Alaska! Up North and to the Left

by Steven Swaks

  For some strange reason, I often enjoyed this part of the flight. As we continued our final approach towards Romanzof, we followed the cliffs just off the right wing.

  Allen was wearing a perplexed look, a worried facial expression distorting his once semi-relaxed appearance. His eyes gazed between the cliffs going by, the flaps coming out one notch for an impending landing, the water skimming beneath the landing gear, and the pilot too relaxed, at least in his perspective, for what was happening.

  Bob and Bill were still asleep.

  John was paying close attention to the landing check list. The procedure was fascinating, the plane slowing down, the increasing pitch, the changing trim, cowl flaps, landing lights, mixture, the pilot’s hand was conducting an orchestra for a symphony to a landing.

  Allen looked at me nervously and snapped his stare towards the descending flaps as I lowered the surface another notch. He glanced back at my direction in hopes of finding an answer to what was going on, a cue, something to reassure him, where was the airport? I appeared calm; that was a good sign, but the water skimming below was something else; it was a constant reminder of his fragile condition. The cliffs… they were so close, too close, he could have touched them. The wall of shear rocks kept going and going, constantly following us in a long curve to the right. His heart was pounding. He knew the end was near. I knew what I was doing, or so he hoped. Yeah, the pilot had been there many times, he thought, in an instant they would be on the ground, Allen would pump his chest and pretend that everything was fine. He was tough; he could handle this little flight. The water was still going by beneath the plane. In early November, the ice was already spreading on the freezing bay. If we ditched, there would be no hope for survival, even Allen knew that certainty. Our only salvation was on an occasional narrow rocky beach going by.

  Gradually, a small opening appeared between two cliffs, two flashing white strobes finally announced a human presence, a threshold, a runway! The strip unraveled before our eyes and speared straight towards the heart of the mountain. Safety was finally within reach, but the relief vanished like a child’s dream in the morning sunlight. Tension came back and mocked the newcomer, the runway, the lifeline to firm ground was a mere ribbon of gravel hanging on to a cliff like a lost mountain road in Peru. Too close to the right, the plane would hit the mountain, too far left, and the craft would dive into a 200 foot ravine. The landing was a one way ticket uphill into a tight valley closed off by rising terrain just steep enough to outclimb most planes. The landing had to be successful or the plane would crash, it was simple logic, the arithmetic of life and death, there was no other alternative. The takeoff would be downhill towards the sea and its life giving emptiness.

  The plane turned right and entered the valley. It all went so fast, the nose wheel rose, the cliff just out the window, my hands flying through the cockpit adjusting controls and power settings. A sense of relief followed the landing (an uphill climb rather than a descent), Allen was on the ground, at last. Bill and Bob’s eyes opened as the main gear hit the ground, the ordeal had been a good break. John had enjoyed himself.

  Today was all about Cape Romanzof. From my limited perspective, the Cape was only a runway with a single room weather station hanging at the edge of a cliff just above the bay. A narrow pathway left the station and ran down to a small dock a few hundred feet below. At the opposite end of the runway, there was nothing much, only a large wooden sign firmly planted on the top of the sloped ramp welcoming the depressed visitor. It wore the official seal of the U.S. Air Force and gave a more official touch to the isolation of the site. A gravel road curved behind the sign towards the hidden facility, miles away from the runway. This was my experience of the Cape, nothing else. This time, I was about to go beyond the sign, I would go up to the base and finally see the nest.

  I taxied to the edge of the ramp and parked the 207. A white pickup truck pulled up by the plane. The back door opened. Nothing happened for an instant, then the crazy, bipolar, drooling, somewhat of a Labrador canine thing jumped out to greet us, or perhaps mold us, in its troubled mind, the line was very fuzzy. The driver stepped out of the vehicle with some mail in hand, there was hardly anything for Bethel, barely a handful of envelopes and cards, just the minimum required to maintain physical contact with the outside world.

