Alaska Homestead: Living in a Cabin up North
(Page 3 of 3)
May/June 1978
By Steve Chamberlain
Next to eating dried fish, I prefer my catch in the form of gwamaqqluk. That's when you take your strips, flats, or blankets off the rack when they're about half-dry and boil 'em. What you get is a nice, chewy, deliciously "smoky" tasting piece of fish. (If you're in a picnic mood, you also can take chunks of half-dry fish off the racks and roast 'em over the fire like hot dogs. A warning, though: If you have children, don't do this too often or your next winter's supply of protein may be perilously small come late fall!)
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As I said before, life isn't always (or even primarily) idyllic up here . . . it's mainly a lot of hard work and making do with what you've got or doing without. There's many a winter day when you'll just come inside to eat at noon and to fall asleep at night. (When you've been out in the fresh, cold air all day and then enter a warm cabin, your eyes immediately get sticky and heavy.) And there'll be days when you'll work for hours on some small task and still not get it done and then have to work all night at it too.
In the north country, Nature has the upper hand and—as a result—good, honest efforts sometimes aren't enough to get you by. You'll lose your firewood in the overflow ice, or it'll rain all summer and your fish will rot. You'll need more than an average amount of patience. There are no guarantees . . . and it's foolish to look for any.
I guess that's the very reason why there's still a lot of opportunity for subsistence homesteading here in Alaska. You'll find a few old-timers up this way who like the freedom and solitude and self-reliance that characterize life in Alaska's back country . . . and you'll find a few (precious few) younger people, like myself, here too. Most native-born individuals, however—the young folks in particular—have learned (with help from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the state-operated schools) to flee this country as quickly as possible for Anchorage or Seattle.
What it all boils down to is this: There's still plenty of room up here for the quiet person who isn't in a hurry to get anywhere but back to the land. The old-timers are looking for people to help them, people to teach and tell their stories to. Newcomers (hardworking newcomers) are always welcome.
Nope. It isn't easy to make it here . . . and it isn't a rich (in dollars) way of life even if you do make it. But it'll get you from here to there more pleasantly than working on the pipeline will.
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