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I've been fascinated with the thought of heading off to live in Alaska since I was a kid.
About a dozen years ago I nearly bought a piece of property in AK that was a couple hundred acres, house, barns, ATVs, generators, etc. and was only accessible by air a few months a year. That was just after a divorce and I just wanted to go hide.
Now with all the AK reality shows on the National Geographic channel it's got me thinking about what that may have been like.
Sooo, with that said. If you had the chance to head off tomorrow for the opportunity to live in the Alaskan wilderness with a
basic battery from what you currently own what would it be? Along with all your other gear you have room for two center fire rifles, one shotgun, one rimfire ( rifle or pistol) and one centerfire handgun. There's room for 1000 rounds for each firearm. Reloading supplies will have to be flown in the following summer.
For me it would be;
450 Marlin Guide gun, with Leupold scout scope
Grandpa's Springfield Sporter in .30-'06, Leupold scope
Remington 870
CZ 452 .22 magnum, open sights.
Bowen custom Ruger SBH old model.
I'd like this not to turn into our custom dream gun post. But what would you take if you had less than two weeks to pack up and go?
looking forward to your responses.
jb
jasonB " Another Dirty Yankee"
" Tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"
Wild West Guns Co-Pilot, 45-70, scoped
Freedom arms .475 Linbaugh, 5.5 inch barrel
Garand, 30-06
Summit PKS toggle bolt rifle with suppressor, 22LR, scoped
Remington 870 12 gauge
I would take an ammo can of ammo for each firearm. On next years flight would be reloading hear for hand loading each, with lee loaders, powder, molds primers, etc.
I would also probably want a go to town firearm such as my SIG 227 but would leave that off my list to comply with your posts.
Mike Johnson,
"Only those who will risk going too far, can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Eliot
Ruger GunSite Scout
Marlin .444
Remington 12 ga 870 Tactical
Single Six w/both cyls
My Ruger SBH custom with a good leather shoulder cross draw.....
I might reserve the right to switch out the .444, and buy an all weather "something" in .338 Win Mag...
The Rotten Fruit Always Hits The Ground First
Proud Life Member Of:
NRA
Second Amendment Foundation
Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms
DAV
Trade before you go or the following summer. Two weeks should be enough time to do any trading you think you should. Just no custom builds in a Super MangnaSaurus caliber. Only what's on the shelf!
I missed that 870 Tactical so much I had to replace it this summer.
jb
jasonB " Another Dirty Yankee"
" Tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"
I'd K.I.S.S., and just grab my 12ga Ithaca Model 37 Deerslayer smoothbore slug gun w/rifle sights, a Ruger or Colt SA .22LR revolver and a Cold Steel Trailmaster Bowie.
A good heater.
Mosquito repellent (gallons).
Fishin' gear.
A bunch of canned goods.
Chain saw.
Log splitter.
Matches.
Camp & skinnin' knives.
I'd have to buy a coupla guns & ammo. (Hey, BATFE, I don't own any now...)
Griff,
SASS/CMSA #93
NRA Patron
GUSA #93
There is a fine line between hobby & obsession! AND... I'm over it!!
No I ain't ready, but let's do it anyway!
Pistol would probably end up being a Glock or M&P. I know any pistol caliber under .44 is not likely to do much about bears, and even a .44 isn't definite. Pistols to me are 2-legged predator protectors.
2ndovc wrote:Yeah? What happened to that .35 W Browning you posted about recently?
Fell overboard while canoeing recently, right?
jb
Yes...all the way to the bottom and I can't swim. toxic waste ate it up, too.
But if I had not of sold all my guns...
I would have taken
Stainless single-six with both cylinders
Ruger 10/22 with folding stock
ruger redhawk .45 Colt 7.5" barrel
Winchester 1895 405 takedown
Rem 700 in .35 Whelen
"Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world." - Thomas Carlyle
45-70 guide gun (I use it for anything as it is and I already consider it my #1 game getter
Ar-15. (Although the m1a I just acquired is nice , I haven't put enough rounds through it yet
Winchester model 50 auto loading shotgun ( a 870 would suffice too)
Ruger takedown 10/22
Glock 20 10mm
Single six
Oops- just saw the parameters were 1 rim fire, so I'd leave the single 6 at home. For a "goin to town gun" I'd pick my glock 29 for ammo and magazine commonality with the larger 20
In the interest of keeping things a little more traditional, i would
Leave the Guide Gun and Model 50 in place, their perfect
But i could sub in my 20" model 94 in 30/30 in place of that AR
I could easilly sub in my Henry 22 fot the 10/22 - heck, it holds more rounds even unless you use a banana mag in the ruger
A 4" model 66 Smith could sub for the big Glock, and a recently aquired model 19 2.5 would be my "carrying around" gun. I have some Colts that i like better than the Smith's, but i dont mind getting an S&W dirty
I enjoy shooting single actions, but i have far more experience with D-A's and i wouldnt necessarilly be depending on the sidearms for game gettin'
Last edited by Streetstar on Mon Nov 24, 2014 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Hmmm . . . tough choice, but if I were going to live in Alaska, I would have to say I would take . . . well, everything I have now!
