I’m really not sure how it happened, but twenty-some years ago, after I’d completed Prescription for Adventure: Bush Pilot Doctor, my second-grade school teacher, Anna Bortel (Church) and I sat across my dining room table and leafed through letters, newspaper clippings, and school newspapers she’d saved from her teaching experiences in Alaska; and then we projected Kodak slides against a blank wall.

Never did I think a video-trailer was in the future. I was writing with a pencil, mailing rewrites in stamped envelopes, and wondering how to turn slides into half-tones into photos in a book. It’s not always a bad thing to have a slow-growing project.

Why did I persist? I was captivated and inspired by Anna’s heart-warming, humorous, and amazing stories. Just as the Alaska spawning salmon swim upstream, so had this single woman pushed against a society that expected her to fit the mold of wife and mother.  When this rite of passage eluded her, Anna did not bemoan her singlehood. Instead, in 1954 she drove from Ohio, up the Alaska-Canada Highway, to Valdez, where snow was measured in feet and an Easter Egg hunt unheard of. There she taught for three years.

Her curiosity about Alaska wasn’t quelled. In 1957, she pushed farther north to Tanana, an isolated Athabascan village along the Yukon River. Teaching and living in drafty Quonset huts with freezing oil lines at 50 below zero added to her teaching rigors. Discouraged? Yes. Daunted? No. That’s where I met her. That’s when she became my mother’s best friend. That’s where she accompanied my physician father on a medical field trip to Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska, where the last roving bands of Nunamiuts, and the only inland Eskimos in Alaska, followed the caribou.

The trip to Anaktuvuk Pass took her even farther north. While my father checked for ear infections, tuberculosis, and nutrition issues, Anna assessed the need for education. The elders of the clan were determined to provide education within their settlement, rather than send their children to boarding school. The obstacles were daunting for a school teacher: no school building, no tent or sod house available for a teacherage, no roads to transport building supplies, no airstrip, no wood for fuel except willows, no public services besides a post office, and few English-speaking adults and children. Simon Paneak and other elders begged her to return and teach – in a place where sled dogs outnumbered the 98 people.

 She returned to Tanana, She prayed. She waited. In 1960, Anna became the first permanent school teacher in Anaktuvuk Pass. Because of her willingness to live in a sod house, melt snow for water, use a kerosene lamp for light – and – teach  children that ‘A’ is for ALASKA, ‘B’ is for BEAR, and ‘C’ is for CARIBOU, and adults to write their names, an airstrip was build to haul in construction materials for a school. And, the Natives ceased their perpetual migration to settle in the middle of the wide, windswept pass.

In 1960, Ernest Gruening, U.S. Senator from Alaska, described the dilemma Alaskan educators face and the determination of the Native people to obtain an education. He held up Anna Bortel as the ideal teacher, “one able to comprehend their problem, one kind and sympathetic, and above all one able to adjust to all conditions that might face her.”

Over the course of 20-some years, Anna and I worked with her stories. She had the facts, details, conversations, and photos. I crafted her material into chapters with settings, additional facts, geography, flashbacks to childhood, foreshadowing, transitions, and conclusions. I expected the results would be one book. The word count was too high. The stories over-flowed into two books.

 ‘A’ is for Alaska: Teacher to the Territory covers the drive to Alaska, Valdez (1954 – 1957), and Tanana (1957-1960).

‘A’ is for Anaktuvuk: Teacher to the Nunamiut Eskimos grabs some pieces from the first book, to orient the reader, and then documents the history-changes of the Nunamiuts from 1960-1962 – all in humorous, heart-wrenching, and compelling stories.

I wanted Anna’s story to be written down –and shared with her family and friends. At the same time, given how my German-Russian Mennonite heritage is significant to me, I wanted the Nunamiuts to be able to know, read, remember, and pass along their traditions and heritage.

