?

A State Senator from Juneau was dispatched to Hope to meet with us and discuss possible divestiture of this land.  While the Native corporation could select it.  It was also possible that the State of Alaska might end up with the property.

The Senator brought along a young female recorder. Both were dressed appropriately for a Congressional hearing.  Their audience, however, were in jeans and wool shirts, male and female alike. The politician was out of place and looked at askance.  Young children raced around the Hope Social Hall as a large dog fight took place outside the entrance.

As hard as the politician tried to explain what MIGHT happen, he had no real answers.  The crowd grew raucous and shouted he and his young female recorder out of the building, into his rental Cadillac, and back to Juneau.

Later, the State did take possession of the property, and the Native corporation board did not choose the properties.  The State then offered the one acre lots to the lease holders for $850 each and agreed to use monies from a special rural electrification program to bring powerlines into the area.
​ 
So the meeting represented raw politics done Alaskan style.  And the outcome brought unmanaged “civilization” to the wilderness.
 

 
In the summer of 1971, I signed a contract with the Federal Government to lease a one-acre plot of land in the Chugach National Forest.  I was obligated to build a cabin according to plans I had submitted along with my lease application.
I had taken on a larger task than I had imagined! 

Fortunately, I had good friends with resources.  Ron, who managed all the State Farm agents in Alaska, had a beautiful wife, a wonderful child, a Cessna 180 on floats, and lived larger than life.  A past college football player, he was strong in body and spirit and encouraged me and worked beside me as I began my new journey as a builder.

The first step in building a cabin in the woods of Alaska was to clear a path to the spot on which it would be built.  This was my first hurdle since a rudimentary road ended two lots before my leased land. I had to learn to handle a chain saw and cut down trees.  This was manageable as I learned how to keep the chain saw running without losing the chain, without crimping the chain in a tree, and without landing a tree upon myself!  Ron and I spent one weekend with this task alone, after driving the 90 miles from Anchorage, over Turnagain Pass, down the 19 mile dirt road leading to Hope.

We managed to clear the trees in two days.

But now we had to lay gravel over the mossy ground to create a road for our vehicles. Fortunately there were several brave souls who were moving old mining tailings with a small D4 Cat, retrieving small amounts of gold that the 1900 miners could not extract from the nearby Resurrection Creek.  I was able to contract with Don to walk his Cat to the cleared trail. There, I had several truckloads of dirt and rocks dumped so a base could be spread.  That weekend saw our road extended to the plot we cleared for the cabin.  I was pleasantly surprised that our section was substantial, thicker than the gravel laid for the first two lots leading into my leased area.

We now could begin construction.

A rented truck hauled the basic materials from Anchorage.  A borrowed generator supplied power for power tools, mostly circular saws and drills.  There were no powered hammers in those days. Shovels provided our first attack upon the land as a small crew of friends and I dug 12 holes, each about 3 and a half feet deep, set in three rows.  Into these holes we placed Sonotubes which looked like 6 foot long toilet paper rolls.  Very thick, these were heavy-duty cardboard structures into which concete is poured to create smooth columns.  Rather than use pre-made footers, we braced the tubes into the holes so they did not quite reach the bottom of each hole.  In this way, when we mixed and poured concrete into these tubes, some of it would spread out from the bottom to create a footpad that was a bit wider than the tube at the bottom.  At the top, we inserted short pieces of steel rebar so that each pillar had a 7 inch “stick” of metal jutting up.

Once each pillar was leveled and the concrete set, we were able to nail together the long 2x8 pieces of lumber we had purchased to create three 4x8 girders.  These were then pounded down onto the jutting metal rebar, creating a stable base on which to build our floor and front deck.

The floor was a 16x20 platform created using 2x6's and sheets of ¾ inch plywood transported from Anchorage.  I remember those particularly, even today.  Ron, using his football player physique, was carrying two sheets at a time from our road to the cleared area for the cabin.  Only about 100 feet, this was not a long walk, but the sheets were heavy and we carried them bending over with one hand down and the other up, balancing the weight on our shoulders.

Unfortunately, I attempted to match the physical feat of my friend.  I did one carry and must say that I still feel the resulting back injury today, 50 years later.
 
We built our floor and then marked on it one frame shaped like a diamond with the bottom third cut off. This was to be the skeleton for our modified A-frame structure, one which had a base of 16 x 20 feet.  When erected, 5 of these would form the cabin, propped up like a deck of cards, and then tied together with plywood sheets to form a large roof.

It took one summer of work, with help from various friends on weekends, to build the structure.  Windows were placed on either end, with a back window being framed in vertically, when it was meant to be horizontal.  As I looked at the work to reframe that end window, I panicked. Ron, who was partly responsible for the error, taught me a lesson for life in that moment.  He said simply, “We can do all the work of taking it apart and reframing it, OR YOU CAN PROP IT WITH A STICK.”  A simple lesson when faced with a difficult decision.  We whittled a fancy stick!  The phrase “prop it with a stick” has found many uses in our lives since.

Back in town, Wayne and friends helped me in the school auto shop.  There, I provided a “kit” I had purchased from a Montgomery Wards catalog for creating a wood stove using a 50-gallon barrel.  This consisted of a collar for the pipe, a door, and two legs.  We debated whether to cut the barrel down and weld a plate to it so there was a flat surface.  The answer was no since I had a propane stove already in place, donated from a building Ron had torn down earlier in the summer. The demolition provided a large swatch of shag carpet, a sink, and a countertop too.

We attached all the parts and painted the stove flat black.  Metalbestos insulated pipe was purchased to carry through the 12x16 loft area, necessary so no one could be burned when passing by the pipe coming up through the middle of the cabin.
A deck was completed, roofing shingles attached, plywood painted, and the cabin was completed by the end of that summer.  Altogether the materials cost was just a bit over $3,000.

After 8 years of use, we transferred the lease to a new couple who purchased the improvements for $20,000. 

40 years later, we revisited the lot.  It was now owned by a real estate investor in California.  The State of Alaska had taken over the property from the Federal Government in 1982 and sold the lots to the prior leasees for about $850 each.  A rural electrification project provided lines for electricity at no cost to the owners.

