Alaska! Up North and to the Left

by Steven Swaks

  “There are three exits-”

  Joe the bushman and first passenger in my carrier cut me off. “Son, we know your garbage, just crank it up and let’s go!” His short allocution was followed by a straight and dark look, the merciless stare of a predator gauging its prey before the first strike. It was without ambiguity, direct, and to the point.

  A heavy silence ensued. What seemed to last an eternity was a fraction of a second. All my hopes and ideologies were crushed in an instant by this rude intruder. My first passenger was nothing but a challenge. I had hoped for something easier, a Yupik family anxious to go to Bethel and visit a grandmother, or perhaps a technician on his way back to Anchorage, happy to be going home. My hopes were dismantled by a ruthless savage. Robert looked at me in silence.

  “Sir, I understand that you’ve heard this speech a hundred times, but you’ll have to hear it one more time for your own safety, and because I am required to tell you by FAA regulations. Besides, if I don’t tell you, the guy right there is going to strangle me!” I quickly jerked my thumb towards Robert.

  For the next second we stared at each other in a seemingly endless standoff like two dogs fighting for the same bone. Without saying a word, he slightly smiled and waited for my briefing. Robert looked at me with a little smirk.

  My two technicians seemed to enjoy the rest of the flight. I hope they walked away with the satisfaction of having been handled by a professional pilot, not some kid who would change his mind and jeopardize their safety to satisfy a rushed passenger. I was at the edge of the woods, standing like a little child in front of a giant black rod iron gate. Another few flights and Robert would test me one last time before unlatching the lock. I would venture by myself into the forest and its marvels, but I would also face its dangers and wolf packs.

  Checkride

  May

  It all went by so fast. I sat at a desk and answered questions about the weather, regulations, and aircraft systems. They all came up, one by one, with their technical details and rules, with their procedures and scenarios. We flew and did the same with the plane. The aircraft turned into a torture chamber, or a beautiful extension of my inner self, it was hard to say. The maneuvers expressed my knowledge and skills. I landed, took off, landed again. I stalled the plane, experienced imaginary failures and saved the day, every time. We came back to Bethel for a last landing; we taxied, and parked the plane. It was all a daze, a single breath.

  Robert stepped out. I followed. We walked upstairs. My log book was signed. A blessing and the gates were opened. I walked back down stairs and walked into dispatch. I was entering the woods for the first time, by myself.

  Jeb looked at me the instant I stepped the room, his two devious brown eyes locked on me, his new acquisition, a brand new pilot just for him. I was as green as it got and I did not know any better. He could use and abuse me as much as he could, and it would take a while before I knew the exact boundaries of my authority. Other pilots were too busy to raise warning flags and damper down his euphoria. Rather, I was given a pat on the back and was violently pushed into the snake pit.

  “Tuntutuliak, next!” Jeb grunted. My first destination was thrown into my face like a flying fish in a Seattle market.

  “Ok,” I vaguely answered. For the first time, I was finally a Commercial Pilot. The terminal and airport sounds were so distant, drowned in a fog of colors and lights. Two men were standing in the middle of the terminal. I nodded, more by reflex than anything else. One of them looked familiar.

  “You got two pax*, here’s the dispatch release, I have already written the names and weights,” Jeb barked and quickly indicated the two passengers. Dispatching was not an act of faith; it was not a lucky charm where pilots and charter passengers met in dispatch by enchanted coincidence. It was more of a balancing act, a well-choreographed symphony between booked charters and rotating planes. Somehow, dispatch always worked it out.

  “Yeah, sure. Any mail?” I was back with the living.

  “No mail, only a few personal bags, couple of tool boxes, Danny’s loading them.”

  I jotted down the weight and balance and checked the weather. It was nice, an actual nice, not miserable conditions hardly inching above the regulations. The passenger I had recognized was an African American worker named Tyrone. I had flown with him in my tumultuous Roman days. I did not know the other man. I greeted them and went on to prepare the plane.