I grew up in the bush - no electricity, no roads or cars or even three-wheelers where I was. Went to a one-room school every day by walking down to the beach where a skiff picked us up and took us across the bay to the school. 12 kids in the school, kindergarten through high school. About 50 - 75 people in the town that stayed through winter.
We had a tiny store operational sometimes, and not others. basic cannned goods and stuff. Anything fresh - all meat and vegetables, we had to grow, shoot, or catch. We ordered in bulk stuff like flour and powdered milk (took me a long time to get used to the fast of fresh milk, and I never could stomach right-off-the-farm-fresh milk).
I have since lived, worked, and traveled everywhere in the state except the slope and Kodiak Island.
I can tell you that the guns most of you already own are plenty sufficient for living in Alaska. Growing up, I saw a lot of .30-06s, .30-30s, .303 Brit, 6.5x55, .223, .243, .300 Savage, .348, etc.
You can travel, live, and hunt in Alaska with only a .30-06, and lots of guys have. While I prefer having a heavier rifle like a .45-70 or .50 Beowulf for walking around in some big bruin's berry patch, if I had to be, I would be comfortable with just one gun if it was something like a .35 Whelen, .348 Winchester, or a .30-06. Plus a .22, of course. You have to have a .22.
And while a thousand rounds for each would ensure LOTS of practice, I probably be better off with 2K for the AR and just 500 each for the '86 & 94.
The second year would probably see a change from the '86 to the 7mmRM and a good stock of 175gr pills... but it needs a good scope, er.... once I get one , of course!
Griff,
SASS/CMSA #93
NRA Patron
GUSA #93
There is a fine line between hobby & obsession! AND... I'm over it!!
No I ain't ready, but let's do it anyway!
My Rossi/Ruger .357 set is 99.8% there... the .2% needs Brown Medicine (.454+).
But Ptarmigan can be killed with hand-thrown sticks and .308 is proven, so...
My MBR, .357s and .410 are worlds of plenty - even without a .22.
C2N14... because life is not energetic enough. מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין Daniel 5:25-28... Got 7.62?
Not Depressed enough yet? Go read National Geographic, July 1976 Gott und Gewehr mit uns!
The other rifle would likely be a Marlin 1894 in 45 Colt, OR something in the EBR family. The Marlin would be practical and ammo-compatible with the Redhawk, but somehow it just seems like a family should have some sort of EBR. My choices would be M-1A or AR-15, and with the bigger critters and longer distances up there I might lean towards the M-1A.
On the Charger, I might do the 'SBR' paperwork so I could put on a rifle stock on occasion. With a suppressor, it is quiet, accurate, and fast shooting, but in 'pistol' configuration you need to use the bipod. With a rifle stock it would be pretty cool
Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws "first do no harm" - gun control LAWS lead to far more deaths than 'easy access' ever could.
I actually did just that. I loaded all of my worldly possessions into a boat on a trailer and my stakebed truck and went to the end of the road, Well, one of them. I took a Win94 30-30 and a Win97 12ga.
I raised my kids in bush Alaska, the southeast version. Small village. Reached by air or boat, which means sometimes unreachable. We lived off the land and supplemented with stores in sitka and juneau.
I had one hunting rifle at a time because I couldn't afford to tie up dinero in more than one. I used rifles from 25-20 to 338wm. I had a 44mag sbh with a 10" barrel that made a lot of meat. And I had a 12ga mossburg 500 with two pistol grips for walking the beaches with my wife and kids. By the time I got around to 45/70 I was done hunting, my kids brought in all the meat and didn't want my help! Why should I get to do all the fun stuff?