We discovered several things: Our cabin had been almost untouched in 40 years.  My son’s plastic sled was still underneath alongside the Sonotubes.  The same table and chairs, drapes, and tablecloth were viewable through the front window.  The roof was intact, though moss covered. The front deck was rotted and not safe to walk upon but the main structure looked solid.  A neighbor informed us the lots were worth in excess of $100,000 in 2014.

All around were various structures built without regard to the rules and regulations of the Forest Service leases.  There were ramshackle shacks beside nicely built homes.  This was not the wilderness any more, and my wife and I both agreed it would not be a desirable cabin location today!

Did I mention… our original lease purchasers were a couple from Juneau, where one was blind and the other deaf?
​
Perhaps this story was too “concrete”  There are more interesting stories to come.
 

Working In Kotzebue
 
Departing Anchorage at 6:30 AM that June morning,  I had no idea what to expect when I would arrive in Kotzebue.  I had hastily packed my heavy jacket and woolen shirts since my destination was positioned about 30 miles above the Arctic Circle.  Cold, right?
 
Well, not exactly. This was 1977, one of Alaska’s driest and hottest summers on record!  Later, I would have to ask my wife in Anchorage to send me short sleeve shirts and shorts.  The temperature stayed in the 80’s for most of my stay.  And multiple storms marched across the State, east to west, accompanied by thunder and lightning but no rain.  Called “dry lightning” this weather pattern was a firefighter’s worst nightmare.  
 
Kotzebue provided many experiences beyond the weather.  It was a hub of commercial activity for the Northwest Region, and a “wet” town that attracted many young people from neighboring “dry” villages where alcohol was prohibited.  Since the airstrip accommodated larger commercial jets, and the NANA Corporation had built a modern 3-story hotel to promote tourism in 1975 (rebuilt in 2011), the town also attracted an assortment of tourists who visited in the summers. 
 
I stepped off the jet to be greeted by a beautiful pair of Native young women sporting very furry parkas meant to reflect a tourist’s idea of an “Eskimo”.  Though it was quite hot, and the lovely kuspuks (lightweight fabric summer parkas) worn in summer were not evident, the greeting was warm and inviting.  
 
On the plane I had a seat partner who, though younger, had attended Copper Valley School just prior to its closing.  I’ll call him “Mackey” though that’s not his real name.  A later incident showed me he was not the caliber of person I had experienced in my years at Copper Valley.
 
Mackey was also sent by BLM to comprise a satellite team of people to manage the numerous fires in the Northwest Region.  There were many fires in the Fairbanks District, and Fairbanks was already taxed to its limit with no personnel to dispatch. Their leadership called upon the Anchorage District and BLM in Boise, Idaho, for help.  That is how Mackey, me, and others were called up.  We arrived in Kotzebue, disembarked, walked to the Nullugvik Hotel. There I was registered into a very modern hotel room along with a roommate - Mackey.
 
I checked in, carried my luggage to a third-floor room, and joined a group of about a dozen people in a very crowded room on the second floor.  This was the beginning of our 6 - week battle against the elements.
 
But this is a story about memorable events in Kotzebue.  
 
Our housing
 
First, some memories of the hotel.  It had a restaurant that served bacon and powdered eggs accompanied by brown orange juice. Lunch? Unremarkable. Dinner was mostly steak and potatoes since our BLM budget seemed unlimited and the best cuts were easily thawed.  Wait staff were young local girls. There was a bar too.
 
Only two nights in town, and Mackey showed his true character.  Two days of intense activity brought me to our shared room for a - hopefully- 4-hour sleep.  While I can ‘t be sure of Mackey’s duties and timing, that second night I was awakened as Mackey and a pretty young female member of the wait staff collapsed on his queen bed, both quite inebriated and both immediately asleep - or passed out (?).  I arose, dressed and reported back to my logistics team while the sleeping couple snored.  I requested and was moved to a room without a companion.  Mackey disappeared - probably released and sent home.
 
One night I observed an elderly woman, probably a retired schoolteacher from a group that had recently arrived, leaning out her window chiding a young boy for riding a loud dirt bike outside the hotel - at midnight.  Since there was no night at this time, he was obviously part of the “second shift” of children who decided to play on their own time.  The educated -but uneducated- tourist had no clue!
 
Another night was interrupted by a very inebriated older denizen banging loudly at 2 AM on a locked outside door.  “Sophie” he hollered”, “Let me in, I want Sophie!”  He proceeded to holler and throw himself at the door for a good 15 minutes. Finally, he muttered “I guess I can’t get in.  Oh well,” and he walked away.  All the outside doors had been locked for a reason!  
 
Our home base
 
A second memory was of our headquarters, established in a wooden framed house managed by the Federal Aviation Administration.  It was “on loan” to us for the duration.  A large window looked out upon the Kotzebue Sound and provided a breathtaking view when a breeze lifted the smoke.  Frigid and crystal-clear water lapped the shore only a few feet from the house, with a deeper channel running parallel to the shore.  Probably 100 yards out was a shallow sandbar also running parallel to the shore.  Very distantly, one could see a thin line of white- the ice pack that had retreated to the Bering Sea.
 
Our radio operator (dispatcher) and an early telecopier machine sat facing the window and our team occasionally gathered at the table there to discuss the day’s activities.  Opposite was a large wall map and pocket board where I maintained a view of fire activities as people reported details.  All visitors and calls were logged by me as everyone reported to the “Maps and Records” clerk.  
 
Each fire was assigned a number and a name.  Each name was to be associated with a nearby geographic location.  I was able to slip in one fire I named the “Pat Lake” fire!  Boise never realized my wife was named “Pat Lake”!!  When another team member tried that using his fiancé’s real name, he was chided and told to adhere to the rules.  (to this day we laugh about the fire named after my wife!).  
 
