Eagle River to our cabin in Tazlina

1/4/08: Eagle River to Tazlina:

We skeedaddled out of Dodge, or, should I say mozied after numerous stops for tire chains, haircuts, snack purchases, a postal rendevous and a couple cups of joe…geez. Good thing we don’t have to be anywhere anytime soon. Slightly slippery roads and 18 degrees, which gradually decomposed to minus 21 outside Glennallen. We’ve driven this road a hundred times before on our way out to Tazlina and the scenery never gets jaded, No traffic whatsoever (who the hell does road trips in the winter????); just snow peaked mountains at dusk, pink skies, blue glaciers and frozen rivers. Winter is cool. Soft, quiet, eerily still. The cabin is fr..fr…fr…freezing cold, so we lit a fire in the stove and went to town for a pizza. Still warming up as I write this. In time, the cabin becomes cozy. As we lay down in the loft,( in science, it would be called the “energetic advantages of huddling”), we spoon tightly to generate heat, then dream back 30 years. Three decades ago, we were cuddled tightly under a thick velour quilt, on the lower level of Kent’s partially constructed house in Fox, Alaska, an outpost north of Fairbanks. The walls were soundproof; the wood stove, fashioned out of a large piece of the oil pipeline, blazed, and snow blanketed the floor above us. That day started our journey together and now we have come full circle. Another partially constructed cabin home, blanketed with snow at 22 degrees below zero, we lay huddled and grateful and happy. Tomorrow we continue to Tok, one of the few places on earth where I have bad bad memories of a winter trip many moons ago. Clutching baby Zach between us on a hard bed in a Quonset hut and being charged $100 a night to half way freeze to death…THAT’S my memory of Tok; we shall buzz right on through that shanty town this time! 1/5/07: I love words, especially these two: Kandahar and Chistochina. I love the way they sound as they roll off your tongue and into the atmosphere. Kandahar, of course, is in Afghanistan and as I say it, I envision the similarities of these two polar opposites as we pass through Chistochina (doesn’t that sound pretty?), a tiny Athabascan village. It is minus 9 degrees, very little relief in the landscape, gray skies, black spruce blanketed in white, mountains sugar coated white, black pavement dusted in white; ice fog (you guessed it, white), and the hurricane of snow whirling perpetually in front of us as we travel in the wake of a trucker, whose rig looks like a freight train hurling through, um, white. So back to Kandahar: zero relief in the landscape, people bundled in cloth to protect against the elements, 115 degrees, imperviously dry desert sand and whirling dust devils, a relentless yellow sun singing exposed body parts…perhaps the sun’s blisterous perilous sting is almost as painful as frostbite.

Kent just hooked up “Virginia”, our Garmin GPS mapping tool. Which is pretty ridiculous because there is only ONE road out of Alaska so it’s virtually impossible to get lost. But he likes to know where we are in relation to other parts of the world. Like, we’re now at the Little Tok River, which means we’re a long long ways from say, Monkey Forest Road in Ubud, Bali Indonesia. Yes, my darling gear head, that GPS is sure useful right now. “Virginia” informs us of our next destination: drive 290 miles, then turn right, she says in her monotonous diction. Well, DUH!

In Kent’s defense, while driving in a snow squall created by the wake of a 16 wheeler, “Virginia” alerts us to the existence of a T-bone intersection two miles down the road. And, “Virginia” just told us the sun has officially risen, at 10:06 am. Of course, you never actually see the sun, it’s just that in our world the sky has turned from darkness to light. So I correct Kent’s initial blog entry where he states, “in March we will return to sunny Alaska.” Sunny Alaska? Isn't that an oxymoron? Kona is sunny. Fiji is sunny. No, in March, we return to the light.