Another Walk in the Park: October 2021

Raise your hand if you have ever gotten depressed by the thought of another winter in Toledo. November to April or May with nothing but gray skies and temporarily white snow also on its way to gray.

Now, consider how you might feel in Alaska where “November” arrives in August and there is no relief until June or thereabouts. By March you have developed a chronic case of cabin fever from enduring 20 plus hours of darkness out of each 24. It could seem like an eternal Covid lockdown. You have to really, really love the dark and cold to love Alaska. Pretty much every Alaskan does. Which tells you something about Alaskans.

But, then, Alaska is an all-or-nothing kind of place. In the three months that pass for spring, summer and fall, Alaskans become manic instead of depressive. It never gets really dark. The sun may dip below the horizon for a couple hours but twilight lingers. Shirley and I were in Alaska in what passes for summer. We got up at 2:30 a.m. thinking it was dawn. And it was.

So, how do Alaskans cope?

Bicycling

Megan and Andria are 23-year-olds from Palmer. Megan asks, “Have anything planned for the weekend?”

Andria: Nah. Just thought I’d kick back.

Megan: Are you up for a bike ride?

Andria: Sure. Where do you want to go?

Megan: How about we pedal down to Valdez and back?

Andria: That’s 400 miles round trip. Think we can we do it over the weekend?

Megan: You’re right. Maybe we can sneak out of work an hour early.

Andria: You want to ask the guys to go with us?

Megan: Oh, they’d just slow us down.

On Monday, someone asks Andria about her weekend. Word gets around and 1,472 of their Facebook Friends want to go along on their next ride. Canopies are set up along the route staffed by people over the age of 87 and younger than three; that is, anyone too old or too young to ride a bicycle 400 miles through the forests and up steep mountain roads on a weekend. The 87s and 3s could do the ride but it would take them more than just a weekend. Instead, they serve lemon-aid to keep the riders hydrated and brownies to keep everyone happy.

Marathon Races

Leftie and Louie are having another tall, cool one at a craft beer house in Seward. New craft breweries spring up all the time in Alaska. In the time it took me to write this sentence, 2.37 new breweries opened. You could Google it.

Lefty: You know, Louie, every town in the US of A holds these 5K races and marathons to raise money for charity. Could we do something like that in Seward?

Louie: Are you kidding? Unless a cruise ship is in, there are only 42 people in Seward and half of them are geezers from Ohio who ran out of money and can’t get home. Besides, how do you hold a 5K race in a town with only 1K of streets. People would die of boredom before they finished. If they even bothered to finish. And a marathon is totally out of the question.

Lefty: A marathon race doesn’t necessarily have to be one of those 26 mile runs that anyone can do. What do you see through that window?

Louie: I see “Coors” written backwards.

Lefty: No, you dolt! What’s that big thing sticking way up into the sky?

Louie: Oh! You mean Mt. Marathon.

Lefty: Of course. A “marathon” race could be up Mt. Marathon and back. Do you suppose anyone could do it in less than an hour?

Louie: Nope. Physically impossible. For one thing, there is no trail up there. And for another thing, it is almost straight up.

Lefty: We don’t need a trail. That’s the beauty of it. Everybody starts in the same place and they can run up and back any way they want to as long as they go to the top and back.

Louie: But how do we know they got to the top?

Lefty: We could put a flag up there and they have to go around the flag pole? In fact, we could do it on the Fourth of July and make it an American flag just to emphasize the patriotic aspect of the event.

Louie: What you mean “we” white man?

Lefty: I’ll bet you two pints of Moose Slobber Ale that I can find someone to plant the flag.

Louie: You’re thinking of Ron aren’t you? Yeah, he’d go just to scout a route.

Well, Ron did take the flag to the top of Mt. Marathon. Lefty and Louie placed ads in the Seward Folly, the Homer Odyssey, and the Anchorage Anchor. For the entry fee of $17.76, participants got a T-shirt and a bumper sticker declaring “I survived the Seward Marathon Run.”

Ron finished second, by the way. He attempted a “short cut” that involved jumping off a 12-foot high rock ledge. Dislocated his left shoulder. Slowing down a little to push it back in place cost him all the time he gained with the short cut. It is harder than you might think to run fast, even down hill, while cupping your left elbow in your right hand.

The girl who finished third had a fractured ulna. Radius, maybe. Anyway, 100% of the participants were treated at the Aid Tent for assorted abrasions and contusions. At least one concussion.

One runner never came back. Search teams were sent out but because there was no official trail he could have gone off anywhere. “Bears got him,” said some. “Nah, have you ever met his wife?” said others.

A good time was had by all.

If you look closely, you can see the route up Mt. Marathon chosen

by racers not adventurous enough to strike out on their own.

Historic Districts

Whenever three or four Alaskans get together, one of them is sure to ask, “How did your yard sale go?” All of them acknowledge that they had some stuff left and at least one of them will have a creative solution.

“The old Wilkeson cabin has been deserted since ‘03 when they took the ferry to Bellingham. I don’t think they are coming back. Let’s take our stuff over there and start a local history museum.”

So they do.