The Simon Paneak Museum is eager to use ‘A’ is for Anaktuvuk: Teacher to the Nunamiut Eskimos as a resource in the museum, for tourist awareness, school education, and resident pride.

Now, twenty-some years later, Anna’s story is told, a segment of the Nunamiut’s history is recorded, and a video-trailer is made. Now, Anna smiles from much deserved accolades and congratulations. Now, I smile that twenty-some years of work is completed.

With regards to my siblings:  Mark Gaede, Mishal Gaede, and Patti Gaede, who don’t pretend to be locals. They are locals.

A single-prop Cessna 206 at Anaktuvuk Pass, in the Brooks Range — flown by Dwayne King, a local. (2009)

“We left Anchorage for the wilderness,” the travel writer for the Post said in so many words. He was driving to the Kenai Peninsula. The “wilderness”? This man has not been to Galena, Anaktuvuk Pass, Point Hope, Dillingham, …places I’d consider a bit more remote than the Kenai Peninsula – wherein lies my hometown of Soldotna. We don’t even consider our Gaede-80 homestead remote anymore, seeing that it is now surrounded by subdivisions.

The writer went on to say that most people live in Anchorage. I read that three times. Anchorage does have the largest population of any settlement in Alaska, but I got the impression he believed life didn’t really exist anywhere else; well, except in that wilderness of the Kenai Peninsula.

“Few of them (locals) spend much time on cruise ships, or flying over the Brooks Range in single-props. ..” Let’s stop right here. I fail to see the similarity of a cruise ship and flying in a single-prop over one of the most remote areas of Alaska.  My one time on a cruise ship was not like my several trips to Anaktuvuk Pass, located in the middle of the Brooks Range, of which one was in a Piper PA-14 Family Cruiser with a single prop..  It’s true, locals probably avoid cruise ships.  However, you may find some locals on the Alaska Marine Highway.

“But a lot settle down in the Last Frontier because of the nearby (read: ability to get there in a Subaru) wilderness….”  Amazing! Alaskans choose the Last Frontier for accessibility to the wilderness in a car?  Wrong again. The locals define wilderness as a place Subarus cannot access. The sourdoughs didn’t choose a population hub. Bush pilots don’t. Missionaries don’t. School teachers don’t. Commercial fishermen and women don’t. Biologists and seismologists don’t. And …there are indigenous people in Alaska and the Native population does not all reside in Anchorage.

His comments about Anchorage were not complementary. We all know what it means when someone chooses the word “charming” to describe “lack of with-it-ness” and not a “vortex of culture.” I sensed disgust. Again, he suggested the reader not act like a tourist, but a local, and reported jubilantly that he’d found a Japanese sushi bar.  I thought locals ate moose, caribou, smoked salmon strips, halibut, trout, ptarmigan, giant cabbage, and blueberries.

Before using the Travel section for kindling, I took a deep breath and read on. One day he “played tourist.” I read that again. He never started a chainsaw, flew in a bush plane, chopped wood, mended a fence so the moose couldn’t finish off the cauliflower, checked out a tide table for clam digging or set-netting, asked about berry picking, or bought a blue tarp, but he thought he was blending in with the locals.

His final paragraph: “Boy do the locals love their java!” What locals was he talking about? The locals I know love their tall, black rubber boots; a newly sharpened ax; airplane wing covers; fleece; rhubarb; the smell of damp moss on a drizzly day; buying bread that is only a week old; finding a matching set of about anything at the one Home Depot on the Kenai Peninsula; and early August, when the tourists stop clogging the road through town, the road to Anchorage, and Fred Meyer’s parking lot.

It would be an eye-opener for him to read any of my Prescription for Adventure books, where, yes, Alaskans actually fly in a single-prop airplane to the Brooks Range.  There is human life outside Anchorage.  Ask a local.