Now days, following the list, a stainless guide gun with one load, 525gr cast. PTR-91 762X51 for the second rifle. Redhawk 44mag with one load, 405g cast. Ruger auto 22 pistola for the rimfire, and the same mossy with 69gr hard cast round ball.
Why 2 rifles? So the family is fortified while I'm out and about.
Is the wife allowed an allocation for her needs? What about the kids?
Last edited by Grizz on Mon Nov 24, 2014 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Oops- just saw the parameters were 1 rim fire, so I'd leave the single 6 at home. For a "goin to town gun" I'd pick my glock 29 for ammo and magazine commonality with the larger 20
Alaska is the last frontier, land of outlaws and misfits. Screw the rules
Besides, a single-six/10-22 combo is one rimfire pair.
I'd give up something else to have my two rimfires.
"Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world." - Thomas Carlyle
Oops- just saw the parameters were 1 rim fire, so I'd leave the single 6 at home. For a "goin to town gun" I'd pick my glock 29 for ammo and magazine commonality with the larger 20
Alaska is the last frontier, land of outlaws and misfits. Screw the rules
Besides, a single-six/10-22 combo is one rimfire pair.
I'd give up something else to have my two rimfires.
I can (and have) reloaded my .357s with nothing but lead, home-made BP and primers... can't do that with unobtanium .22.
C2N14... because life is not energetic enough. מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין Daniel 5:25-28... Got 7.62?
Not Depressed enough yet? Go read National Geographic, July 1976 Gott und Gewehr mit uns!
Back in the late 40`s or early 50`s I had a adventurist distant cousin go up there to live the life. After a year or three his skeleton was found in his cabin. I have never been there but would like to see it. I would think you would have to be young and healthy. I am 73+ and know it. When I was young I worked in the outdoors, National Park service etc. Also a few similar jobs. One summer (1960) I worked in Yosemite as a fire fighter and blister rust checker for six months. 1961, the Grand Tetons. Glad I did it. For me, I found you can be dropped in the middle of paradise but it can get old quick if you cant get out. That may be just me though, as I am the type that HAS to get out and at least drive to sjghtsee for awhile every day, even if it`s just to lunch in a neighboring town. My thing is to ride the trails here in SW Utah on our RZR as much as possible in good weather. I also own a puddle jumper (citabria) airplane and like to get up once in awhile. We have lived here almost 10 years and I have been on almost every trail in a 70 mile radius mutable times, and there is a lot of `em. For many years as a batchlor, I about lived on a harley on most of my time off.
The point here is I live here in colorful Utah where many people come to see all the National parks from the other side of the world and I get restless and want to see and explore other areas in short order.
Maybe I am just different.
BlaineG wrote:I think you EBR fellers, or any of the semi-autos, are going to be "urinated off" when it won't run right in zero degree weather
Ohhhh! Don't bring that up!
It brings back memories of a certain clientele that we used to have who always wanted to show up and have endless discussions about what would or would not run "when I'm hunting wolves at sixty-below on the Kuskokwim."
I told them it does not matter a bit - when you are dumb enough to be hunting wolves at sixty-below on the Kuskokwim, those same wolves smart enough to be curled up somewhere safe waiting for the weather to change.
Cold is a real consideration for semi-autos, but as long as it is handled right, most semis will run fine.
so do folks degrease them and shoot them dry? that's what I've been told, but it's never been cold enough to stop my guns, at around 5dF they shoot fine.
when it gets to 60 below I'll be curled up with them and we'll both be glad of it.
7.62 Precision wrote:What is very common up here is bolt rifles that fail to fire in sub-zero weather. I hear about it from hunters quite often.
I'm not an expert "anything", but my experience tells me that a bolt misfire is bad maintenance, and a semi misfiring is an eventuality, regardless of the weather. I get dinged for saying this all the time but WD40 will absolutely dry out the water that will freeze, and is thin enough not to slow down in the cold...I mentioned zero....you mentioned 60 below. Two entirely different things, right?
The Rotten Fruit Always Hits The Ground First
Proud Life Member Of:
NRA
Second Amendment Foundation
Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms
DAV
Grizz wrote:so do folks degrease them and shoot them dry? that's what I've been told, but it's never been cold enough to stop my guns, at around 5dF they shoot fine.
when it gets to 60 below I'll be curled up with them and we'll both be glad of it.
Yeah, 60 below means if you are out hunting, you have a pretty good chance of getting dead, and nothing will be out moving anyway. Plus, those temps are pretty rare anywhere people are hunting.
Those guys just say it to sound tough.
