Read Online Breaking the Ice by Kim Baldwin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kim Baldwin
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Maybe she could get some insights into the kind of person her sister was.
“As many reasons as there are mountains, why people live here.” Bryson recalled the many discussions she and her friends had had in the Den on that very topic. Some locals were secretive about why they’d come, which provided ample fodder for lengthy speculations over a few beers. On the run from the law. Antisocial. Unabomber. Illegal alien.
Most folks, though, were pretty forthcoming about what drew them to Alaska. Grizz and Ellie were eternal flower children, homesteaders who came to live off the land and start a commune that never really materialized. Instead they founded a roadhouse as a way to draw the community together, which it had accomplished in spades. Their past showed in the peace-symbol T-shirt that Grizz wore a lot, fashionable again with a new generation, and in the preponderance of classic tunes from the sixties and seventies that made up the bulk of the 120 selections in the jukebox, a 1954 Rock-Ola 1438 Comet that Ellie found online in a Seattle antique shop.
Skeeter had been a commercial pilot with a major airline, and his routes often took him over Alaska. Seeing it from above had made him determined to experience it up close in a small plane, and when he had a taste of it during a month-long vacation, he was hooked. He quit his job and found a plane of his own, settling in Bettles to join the freelance cooperative after a month of tagging along with Bryson, Red Murdock, and half a dozen other veterans of Arctic Circle flying. Skeeter made the transition pretty easy, especially since he’d been based in Minneapolis and had seen his share of bad storms and bitter temperatures. He loved the scenery and independence of his new job, along with the fact he could chain-smoke if he wanted to and stop shaving every goddamn day.
Lars and Maggie had met in the Gates of the Arctic National Park when they were just out of their teens. Maggie was backpacking, doing field studies for her courses at the University of Alaska, and Lars had decided to spend his spring break from Michigan State on a solo fly-fishing adventure in the bush. Both were immediately smitten. When Lars’s charter pilot, Bryson’s father, returned to pick him up eight days later, Maggie went with him.
They married and lived in Fairbanks long enough to get their degrees—Lars in ecology, conservation biology, and environmental science, and Maggie in wildlife biology and plant biology—then settled north, near where they’d met, to work and raise a family.
“Most folks, I guess, are just the rugged-individual type,” Bryson explained. “They move here for the chance to live simply—off the land, by their wits. Testing themselves against the worst nature can offer. A few are running away from something or someone, and don’t want to be found. Or they want to get as far as possible from stupid laws and regulations that restrict how they can live. For me, Alaska is in my blood. I was born here.”
She didn’t ordinarily volunteer a lot of personal information to her clients, but the chitchat was helping her fight her fatigue. “Lived in Fairbanks for a while, and even that was too much big-city for me. Can’t fathom being anywhere else. Have to be able to breathe fresh air, see the stars, hear the wolves howl at night. Wake up to a view that always stuns me.”
“But you sure have to sacrifice a lot to get all that, don’t you? You really don’t have a refrigerator?”
“That’s just what I mean. People like you who’ve never known any difference think those are such big necessities, but they’re not, really. You get back so much more here than you ever have to give up. I’ve pretty much always done without such things, so I don’t miss ’em. I live a very comfortable life.” She rarely wanted to explain or justify her choices, but this stranger had put her on the defensive. “Hear my clients talk about how a simple power outage for a day or
“As many reasons as there are mountains, why people live here.” Bryson recalled the many discussions she and her friends had had in the Den on that very topic. Some locals were secretive about why they’d come, which provided ample fodder for lengthy speculations over a few beers. On the run from the law. Antisocial. Unabomber. Illegal alien.
Most folks, though, were pretty forthcoming about what drew them to Alaska. Grizz and Ellie were eternal flower children, homesteaders who came to live off the land and start a commune that never really materialized. Instead they founded a roadhouse as a way to draw the community together, which it had accomplished in spades. Their past showed in the peace-symbol T-shirt that Grizz wore a lot, fashionable again with a new generation, and in the preponderance of classic tunes from the sixties and seventies that made up the bulk of the 120 selections in the jukebox, a 1954 Rock-Ola 1438 Comet that Ellie found online in a Seattle antique shop.
Skeeter had been a commercial pilot with a major airline, and his routes often took him over Alaska. Seeing it from above had made him determined to experience it up close in a small plane, and when he had a taste of it during a month-long vacation, he was hooked. He quit his job and found a plane of his own, settling in Bettles to join the freelance cooperative after a month of tagging along with Bryson, Red Murdock, and half a dozen other veterans of Arctic Circle flying. Skeeter made the transition pretty easy, especially since he’d been based in Minneapolis and had seen his share of bad storms and bitter temperatures. He loved the scenery and independence of his new job, along with the fact he could chain-smoke if he wanted to and stop shaving every goddamn day.
Lars and Maggie had met in the Gates of the Arctic National Park when they were just out of their teens. Maggie was backpacking, doing field studies for her courses at the University of Alaska, and Lars had decided to spend his spring break from Michigan State on a solo fly-fishing adventure in the bush. Both were immediately smitten. When Lars’s charter pilot, Bryson’s father, returned to pick him up eight days later, Maggie went with him.
They married and lived in Fairbanks long enough to get their degrees—Lars in ecology, conservation biology, and environmental science, and Maggie in wildlife biology and plant biology—then settled north, near where they’d met, to work and raise a family.
“Most folks, I guess, are just the rugged-individual type,” Bryson explained. “They move here for the chance to live simply—off the land, by their wits. Testing themselves against the worst nature can offer. A few are running away from something or someone, and don’t want to be found. Or they want to get as far as possible from stupid laws and regulations that restrict how they can live. For me, Alaska is in my blood. I was born here.”
She didn’t ordinarily volunteer a lot of personal information to her clients, but the chitchat was helping her fight her fatigue. “Lived in Fairbanks for a while, and even that was too much big-city for me. Can’t fathom being anywhere else. Have to be able to breathe fresh air, see the stars, hear the wolves howl at night. Wake up to a view that always stuns me.”
“But you sure have to sacrifice a lot to get all that, don’t you? You really don’t have a refrigerator?”
“That’s just what I mean. People like you who’ve never known any difference think those are such big necessities, but they’re not, really. You get back so much more here than you ever have to give up. I’ve pretty much always done without such things, so I don’t miss ’em. I live a very comfortable life.” She rarely wanted to explain or justify her choices, but this stranger had put her on the defensive. “Hear my clients talk about how a simple power outage for a day or
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