My journey began yesterday when I got on a tiny prop plane with Leon Alsworth, one of two pilots who make runs between Anchorage and Port Alsworth (yes, he is one of the Alsworths). Leon is a man of few words. I know not too much about him except that he loves the taste of butter (this came up when I shared some cookies) and that his tiny self fits perfectly into the Cessna 206 that he often flies from Port Alsworth (the gateway town to the Lake Clark region) to Anchorage.
Just before we took off, we had pull the plane over to load up some supplies from a Port Alsworth family visiting Anchorage. In Port Alsworth, there is simply no place to buy anything. It is a town where the physical dollar bill seems to have little place or meaning. Hence, a trip to Anchorage often means an opportunity to bring back essential and more affordable supplies from the “big city.” After carefully putting my belongings under the cargo net, Leon repacked the plane in a manner that seemed to be guided only by one principle: let us not crush the eggs, pizza, and strawberries.
Once the plane was scientifically packed, we were off to the skies. Anyone who has been in a prop plane in Alaska knows that the aerial views are nothing short of spectacular. During this time of year, Mother Nature paints one-of-a-kind landscapes with silty muds, trees of all kinds of green, and splashes of bright fireweed. During the 90-minute flight, the view was constantly changing. Leon pointed out a waterfall which is literally a spout coming out of the middle of a mountain, gushing with such pressure that the spray was visible even from our plane, so forceful that it looked like the water was moving in slow motion. The first thing you see when you arrive in Port Alsworth is obviously the runway, a long stretch of gravel running from the bay. Port Alsworth was more or less built around the runway, as would be natural for a town founded by a pilot (Babe "Leon" Alsworth, Leon's grandfather). The town now actually boasts two independently operated runways running parallel, less than a mile apart. Legend has it that two Alsworth brothers fell into a rivalry after one insisted on charging the other for the use of the first runway. The second brother solved the problem by building one of his very own.
For my stay in Lake Clark, the deal is that I am to volunteer with the Maintenance Crew in exchange for transportation to the Park and free housing. My only clear pre-designated responsibility was to pack all the food I intend to eat during my volunteer period, a difficult task for a perpetually hungry person.
For my first day with the crew, I was assigned to my friend J, who is the on-site engineer helping the Park finish its construction of new housing. J was in the process of doing surveys of the various existing buildings for purposes of appraising the property and evaluating whether any repairs are needed. And so, I spent most of the day measuring the windows of Park buildings.
As with any task, there is a learning curve. By the end of the day, however, I still had not mastered the art of wielding a tape measure without having it flop impotently off a window ledge. But I did learn that there is a soundtrack for every task, and for measuring windows, folks, nothing beats Dwight Yoakam.
Measuring windows was a funny way of getting to know a new town and its inhabitants before actually meeting anyone. In the process of determining the size of their windows, I learned much about the lives of the residents of Port Alsworth. Art on the walls and photos of family members gave obvious clues. But there were other details, more subtle. Potting soil in the bedroom, house plants cluttered in a living room -- gardener. A fiddle left on a kitchen table, jars and jars of recently salmon in the dining room, lingering yummy smells -- good cook and musician. A loft area that smelled like dog -- dog-lover. It was strange to see these lives inside out. It is often said that eyes are the windows to the soul. By the end of the day, I would have been ready to argue that windows are also the eyes to the soul.
My favorite building during my "survey" was the weight room used by the park rangers because it had only three small windows, all of identical size, very easy to measure. It is also a great building because of its rather unique decor: a motivational poster for target practice which depicts (presumably) a potential perpetrator of crime. Why this strange woman in a blazer and matching beret would be found in a National Park, much less cause trouble in it, is a mystery to me. But she apparently is what gets the Park Rangers to pump more iron and run faster. Upon closer inspection, her strangely large man hands and squarish jaw betray that she may pose more of a threat than her beret suggests.
Standing outside, measuring windows made me inordinately hungry. I now understand why many construction works have pot bellies. It’s probably not all just beer. In order to remain sufficiently fueled for outside work, one must nourish the insides. I blew through a number of my snacks in my first day. Luckily, my stay here is limited.
Summertime is an important period to store up goods for the winter. Among the local pastimes is the art of home brewing. J was ready to bottle his first batch of his first homembrew, and we spent the evening making it happen. Our task for the night was to sanitize the bottles, pump the brew into them, and cap them for storage and additional fermentation. We filled bottles halfway with sanitizing liquid, stuck our thumbs in them to fully agitate the bottle. I held up the bottles to the dim yellow light in the laundry room in order to inspect their cleanliness. For a few of the bottles, I had to pick a few horsetail plants to use as a scrubbing brush.
The rest of the evening was spent trying to find the sweet spot of the cheap-ass bottlecapper we were using. By the end of the night, though, J had two cases of Smoking Rock Porty Ale ready to be sampled in two weeks. And I was ready for bed after my first full day at Lake Clark.
1 comment:
Post a Comment