Beyond Road's End , livre ebook

Beyond Road s End
Beyond Road s End
LIVING FREE IN ALASKA
Janice Schofield Eaton
A LASKA N ORTHWEST B OOKS
Anchorage, Alaska Portland, Oregon
Text 2009 by Janice Schofield Eaton
Photos 2009 by Janice Schofield Eaton except as noted on individual photos
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN -P UBLICATION D ATA
Eaton, Janice Schofield, 1951-
Beyond road s end : living free in Alaska / Janice Schofield Eaton.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-88240-754-8 (soft bound)
1. Eaton, Janice Schofield, 1951- 2. Eaton, Janice Schofield, 1951-Marriage. 3. Frontier and pioneer life-Alaska-Kachemak Bay Region. 4. Outdoor life-Alaska-Kachemak Bay Region. 5. Women-Alaska-Kachemak Bay Region-Biography. 6. Kachemak Bay Region (Alaska) -Biography. 7. Kachemak Bay Region (Alaska) -Social life and customs. I. Title.

F912.K26E37 2009
979.8 3051092-dc22
[B] 2008043277
Alaska Northwest Books
An imprint of Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co.
P.O. Box 10306
Portland, OR 97296-0306
(503) 226-2402 * www.gacpc.com
President: Charles M. Hopkins
General Manager: Douglas A. Pfeiffer
Associate Publisher, Alaska Northwest Books : Sara Juday
Editorial Staff : Timothy W. Frew, Kathy Howard, Jean Bond-Slaughter
Editor: Laura O. Foster
Cover design: Elizabeth Watson
Interior design: Andrea Boven Nelson
Maps: Marge Mueller, Gray Mouse Graphics
Production Coordinator: Susan Dup r
Printed in the United States of America by Lightning Source
In memory of Ed who taught me to Live Now.
To Barry for his unending support during fulfillment of the promise
and to Ellie and the campfire of friends.
Contents
Introduction
Part One
Good as Gold
The Other Life
Derailed
Meltdown
Day One
Welcome Home
Smoke
In a Muddle
Moving Mountains
Taxing Times
Spring Thaw
Stuffed
The Great Stone Puzzle
Golden Quandary
Trials with Tony
The Detour
Five Thousand Miles
Part Two
In the Panhandle
North to Alaska Again
Zig or Zag
End of the Road
Beyond the Skull Gate
Swift Creek Creations
Lost in the Jungle
The Land Beyond
Return to Swift Creek
The Hitchhiker
Buried Treasure
The Coffin
Felling Times
Changing Season
Thanksgiving
Readying for Santa
A Tale of Pie
Winter Holidays
Chalk and Cheese
Surprises
Strange Skies
Bonanza
Guns and Ghosts
More Russian Dealings
Books and Beyond
Nectar of the Gods
A Tale of Two Mays
Easy as Pie
Baby on the Doorstep
A Nanny for Harriet
Halibut Cove
Part Three
Once Upon a Valley
Flood
Good Neighbors
New Life
First Company
Let There be Light
Valley Living
To the Post
Holey Socks
The Boot Maker
Photographs
Tides of Change
Writing Marathon
The Other Side of the Story
Summer High
Once Upon a Journey
Family
By the South Atlantic
Camellia Drive
Sisters
Rosemary
Home Sweet Home
Bush Essentials
Solstice
First Fish
Doldrums
The Call of the Job
Botanical Boggle
Close Encounters of the Furry Kind
Pony Trails and Break-ins
Icy Bay
Return to the River
Neighbors
Changing Season
Yo-yos
As the Tide Turns
Port Dick
Summer Down Under
The Other Isle
Open Doors
Coming Attractions
The Water Rat
Crossing the Bay
Goat Mountain
Snowed In
Blood Red
Bush Lines
Cry of the Forest
Vision Quest
In the Sardine Can
Crisis by the Sea
Looking for Land
Hobbit Hole
Hitching Up
Last Chance
Fetish
Hoodlums
The Very Best
Flashback
Mount Camille
The Boys from Back East
Christmas Cheer
Round Two
Trail of Blood
Tune-in
The Vision
U Turn
Crossing the Divide
Part Four
Axing News
Into the Fry Pan
Twentieth-Century Times
In Land We Trust
Once Upon a Friday
Gore Point
Dirty Waters
Life after Exxon
Once Upon a Box
Trial by Fire
Dragon s Den
In the Wake of Disaster
From the Heart
Ups and Downs
Red Ink
Pickles
Groundhog Days
Epilogue
Postscript
Ed s Legacy
Appendix One
Appendix Two
Final Thanks
Note on Names and Place-names
Recommended Reading
About the Author
Introduction
Promises are easy to make in times of crisis. I ll go to church every Sunday. I ll quit drinking. My promise was to tell this story, if only . . .
When if only finally happened, I set out to fulfill my pledge. I d breeze through beginning chapters, then hit discomfort zones and crash. My notes would retreat to the top drawer and hibernate, then reignite like those joke birthday candles you extinguish and then burst back into flame.
I d rather write about my friends Alaskan adventures, I d argue with myself. They climb Mount McKinley, captain boats in Prince William Sound, race the Iditarod, fly planes to the Arctic. Mine s an ordinary life, and what it s like to shift from the Lower 48 to Alaska.
You re right, Jan, a voice replies, its Boston slur strangely like my husband Ed s. And that s why it s important. Living our dream didn t require outrageous abilities. Besides, this story s far bigger than us. It s about an entire community, and what working together can achieve.
Still I dawdled and evaded my vow. I d make sporadic attempts, beginning anew to tell the tale. Then life, spinning its wheel of change, would sidetrack me. More than a decade later, with Ed passed on and me living in a new hemisphere remarried to a New Zealander, the promise and Ed s voice still nagged in the ether. Tell the story, Jan. Write about Alaska.
Oh Eddie, I reply silently, I hate writing when we re central characters. It s like letting a stranger into our bedroom.
Jan, his spirit says. No excuses.
Fire burns me to action. A log rolls out of the fireplace and knocks over the screen. Embers ignite the carpet. My Kiwi spouse walks into the dining room in time to save our home, and my manuscript notes. My resistance turns to ash.
The next morning I face the blank page, feeling more naked than when in a sauna. What do I say?
Write like you re talking around the campfire, coaches friend Ellie. I ve heard bits of the story over the years, I want to hear the whole thing. Tell me again about that gold bar. Whatever became of it?
PART ONE