  Bill and Bob walked off the plane ready for the beginning of their shift in a well-established routine. Allen stayed in the aircraft for an extra minute in a useless attempt to delay the inevitable. What was this place? There was nothing. Nothing was not even the proper word, aside from a wooden sign, it looked like a large lunar crater. The self-doubts soared high in his wondering mind. Why was he doing this job? His salary was a great motivation, but at this point, money was so far away consumed by his unrestrained spouse and demanding kids. John did not care, the plane was staying and under no circumstance would be leaving without him. Romanzof was a two to three hour job. That was all.

  I walked to the flank of the plane and opened the lateral door before removing the few bags and tool cases. The driver helped me transfer everything into the pickup truck. At this point, in a conventional flight, I would have greeted my Bethel bound passengers and loaded their bags, but aside from John, nobody was coming back with us, and above all, I was staying there.

  The light brown Labrador was aimlessly roaming around us, its tail wagging happily to see new people, but they were humans, no dog. Always humans, never anything else, no cats to terrorize, no rabbit to chase around, no dogs to play with, only humans and in this hole, he could not stand it anymore. His life was a jail sentence, stuck between those mountains.

  Allen brought his hand forward to pet the dog as he approached him.

  “No!” the driver commanded.

  “What?” Allen steeped back surprised.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Why?” Allen asked startled.

  “Barney is unpredictable. He’s been here too long. The poor bastard went nuts a long time ago.”

  Barney, what a name for an Alaskan born dog. Barney was for a wimp, a lame dog with a red bandana around his neck walking in the park alongside a blond freckled kid with rolled up jeans and glasses. One day he would get out of there, get out and feel the freedom flowing through his fur, the wind blowing on his face, no limit, no mountain, the wide open spaces just for him.

  “Barney! Come here boy!”

  Barney, why not sparky or Rex? Lord he hated that name.

  “I’m Tim by the way.” The driver introduced himself to Allen and shook his hand.

  “Hi, I’m Allen.” How many more people were in Romanzof? Four? Five? Allen did not care… six weeks, that was all he knew.

  Tim was medium built with a well-trimmed and fine white beard. The first time I had come to the Cape, I had expected uniforms and military outfits, but the radar site was only a radar, a technical relay with subcontracted workers wearing plain clothes. I already knew I could not expect an ultra-secret facility with controllers staring at radar scopes and clearances upon clearances required to enter. Cape Romanzof was only a radar dome and the facility to support it. The heart of the action was somewhere else.

  Tim wore thick black overalls, boots, a brown sweater and an opened black arctic jacket. I had met him a few times before and the isolation did not seem to bother him. For Tim, Romanzof was an escape from his other life, the one in Anchorage where he was one among others, where his life was punctuated with trips to the mall and a movie in the local theater with his divorced girlfriend. After years wondering where his life was going, Tim had found an equilibrium, partly thanks to Romanzof and the peace it had come with. The Cape was almost like yoga, six weeks of semi-isolation to reflect on his condition and meditate away from the city frenzy. Tim enjoyed the quietness as long as the other crew members did not create trouble, which they rarely did anyway aside from the occasional deprivation of cigarettes.

  We climbed into the truck and left the ramp. I was curiously stirred by the enigma
. For the first time, I was about to see beyond the large brown sign. I was the kid with butterflies in his stomach on the way to his first carnival. What was beyond that curving road? I did not expect anything grand or jaw dropping, but I enjoyed expanding my horizons, especially since I had been there so many times without seeing much.

  The pickup started the slow ascension. Like a curtain in a theater, the sign gave way to a small valley and a twisted climbing road towards two large white domes a couple of miles away. Large towering mountains were dwarfing the valley on all sides into an insignificant crater. I could only look around and feel the oppression of the cavity, the horizon had vanished, replaced by rocky slopes and steep cliffs.