Degrease and shoot dry, or use a lube that works in the cold. WD40 can be as bad as anything, because it sits in there and makes a gummy mess over time, and people just shoot more in instead of cleaning it out.
It's gonna be December when I "get there", sooo....
My choice would be to gather up whatever I can SELL out of my collection and use the money to GET HOME to South Florida.
I don't live down here by accident Boys....
Grizz wrote:so do folks degrease them and shoot them dry? that's what I've been told, but it's never been cold enough to stop my guns, at around 5dF they shoot fine.
when it gets to 60 below I'll be curled up with them and we'll both be glad of it.
Yeah, 60 below means if you are out hunting, you have a pretty good chance of getting dead, and nothing will be out moving anyway. Plus, those temps are pretty rare anywhere people are hunting.
Those guys just say it to sound tough.
Degrease and shoot dry, or use a lube that works in the cold. WD40 can be as bad as anything, because it sits in there and makes a gummy mess over time, and people just shoot more in instead of cleaning it out.
It goes without saying that any lube left in place long enough will get gummy. The way it acts long before it gets gummy is my concern. I'm sure there are other products, but the WD will replace moisture, and be thin enough to run in the cold. (I think there is a cold weather CLP mix, but I've never used any). The message is to clean and lube wisely on a regular basis with anything you use.
My Grandfather used 3-1 oil. Normally not horrible stuff, but I got his Browning .22 Auto about 10 years after he had cleaned it last....yellow, waxy gunk throughout. That took some effort to rectify...
The Rotten Fruit Always Hits The Ground First
Proud Life Member Of:
NRA
Second Amendment Foundation
Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms
DAV
7.62 Precision wrote:If I was in S. Florida, I would sell whatever I had to to get back to Alaska. I don't live here by accident . . .
Well Pard....All I can say then is ain't it GREAT that we're BOTH where we most want to be..!!
Good on ya..!!
Of course, I would not be opposed to visiting in the winter, when it's not too hot there . . .
They still running the "Mall of America Shuttle" between AK & MPLS all winter?
I remember a lot of womenfolks wanting that flight to warm up and do some shopping...
C2N14... because life is not energetic enough. מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין Daniel 5:25-28... Got 7.62?
Not Depressed enough yet? Go read National Geographic, July 1976 Gott und Gewehr mit uns!
Baikal 12g/30-06 combo rifle with sub-gauge inserts as a primary hunting arm.
An ak 7.62x39 format folding stock rifle for miscellaneous work.
A .22 pistol. Buckmark or ruger of some flavor.
...Proud owner of the 11.43×23mm automatic using depleted Thorium rounds.
Out of my battery, I would take: Springfield 1903 rebored to 358 Norma with a 6X weaver, 308 Rem. 40X, pump 12 ga. any brand, Freedom Arms 454, Ruger 10/22
7.62 Precision wrote:If I was in S. Florida, I would sell whatever I had to to get back to Alaska. I don't live here by accident . . .
Well Pard....All I can say then is ain't it GREAT that we're BOTH where we most want to be..!!
Good on ya..!!
Of course, I would not be opposed to visiting in the winter, when it's not too hot there . . .
C'mon down..!!!
The worse part of our Winter is that the sea conditions are often too rough for me to take my 23' offshore boat out the inlet for some big-game fishing.
Those are the days I paddle my kayak around some choice spots inshore for Flounder, redfish,snook,trout...etc.
Of course...we also bundle up on those chilly Wintery days..( it gets all the way down into the 40's around here sometimes for overnight lows...!!!!) and enjoy the clear dry days at the range shooting.
Let me know if you get around these parts, we'll put something together.
I would be totally happy with a Bolt Action 30-06 and a Bearcat 22lr. If you insist I will add a 44 Mag. Ruger, a Winchester M 94 in 30-30 and a Remington 870. 12 Ga.
make mine a boat, in an estuary, with a nearby vein of coal and dense alder thickets. I'll pick it up in buckets and stockpile it close to where I'm frozen in. The alder makes good charcoal. I'll be in the little lump of snow with the whisp of smoke . . .
Winchester model 71--.348---250gr Barnes or my 250 cast
Marlin Cowboy--.44 mag---260gr cast
CZ452--.22LR
4 3/4" Ruger Flattop .44 mag---260gr cast
28" Ruger Red Label 20 gauge
That's just going by what's in the safe. But then again, I don't think I'd want anything else!
