Upon careful reflection, I have decided that I prefer traveling by dogsled to snow machine. The snow machines are fun, too, and you don’t have to worry about ice pellets being kicked back in your face, but they’re also loud, and not nearly as cute.
The night before, I had gone down the ice slides at the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, and watched the northern lights fill the sky above the sculpture gardens. Two days later, I would be relaxing in the hot springs in Manley, surrounded by flowers and grape vines, while the snow fell outside.
Aboard the sleds it was a balmy 0 degrees Fahrenheit, a good 40 degrees warmer than usual for this time of year, sunny and clear. We crossed another frozen river, paused for a few minutes, then set off again.
“It’s like a movie,” Majo said. Majo is a Paraguayan exchange student staying with my cousins in Anchorage. My mom’s cousin Paul has lived in Alaska for years, and his family was more accustomed to the idea of traveling by dogsled than I was. Majo, meanwhile, had never seen snow before coming here. I decided not to tell her that the last movie I had seen that looked anything like this ended with Nazi snow zombies being fought off with chainsaws.
It was a three hour trip from Manley to the cabin by dogsled. Manley was itself a 72-person community three hours west of Fairbanks, without a single gas station in between. Another cousin, Paul’s sister Robin, lived in a cabin there with her husband, a former Iditarod racer. He was retired now, and had sold his dog teams for a sailboat in the Caribbean, where they spent a large part of their winter. Between sailing, fishing, hunting, trapping, and raising an adorable three-year old daughter, they were keeping busy enough even without the hundred-plus dogs who had once lived with them.
Robin had grown all the vegetables in a delicious meal she prepared Thursday night. Almost everything we ate that weekend – moose, blueberries, the best salmon I’ve ever eaten – came from the land around the cabin. The cabin itself came from trees chopped from the surrounding woods. Indeed, with the exception of the animated children’s movies playing in the background beneath the propane lamps, it would have been easy to imagine that we had stepped back in time a hundred years.
The next day we got on a pair of snow machines, some of us standing on dogsleds being pulled behind, and went to the lookout over Dead Man’s Lake. Standing on the sled, dragging my feet in the snow to keep from running into the snow machine when it slowed down, it took almost an hour for us to reach the top of the hill. We could see for miles, the lakes and rivers stretched out before us, the mountains far in the distance now. There was an icy crust on the snow, and Tori, uncommonly resilient even for a three year old, gleefully slid down the slope, apparently unconcerned by the bump of a tree when it abruptly stopped her slide. “More!” she shouted.
We stopped to eat dried salmon strips, drinking a thermos of hot cocoa, as we looked out over the landscape. Paul pulled out his iPhone and took a few quick pictures. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ve got reception here, I’m going to post these on Facebook.”
To see my photos from the trip, and from the rest of my time in Alaska, go to:
I’m having a great time here so far. The weather’s getting warmer and the days longer, and it’s starting to feel like spring, despite the occasional snow flurries. I’m really enjoying my job (as a GIS Biologist for Audubon Alaska), and I’m so glad I had the chance to come here. I hope that everyone down south is having a great winter. And thank you again, Paul and Karen, for inviting me along with you to Manley – I had a great time!
Best wishes,
Nathan
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