Each midnight the log entries were written into a narrative report and given to a local woman hired to type the scrawled text on several single-spaced pieces of paper.  The pages were then fed into the spinning telecopier and “faxed” to Boise headquarters.  These documents were archived and sent daily to Washington to enter into the Congressional Record along with a request for appropriated monies for the fire activities.  Unfortunately, the records, stored today in Seattle, are only organized by fire number.  To retrieve the records I submitted would require on-site sorting- something I would want to do if conditions allow me to travel to Seattle.
 
The seal
 
Our finance person, Jim, had an open “checkbook” which he used liberally to procure whatever we needed. (He managed to spend $15,500,000 in 6 weeks!) He also brought with him a collapsible canvas kayak which he used in the channel outside our headquarters - on several occasions.  None of the rest of us felt confident enough to try his recreational activity!  The water was too cold.  
 
Shortly after Jim’s first paddle, a dead seal washed up on our short beach, rolling in the undulating tide.  We knew it must have come from far off-shore, where the ice pack had retreated and where Native hunters probably lost the carcass during a recent hunt.  For several days we watched it bouncing in the water.  Jim debated harvesting it - maybe for the pelt?  The debate was short.  We assured Jim that there were few secrets in Kotzebue and that someone must know it was there.
 
Sure enough, a day later, a flat bottom aluminum boat with a stepped-up motor came chugging along. Two male Kotzebue residents got out and tied a rope around the carcass’s rear flippers and towed it away to the north of town. 
 
Our radio operator
 
A few days after the seal was towed, I was finishing up my midnight report. The only team members on site were myself, my typist, and our radio operator, Jeanne.  She accompanied me to Kotzebue from our Anchorage office and was a skilled dispatcher and a hard worker.  As I prepared to leave for the “night”, Jeanne told me she was feeling sick and didn’t think she could continue with her overnight shift.  Though I was myself exhausted after a 16-hour shift, I realized she needed attention.  She did not look well at all, and there was no one else there to take over.
 
I managed to rouse someone to use our ever-running pickup truck and take her back to her lodging at the hotel.  I called the desk there and alerted Paul, our present team leader, to her illness.
 
I then had to operate the radio, a task I had never done before.  A few calls were handled and I soon learned the “over and out” “Yes, this is KOTZ” lingo as I talked to a few incoming aircraft.  I managed to stay awake until one plane landed, and the pilot asked for a transport to bring a passenger to our headquarters.  Soon after, a hefty-sized fellow in jeans and a Woolrich flannel shirt appeared. I greeted him and asked who he was.
 
“My name is Ty and I’m from the Fairbanks District office,” he replied.  “I’m taking over from Paul, who is being relieved.”
 
At that point, I relayed to Ty the story of my first dispatcher experience.  I then returned to the hotel for a bit of food and sleep,”.
 
I later learned that Jeanne had a rare blood disorder that she had never disclosed to her superiors.  She was medevac’d to Anchorage and almost died before a blood transfusion saved her life.
 
I was thankful I had made a good decision that night!
 
My wife visits
 
After three weeks of intense activity our days became somewhat normalized. I asked if I could have a day of respite if my wife would come to visit.  I had the room to myself and I could afford the round-trip ticket since I was earning time and a half for each hour I worked over 40 hours per week.  With a week of 20 hour “days” followed by mostly 16 hour shifts, I had the resources, and I thought she would like a visit.  Even though she was 5 months pregnant, she enthusiastically embraced the plan.
 
She arrived one clear and bright Saturday night and settled into our comfortable room.
The next morning, we visited the cultural center and walked about, taking in the ambience and surroundings that she had never experienced from the road system of South Central Alaska.
 
For the afternoon I borrowed the only vehicle we used for in-town transport.  It was a beat up FAA pickup truck that had a broken starter.  It needed to be pushed in order to start.  Since we had gasoline - but no starter- once we pushed it to start, we tried to never let it stop.  IF perchance it did stop, the person driving it had to find a group of “pushers” to restart it. 
 
So I received the truck in running order and drove to the only military installation near town.  A military radar site, it had an all-male contingent running the place. It also had one small tree outside the main building, humorously dubbed the” Kotzebue National Forest”.  On the way, we passed the “Flying Martini Bar”, which was no longer active.  It was at the end of the airport runway, situated INSIDE a wrecked Constellation aircraft. While I did not remember this tourist attraction, my wife did, and a brief online search told its history.
 
We arrived at the radar station on a mid-Sunday afternoon in order to join a few folks to watch that week’s delivered movie. As we walked in my wife asked me where the women’s restroom was located.  UH- there was none! 
 
We located a large washroom obviously serving the male inhabitants.  As she entered, I stood sentry duty at the door.  Soon enough a pleasant fellow in a corduroy shirt and blue jeans approached and asked why I was blocking the door to the John.  
 
“Well, I’m with the BLM group and my wife is visiting.  We came to watch the movie and she needed a ladies’ room-   which you don’t have. And who are you?” I inquired.
 
“I’m Colonel Harris”, he replied.  “I’m the person who runs the place.  You are most welcome.  And the movie starts in 10 minutes in that room there.”
 
My wife exited and we thoroughly enjoyed free popcorn while we watched “The Great Waldo Pepper”.
 
When we left, the pickup was still running so we were safe to return to the hotel for our steak dinner.
 
The next morning my wife returned to Anchorage and I resumed my duties at the FAA house.
 

What is a Maps and Records Clerk?
 
The Kotzebue headquarters was in a government building owned by the FAA. When we moved in after our first few days of operating out of a hotel room, our Finance Officer, Jim, had already activated a telephone line so we could communicate via voice to the Fairbanks BLM District Office.  We set up our radio and had communications with aircraft and our field team leaders. 
 
I, however, had additional needs.  In order to justify the considerable logistic expenses fighting 87 fires, our unit needed to send daily typewritten reports to BLM in Boise, Idaho, as well as to Fairbanks.  All the reports were then processed to Washington where Congressional approvals were needed for these emergency expenditures.
 
Though I did not understand exactly how the final monetary requests were routed, it was impressed upon me that my reports were necessary and needed to be sent in a timely manner- daily if possible.
 