"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction." - Thomas Jefferson
Thanks for all the responses Guys! Especially Grizz and 7.62!
I'll always wonder what it would have been like, but I'm content here in Northern Ohio with the ability to travel to the places I want to see. Getting too old and fat to move off into the wild permanently these days!
Just a fun experiment.
jb
jasonB " Another Dirty Yankee"
" Tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"
2ndovc wrote:Thanks for all the responses Guys! Especially Grizz and 7.62!
I'll always wonder what it would have been like, but I'm content here in Northern Ohio with the ability to travel to the places I want to see. Getting too old and fat to move off into the wild permanently these days!
Just a fun experiment.
jb
Head to the U.P.....that should suffice....
The Rotten Fruit Always Hits The Ground First
Proud Life Member Of:
NRA
Second Amendment Foundation
Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms
DAV
I can tell you what it has been like for me, but remember that Alaska is a huge place. If you consider the distance between atlantic and pacific oceans, and between the Canadian border and the Gulf of Mexico, that is similar to the distance covered across the face of the earth my Alaska.
Alaska is 2.5 times the size of Texas, but is 3 times the size of Texas when the tide is out. Alaska has more coastline than all the rest of the US put together.
So if you think about the differences in climate and topography and even culture from New York to Alabama, to Montana to Arizona, to Washington, this is like the differences in climate, topography and even cultures within Alaska. Everyone who has visited Alaska once or twice is happy to tell me what Alaska is, but the couple who took a cruise up the inside passage has a much different perspective than the guy who was stationed on Adak, or the tourist who flew to Nome to see the finish of the Iditarod, or the airman who spent three years in Fairbanks, or the guy who worked on the slope, or flew to Dutch to spend 4 months working the slime lines or processing fish in the belly of a factory trawler.
I have lived and worked in fishing villages, logging villages, native villages, villages where there were few natives, in native villages that were open and friendly, and I spent lots of time working and fishing and hunting with, and learning from, Native people of different cultures, and in villages where white people were not welcome - sometimes for no good reason, sometimes for very good reason.
I have known millionaires who lived and worked just like anyone else in the Alaskan bush. I have known people who came to Alaska to run from something, sometimes personal, sometimes criminal. The guys running from a criminal past often find that Alaska is a harder place to hide, because the towns are smaller, the communities closer. I had an friend when I was young who came to Alaska to escape his past - he was from California and had been a bank robber by profession. He was on the FBI's top ten list for many years. I recently flew to Unalakleet with three friends, all former military, to perform a funeral for a quiet old guy I knew there. It was not until he died that we discovered he was a member of the first LRRP team in Vietnam, and went on to be very involved in the special ops community - his name can be found in many of the books written about those types of units - LRRP, MAC-V SOG, Rangers, etc.
I have been friends with people who do incredible things as part of daily living, who think nothing of things that would make the front cover of the magazines, if anyone knew about it. I have friends who spent weeks in a 16 foot skiff drifting around the Bering Sea after they got lost in the fog and ice and ran out of fuel. I have known people who have been shipwrecked, who fought bears with their hands, who lost fingers in rigging and tied the hand up and kept fishing. I knew a family who ended up in the water when their boat sank in really rough weather - a father and two small boys (my parents had given them the child-size survival suits the boys were wearing). I also knew one of the crew members in the Coast guard helicopter that chose to drop a crew member in the water when it was likely they might not recover him, refused to leave when they were low on fuel, and finally set the chopper down on the water to rescue them. As the chopper crossed from the water over the beach at the end of the runway retuning to Sitka, it ran out of fuel.
I know people who have killed polar bears with .22s or have been thrown into icy waters by big bull walrus; who have hidden on ice floes while Russian helicopters tried to machine gun them, and have taken artillery fire from the Siberian coast.
We do crazy things to keep equipment going and get jobs done - in places where a broken fan belt on a piece of equipment can stop a job for a week, flying stuff in strapped to the landing gear of small planes, patching and scavenging and improvising to make things work. We were in a camp once, within sight of the coast of Siberia, laughing about the ridiculous reality shows: the ice trucking show, the tugboat show, the bush flying show, the bush living shows. We found it humorous that all that stuff was just what we went through to get to a job. Then the hard part started.