  It felt like a bad sci-fi movie. Let’s enclose some humans together in the middle of nowhere, drop the temperature and see what happens. Most of the year, the sea was not even an option for escape, the torturous ice was longing to catch any captain bold enough to bring his ship anywhere close to the shore. The tricky runway behind us was a valid option, but so many times the weather hadn’t given its blessing and had trapped the crew in their domes. Beyond those structures, there was little more, only a large white ball sitting on a mountain ridge peering at the Russians for an eventual attack that never came. The Soviets came on a regular basis to test our defense systems and encountered our boys with the same regularity.

  Half way through our ascension, the pickup was bouncing around, each rock sending us in the opposite direction in an ongoing Newtonian demonstration. We stopped and dropped John by a small wooden shack and a series of short antennas; we helped him unload his equipment and continued on towards the domes. The second half of the ascension was a carbon copy of the first one. A thick coat of snow from the previous storm littered the ground, Cape Romanzof would stay buried under several feet of snow and ice until May.

  Besides a few small auxiliary structures, the main body of the base was made up of the two white domes; the first one looked like a large maintenance hall with a few vehicles and work benches, while the second served as the main quarters. I truly felt privileged to enter the first shield of defense against the Russian bear. I could not help but think about the movie “The Thing” with Kurt Russell, a team of scientists found themselves stranded somewhere in Antarctica along with some kind of psychopathic alien. To spice up the movie, E.T. did not find anything better to do after travelling gazillions of miles through space than torment the white coat people, until Kurt Russell came to save the day at the end, or so I recall. Cape Romanzof had the same claustrophobic thriller atmosphere, the one that makes you want to keep the lights on after the movie and look over your shoulder in the dark. I could picture the site at night with howling winds and fear settling in. Yes, it was that kind of site, at the edge of reason, only a breath away from insanity.

  We stepped out of the truck and climbed a few metal steps to enter the second dome. We walked through a short service corridor with gray walls and entered the main room. Allen was trailing behind. The outside austerity had a lasting impression as I walked inside. Subconsciously, I was expecting the same inside, a dry and bland housing without extra frills, but the construction was designed for a small group of people who stayed there isolated for fairly long periods of time. In a brilliant move, the administration had realized that the residents might have played peek-a-boo with a pickaxe if a dull and uncomfortable housing was the only comfort from the harshness and loneliness of the area.

  To my great surprise, we entered a beautiful and bright main room. Beyond the entry way, there was a large dining room with western style tables and chairs, a row of bedrooms ran two thirds around the main room downstairs and out of a mezzanine upstairs. To the right of the entrance, there were a handful of offices and a large restaurant style kitchen. While I felt sorry for them, they enjoyed their own personal amenities. The individual rooms seemed very comfortable. Even the kitchen was staffed with a fulltime cook who had nothing else to do but spoil the few workers and serve them gourmet meals. I walked further into the main dining area, the lighting was bright and created a warm atmosphere at the antipodes from anything we could have pictured so far away from any urban center. The dining room belonged more to a sports bar with its large flat screen television playing nonstop basketball games rather than an austere governmental building. Just to the right of the TV, was an entire wall of small yellow plastic drawers full of candies, chocolate bars, and chips. The dining room was the ideal setting to have a good time with a friend, hang out, watch TV, and overdose on junk food.

  “Bill and Bob, you have your quarters upstairs, as usual, Allen, you’ll be downstairs by the entryway. Sorry it’s a bit louder with the wind but you’ll get used to it. You have to earn your spot upstairs.” Matt said without looking back.

  Bill and Bob walked upstairs dragging their bags behind them.

  “Allen?” Matt turned around.

  Allen was still in the entryway. Pale. Quiet.

  Tim walked back towards him. “Hey bud, what are you doing? Are you ok?”

  I looked at him dumbfounded.

  “I cannot stay here, this is too much, I did not know… too small… I cannot…” Allen mumbled.

  “Ah, it’s all right, people feel that way the first two or three days, it’s like an aquarium, but they get used to it,” Tim said walking back to him, and tapping him on the upper arm.

