Legends of Alaska - The Midnight Sun

They call Alaska the Land of the Midnight Sun.  If you are not from Alaska you may not understand but this is largely derived from the fact that long about the end of June there is about as much light at midnight as there is mid-day.  Eventually somewhere around 2 or 3 in the morning it gets kind of dim but never really dark.  Alaska is a land of absolutes in many ways and while the Midnight Sun sounds romantic the opposite that occurs long around Mid-December is Eternal Darkness.  During that time the Midnight Sun becomes the Midnight Moon.  In winter you pretty much live in darkness because the only day light is from about 9am to 3pm and during that time you are likely in school or working.  

The contrast makes half of the year stand out so much more vividly in my mind than the other half.  When I look back into the deep corners of my mind the vast majority of memories that bubble to the surface occurred in the summer.  Summer in Alaska is a kind of orgasm of life.  To escape the midnight light you will see windows covered in aluminum foil on the inside.  The desperate sleepless residents go to extreme measures to try to counter the nocturnal light.  

For my friends and I the daylight was a chance to hit the links.  It meant golfing for free.  Okay to be fair none of us were golfers and we were simply terrible at it but for Robert Maney, Mike Searcy and myself the midnight sun meant we could go out on the public Russian Jack Golf Course and play for free.  Sure, it was a bit of a challenge in that all of the flags on the putting greens had been pulled but I like to think of it as requiring increased skill level.  As we would trudge around the greens swatting mosquitos and chopping at the turf we would leave countless divots in our wake.  It was hard to not recognize the fact that there were few places on the planet where what we were doing was possible at one am in the morning.  As young men, the added hours of daylight were akin to electricity surging through our veins.

Green lines are bike paths

One of the most wonderful things about growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, was the freedom that it provided.  The reality of living in Alaska is much closer to living on an island than few other places in America.  Once you leave the city there simply is nothing.  There are two roads, one north and one south.  The nearest city of any greater size in America is Seattle, Washington.  Despite being isolated there was something so free about that northern town.  As a child in the winter I could take the city bus around.  As I grew older my bicycle became my tool.  Anchorage was the most amazing place to ride a bicycle.  While you only have a few months to do it, there are bicycle lanes and dedicated paths that lead everywhere.  From one side of town to the other I could peddle my way to bliss.  The best part of all was that darkness never really came.  

While travel in the summer was easy, winter was a different matter.  The limitations were only overcome when after saving a summers wages from working I bought my dream car and equally my nightmare, an MGB.  When I was young I would hear stories of my mother

The Shape of Things To Come TR7

talking about her Triumph Spitfire in Los Angeles and I wanted one for my own.  My mother was addicted to the British car, so much so that she made the disastrous decision to buy a TR7.  The TR7 was the British car makers last gasp and it was simply awful.  It represented the pinnacle of horrendous British vehicle engineering.  It was also aside from my convertible MGB one of the most inappropriate Alaska modes of transportation possible to buy.  

I remember shopping for the TR7, sold as “the shape of things to come.” It was a car that looked like a wedge shaped makeup sponge.  Following my father and mother's lead I was horrified when I discovered it only had two seats.  I recall asking “Where will I sit?”  The answer turned out to be that I wedged myself between the two front seats on an arm rest.  Obviously this was a time period that predated modern seatbelt laws and child seats.  It was one of many questionable decisions my mom made the most brilliant was feeding me raw hamburger meat with salt.  Hey its like Steak Tartare in France!  Thank God it was, I assume, a time before mad cow disease.  The TR7 also came with the modern feature of an 8 track stereo.  For my mom that meant a total of two giant box tapes, one being John Denver.  

So my mom took on the Alaskan winter with a horrendously engineered two seater sports car.  My father eventually inherited the thing when my mother could no longer deal with it and I can still see him beating on it in the winter outside our house.  Cold frozen days when like all of us, he would venture out before light and crack the ice away from the cars doors and windows hoping he had remembered to plug the engine heater in the night before.  My father was typically dressed in a Harris Tweed jacket capped by a turtle neck sweater.  Invariably the engine would refuse to crank and the car like many people in Anchorage leaving for work in subzero temperatures, would announce it’s intent to stay in bed.  Try as my father would, the TR7 wouldn’t start up.  My fathers curses probably caused the snow to fall out of the trees as he would pummel the car in frustration.  Eventually the TR7 succumbed to an engine fire. Engine fires seemed to be a curse in my family claiming the lives of three vehicles.  Despite having a front seat to the TR7 fiasco, I seemed immune to learning from the experience and went about buying my own two seater, a convertible no less.   

I was so excited the day we bought it from a man in Palmer.  It was the culmination of a summers savings, working eight hours a day slinging food in an effort to buy my freedom.   My enthusiasm however was almost immediately tampered during the drive back home when the muffler fell off and started to drag.  Sparks were flying out from the bottom of the car as the pipe scraped against the asphalt.   I remember my frustrated and angry father kicking at it furiously trying to reattach the separated pipes.  From there it was an odyssey of frustration as I tried to keep it running appealing to my father’s superior mechanical knowledge for help but discovering how little patience he had for auto maintenance at that point in his life.  I think I survived one winter with the car only to wreck it in the spring.  It was may fault, I was a stupid kid and when the remains of my joy were towed home I felt humiliated in my defeat.  I found a guy that basically took what was left of my love off my hands for a couple hundred bucks and a rotted Toyota Corolla station wagon in trade.  My kind if not overly sarcastic girlfriend called the thing my limousine.  The car was in such a state of disrepair the cancer of rust had reduced the fenders to flapping out as I drove down the road.  The ignition had ceased working so to start it my father bypassed the key switch and I had to cross two wires with a spark.  It took a quart of oil a week and smelled but it ran and restored some of the freedom I longed for.  My parents would never agree to allow me to use their cars so without my own ride I was stranded at our isolated home in the southern part of the city.  I can recall driving their car only once before I turned 19.  It was the TR7 that I was permitted to use to take my date to the High School Junior Prom.  It was also on the night of a huge snowstorm that left me wondering if I would make it back home.  