So Jim saw to it that two important pieces of equipment were procured mostly for my use.
 
The first to arrive on the scene was a small 40-pound piece of hardware called a “telecopier”.  This was a forerunner to our present fax machines, which did not yet exist for general use in 1977.
 
The telecopier hooked up to our incoming phone line.  It had a small spinning drum/spindle to which a typed or drawn-upon piece of paper was attached.  A phone number was entered- hopefully to a similar machine connected and powered at the receiving end of the call.  Once the call connected, pressing a button caused the drum to spin.  A photoelectric cell would then transmit the change of black to white on the page - the text or drawing.  At the other end, the opposite translation would result in a transmitted page coming off that drum.  All this predated our present digital processing and worked pretty well.
 
In fact, this worked too well!  After several weeks of frenetic activity, my workload became repetitive, and I often found myself at night with no incoming actions as fires subsided for the evenings and crews rested.
 
Once my reports were typed and telecopied, I took some time to draw cartoons related to unusual activities.  One I remember vividly occurred when two smokejumpers had returned from helping set up a radio transmission relay on the top of an area mountain.  They reported seeing a strange perfect circle imprinted in the snowpack near the summit.  They said it looked like a flying saucer had landed, and they even saw markings where something may have “exited” the circular imprint.
 
Now I wondered what these fellows had in their canteens, but they seemed genuinely perplexed and excited. They had deployed the radio equipment, so we sent them to their lodging for rest before their next deployment.
 
I didn’t want to write this story into a report to Boise, so I decided to draw a cartoon with a brief synopsis for my Fairbanks contacts.  My picture showed small flying men with beanies on their heads with propellers. Flying over Kotzebue!
 
The cartoon transmitted fine and must have caused a good laugh because I was asked to send more!  This I did, though none were remarkable enough to remain in my long-term memory for 43 years.  
 
As for the strange imprint?  One of life’s unknown mysteries!
 
I also connected our telecopier to a number in Anchorage that connected to the Anchorage Daily News.  Here, again during my late hour down time, I sent occasional dispatches describing noteworthy activities of the day.
 
One such dispatch was exciting enough to be printed on the front page of the Anchorage paper.  The incident involved a Native crew member who became extremely ill on the fire line.  Our radio operator alerted us that he may have appendicitis and need immediate medical care.
 
The resulting actions were to walk him across a smoking burn area in a D-6 Caterpillar to a local stream where a flat-bottomed boat awaited.  This took him down-river to Golovin, where there was a person with medical training who could assess his condition in a phone consult to a doctor in Nome. Then we could airlift him to Nome if necessary.
 
As I wrote the incident for the news reporter, I must have imbued my narrative with the sense of excitement and near-panic we felt as we did not know the outcome until the next day.
 
There were three outcomes:  FIRST, the sick fellow did not get flown to Nome.  It was correctly determined through the Golovin call to Nome that he had food poisoning from eating some bad C-rations!  He was fine.
 
But the SECOND outcome was more personal.
 
It seems the newspaper story was picked up by an AP news service and the result was a request to entertain a news reporter/photographer from Time Magazine.  Sure enough, within two days a young man in nice clean pressed jeans with a big camera appeared at the Kotzebue terminal asking to be flown to a fire.
 
We had to accommodate him so we put him in a small plane and sent him along to a fire site surrounding a mining location at Haycock (inhabited for a time by the Jorgensen family.  I wonder if this was where my Copper Valley schoolmates Trygve and Cecelia Jorgensen came from?). We knew the fire was active on all sides of the tiny airstrip there, so we expected some degree of excitement from our young visitor.  Indeed, he refused to exit the plane.  Too much excitement!
 
The following week a short article was published in Time Magazine accompanied by an aerial picture of a fire line marching across the tundra.
 
Then came the THIRD outcome, which was a directive that I stop publicizing our activities beyond the required reports!  No more dispatches and no more cartoons. Whoops.
 
As I mentioned earlier in this story, there were TWO pieces of equipment brought to headquarters for my use.  The second came about two weeks into the operations.  It was a monster that stood 3 feet tall and weighed several hundred pounds.  To this day I don’t know where it came from, but it was quite useful for information coming into our operations.  It was a teletype machine, one with a keyboard and a roll of paper on which printed information arrived with a clatter associated with the press rooms we see in movies.  With a line dedicated to our Fairbanks office, reports would come in periodically-and often- letting us know what was happening around the State.
 
This behemoth was important enough that we placed it next to our building stove with its never-ending large black enamel pot of “camp” coffee.  The coffee was made and kept filled by Claire, the Las Vegas lady brought to us by Bob the smokejumper.  It was her only duty and she fulfilled it well.  There we would congregate whenever the keys started clacking and the paper roll began to move.
 
Sending information out via this equipment required some skill since there was no backing up on a line so codes for mistakes were needed, and messages had to be carefully typed and, where possible, abbreviated.  Incoming copy could be ripped off and posted to a board or given to a responsible team member to process.
 
I never liked this machine beyond the feeling of being in a real newsroom.  Like the camp coffee, the teletype kept us awake!
 
And along with our typewriter, radios, our telephone, and our telecopier, we communicated.
 
That was how a “Maps and Records Clerk” worked for our government!

 
Tommy Lepak and his buddy Al each owned a specially modified tracked vehicle made by the Bombardier Company.  These rugged vehicles were used to take moose hunters back into deep wilderness areas to hunt moose.  However, during the summer fire season they were equipped with high pressure hoses attached to tanks filled with water. Each vehicle had a large round Steel eye attached so that it could be lifted by a helicopter and dropped in front of a fire where using the hoses two men could do the work of a 15 man fire crew
 
Often on a fire bust when there was limited manpower the Bombardiers would be leased from Tommy and Al and then dropped into a fire site to cut a line to contain a fire.   Such was the situation in Kotzebue when the Candle fire needed to be fought.  A large landmass surrounding the old Candle Mine site had been assigned to a reindeer herd project as a summer grazing area. A BLM biologist said that this site was given to the NANA Native corporation by the Federal government because of the nature of the vegetation used by the reindeer. One problem was that the lichens eaten by these animals could take up to 100 years to revegetate after being burned over.  As a result,  we were directed to put resources on this fire though no people or structures were in danger.
 