  My first flight went well. The short 25 minute hop to Tuntutuliak passed right over the Kuskokwim River then stayed over the tundra and multiple lakes all the way to a short and chronically muddy -at least for May-1700 foot runway. The landing was easy and smooth. Tyrone and the other worker picked up their gear and left.

  In this late spring, the gravel runway was often heavy and wet. I taxied back on the strip studying every rut and puddle. I turned the plane around at the end of the short strip and launched the 207 down the runway. The engine roared and the plane sprung forward. Faster. What was an innocent puddle five hundred feet ago became a trap, an invisible hand holding me back and slashing my speed. Ever faster. Each puddle exploded in a large burst of murky water, muddy projectiles flying and smashing onto the fuselage and the wings. The plane was hardly gaining speed with each one of the bursts more violent than the previous one. The plane was jerking and wobbling under the continuous attacks. The 207 echoed each rock and dip the tires encountered. In a slow and dramatic motion, the nose wheel lifted off soon followed by the main gear. In an instant, the torment was left behind, there was no more fighting and jittering; there was only the peace and calm of the flight for a first taste of the months to come.

  Breakup

  May

  The Kuskokwim River was a solid reference in an otherwise mostly featureless delta. From the pilot’s self-centered point of view, the river had good back up navigational value to guide us to numerous villages and to bring us back to Bethel. Otherwise, it was merely entertaining; we stared at the flowing water to find a boat or a fisherman throwing its net. We counted the snow machines going by during the winter and waited for our destination.

  For the natives, the river was a lot more than an in-flight movie. It was a tremendous source of food with yearlong fishing (if we wanted to include the challenging ice fishing), and offered a natural highway away from the summery spongy tundra or the broken winter landscape.

  The river followed the season like everything else. It froze from early November to mid-May, and thaw thereafter with a few weeks of transition in between, where it was neither sailable nor drivable. It was unsafe for boats, unless the captain wanted to salute and sink with his ship in a dramatic old Royal Navy fashion, and it was as dangerous for snow machines because the ice was too weak to support the weight of a vehicle, no matter how light it was. So, twice a year, for a handful of weeks, locals patiently waited through a limbo transition period to rightfully take the river over.

  In May, the mercury finally creeped above the freezing mark, the flowers bloomed and the river morphed into the free flowing waters it was meant to be. In the meantime, the Eskimos stood back, frustrated by a forced isolation with obsolete snow machines and boats unable to sail. As usual, the faithful bush planes were there working overtime to compensate for the lack of transportation.

  We all talked about the river, unable to do anything but wait and comment about the slow breakup process. Maybe it was a simple change of scenery in the making. It was a chance to go fishing, or maybe a love struck teenager was longing to visit his girlfriend so close, just on the other side of the river, but so desperately unreachable. While the people talked, ice breakup was already happening upriver like a deliverance after months of tension.

  The breakup process was simple, as the snow cap melted, the increased volume of water adding to the rising spring temperatures stressed the thick ice sheet on the river. Combined with a tide coming from the Bering Sea, the frozen river did not resist and sometimes violently cracked and broke. The first sign of breakup appeared upstr
eam, days and sometimes weeks before we even noticed anything in Bethel. The location of the breakup was the hot topic in town. Everybody tried to get the latest news and share the discovery with anybody willing -or not-to listen.

  Sadly, the breakup came along with a cohort of plagues. The breaking shanks of ice often piled up and jammed at the river bends and tighter places turning into nature’s improvised dams, sometimes lingering there for days. As a direct consequence, the water level rose upriver and flooded the all too common low level lands in the area. Every year, a few villages morphed into little Alaskan Venice with Eskimos traveling by boats down Main Street. Occasionally, enormous floating chunks of ice severely damaged villages and crushed houses.