  Allen had a blank stare, hardly hiding fear and anguish.

  “We’re going to feed you a great lunch and you’ll be a new man after that,” Tim said before ushering him to one of the tables. “Steven, come with me.”

  “Is this the first time you have somebody react like that?” I asked following him walking towards the kitchen.

  “No, newbies can be pretty anxious.”

  “Why is that, it’s really not that bad, it’s actually a nice place.”

  “It’s nice if you know that you are going to stay here for a few hours, it’s a different story if it’s for a long period of time. We can stay locked up in this building for days, sometimes we don’t even see the horizon for weeks. It can be hard sometimes. I bet you Allen is a little claustrophobic.”

  “Or a lot,” I added.

  “Or a lot. That’s what I am concerned about. He doesn’t look that great, I’m afraid he is going to lose it when we get a blizzard.”

  “You mean if you get a blizzard?”

  “No, I mean when. This is not Bethel friend, you know it’s going to happen in the next few weeks. Then, we won’t even be able to get him out. Like I said, we can be locked up for days.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Let’s wait until you have to leave and we’ll see from there. If he stays and can’t handle it we’ll get a charter to fly him. That’s if we don’t have a storm. Well, that’s not really your problem is it? Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you go to the kitchen and get some lunch?”

  It was late morning and I could definitely eat something. Following the smell of freshly cooked food, I found the self-serve kitchen. I stood in front of a full self service station with multiple entrees, vegetables, and desserts. Tim smiled seeing my surprised look. I have to say, I did not expect that kind of meal in such a place.

  “Grab a plate and take whatever you want. You got some salad, mashed potatoes, and green beans. There’re steaks over there.” Tim said.

  “Thanks, do you mind if I call my dispatch first?”

  Tim pointed behind me. “Go for it, the phone is in the office right there.”

  I looked behind me and saw a small office with all the required tools. Curiously, I was surprised to find all the modern communication equipment, the computer was purring waiting for instructions, the fax machine was nearby, and a printer/ scanner rested on a file cabinet behind a crowded desk. Closed curtains on a small window were darkening the office, I did not mind, it created a comforting feeling and an appreciated privacy.

  I called Norton Aviation, and Chris picked up the phone. I had a good vibe about him
, but at this point, personal feelings were not important, his work and attitude as dispatcher was what really mattered.

  “Hi Chris, this is Steven, I’m at Cape Romanzof. We should be here for two or three hours… I’ll call you when we leave.”

  Chris acknowledged and moved on. Dispatch was our Saint Bernard; they kept track of our moves and called the cavalry if we did not show a sign of life after our estimated time of arrival expired plus thirty minutes or so. Who knew if we could really trust them? I had never seen the system in action but I had some doubt about its efficiency. Some dispatchers had no idea about what to do if a plane was overdue. Another company’s plane had gone missing for hours before anybody woke up and did something, but I have to say that Jeb was on the right side of the fence and I trusted him. In case of trouble, his anal nature would kick in and he would call Anchorage or the authorities to come find us.

  I walked back to the kitchen and picked up a plate, this time Charlene, the cook, was there.

  “What in the world are you doing here?” Charlene asked with a smile. Her voice was hoarse and cracking. Her emaciated face was the outer reflection of what was going on inside her damaged body after years of smoking. She had started young, too young, 12 years old. Dressed with her washed out blue overalls, she sat with her best friend Janey against the wooden fences of rural Kentucky, smoking away her youth. In the early sixties, nobody really knew better, even her dad only thought it looked bad but did not know any better about the health effects. Smoking was only good enough of an excuse to slap her a few times. That’s until she turned 18. She celebrated her birthday on a train running away, as far as possible. That’s how she landed in Alaska. Even Alaska was not far enough. Romanzof was the final stop. She loved it there. It was her home, her safe haven away from everything. Leaving the Cape for her so called time off was the opposite, it was the beginning of the count down before coming back home to Cape.