We deal with laws and regulations that never take Alaskan conditions into consideration. When the department of homeland security and FAA made new regulations that explosives could never be carried on any aircraft, construction in pats of Alaska ground to a halt. The FAA came up with a work-around for Alaska, but not before companies lost millions. When they ruled that oxygen could not be carried on aircraft, elderly people in the bush across alaska were suddenly left without medical oxygen, a much more devastating situation than all the companies that could not use their cutting torches. Obama's ban on avgas, if it ends up standing, will destroy transportation in bush Alaska. Federal law prohibits shooting in hours of darkness, but most blasting on the slope is done in the winter. Congress found out that a village had no roads, so they authorized a project to build city streets. We built streets in a village that has no cars, probably never will have cars, and the residents saw the streets simply as inconvenient speed bumps for their snow machines. That village, with a population of 300, where it would cost $8,000 at least to ship a vehicle to, on an island with nowhere to drive to, will probably never have cars.
I grew up in a bush fishing village, but my father was an explosives engineer, so we lived in a lot of places while he worked jobs. I lived in Paxson when I was one, so I have very few memories of that. We lived in a tent in port Alexander, and We lived in a tent outside of Skagway. We lived in Baranoff Warm Springs and in a tent in Hidden Falls. We lived in Petersburg and in Sitka. But mostly I grew up on a homestead in a fishing village. The population was generally around 50 during the winter and increased to 100 during the fishing season. The school was a one-room school with 12 students of various ages. Since most of the parents who homesteaded there were about the same age, the bulk of the kids were my age and younger.
The village was situated around a bay. The bay closed to a narrow gut, then opened up again, and then closed again to the entrance of a shallow lagoon at the back of the bay. On one side of the bay was most of the infrastructure of the village - the older houses from the teens and '20s when the town had been a boom town, before becoming a ghost town in the '40s., the school, the post office that was in someone's house, the cold storage. There were two docks: the front float in the front part of the bay, the back float in the back part of the bay past the gut, both terminating in an airplane float and lined with wooden trollers, their poles making a forest along the docks, and a wide boardwalk running the length of the town.
On the other side of the bay, apart from a couple houses right on the beach, the houses were new construction, and there were no docks. Boardwalks, where they existed, were single plank boardwalks snaking through the woods - single planks laid end-to-end, usually on pilings just above the ground to 6 feet up, and generally 6 or 8 inches wide, rough-cut from driftwood logs. These boardwalks kept our feet out of the muskeg and allowed the use of wheelbarrows to carry stuff up from the beach.
On this side of the bay, everyone kept skiffs moored to outhauls that were used to travel around town, and some people had little punts that they would pull out of the water and drag up the beach. We would walk down the boardwalk to the beach, pull the skiff in with the outhaul, and go across the bay. Kids put on lifejackets when leaving the house just like they put on their coats.
During the school year, kids on the other side of the bay would walk to school on the boardwalk. On our side of the bay, we would all walk down to the beach to wait for the school skiff. In the grey dawn we would stand on the snowy beach in our lifejackets, stomping our rubber-boot-clad feet to keep them warm, throwing rocks and waiting for the skiff. Sometimes there would be floating driftwood logs, tied end to end, stretching out into the bay that one of the families had towed into town with their skiff for firewood. We would dare each other to see who was brave enough to walk farther out on the logs than the others. When the skiff nosed into the beach, we would pile in the skiff for the trip across and down the bay to the back float.
The school was one room and brightly lit with electricity from a diesel generator in an outbuilding. The fuel was provided by the state, as was a single telephone in a added-on room in the outside of one families house, of use in emergencies. The coatroom was lined with lifejackets hanging from hooks and rubber boots lining the walls. There was one teacher and a teacher's aid. The teacher and students built a playground out of driftwood logs when I was in third grade. We all had fun during recesses swinging axes and hammers - try that with third-graders in the Lower 48 and see where you get . . .
My father built the house we lived in next to a creek, just above a waterfall. The creek came down the mountain from a spring and it was clean, fresh water. When we needed water, I took a bucket down to the creek and filled it amongst the moss-covered rocks. When I was five, my dad bought me a hatchet, and I used that hatchet in the winter to chop through the ice to get water, the ice chips stinging my face. In the spring, the snow melted and the rain came non-stop and the creek turned yellow and swollen and roared so loud that we had to raise our voices to be heard. Huge mounds of foam swirled in the pool below the waterfall.
Later, my dad ran a black 1" plastic pipe all the way up the creek to the the spring, and laying on the bottom of the creek, it never froze and provided running water by gravity to a sink in the kitchen.