  While breakup progressed towards us, we kept busy gambling about it. It was not an approximate guess and result. It was not the, “well, I think the darn thing is gonna break in two weeks. I’ll bet you lunch on that one!” No, it was the well-orchestrated Kuskokwim Ice Classic, the lottery with an Alaskan touch. Why play with dancing little balls, when we can gamble on statewide breaking rivers? The aficionados became true experts and brought a scientific approach to the process with the tide involvement and weather trends. They obviously knew the average breakup day, May 18, but a lot more was involved and the players took the game very seriously. “Well, if the moon is properly lined up, and the high tide is at 4:38 pm, with an average temperature of 36.7F slightly on the rise to 37.2F on April 17th, I can therefore reasonably assume that the river will breakup at 2:19 pm, May 12th.” The date and exact time was written, sealed, and dropped off at an official booth, all bets being closed a safe few weeks before any potential break up.

  Now the next question was very logical and expected. How could they accurately give the breakup time? NEVER underestimate the power of boredom! Those long and cold winter nights gave pleeeeeenty of time to ponder the meaning of life, especially in the middle of the frozen tundra, which often translated into a depressing: “What the heck am I doing here?!”

  The answer was very simple. Weeks before breakup even started to progress towards Bethel, the city installed a tripod on the frozen Kuskokwim River near the sea wall. A large Alaskan flag proudly sat on the top, floating in the blowing winds. A small wire attached to the tripod was linked to a timer safely located on the sea wall. As the ice broke, the tripod went on a nose dive along with the proud flag; the wire tripped and locked the timer, marking the exact time of the break up. The closest bidder won the roughly $5,000 prize. But we were not the only ones playing that little game. There were different versions of Y-K lottery throughout Alaska, and some cities like Nenana by Fairbanks took the gamble to a whole new level with a jackpot soaring to the $50,000 Alaskan nirvana. The lottery did what it was intended to do, besides entertaining us, it marked a new page and gave a time stamp to the beginning of the summer.

  As the breakup line came closer to Bethel, the excitement rose along with the water line. The ice was the hot topic, everybody talked about the location of the jam and once again the pilots were in the forefront of the information network. We took pictures and talked about it. Even the official Flight Service Station, usually dedicated to giving weather briefings to pilots and file flight plans, was in quest of updates. Pilots were the eyes giving the news to the rest of Alaska.

  The jam and the flood followed each other. The jam nonchalantly went down the river, retaining the water and flooding everything in its path. As it came closer to Bethel, everybody drove to the sea wall after work to go look at the latest water level. While it was a source of gossip and a cheap thrill for most, others worried about their houses and cars. It was not a dramatic flash flood, but the water lazily rose, and turned houses on stilts into small islands. The stranded home owners resigned themselves to use dinghies and rowed to their cars safely parked on higher grounds while they waited for the waters to recede.

  One day, breakup finally reached Bethel. In a Hollywoodian slow motion, the flag fell into the river, the crumbling ice carrying it away like an old rag. The wire pulled the trigger and somebody won. Besides a lucky winner getting his prize, the falling flag marked the beginning of an uncontrollable rumor. Somebody saw the river moving, it was not a crashing sound but a small continuous shift. Joe Lambda called his friend on his newly acquired cell phone to spread the news, but the communication was still way too slow. The frenzy reached somebody in the hospital who jumped on the public announcement system and called out the time critical info. Everybody stopped what they were doing, looked at each other, and commented about it.

  As the afternoon went by, the rumor spread to the entire Y-K Delta, sending cohorts of people to the river. One by one, they all came to visit the new sight. The water was going by, carrying away hundreds of tons of ice and truck sized icebergs. Large slabs of ice climbed on top of each other, crushing and crumbling, heading towards the sea wall and turning the thick metal wall into a giant Swiss cheese shredder.

  My day of labor was done. Barely out of the plane, I packed up and rushed to the car to go pick up Lydia and drive to the river. I had seen the show once before, but each year it was different. It was the beginning of a new season, a birth to watch. There were only two seasons in Bethel, summer and winter. The transition was sudden; it fell down like a judge’s gavel on a striking plate. The winter started with the first snow fall, the summer with breakup.