Having no crews available because of many higher-priority fires across the Fairbanks District, we resorted to a call for the two all-terrain vehicles (ATV’s).  They were quickly shipped via a large cargo plane from the Anchorage International Airport to the Kotzebue airfield.  From there we airlifted each via helicopter to the small Candle airstrip created from the old mining tailings.
 
Here’s where this story becomes interesting.
 
Along with each ATV came a driver and a second person to use the hoses. One of the “hosers” was a lanky young man with long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.  With earrings and tattoos, he was typical of what we then termed a “hippy”.  Many young people seeking to escape the restrictions of “normal” life found freedom and adventure in the wilds of Alaska. Jonathan was one of them.
 
We flew Jonathan to the Lepak Bombardier to spend many long hours cutting a line to contain the Candle fire.  We had occasional contact with Tommy and Al, but largely left them to their work.  Several fuel drops were made by helicopter over the course of several weeks.  As the fire began to die, we received a strange call from Tommy.  Could we send out several cases of beer before they finished cleaning up?
 
Of course we wanted to know why.  Tommy radioed back to us that Jonathan was to be picked up the next day, returned to Kotzebue, and then flown back to Anchorage where he was to be married.  
 
Since the Candle fire had been largely contained due to the efforts of these men, and since we thought this a worthy reason for a party, we sent out the requested cases.  We also made arrangements for Jonathan and me to fly back to Anchorage on a fancy two-pilot plane we were using for fire-spotting.  The plane, a Merlin, was due for a 100-hour inspection to be done in Anchorage. It was an earned respite for me after 4 weeks of 16–20-hour days with only a few local breaks.  I would get to see my wonderfully pregnant wife for one day, and Jonathan could join his fiancée for the planned wedding celebration.
 
Jonathan came into Kotzebue in a state that indicated he had probably imbibed at least half of one of the cases of beer!  He could barely walk up the metal stairs to enter the Merlin.  I spotted him as he clanked up and noticed him holding a cylindrical piece of sown canvas by a canvas handle.  It reminded me of a smaller wine bag one would use to carry a bottle of wine.  But it was too short to hold wine- and it had a thin leather strap attached from the open underside of this “bag” to his left wrist.  What was this object?
 
As Jonathan tripped down a center aisle to take a seat opposite and behind me, I glanced back just as he reached under the canvas “bag” and extended his hand up and into the hidden inside.
 
He then pulled downward and out popped a ruffled chunk of white feathers!  With a simple twist of his left wrist and a guide from his right hand, Jonathan awkwardly placed a baby snowy owl onto his left shoulder.
 
Jonathan proceeded to pass into a deep sleep for the flight, as his white feathered treasure looked at me with large yellow eyes and swiveled its head almost 180 degrees, much like a gun turret seeking a target. I must admit my neck also swiveled as I watched this smallish creature for much of our flight.
 
As we landed and Jonathan arose unsteadily from his seat, he grabbed his feathery charge and “stuffed” it back into the canvas cylinder.
 
I asked him where he got the bird and what was he going to do with it.
 
“Oh,” he replied, “I saved it as it was hopping in front of the fire line.  I’m taking it to my new bride as a wedding present!”
 
And with that last note, Jonathan staggered out of my life.
 
Footnote:
Several years later I learned that Tommy  Lepak retrofitted his Bombardier for a moose hunt off the Denali Highway.  Tommy was an experienced guide, so we were quite surprised to hear that on that hunt he shot his uncle through the heart, mistaking his rustling in the brush for a moose. 
 
Soon after, Tommy left the State and we never heard from him again.

 
It was three weeks into my Kotzebue experience as a “Maps and Records Clerk” when I was asked to return a sick firefighter to his home and sign him off and deliver his paycheck.  His home happened to be Shishmaref, a small Inupiaq village of 600 located 105 miles from Kotzebue.  
 
Since we had to fly the Native home from a small airstrip at Candle to an even smaller strip at Shishmaref,  we decided I should travel using Paul’s small Cessna 185,  a six-seater we contracted from him out of Galena.  As far as we knew, Paul was an experienced Bush pilot having flown the territory for several years.
 
Paul flew VFR (Visual Flight Rules) to Candle, just a short hop across Kotzebue Sound.  I sat next to him as we bumped to a short stop on the mining tailings that had been bladed over into a crude landing strip.  There we picked up our hurting passenger.  It seems he had contracted an STD sometime prior to his delivery to the fire site.  He needed his home and treatment, and was in some degree of pain.
 
Shishmaref was a small village located on a disintegrating barrier island facing the Bering Sea, five miles from the Alaskan mainland.  Its small landing strip ran east-west across the island, about a half mile north of the village’s main road. 
 
Our trip to Shishmaref was quick but notable.  Smoke covered the entire Seward Peninsula to 5,000 feet, meaning we flew in a fog, moving with geographically identifiable rivers, passing the Serpentine Hot Springs and the tors found nearby that helped Paul achieve a successful landing.
 
We marched single file down the one Main Street, letting our passenger drift off to a small clinic for the medicine he needed.  We then continued to the main store in the town.  The store had meager stock, but it seemed a center of activity being used for all manner of trade, from hardware to hunting and fishing gear to food supplies.  
 
Paul asked for a manager and approached him with a question- “What was the price of raw ivory: walrus tusks?” 
 
I was wearing my BLM patch on my shoulder, and one sideways glance confirmed I was “Government”.  Since it was technically illegal for Natives to sell raw ivory to non-Natives,  the answer was three-part::  “It sells for $20 a pound, but of course we cannot sell it to you !”  “BUT, you can buy our carved and scrimshawed art work!”
 
We left without ivory and walked north toward the Cessna.  A short side trip took us to Herbie Nayukpuk’s studio. Herb was a village leader known for his running dogsleds in a succession of Iditarod races, and for his fine walrus ivory art pieces.  Herb was also the team leader for the Shishmaref fire team, and absent, working a fire in the Fairbanks District many miles away.
 