Here I am in Anaktuvuk Pass, in the Brooks Range, in 2009. I was also in Anaktuvuk in 1962, and 1988. I am not in or on a Suburu.

~~~~~~~~

 What does “a local” mean where you live?

If you’ve been to Alaska, what was your observation about the “locals”?

“We just put our winter boots away…bring your mud boots.” That was my last phone conversation with someone in Galena, a village of 500 people, along the Yukon River in Interior Alaska. That was mid-April, 2012. I was to arrive on April 25, during breakup.

Galena, located 270 air miles west of Fairbanks, and accessible only by air or the Yukon River, is the largest Yukon-Koyukon village. In the early 1900s, Galena was established near an Athabascan Indian fish camp and became a supply point for nearby mines. In 1941-42, during WWII, Galena Air Force Station was built.

Why was I going to Galena? I’d spent two impressionable grade school years upriver in Tanana, a village which at that time had 300 people (today around 100.) I was curious about the other villages. I wanted to touch my past, reach back to those nostalgically remembered years, and see what was there now.

My father, the Medical Officer in Charge (MOC) of the Tanana Public Health hospital had flown his J-3 and PA-14 Family Cruiser to make housecalls and medical field trips up and down the river, as well as to other parts of Interior Alaska. I’d listened to his stories, seen his Kodak pictures, watched his 8 mm movies, and delighted in souvenirs and gifts made of beads, woven grass, leather, and fur that he’d brought back from the Native people. He and my mother had a heart for the isolation and cultural adjustments of the missionary families. They’d pack us three kids into Dad’s plane and flown downriver to bring conversation, freshly baked cinnamon rolls, a book they’d just read, a puzzle or toy for the children, news from Outside (anywhere “outside” Alaska), and a listening ear. In those years, no one in Interior Alaska had a TV or telephone, much less internet connection. Communication was via one-way or two-way radio (often a single radio within a village, although additional possible contact if there was a CAA/FAA station in the village. The radio operators were usually the teacher, missionary, or innkeeper), mailed letter, a static-plagued radio station, a dog musher from another village, a bush pilot bringing a verbal account –or perhaps a newspaper or magazine.

Why had I specifically chosen Galena? I’d marketed my Alaska Unit Study Guide to Interior Distance Education o Alaska (IDEA) homeschoolers. IDEA was based in Galena, but served all of Alaska. I’d been to IDEA curriculum fairs in Soldotna, Kodiak, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. I’d called the office in Galena regarding invoices and purchase orders. Along the way, I learned about the Galena Interior Learning Academy (GILA) boarding school in Galena, which was one of three high school boarding schools in Alaska. Since I’d been sent to a boarding school when I was 15, I had empathy for boarding school students – oh – and knew the fun, too! The distinguishing characteristic of GILA is the vo-tech program which provides students the opportunity to graduate with a skill: cosmetology, auto mechanics, culinary, or aviation.  Since my Alaska Study Guide is based on my father’s stories in the book Prescription or Adventure: Bush Pilot Doctor (4^th edition: Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor), which is filled with hunting drama, and medical emergencies, and flying mishaps, I recognized that the Guide would be a perfect fit for many of the students.

All in all, my reasons were the lures of exploring more of Alaska, stepping into mirages of my little girl world, marketing, and deliberate moving out of my comfort zone.

My Comfort Zone: neat, tidy, clean, warm, predictable, known, advance planning, adults versus kids, an amount of control over my environment, discussed expectations when teaching/speaking/presenting.

I was headed for adventure all right. This was breakup time: a time when snow melts but the ground is still frozen; a time when daytime temperatures are warm and mud puddles enlarge by the minute. When night temperatures freeze and a layer of bubbled or rippled ice forms on these new lakes. Messy.

Advance planning? My emails had been blocked by the school internet security. The one phone call with a staff member had been disconnected. Why? Perhaps it bounced off the satellite the wrong way. I hadn’t made contact with the school until a week before I was to fly in. 

Prepared? I had my tall, black rubber boots and thick gray woolie socks.

(To be continued)