Lady s slipper (Cypripedium candidum)
How do you picture Alaska? I see us in a log cabin by the sea, with a snowcapped mountain view.
Good as Gold
The bar is the size of a Hershey s chocolate bar, the weight of a quart of orange juice. The color is molten gold, and gold it is, solid and pure. I heft big yellow in my hand, feeling strange. Everything feels strange.
Tony, Ed s friend from the construction industry, kneels before us. Besides the gold bar is another strange sight: American greenbacks march like soldiers across our living room floor. Tony points at the stacks of hundred dollar bills secured with elastics. It s more money than I ve seen in twenty-eight years of living. He counts aloud.
One thousand, two thousand, three thousand . . .
Ten thousand, eleven thousand, twelve thousand . . .
The piles are like Monopoly money. But these are genuine, green dollars. The stacks of thousands spread.
Seventeen thousand, eighteen thousand, nineteen thousand. Still Tony counts. With each wad I feel odd, like I m part of a heist scene. People I know don t have money like this. We ve never had money. All ours?
Twenty-three thousand, twenty-four thousand, twenty-five thousand.
I look at Ed as the magic number is reached. Twenty-five stacks of hundreds, plus thirty-five ounces of gold.
Three months ago our north-to-Alaska future felt like a fairy tale. Now we ve no excuse and no choice. We ve just swapped our log home on Blueberry Hill in New Hampshire along with its forty-six acres, its organic garden, its riding ring, and its barn for wads of green paper and a chunk of metal.
Are we crazy, surrendering our bucolic lifestyle for a vague dream? We ve no work to head to, no friends waiting to greet us, nothing certain. Will we even like Alaska, we wonder, or find a niche in a state bigger than Texas, Montana, and California combined?
Henry David Thoreau s counsel beats in our ears: Sim-pli-fy, sim-pli-fy. Follow your drummer, follow your drummer. The books of wilderness survival author Bradford Angier bait us with promises of living richly in the wilderness on ten dollars a day. We re hooked by images of freedom, freedom from financial stress and crushing East Coast taxes.
But doubts pinch, coupled with warnings from family. You don t even know where you re going-some vague somewhere in Alaska. Why don t you visit first? Why sell everything you love? they sanely suggest.
Because it feels right, I answer. I m following my intuition. But my answer sounds strange. Everything about Ed and our getting together is strange, the most bizarre event of my entire life.
The Other Life
Bizarre began with New Hampshire in a January cold snap, me grumpier than a bear with a toothache. Every single chore is hard going. The barn s water buckets are rock solid. The track s glaciated and horses skate precariously to the turnout paddock. The only warmth is steam from their nostrils and their fresh deliveries of hot buns.
In the barn, I m shoveling shit and feeling shitty. Each toss stirs daydreams of palm trees and escape from bone-numbing winter. I m cold and cranky. Judy, the farm s owner, has been out of commission since knee surgery. Solo, everything s far more of a chore.
The shovel tip catches the side of the cart and dumps a soggy load in my lap. My jeans reek. I grizzle, re-scoop, and heft again.
You do that like a pro, Jan.
I jump. It s Ed. Ed Schofield is a regular around Mirither Farm, partnered with Judy s hubby in a concrete business.
Hi Ed. Steve s at the shop for another pack of cigs.
Ed leans against the stall door. It s not Steve I came to see.