The house was a frame house using spruce logs as posts and rafters, built on pilings. Firewood was stored under the house, and rabbits were in a lean-to shed off the side of the house. Two chicken coops provided eggs and meat, and behind the house were several gardens and a greenhouse.
There was no electricity, of course. We used kerosene lamps for light, and occasionally when my dad was working on something that he needed good light for, he would fire up a Coleman lantern, and we children would all run around an dance and play in the incredibly bright light.
My mom washed clothes in a washtub with a washboard for a couple years, then my dad bought her an old wringer washer and a little Homelite generator to run it with, so she would go outside and fire up the generator then wash clothes. The generator was shut down by shorting the spark plug with a screwdriver or something, and she always seemed to find a way to shock herself, so I started shutting it down for her.
Heat came from a barrel stove in the middle of the house, backed up to a wood cookstove in the kitchen. A wood cookstove makes the best bread you have ever tasted, for some reason, but it is more works, since the temperature is controlled by feeding the fire and adjusting vents and dampers.
I slept under the tin roof, and the rain drumming on the roof put me to sleep many nights. In the mornings in the summer the house was cool and fresh and I loved going downstairs to watch the light of the rising sun illuminating the mountains above the house through the large living room windows. The widows were old multi pain windows that came from a ruined house in town, and there was a couch in front of the windows made from an upholstered wooden pew from the ruins of an old church. Before those windows were installed the windows were all made of visqueen, and my mom kept a shotgun handy for any bear that might come through a window to join us for breakfast. As long as we lived there, we still had at least a couple small windows that were visqueen.
In the winter, we would wake up and stay under our quilts and listen to my dad downstairs building a fire until we heard the fire roaring in the barrel stove, then we would all go down the ladder and huddle against the stove until the house warmed.
Every year before the snow, we would spend days roaming the muskeg up on the side of the mountain looking for a perfect bull pine for a Christmas tree. Once we found it, we would wait until it was time, and then go up in the snow and cut it down. Since we did not have electricity, we used candles on the tree. Nothing is more beautiful than a Christmas tree covered in candles, and nothing has to be watches so closely, either, so it was only lit on very special occasions.
In the summer, I spent most of my time on the beach. That part of the world is incredible in the ocean and intertidal life. The beaches and tide pools burst with color; red, green, purple, orange orange starfish, bright sea anemones of every color, mottled sculpins, striped pin-point gunnel heads, bright red hermit crabs in moon snail shells, purple and green beach crabs, and the octopuses, which change color based on their moods.
We observed the tide pool life, flipped over rocks, leaned over the sides of the dock to watch ocean life, and there was always some man walking by who would stop and peer into the water or kneel beside a tide pool with us and share his knowledge of ocean life. Later when I was in high school (in a huge city of 5,000 people) my biology teacher was astounded at my knowledge of marine life. He said, "You must have taken some kind of course - did you take some marine biology workshop at a college?"
I told him, "No, instead of watching TV, I spent my whole life watching animals in tide pools."
We had no TVs, no video games, no movies, no computers. Our knowledge of movies came from the characters that festooned the sides of our metal lunch pails, so we made up our own stories about them. We had no interest in professional sports at all. We thought cars were dumb, and all talked about the kind of boats we would have when we grew up. What we cared about were boats and fish, tides and berries, and guns and tools.
I have carried a knife and a lighter since I was five. My dad bought me a hatchet when I was five as well, and I used my own allowance, combined with my dad's money, to buy a brass-barreled Benjamin Franklin pellet rifle, which put the other kids' BB guns to shame. We bragged about our fathers - whose dad was the better fisherman, whose dad had the most powerful rifle. As 8-year-olds we argued the advantages of different hull designs and discussed salmon runs. We caught fish for our families on our own and carved toy boats from wood and fishing floats. When one friend and I were eight, and another friend was nine, we cut down a tall spruce and built a small two-story cabin. My friends dad would not let us use the chainsaw for cutting down the tree, so we had to use axes, but once it was down, he gave us the chainsaw and work went quicker. The cabin was a bit wider at the top than it was at the bottom, but we were proud of it. It had a peaked roof, a door and window, a ladder to the upstairs, and a counter with a basin.
That summer we also built a big raft out of large driftwood logs with a cabin on it made from driftwood planks and scraps of plywood. The girls in town wanted to decorate the cabin and hang curtains in its windows, but we tolerated it, and waited for the tide to come in to float it. My 9-year-old friend had a dinky 20-something-foot plywood-hull troller that his father had given him, with a little hand-cranked diesel engine. We all took exhausting turns cranking the engine till it started, and then towed the raft off the beach at high tide and spent days towing it around the bay, loaded with kids.
