Moving to the Wilderness of Alaska

Moving to Iliamna, Alaska, in February, after being in Ketchikan was quite a culture shock for our family. I am so thankful I grew up on a farm in Kansas with no running water and an outhouse. God used these in my life to get accustomed to the isolated village life. Getting to Iliamna was an adventure we will never forget. We took the ferry from Ketchikan to Haines, Alaska. It was snowing when we got off the ferry and had accumulated a foot or two. Trying to leave the dock we went up a huge hill with our trusty International Scout that had 4-wheel drive! The 4-wheel drive, however, didn't work when we had to stop at the top of the hill. The weight of our trailer started pulling us back down the hill. My hubby yelled for me to get out of the car and help direct him as he backed down the hill. He backed into a drive way that had been plowed out. So we headed back up that hill a second time and my hubby announced that he wasn't going to stop at the top. So we prayed there would be no cars and there wasn't any. We drove to a hotel and got a room to see if the snow would let up a little or stop during the middle of the night. We woke up the next morning to a lot more snow. We talked with some other people who were driving to Anchorage. So we had our own little caravan of vehicles headed in the same direction. It took us 8 hours to drive from Haines to Haines Jct, Alaska. This is only about 60 - 100 miles. The snow on the sides of the road was higher than our car! Our little caravan followed a snow plow all the way to Haines Jct. We spent the night in a very dirty hotel room but we were exhausted and ready for sleep. Going from Haines to Anchorage was a long, arduous drive. One of the cars in our caravan slipped off the road and my hubby was able to pull it back onto the road. Other than that we arrived in Anchorage ready for the next part of our adventure.

We stayed with new friends in Anchorage for a few days and I ended up so sick that I probably should have stayed a few more days. We got our trailer, full of all of our earthly goods, wrapped in what looked like Saran Wrap, to get it ready to ship to Iliamna. That is a lot of work!! Our missionary friend got his airplane ready to take us out to the village. So the day came and we left. (Being new missionaries to the bush, we had no idea we should probably have waited til' spring to move. We were doing this in February with very short days to fly.) The airplane was for 5 people so Micah ended up in the tail of the airplane in two sleeping bags. He was so cold. We were flying along and came to a white out. We did not know if we were going straight, upside down, or into a mountain. God opened up a patch of clouds right over a runway in the village of Port Allsworth. The "chances" of that happening are one in a million! Alaska is a big state and the wilderness is so vast. We landed on the runway and walked to a lodge in the distance. We had to walk in thigh high snow. My hubby took the girls and Micah came with me. My lungs felt like they were on fire - as I had pneumonia at this point. Micah and I were walking as fast as we could. A snowmobile came by and I told the guy to find my hubby with my two young daughters ages 1 and 3. So . . . Micah and I trudged on through the snow and feeling as awful as I did, I said, "Micah, if I die just make sure I get buried!!" Poor kid! What a horrible thing to stay to an 8 year old. We finally made it to the lodge. By this time I thought my lungs were going to explode. We stayed in Port Allsworth for a couple of days. For me, that was wonderful. The day came to try to fly to Iliamna. We had a beautiful day for flying as the scenery was incredible with its rugged beauty. The mountains were completely snow covered. We arrived at our new home totally unprepared for what was to come. We stayed with the outgoing missionary for several days and then they packed up EVERYTHING and left. We had very little left to live on. We had no idea what wilderness living was like. To buy milk at the trading post was $9.00 a gallon. Bread was $6.50 a loaf. Coffee was $17.00 for 3#. A gallon of gas was $3.85. My hubby took me out for an anniversary dinner one time. One spaghetti dinner was $21.00, so we shared a $10.00 hot dog and a $2.00 cup of coffee! We were in complete shock. This was in 1983. We had spent most of our money just getting to our new home. Bless the trooper's wife who told us we could shop in her pantry. What we learned later, was that any time one of us was in Anchorage we needed to buy enough groceries to last for 4-6 months. We would spend about a thousand dollars each time we went. We would then have to find boxes to mail our groceries back to ourselves in Iliamna. We were definitely "cheechackoes" or new people in the village. We had so much to learn about our new surroundings. What we learned later was that we had to buy gas, fuel oil and propane once a year when it came on the barge. That was like paying for all of our utility and gasoline bills for a year in one check to the barge guy. But . . . we needed it! Our village did have electricity but it was "on again off again" which was hard on appliances. We also had a telephone. One time I called my folks in the "lower 48" and got three people in our village. My dad thought that I was a prank caller when I called them because there was a long delay after I said something. Mom did pretty good when I called her but my dad would hang up.

Hunting was a necessity and not a hobby for the people in the village. We were given a moose that someone had shot and rubbed down with liquid smoke to keep flies off of it. It tasted horrible but it provided food for our family. My hubby went on a 3 week moose hunt the second year we were up there. He wanted to get a moose as well as the other guys with him. They went on a river boat 400 miles down the Yukon River and a hundred miles up the Kyukuk River. The day he left was a crazy day with all kinds of things happening. After I dropped him off at the airport, I had three flat tires on my van! The guy in the village that I did not want help from, is the person who helped me with all three flat tires. I had my three kids, three other kids,a baby plus 2 dogs in the van at the time. He ended up being so helpful - I had to tell God I was sorry for my attitude towards him. After we got home, I saw that my youngest daughter had a clear stream coming from one nostril which was abnormal. So I asked her if she put something up her nose - she said, "Yaw". I asked her to show me what she had put up her nose. She showed me a Bic pen and pointed to the top where there should have been a little black plug. So . . . I tried to get it out and gave her a bloody nose which made her sniff. I told her not to do that. Then I called a nurse who attended our church and lived up the hill from us. She tried to take it out and gave her a bloody nose, also. She told me that we needed to find out if there was a doctor staying in any of the lodges. We called several and there was a podiatrist - still out hunting, a vet - still out hunting, and finally the last lodge we called had a doctor who had just came in from hunting. He was the doctor who made the Jarvix heart and is still on television as an advertisement for heart health. He came to our house and took it out very quickly by lying Angela on the toy box, sitting on top of her, putting her hands under his legs, and him holding her head with one hand and taking the Bic plug out with the other hand. PTL for his coming to our house and taking it out. He never did send us a bill. Wow! What a day of excitement! But . . . there was more to come.

I got an urgent knock on the door about 10:00pm. I wondered who that could be. I opened the door and a totally disheveled Eskimo man was standing there. He told me that he wanted to talk to the parson and I told him that my hubby was out hunting. (I did not tell him that he was going to be gone for three weeks.) He left and I thought that that encounter had gone pretty good. The next night he came back and knocked on the door at 10:00pm. I opened the door and he walked in and sat down at the table across from me. He needed to unload his heart. He had been in prison for 7 years for murder, but he didn't know if he had done it or not because he was so drunk. He thought that by coming back to his own village that he would be able to work. He worked but did not get paid. So he had no money and no food. He could not hunt with a weapon because of the felony charge. He had a wife and a little boy. In my heart I really hoped Chuck would get a moose, so I thought, hmmm maybe I could give him the moose that was in my freezer because I really disliked cooking it. So I gave him a couple hundred pounds of that moose. He was really excited (so was I!) and he and his wife became special friends. By the way, my hubby did get a 1500 hundred pound moose! It was yummy and lasted the rest of our time being in the bush!