At his shop, though, we found his daughter, who took us into his log studio.  There we saw one pair of vices holding horizontally a partially- and elaborately- carved walrus tusk.  This was a commissioned piece in process, going to a well-heeled Japanese buyer.  On a second vice, clamped vertically, was another tusk.  Here, Herb had scratched in a small image.  He would later polish the image, drill two small holes through the ivory, slice it, polish it again, and then rub black ink into the scratched image.  This formed one oblong slice to become part of a story bracelet.
 
I negotiated a $375 price (each) for two of his signed bracelets that consisted of alternating Alaskan jade and walrus ivory pieces, where the scrimshawed ivory story depicted a seal hunt.  One was to take to my wife, the other for a colleague.
 
We left the shop to return to our transport.  Many of the younger Shishmaref children followed us, all in a line, like the Pied Piper.  This was of interest since Paul veered off into the 3 foot high brush to relieve himself.  The line followed!
 
Paul and I took off, flying due east, knowing the smoke was dense.  It was Paul’s plan to intersect with the Buckland River, which dumped directly into the Kotzebue Sound somewhat opposite Kotzebue.
 
We buzzed along, flying very low with good visibility straight down, but poor visibility ahead. 
 
We reached the river and Paul turned the Cessna to follow the river.  We both opened our windows to see what was seeable, mostly directly below.  We were no more than 5 minutes along when I observed a large plume of smoke directly to our left.  I had mapped and recorded every fire, and knew that the only fire we had engaged near Buckland was on the EAST side of the river. And we had assumed the small crew had contained that fire!  
So. 
 
We were flying SOUTH along the river.  Toward Granite Mountain and AWAY from Kotzebue!!
 
I told this to Paul. He then pulled up, flying to a point above the smoke.  There he made contact with several other pilots who described extreme smoke covering the entire area to 5,000 feet.
 
At that point, Paul aimed his plane for home.
And that is how I spent my first night ever in Galena!
 
But this story didn’t end there:  I radioed back to my logistic partners in Kotzebue to inform them that the Buckland fire was NOT out and indeed was cooking!  They sent in a helicopter to find the crew with a non-functioning radio, sitting in the middle of a sandbar where they had been chased by the angry fire.  They were safely removed and the fire abandoned to later die of its own accord!
 
The next day a different pilot flew me in his L-20 Beaver back to work in Kotzebue.

Imagine an area the size of New York,  dotted with many small villages, none of which were connected to each other by roads.  Then imagine 83 fires in that same area, many threatening those wide-flung villages.
 
This was what we encountered as we worked throughout a six- week period from Kotzebue, Alaska.  There, in a village second in size to the better-known Nome, and located 20 miles above the Arctic Circle, our BLM fire fighting operations were set up in a little used wood house borrowed from the Federal Aviation Administration.
 
Moving about in this theater of operations required a massive air effort.  Within a week of the call to action, we had leased more than 20 aircraft of various capabilities.  We hired several Twin Otters, a WWII-era Catalina bomber, multiple small helicopters, an L-20 DeHavilland Beaver, an Aztec, a Merlin, several smaller Cessnas and even a loaned Chinook helicopter from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. These were bolstered by the presence of an airfield at Kotzebue that accommodated commercial flights that could bring cargo and passengers into the town using aircraft as large as a Boeing 727 jet.  
 
Each aircraft came with its own story!
 
The Catalina bomber was the most interesting.  Flown up from California, it came with only one pilot.  This gentleman looked old enough to have flown this plane in WWII!  The plane itself, a retrofitted PBY, was designed to land on a body of water and skim the surface scooping water into a tank in its belly,  The pilot would then release this load over a fire or hot-spot, helping to contain its spread.
 
We deployed the Catalina successfully on several hot-spots, thus allowing us to avoid placing crews in those locations.
 
After the second week of occasional deployments, we received an alarming radio call from the pilot.  One of his engines was on fire and trailing smoke.  He was coming in from the west over Kotzebue Sound and could we, please, clear the airstrip so he could land!!
 
We immediately contacted our FAA colleagues and cleared all traffic.  Then, frightened but engaged, our team lined up to observe the approach.  Viewing was difficult due to the extreme smoke conditions, but we were able to watch as the Catalina emerged from the smoke fog a few hundred feet from the end of the runway.  Right on target, the pilot aimed his crippled plane at the west end center of the runway, his left engine trailing a plume of coal/dark smoke.
 
The plane leveled and touched down smoothly with no hint that only the right engine was carrying the weight of the Catalina.  The plane slowed and turned slowly down a taxiway leading to a large concrete “field” where we parked the aircraft used in our operations.   With little effort the pilot guided his plane to a halt, parked.
 
The pilot, unflustered, asked to use our phone.
He called his home office in California and requested they send a new engine.
 
Within several days the engine arrived.  That pilot, himself, installed that engine and was operational within that week!
 
We had two other instances of damaged aircraft.  Both involved our Twin Otters.  These were STOLs-  Short Take-Off and Landing aircraft which were the modern workhorses of the Bush.  They were large enough to move a 15-person fire crew with its gear.  They could land using a very short length of runway and, in fact, could land on rugged terrain where no runway existed.
 
One of our Otters carrying gear and provisions for a crew already deployed, landed on a sandbar on the Buckland River.  The landing was not smooth, and one of the landing gear struts was damaged. The pilot, fearing a possible collapse if he tried a takeoff, called for help. With a fire nearby, we decided to immediate extract him using one of our smaller helicopters.
 
The pilot reported the damage and we prepared to send out a mechanic with parts to repair the strut and fly the plane back.  But we were informed by the fire crew on the scene that the fire had shifted course and was running toward the plane!
 
For two days we waited, fearful that the fire would burn over and destroy our expensive piece of equipment!
 
Indeed, the fire DID burn over the Otter, jumped part of the river, and then died of its own accord.
 
With great trepidation, we flew over the burn, expecting to see a burned out hulk of a plane.
Such was not the case!  The plane was untouched, totally intact.
 