Wolverine Peak

The Midnight Sun in Alaska meant hikes late into the evening in the mountains that surround  Anchorage and in the numerous parks that populate the city.  Anchorage is wonderfully special in that a ten minute drive literally takes you to trail heads that lead into unpopulated and beautiful escapes.  My friend Robert and I even made a camping trip out of it once hiking up a nearby mountain called Wolverine Peak.  Near the top we pitched a tent and at the foot of a thick scrub wood forest declared it to be named Fanghorn Forest after the Lord of the Rings.  We also proclaimed the land we stood on to be an independent republic.  We must have come under attack that night as we slept by the native population.  I awoke to an eyeball swollen shut looking like the twin brother of Quasimodo.  A noseum had visited me in the night and left its swollen hard mark for me to remember its feasting.  With my backpack on I navigated the mountain with one eye as we surrendered our republic to the wild around us.

There is a wonderful drive south from Anchorage that follows an inlet called Turnagain arm.  I was always taught that it was named that way because Captain Cook while seeking the non-existent Northwest Passage, kept turning his ship around because of the difficult currents.  At the far end of the arm where the water ends and the land begins there is a haunting landscape of buildings that poke up from the grassy mud.  They are mostly gone now but when I was a child it was a source of great mystery for me.  The buildings fell victim to the Tsunami that followed the 1964 Alaska Earthquake.  The road stretches south from Anchorage past Potters Marsh and along a mountain ledge wedged between steep rocky cliffs and the grey muddy water below.  As a child it was a two lane road with little room for error as you navigated the turns heading toward the Kenai Peninsula.  Today the road has been widened but as a young boy I can recall a nearly fateful day when I was traveling with my natural father in his Datsun pickup south to go canoeing at Swanson Lake.  It was spring and the mountains above where still covered with snow and as we ventured along a particular part the snow gave way.  An enormous cascade of ice crashed across the road in front of us and we came to a halt in what seemed to be nearly a collision course.  It was one of those moments when simply a few seconds difference might have meant being swept away and out into the frigid muddy water below. 

The Peninsula was kind of magical for me and always an escape.  It might have been driving with my stepfather along the mountains listening to music when I was home from college or venturing with my friends out for camping trips.  My friend Robert and I would bring beer and go gold panning in the cold rivers never finding anything but having a good time in the process.  Another friend Mike Searcy and I would visit our friend Todd in Seward where we would take a boat out to his cabin.  I can recall one day when we were trying to scale cliffs with ocean water lapping at rocks below us.  I became terrified and Mike had to help me down.  Todd on the other hand continued only to miss a step and go tumbling.  Thankfully uninjured we left cliff climbing to others.  

There is a crystal clear lake called Summit Lake that crests a pass the road travels over as it eventually descended into the Kenai region.  Nestled beside the lake was a lodge I always found a welcome sight.  I am not sure if people actually stayed there but it seemed to be the most beautiful place, its log cabin structure nestled below the peaks.  Not far from there my friend Mike Searcy and I spent a couple adventurous days hiking across a mountain path.

Summit Lake Lodge

One of my earliest memories was camping on the Kenai Peninsula with my mother and natural father.  I remember being scared out of my wits trying to cross gaps of water that would lead out to islands cut off by the Kenai rivers icy waters.  Watching terrified as my father ran down the rivers bank to collect our poodle Charlie who had fallen into the water.  Or shivering as we camped out on the Homer Spit, a long stretch of land that extends out from the town passed the light house shaped Salty Dog Cafe to the Lands End Inn.

Another was with my step father in our Volkswagen Bus Driving to the town of Kenai where we could buy fireworks legally for the Fourth of July.  I had 20 dollars, my friend Robert had nothing but together we were determined to acquire an explosive hoard.  I am proud to say that to this day we both still have all of our fingers.  

While summers were wonderful they were short and winters for me were oppressive.   Winter was a chore to get through, to survive.  I think in many ways the key for all of us was school or in the case of my parents, their working life.  My family was not a winter oriented family and the cold meant day after day in the dark.  We tried our hand at skiing and other activities but nothing really stuck with us beyond the accumulation of gear stage. 

Bethel, Alaska

When the wind would blow and my cheeks felt like leather I wondered how anyone could live in such a frozen place.  No matter how cold however I always reminded myself that the town where my natural father lived was much worse.  

My natural father Ed lived out on the Bearing Sea in a village called Bethel.  I visited twice as a child and walked the dirt roads among houses elevated on stilts as to not melt the Tundra.  Insulated sewer lines connected the houses.  It felt like Ice Station Zebra.  The summers were freezing, I could not begin to comprehend how miserable the winters must have been. 

The Midnight Sun even though far away at present still burns brightly in my heart.  That cold unforgiving land was truly a wonderful place to spend my youthful years.  For me it represents an eternal feeling of youth that will live in me until I die.  Even as my skin begins to wrinkle, my belly grows and my hair falls away deep inside me it will always stay.