We all had a lot of freedom, and when school was out we ranged miles from town, walking up and down the coastline, around the back lagoon, up the creek and on the sides of the mountains. This was all at ages where most parents won't let their kids go the the bathroom by themselves. Often we provided our own meals,starting fires on the beach and cooking what we found under rocks and in tide pools. We left our houses in the mornings and returned in the evenings and ate on the beach or at whatever kid's house we were near when we got hungry.
We ordered in bulk non-perishables like flour and powdered milk from Seattle through a store in Petersburg, shipped to Sitka and then on to us. The mail plane came in once a week at first and then later landed on the bay two times a week. Any other planes that came in were charter planes. The only way to travel in and out was by floatplane or boat, and the nearest hospital was at least two hours out from when an emergency call went out. To this day I look up at every plane that flies over, just like you would look out at any car that pulled into your driveway.
All perishables were hunted, fished, or grown. If they were not eaten right away, or kept frozen in a shed or porch in the winter, they were canned. Our pantry was stacked floor to ceiling with canned venison, bear, salmon, and halibut, as well as vegetables and berries. I was three when I skinned my first deer. I remember my dad coming home in the dark, his dark green rain gear dripping water. He stood in the doorway and shucked the cartridges out out his Model 71 Winchester and I scrambled to pick up the .348 cartridges from the wooden floor. Then he carried the deer in, and hung it from a rafter. He skinned it down to where I could reach, and then gave me a knife and I went to town. I don't know how much he helped, but I am sure it was quite a bit, but in my mind I had skinned that deer - a great accomplishment.
In the summers we picked blueberries, salmonberries, and huckleberries. In some places we picked raspberries, but there weren't any in this town. My parents paid me by the pint, in an effort to motivate me to get some past my mouth and into canning jars. We grew carrots and strawberries, potatoes and rutabagas, peas and cabbage and lettuce. A greenhouse allowed us to grow things like tomatoes.
My dad fished when work was short, hand-lining for halibut out of a skiff, and we fished for subsistence, hunted, and gardened. In those days, kids got their own tags, so each member of the family, regardless of age, could take 5 deer where we were. Life and death and the understanding that something dies so we can live were a part of growing up, as were a respect for those creatures that we ate and a strong value for the food we took. Wasting of fish or game meat was unforgivable, and if your dog was seen running a deer, someone would shoot it.
Many people in that village were fairly liberal in politics, but everyone had firearms and lived a substance lifestyle. Big magnums were not really popular, and most people had .30-06s, .30-30s, .308s, and my dad, of course, hunted almost exclusively with a .348 Winchester. Hunting was for meat, not trophies, and with a practicality that would horrify hunting magazine writers, shots were taken that were too long, not perfect, etc. When you are out of food and your family is hungry, pragmatism takes over and all the lofty talk of never taking the shot that isn't perfectly guaranteed to result in a humane, one shot kill seems pretty silly.
The village was predominantly a white village. There was one native family in town, but they were not considered or treated any different from anyone else, nor did they view us any differently.
Life in a small village can be hard in some ways. There are few secrets, and little privacy. Once, money was short and my dad had just gone out on a job. It was my birthday, and my mom had ordered just a few small presents. She had enough to make two small cakes, one for a small party, and one for our family to eat later. She invited a couple families with kids who were my closest friends. On the day of the party, people began to arrive and kept arriving. Soon the house was crowded with every family that had children and some that did not. My mom cut the cakes into tiny little squares so everyone could have a bite. She organized games for the different age groups of children and stressed over the fact that she didn't have anything to serve so many people. My presents were used as prizes for the games, and soon there was a boisterous party. To my mom, that was a hard day, but everyone left happy, and I have good memories of that day, and it is a good illustration of both the good and bad of living in a small close community.
People can be blunt and cruel, and too familiar. People will borrow your stuff without asking, and sometimes forget to return it. On the other hand, there are the times when the community comes together to help family, watch out for and feed each other's kids. There was the time when my mom was expecting a baby, my dad had gone out of town on a job that wasn't paying yet, and we were severely short on food, especially meat, and my mom, fighting anemia, needed meat. We opened the door one cold winter morning to find a skinned and gutted deer hanging on our porch.
Alaska is the last frontier, land of outlaws and misfits. Screw the rules 