  I drove to the hospital. For once, I was not focused on the oncoming traffic; it did not really matter if I spotted a friendly neighbor or a coworker. Today, it was about picking up Lydia and going to see the river. Bethel was not the most entertaining place and any festivity was dearly welcomed. I was on a mission. First, pick up Lydia; second, drive to the sea wall, park, and watch the ice go by.

  I pulled in front of the hospital and waited for my better half. Just like any other building in the Delta, the single story hospital was sitting on stilts hidden by a wooden skirt. It was a yellowish structure with rounded edges and an extremely narrow horizontal row of windows running around the entire facility. If the design was great for thermal insulation, it was more challenging for the employees. With only a few hours of daylight during the winter, the hospital’s windows did not provide much of an opportunity to see the sunlight. Monday through Friday, natural light became an abstract concept, an occasional precious sighting cherished above all.

  Lydia walked out of the main entrance. For a few months she would not have to worry about walking on ice. During the winter, I had always enjoyed the spectacle of her unsteady steps on the slick ice. After two years, she had managed to stay lady-like without a single strike against her. I had given up a long time ago. Countless times, I had grossly fallen on the ground, including the day I had been unable to get a steady grip and I had slowly sunk under my plane in front of puzzled passengers for a demonstration flight with the flight school. Talk about an introduction, “Hi, my name is Steven, I’ll be your pppppppppppppilot.” The next second, I had vanished under the plane. It was all about a professional image and building up a passenger’s trust.

  She stepped into the forest green 4Runner and sighed, her work day was done, it was time to go play. I felt like a four year old on my way to a toy factory. It was breakup! I entered the highway, turned left and headed for the sea wall. There was a festive atmosphere floating in the air, a scent, the perfume of summer triumphing over an endless winter.

  Lydia broke the temporary silence. “Do you know if they have hot dogs?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, I think so.” Why was this relevant anyway? “Rob told me that there’re some good shanks of ice going by, and Kwethluk is flooded.” Soon, another two miles and we would be there. Patience, it was coming.

  We were following another five or six cars. The unusual traffic highlighted the migration towards the river. The whole who’s who of Bethel would be there. Right turn at Bethel’s main intersection, even there, we did not have a traffic light, only a stop sign was still able to handle the ten minutes of rush hour in the mornings and
evenings. We passed by two small restaurants on the left side of the road. Like a number of other buildings in Bethel, they looked like glorified shacks, but behind the bare wooden façades, they often hid warm people, whether they were owners or patrons. The food was usually good, the customer was politely greeted, but the prices often reached a disgusting crescendo. Like numerous other businesses in town, most of the restaurants were Korean owned and operated. A few eateries stepped out of the ranks and offered other choices than the Americanized Asian food and the unavoidable burger and fries. There was the memorable Takis Greek restaurant with their incredible Gyros, fine slices of lamb resting on top of a rounded flat bread covered with an armada of onions. We even had a Mexican place and a Japanese restaurant with a real sushi chef, which was rather impressive for a small town lost in the Alaskan bush.

  Last turn, we were heading straight towards the sea wall. Pedestrians were walking in the same direction, all attracted by the same magnet. I was looking subconsciously for friends or a neighbor, scanning the faces one by one while approaching the river. We turned onto a narrow parking lot next to the Joe Lomack Building, a traditional Yupik Chief. The white metal building baring the elder’s name in large blue letters just below the roof line was one of the largest structures in Bethel. AVCP (the Association of Village Council President), which owned the flight school I used to work for and managed the 48 or 50 local villages, was based there. At this point, AVCP and their duties did not matter, I just wanted to park and walk to the shore.

  There was a fair amount of people split into small groups here and there. A local band was playing on the back of a flatbed truck temporarily turned into a make shift stage. We were in Bethel, adaptation was the motto. Like an eagle spotting its prey, Lydia had found the barbecue stand. The smoke was rising in the calm air, the roasting sausage’ smell was invading our nostrils and drugging our senses.