It was repaired and returned to service.  We had lucked out.
 
Meanwhile, at another southern location nearer Granite Mountain, one of our helicopters was grounded after delivering supplies to a crew.  It had developed a crack across one of its rotors, which, if flown, could cause a catastrophic failure. Somehow, we needed to replace the rotor on site so we could extract the injured bird!  But how could we get such an unwieldly object to the location?  
 
One answer, after reviewing our available resources, was to have one of our Twin Otters carry it to a sand bar only about a mile from the helicopter and then have some of the fire crew and a mechanic carry it in.  The rotor blade, however, was too long to fit within the plane.  So we removed a door and slid the rotor into the plane as far as it would go.  About 3 feet protruded from the door.
 
Our pilot assured us he could fly if the rotor blade was firmly secured to the fuselage and struts.
 
The operation was successful and the helicopter repaired and retrieved!
 
We loved our Otters!
 
Another of our aircraft came from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.  It was a Chinook helicopter, rumored to once have been in service to a prior President of the U.S.  While we never confirmed that rumor, the aircraft was indeed large and imposing. Loud too.  You didn’t want to be standing close when it was in operation preparing to rise.
 
The Chinook came with a 3-man crew with the task of pre-positioning large 500-gallon rubber tanks of fuel for our smaller helicopters.   It also came with the biggest beer cooler I’d ever seen.  I know this because one late night I sat in the lounge of the NuLukVik Hotel, third floor, with this crew and a few other exhausted BLM employees. And Claire, a beautiful young woman who followed smoke-jumper Bob from Las Vegas to this adventure.  
 
As we looked out, being early July, we watched the sun slide along the mountains across the Bay, never dipping below them.  Night never came.  But the Chinook helicopter crew chief did,  with his crew’s beer cooler.  The crew were all there due to a maneuver that grounded the operation of their “chopper”.  After a week of long hours positioning the 500 gallon rubber “blivets”, also called “rollagons”, the crew had grown weary but were not given time to relax. The answer to finding time off was to somehow “lose” the gas cap to their aircraft.  Since it would be at least a day’s time to get a replacement sent to Kotzebue,  the crew was grounded.
 
So we sat and listened to the crew tell stories of what occurred as they worked.  As the beer cooler was lightened, the stories became more animated.
 
We listened as they told of what happens when their 500-gallon “rollagons”, slung from a net below their Chinook, would start to swing.  Imagine the outcome if the swinging was too wide.  That is why they had a “”kill” button that would release their load to bounce across the tundra as they pulled away.  Somehow this image, fortified by multiple emptied beer cans, seemed hilarious.
 
When it was time for the crew to depart for bed, I too got up to leave.  Claire, recently abandoned by her smokejumper who flew to Fairbanks for unexplained medical care, asked if I’d accompany her to her door down the hall.  I did so.  At the door, she asked if I’d like to come in and smoke a joint.
 
Alarm bells went off-  I never smoked a joint.   I was married.   Also, Claire would not be able to stay if she didn’t find different lodging arrangements.  Even in my inebriated state, I knew enough to decline politely and high/tail it to my own room, alone.
 
The next day our Chinook crew received their gas cap and resumed their tasks.
 
And Claire returned to Las Vegas.

It all began at 3 AM on a sunny June morning in 1977.

Of course there was light streaming through the high bedroom window- after all, it was the end of June in Alaska, and even well below the Arctic Circle, Anchorage had its shortened nights.  While my wife and I were not cheechakos who used tin foil to cover our bedroom windows in order to sleep, a clanging telephone did disturb our somnolence!

I answered fuzzily but quickly (there were no spam calls in 1977!) and heard a clear but distinct voice on the other end of the line:

It was Sue from the Anchorage District Office of the Bureau of Land Management.  There, off Abbott Loop Road, was my summer job as a clerk who organized equipment locations for rental during fire emergencies in the southern half of Alaska,  It was a mundane job,  occasionally accented by a need to fly into remote Bush locations.  Mostly it was organizing paper!  Mostly it was a 9-5 job.

A call at 3 AM was certainly not normal, nor particularly welcome,

“OK, Sue, I’m awake,” I mumbled. “What do you want.”

“Can you be at the Anchorage Airport by 6 AM to fly to Kotzebue?  The Fairbanks District Office is overwhelmed and needs to set up a subsidiary operation to cover the Northwestern part of the State.  They want a Maps and Records Clerk to be part of their Logistics team.”

“So what does a Maps and Records Clerk do?”, I inquired.

“I don’t know exactly, but paperwork I suspect.  You have the skill so I’ve been asked to send you if you are willing.”
“Alright,” I said, and my 6 week unforgettable adventure began.

========
A memorable event  not in any particular time sequence:  Featuring TOILET PAPER!

Boise Idaho sent us a few of their finest smoke jumpers.  These guys were free spirits, but worked and played hard and knew fire.  One of the most revered of them was Dave L.

Dave was a rugged looking individual, a bit older than the usual at about 30 years of age.  He didn’t like to live in civilization, preferring the outdoors.  He wasn’t at our Kotzebue headquarters for more than a day when we got the call that a fire was running near the Noatak River.  

Marion W., our Maps and Records Officer, immediately asked Claire, the pilot of the Aztec we rented out of California, to take  a short hop across the Sound to the Noatak River area to map the fire.  He asked me if I wanted to go along. I had been bound to the office for a week and it was an opportunity I relished.  The three of us took off and buzzed north to the River.
There, we could see a sizeable fire up against the mountains.  It seemed to be moving over dried tundra hot enough to generate its own wind current in a westerly direction… toward the little town of Noatak which rested at the mouth of the River.  The fire was still a considerable distance east of this remote village, butted up against a low range of mountains.
Marion told Claire to bring the Aztec down on the fire line so we could get a more accurate map of the terrain.  Already, we were flying a tight circle, wing edges perpendicular to the tundra, me looking straight down through the window, though safely buckled in.  As the wind current buffeted us up and down, I questioned my desire to have this adventure.
Claire did a flip to look out, gauged the wind current put up by the fire, and promptly told Marion “No”, she wouldn’t go down further.  Marion looked surprised.  “I rented the plane, Claire, and I want you to go down further.”  “No, I’m the pilot and my judgement counts.  I won’t do it,” Claire responded.

