Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 27, 1994 TAG: 9403290146
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TRACY WIMMER
DATELINE: GALENA, ALASKA LENGTH: Long
My skis, slicing through the powder with a pleasing, hollow sound, seemed to touch nothing solid. But it was then, as it has been for months, frozen - like a white snake, recently having taken the life of a young Athabascan with a craving for liquor and snowmobiles.
All that white and a mysterious fog - no one knew I was there. No one.
Just more time to think ...
I came to Galena to teach.
The folks who hired me at a jobs fair in Fairbanks last June said little of the place: the 500-plus population village was primarily Athabascan Indian, the temperatures dipped sometimes to minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit but usually only to minus 48 degrees and I wouldn't need my car.
Good enough. The "fair" was a nightmare - too many people, too few jobs. Plus, I had summer work waiting for me elsewhere. So, I skipped the introductory video, signed on the dotted line and by Aug. 12, I was on a Supercab with two caribou hunters headed for Bush Alaska.
Galena, named after the lead sulfide ore first mined here in the 1920s, is 350 air miles northwest of Fairbanks. The "Bush" designation comes from the lack of roads. Actually, there are 14 miles of unpaved thoroughfare here, but it ends just west of town at the dump and just east of town at a thick patch of aspen and birch.
During the summer months, families travel to fish, camp and visit via the Yukon. Barges use the river to transport Japanese cars and microwaves to eagerly awaiting families. The last barge came a week after I did. There'll be no others until spring breakup - early June, late May if we're lucky.
Elders of the village - 55 or older - say the only way to leave Galena now is by air or imagination. Most prefer the latter, but you'd never know it to see some of them flying through town on their snowgos - the word used here for snowmobiles.
Galena is like no place I have ever ventured.
It has no bankers, no lawyers, no doctors.
We do have a state policeman, but he covers six villages over a 2,000-mile radius. We don't see him much. Instead, everyone likes to say we operate on the honor system. From what I've seen, it works.
We have no hospital. We do have a health clinic, but ... how do I put this delicately? If I were truly sick, I'd risk life and limb with a shaky Bush pilot and iced wings before going there. Long story based on experience. (Pregnant women go to town - Fairbanks - at least one month before due dates.)
We have no restaurants. The Fish Wheel Cafe - salmon dishes were its specialty - had a hard time making it even when the Galena Air Force Base was still open last year.
We have no Air Force base. We did at one time. This remote site was known worldwide as the "closest fighting base to Russia," according to the T-shirts worn by soldiers when I first came. Having opened in 1940, the base closed in October, leaving behind a bunch of huge, ugly, tin buildings and a string of broken hearts - not to mention a few offspring.
We have no malls, yet we have Hunhdorf's, a big general mercantile that looks like a mini-mini-version of Sam's Wholesale Club inside. There you can buy a $6 gallon of milk and an $8 Tony's pepperoni pizza and a $40 Timex. You have to send to town for a battery.
We also have Galena Commercial and the Galena Liquor Store. I bought a $2 Pete Townshend "Iron City" tape at Galena Commercial. I bought a $12 bottle of Sutter Home chardonnay at the liquor store. Most people around here tell me the wine was a deal.
We have two churches - St. John Birchman's Catholic Church and Galena Bible Church. The minister at the Bible Church substitute teaches in my absence.
We have a library - housed in the school. Our librarian, my best friend here, happens to be the organist at the Bible Church, a cashier at the liquor store and a University of Virginia law school graduate. She recently sold me and four other teachers her '68 Ford. The right rear wheel came off last week. Draw your own conclusions.
We have no zoning laws. Most of the houses are ramshackle cabins either in Old Galena, down by the river, or in New Galena, near our $1 million-plus school building. Many of the homes don't have indoor plumbing. Water is hauled by sled from a building in New Galena.
We have no sewer system because of permafrost (permanently frozen subsoil). Instead, most houses have a holding tank. Sewage is pumped weekly and taken to the dump. A grim reality of living in the Bush is a frozen septic tank, Mine has been ice solid for two weeks now, forcing me to use a widely accepted Bush alternative - a "honeybucket." Snow drifts work equally well if you're not afraid of wolves.
No sewer means water must be delivered. The cost is 71/2 cents a gallon, which translates into no baths, no nightly showers.
Permafrost plays havoc on the dead as well. It's almost impossible to dig a hole of depth, so men of the village are given the task of estimating how many people will die over the winter. They dig the graves down river in early fall.
We have no waste disposal plan. Everything - I mean everything - is left in the dump awaiting the hungry ravens in nearby trees and the day when it's warm enough for a city bulldozer to work it into the earth. Visiting the dump is not for the weak of stomach.
We have a "city" council. Our mayor also happens to coach high school basketball, the third religion in the Alaskan Bush. After last season, I've decided the only coaching experience needed is to have seen "Hoosiers" - preferably all the way through.
We have a Fish and Wildlife Service (federal). We have a Fish and Game Service (state). Such folks don't usually mix well with Natives nor Natives with them. They have nicer homes than the teachers, and they spend an awful lot of time flying in and out of Bush wilderness studying marten tracks for weeks on end. Nice folks, but two questions pervade: Where do they get all their money? Why don't they just ask an elder if they want to know about tracks?
We do have a public radio station. Between Elvis, Anne Murray and Mountain Stage, personal messages are played: "Sonny, I be in Ruby tomorrow. Meet you at fish camp on Friday. Leonard." This is generally a warm, wonderful system of communication but on occasion, the reality of it hurts, and suddenly you remember where you are: "Lornell, you quit drinking. We help you. Come home. We miss you. We love you. Amanda Jane and Boys."
Looking back from the hardened river, I stopped to turn toward town.
The outline of the village registers peaceful, quiet - maybe even a little charming. At times, it is. In the distance, there was the sound of barking - unusual for that time on a Sunday. Slowly, they appeared - a musher and his team, cutting through the fog and snow at a steady pace. My reaction is always the same: wild awe. I closed my stinging eyes.
Once opened, I saw the dogs had traveled far - all the way to the Yukon Inn.
We have a bar.
And alcohol has ravaged these people - Aleut, Yupik, Inupiat, Tlingit, Haida and Athabascan - all of Alaska's indigenous groups that the white man collectively calls Native.
A Bush teacher learns early to recognize children whose minds and appearance have been altered by liquor while still in the womb. The medical terms are Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects. Such children are so easy to love yet so painful to teach.
Then there is the suicide - the rate of which is higher in the Alaskan Bush than any other place in North America. Not far from where I skied, I remember sitting in a friend's truck on a cold, fall night watching her talk a drunken young Native out of killing himself. His screaming, punctuated by sobs, was horrific. I watched him wave the pistol yelling, "Natives don't got nothing! Nothing!" and finally I covered my face, afraid of what i might see.
He is still alive. I saw him buying beer last week.
What is it they say about letting yourself think too much?
It was time to go home. Darkness was setting in, and although the dwindling daylight has driven some people to depression, it has only made me sleepy.
I live alone in a little cabin on Sooga (Athabascan for marten) Land. Crawling into a sleeping bag on my mattress on the floor, I reached for the dial on my Grandmother Sarah's old, electric blanket. She's been buried in Salem for years, but I can still see her tiny, arthritic body wrapped up in it just the same. Only one side of the faded blue thing works. It smells of Ben Gay. Using it adds $40 per month to my electric bill. No matter. Ever since I turned it on, I've dreamt of my grandmother, and at times she has spoken to me.
"Oh Lord, honey, you are so far from home," she said.
by CNB