One with high tech skills will offer to print out signage from his computer. This is for the edification of visitors who might not appreciate the historic significance of genuine artifacts from way back in the 1970s and ’80s plus some really ancient stuff from the ’60s. Forty-seven prime examples of the taxidermist’s art. Moose antlers. The endangered fur fish--a salmon that evolved a hair coat to keep it warm. An ancient Jeep that was donated because it no longer runs and parts are no longer made. If it says Willys on the hood, it probably helped build the Alaska Highway back in ‘42. Lots of visitors from the Lower 48 seem impressed by anything related to WWII and/or the construction of the Highway. “Yes, sir, this here Jeep was used by General MacArthur when he went to tell Emperor Hirohito to surrender or else.”

Every town has a volunteer fire department and every department has a retired (i.e., “historic”) fire engine that has been “lovingly restored” with a fresh coat of red Krylon spray paint and some gold-colored trim. So, every museum has at least one fire engine. Don’t ask why. Really. Don’t ask. You don’t have nearly enough time to hear the answer.

One of the Alaskans with “artistic skills” will hand paint a sign: Historic [insert town name] Museum, Gift Shop, Espresso-to-Go, Visitor Information. Free Wi-Fi!'

“We don’t have Wi-Fi here,” objects one, “free or otherwise.”

“It don’t matter,” says the born promoter. “We just do what they do at all of the other free Wi-Fi places. We tell people it’s running a little slow today and it fades in an out.”

If one of them happens to be retired and collecting a pension, he gets to be Museum Host and pocket the money from the donations jar. It helps if he is garrulous. But pretty much all Alaskans are garrulous. Nine months a year with limited social interaction seems to have that effect. He can tell visitors how his parents came up the Chilkoot Trail as prospectors in 1898. How he survived the great earth quake and tsunami of 1964 by running up the mountain with a tanker ship being swept up right behind him. How he built the Alaska pipeline one winter and cleaned up the Valdez oil spill one summer.

Some towns, like Hope and Sunrise, are too small to have their own

historical museums so they are forced to team up.

Alaskans believe in limited government--preferably one

in which all bureaucrats can meet in a place like this.

Most of us end up where we are through inertia. We had planned to move to some place slightly more exotic than Toledo but the timing was never quite right. Now the kids and grandkids live here and, well, you know how it is. Every Alaskan, on the other hand, has deliberately chosen to live there. Those without the gumption to stick it out tend to hitchhike to the Lower 48 after the first winter. But once you’ve learn to cope, living in Alaska is just a walk in the park.

More photos of Alaska can be found in the post for November, 2017.

Alright, let us begin with a confession. I have no idea at all how or why I have failed to post about Shenandoah NP until now. Shirley and I have just returned from a fall trip that included Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Cumberland Falls St. Park in Kentucky, Great Smoky Mountains NP, and up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Shenandoah NP. We have been visiting Shenandoah since the '70s when family vacations seemed to alternate between the Smokies and Shenandoah because both are within a one-day drive of Toledo. Shenandoah served as a base for visits to numerous other destinations in Virginia: the homes of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe; an amazing number of Civil War battlefield parks; the Historic Triangle that includes Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown; Colonial era mansions on the James River--Sherwood Forest, Westover, Evelynton, Berkely and my favorite, Shirley Plantation. There were also family tours of Washington, DC reached from Shenandoah as well as Assateague National Seashore on the Delmarva Peninsula.

So, when Shirley and I returned from this most recent trip, I downloaded photos and updated posts for the Smokies and the Blue Ridge Parkway. That's when I discovered there was no place to put the Shenandoah pix. But it is at least partly your fault. You are the one, after all, who failed to tug my sleeve and say, "Oh, please, please share your travel photos from Shenandoah."

Perhaps you can be excused because you have read several accounts of Shenandoah in my monthly "A Walk in the Park" column in Healthy Living News. Which, by the way, includes yet another in the Nov. 2021 issue. Just in case you have not, here is a thumb-nail summary of what to expect in the park.

Shenandoah was established in 1930 with land purchased from residents along the Blue Ridge in Virginia. Much of the timber had been logged and the land cleared for farming. Though Jefferson loved the view of the Ridge from Monticello, by 1930 historic photos reveal it was far from attractive. Still, the Park Service built Skyline Drive that runs 105 miles along the crest and has allowed the forest to re-establish itself naturally. What you see today is nothing at all like the barren, heavily eroded land of 1930. Only Congress would decide that such a desolate looking place would make a great national park. Well, hurray for Congress! This was one of the four or five times they have been right since 1798.

There are impressive vistas from most of the 75 pullouts along Skyline Drive even though, in some places, the forest has grown right up to the road, obstructing the view. Not to worry. There are still plenty of opportunities to enjoy the scenery. To the east are the mountains and rolling hills of the Piedmont and to the west is the Shenandoah Valley with its tidy farms and tiny towns. Beyond that, the Allegheny Mountains march toward the horizon until lost in the mist and haze. Wildlife includes deer, bears, and wild turkeys.

In spring, the wildflowers, flowering trees and shrubs are simply spectacular and the fall color season attracts leaf peepers from all over. But never mind all the talk. Just look at the photos. At last.