Even though in his late 20’s, Marion had quite a bit of experience flying over fire sites. But Claire had the stick.  We spotted what we could, then skeddaddled back to home base in Kotzebue.  Upon exiting the plane, Marion told Claire to pack up her plane and go back to California.  He fired her. Harsh, and unexpected.  Perhaps they were both right?

The mapping helped however.  Dave L was now to be engaged on the Noatak fire.  He looked over our maps, assessed the terrain, and drew a line where he said he would stop the fire from moving toward Noatak.  With a mountain to the east with no vegetation to burn, and with two rivers, one on each side of the flat terrain that came together like an arrow head at the village of Noatak,  it was obvious that removing a line of vegetation from one river to the other, well ahead of the approaching fire, would stop it in its track.

We had one problem.  Manpower.  David L told us he would need three 15-man Native crews to do the job within two days.  But we had only two available.  “What about the aerial backfiring ship?” David asked.  “Perfect”, Marion responded.  Using the Cessna with incendiary grenade launchers would start a hell of a fire line marching east to meet the west-approaching fire, which generated its own wind.

I called Fairbanks to order the Cessna.  Ahhhh.  Nope.  Higher priority fire in the Fairbanks District far east of us.
So David used an alternative. David knew how to start fires as well as put them out.  He suggested a solution, which we happily accommodated. 
 
He order a number of large cases of toilet paper from a store in Fairbanks!  
David had two Native fire crews rolling toilet paper across the tundra, setting a backfire.  They stopped that fire dead in its tracks at exactly the time he said he would do that.

You respect a guy like that!

 
My new teaching buddies and I sat around the table in the Service Hanshew JSHS faculty lounge, newly built in Anchorage.  We were discussing how we wanted to experience the wilderness of Alaska.  We were all newly hired to meet the educational demands of a large influx of children, coming to us because of the birth of the Alyeska Pipeline and the boom-time jobs that were being offered.
 
Exploring my new world, I drove north from Anchorage to McKinley Park (Denali now!) with my wife and baby, tent camping halfway into the park.  Park rangers stood watch for undesirable wild life… mostly big brown bears.  After one night, we drove to Wonder Lake and out.  On the way back toward Anchorage, we did a 24 mile dirt road side trip into a lodge on Peter’s Creek Road.  South of Denali, it was in God’s country.  The road, deeply rutted and rocky, was barely passable with our Dodge station wagon.  The road dead-ended at the lodge, a large two story log structure which wasn’t open at the time.  A burbling trout stream sat at the dirt circle parking lot beside the building, with a few 50 gallon drum containers meant to hold refuse from fishermen who often frequented the spot.  I tried my hand with a small lure, but it was late and fishing was not on the agenda that trip.  No fish bit in the short time I cast into the rocky waters.

We were alone this time and enjoying the peace and quiet, only occasionally punctuated by Baby David’s presence.  As the sun lowered behind the mountains, my wife looked around and said “I don’t want to sleep in a tent.  There might be bears around and there are no Rangers!”  While I wasn’t as fearful, I heeded her distress.  We set up our tent, moved all the gear into it, put the baby in a laundry basket on the front seat of our Dodge station wagon, laid out a mattress in the back, and bedded down in our sleeping bags for the night.

Sure enough, there was bear.  He was a medium-sized black bear, interested in the contents of the barrels outside.  He muddled and snuffled around a bit, took a sniff at our car (“Canned people”?) and left the area, probably still hungry.
I was thankful I heeded my wife’s warning.  But… she refused to tent camp again.

So I entered the above discussion with one thing in mind:  a cabin.  Several of my fellow teachers also liked that idea.
But where?

The State of Alaska, only 12 years old at the time, decided to assist its residents.  All we needed to do was to look in certain State-designated areas, travel to a chosen spot, put down stakes in four corners, and we could then file to own up to 20 acres of free land.  Called Open to Entry, this program appealed to us as one answer to “Where?”
Our first mapping exploration located a beautiful lake halfway to Denali.  It was an easy hike off the Alaska Railroad, which would stop for travelers living in such places.  Several of us were ready to make a pilgrimage to the spot, but as we inquired, we discovered that the upper, dry side of the lake, was partially staked already.  Further discussion with State officials revealed that the parties claiming that property were NOT friendly. They had staked enough area to “own” the whole lake and had reportedly fired warning rifle shots toward would-be participants in the Open to Entry program.

We scotched that plan.

One of our group later staked a claim nearer to Willow (famous for housing Sarah Palin’s family).
However, in early spring, he discovered it was largely swampland, not suitable for building.  He abandoned his claim.

Meanwhile, I found a source through the Federal Government, an entity that owned most of Alaska.  The U.S. Forest Service maintained the Chugach National Forest area on the Kenai Peninsula, an area with its northernmost section adjacent to a small community called Hope, Alaska.  This area was reachable by dirt road and included a group of about 30 one-acre lots that could be leased for $99 a year on a one-hundred-year lease. The lease could be obtained by signing a contract that involved Federal approval of plans for building a cabin on the lot.  The Government provided covenants and rules for the owners that meant to keep the area as pristine as possible.  I liked that since it meant we would not be butt up against yahoos with rusty garbage cans filled with alcohol containers and junk cars beside shacks. There were some controls.

I met with one of my lounge friends who happened to be the shop teacher in our high school.  Wayne was a talented carpenter and had been a California contractor in his past.  We discussed what I needed, and Wayne not only designed a plan for a small modified A-frame cabin, but he also assigned his students to build a scale-model of it so I would understand the structure and what would be needed to build it.  I took Wayne’s plan and completed a ream of Federal paperwork.  The model was perfect!
The plan was submitted and approved.  I now “owned” the property in the forest just outside of Hope Alaska!
​
But it needed to become a reality.