Crossing The Gates of Alaska:. Dave Metz
of March, making life almost impossible here. I don’t quite appreciate the weather’s severity until I step off the plane and feel the arctic air scouring my body. Except for the arctic fox, and perhaps a rare polar bear roaming in off the frozen sea, no large animals live out in the frigid air. Even ravens haven’t shown up yet. It’s far too cold.
Kotzebue is an isolated town on the tip of the Baldwin Peninsula, on the northwest coast of Alaska. It’s built on a large spit of land that juts out into Kotzebue Sound on the edge of the Chukchi Sea, dangling at the waves’ mercy. The region has a long cultural history of being settled by the Inupiat Eskimo. I don’t think Kotzebue is an Eskimo name, but it is an Eskimo village. It’s named after the Polish explorer Otto von Kotzebue who discovered the village around 1816. Though most of the residents are Inupiat Eskimo, I’m certain people of other origins live here now as well, moving in from other parts of Alaska and the lower forty-eight states, like Caucasians and perhaps other people indigenous to Alaska like the Yupik Eskimo. Even in the dead of winter the native people walk around without hats on and bare-hand everything, even icy steel. If it weren’t for their incredible tolerance for wind and cold, the rest of humanity just might forsake this place. But these people have made this part of Alaska their home, despite the hardships. Like most Alaskans they have adopted snowmobiles as their primary mode of transportation and ride them around with the throttle topped out. Everywhere they go it seems to be at full speed, and the younger generation has taken to racing back and forth across the frozen ice, like it’s the main activity in their lives. I wonder if they are losing touch with their culture and with wilderness by rushing their sedentary lives too much. It’s ironic how sedentary people always act hastier than nomadic people. I cringe both from the cold and from the mistake of forsaking nature.
The people here don’t seem to feel the bone-stabbing effects of the cold, and they can retreat into their modern houses and warm themselves. The appeal of our industrial, gadget-filled world has reached even this place—so far out on the edge of the North American continent that it seems like it could fall off into the sea and disappear. As for gadgets, I’m carrying a satellite phone with me just in case I get into trouble and want to return to the modern world myself.
When I walk off the plane in about ten-degree weather, I know Jimmy and Will must be suffering from chills, so I go inside the airport terminal and look for them. I find them sitting outside the front door of the terminal garage in their kennels. When I get to them they are distressed and shivering, so I drag their kennels inside the alcove of the rear door where it’s at least ten degrees warmer and out of the wind. Then I collect all my gear off the conveyor belt and call a van to pick us up. I have a lot of winter gear, so it takes me several trips to lug it all outside where my ride will come. I feel a social phobia wakening within me, because the terminal is small and crowded with a lot of people standing around. They are patient and wait for their baggage as I weave my way through them with my gear. I feel like a novice, battered by the cold, and I never make eye contact even though I’m taller than most of them. I get the feeling these people are scrutinizing me and I begin to second-guess the journey I’m about to begin. It seems so extreme. I don’t think people around here undertake adventures like this anymore. My innate restlessness and my undying urge to be on the move make me feel inferior.
My ride arrives and I load Jimmy and Will into the back of the van. The driver helps me load the kennels, but I don’t let the dogs out yet. When I do they will want to run around for a while, and it will be hard to get them back in. It’s better to wait a few minutes longer until I get to where I plan to camp. I have the driver take me a mile out of town where there is less noise. Even though there is only about a mile of road in the town, the driver appears mildly stressed and rushes to pick up and drop off passengers. The van passengers talk to each other quietly like they are acquaintances. I can’t quite understand what they are saying, and I’m not sure if they are talking in their native language or some form of accented English that I can’t decipher. An old native woman sits in the front seat on the passenger side and mumbles to the young man driving like she is a sage giving advice. She doesn’t look at him, just out the front window, but the man reacts as if he understands everything. I don’t know what she is saying. They all talk so softly, which is kind of a nice change when I think about it for a few minutes. There’s no gaudy talk and no one aggressively controlling the conversation. There’s simply the monotonic speech that I really don’t need to understand. When we get well out of town and everyone else has exited, I have the driver let me out. Then I unload my gear and the dogs. The snow crackles beneath my feet. I let the dogs sniff around to warm up and to relieve themselves. Their breaths leave two rising columns of vapor as they thread their way over the white, glistening tundra.
I erect the tent right away, about fifty yards from the main road. It’s a two-person, four-season tent made by Marmot. It’s made for extreme weather, and without it I couldn’t survive. The light wind that blows here constantly cuts right through me, and I’m concerned that it could increase at any time. I make sure to use several pieces of cord to tie off the middle section of the tent, to help stabilize it if the wind does kick up. I can’t risk having any broken tent poles or torn fabric out here. I would have preferred to stay in a motel my first night here to adjust to the cold shock, but there were none that allowed dogs inside. I can’t just leave Jimmy and Will out in this cold; they would freeze to death. Their fur isn’t thick enough to withstand this kind of cold without a tent. It will be better after they acclimate, but I keep them inside the tent with me at night to keep them warm and comfortable. The first half of this trek depends on them remaining strong and healthy because they will be doing most of the pulling. They will be the main driving engines that will help me pull about 200 pounds of food and winter gear in two separate sleds. I know even before I start that my journey will not be possible without them. I could pull the sleds by myself, but it would be much slower. I have so much gear to cope with the ice and cold, that the weight I have to carry seems ridiculous. For instance, I have a snow shovel for digging out a place for my tent each day and an ice axe for chopping ice from the river to melt for drinking. I will also be getting many more clothes and large quantities of cooking fuel before I set out.
March 21, 2007
Today I move my tent closer to town and set it up underneath the bridge where it’s more protected from the wind, and also so I have a shorter distance to haul my food back from the post office. Since I’m not accustomed to the cold yet, I underestimate its savagery and begin to stumble before I get close to town. It’s a rude awakening how it can knock you back and put your life in peril within a few minutes’ time. As I hike back toward town hauling all my gear, I get chilled and my toes start to ache. It’s only out of necessity that I decide to pitch my tent under the bridge. This is as far back toward town as I can get before I get into serious trouble. I lose my ability to function properly. My toes sting and I can’t get them warm no matter how fast I walk. I have to concentrate and work through the cold to set up my tent. My fingers aren’t working right. I have to unfold the poles and shove them into their tent sleeves while wearing my gloves as much as possible. I take a minute when I’m not quite done to pull each of my fingers out of the finger section of my gloves and curl them up into a fist while still inside my gloves. When my fingers all come into contact with each other I clutch them together to warm them up a little, and this gives me a few more minutes of time to work before my fingers go completely numb. But once I get the tent set up, I hurry in with the dogs to warm up. Once the doors are zipped and I’m out of the icy wind, I begin to feel better.
Later in the day, because my tent is set up and I know I have a place to hurry back to for warmth, I risk walking to the grocery store. I pet the dogs as I tie them up and out of the wind. The store sits off the ground on large beams, so Jimmy and Will can lay underneath where there is dry dirt. I walk up metal-grated steps and enter through double doors, which lead me to a lobby before I enter two more doors that lead into the main store. The air inside the lobby has to be about forty degrees warmer. My glasses fog up instantly, and the warmth causes me to overheat. I yank off my balaclava and stocking cap, and I unzip my thick jacket before I enter the final doors. The store is fairly large, so as I search up and down the aisles I start to sweat. I have to stop and take off my jacket.
I buy two gallons of white gas for the stove, a loaf of cheap bread, and a gallon of milk. “Going on a camping trip,” I say to the cashier, but