Almost There..

This is a short article I wrote in December of 2006, when living in Sitka, Alaska. It’s a description of how I made it through the winter. I miss it.

I have a way of getting through the dark months here in Sitka. And it has everything to do with events that come dependably marching along each year. Starting with Fall, it’s the last cruise ship to leave Sitka. This joyous event happens in early September. I know that our economy is dependent to a debatable degree to tourism dollars, there have been so many of them on a daily basis, that I am personally glad to see the last one get on the ship and disappear around the channel islands and over the western horizon.
The next event I lock onto as a waypoint on my way to next Spring is November. There’s a lot going on just before and during November, that requires planning on our part. First, the church Harvest party. This is planned for the kids of our church as an alternative to Trick-or Treating. But before you start hating me for depriving my kids of THAT tradition, know that usually it’s raining/sleeting/snowing by then, and winds rarely abate to less than 15 knots. And they actually accrue more pounds of candy and treats per hour than a good night trick or treating anyway, so everybody wins. We will occasionally go over to the Coast Guard Base housing, where a kid can hit 50+ households in less than an hour and do well in the candy harvest. I think one year, the base actually subsidized the residents, as it’s popular to the rest of Sitka residents as well.
Then the first week of November, which hosts my wife’s birthday. She turned 40 this year, which made it even more memorable. Some of her close friends kidnapped her for the day and treated her to coffee, lunch, manicure, gifts, etc. I wish I had such friends.. Because my birthday comes along later in the month. Which puts us close to our next season-tracking waypoint, Christmas. We have had to start preparing and ordering gifts earlier in the month so there is little rest until Christmas.
I’ll break into the description of my season tracking method to describe other things that keep us busy during this time:
We heat our home with wood, so that is an ongoing process throughout the year. I have learned that pallets used to ship goods onto the island we live on dead end here. Sitka doesn’t produce anything that merits strapping it to a pallet and shipping it away, so pallets are plentiful just about everywhere. And the majority of them are made of kiln dried low-quality oak. Which by the way does not grow here. We burn spruce, hemlock, and other scrub conifers, so we don’t enjoy the heat and long burning characteristics of oak or other hardwoods very often. BUT, I can stack 7 or 8 pieces of oak pallet wood in the stove, and it burns longer and hotter than the local woods I have to cut, split and stack. I can ‘harvest’ enough pallet wood in 1.5 hours to burn for two or three days, free. Whatever doesn’t go in the wood stove, gets burned in our fire pit in the backyard, where we can sit around in the evenings when the weather is good and enjoy a bonfire.
Another activity that we depend on is deer hunting, or more appropriately, harvesting. (Noticing a trend here?) We live in what’s called a ‘subsistence area’, which means we can harvest larger numbers of black-tail deer. Four per family member to be exact. Now I’d never need that many deer, for a season, but to put it in perspective, after mid August or September, if hunting has been good, we stop buying red meat until mid-spring. And the venison here tastes so good, mostly because the deer range from mountain top to shoreline for feeding. So through the year they browse through mountain meadows, old growth forests, and beach grasses and seaweeds.
And the younger, the better. The state fish and game department encourages taking the younger deer once it starts getting cold, as they are less likely to survive our sometimes very cold winters. (I’ll sometimes cook an entire hindquarter of a smaller deer, bone-in, as it’s so tender and juicy!) By the way, this year Iain shot his first deer.
Another activity that we enjoy that starts mid-December is small mammal trapping. Iain and I started doing this with a close friend three years ago. Now Iain has his own traps, and this year will run his own trap line. And we’ll do this through mid-February. Mink hides will bring 50-70 dollars each at auction, and marten or ‘sable’ as it’s called once it’s used in a fur product will bring even more. It can be cold, hard work but it gets us outside together which is worth every minute for me.
So this gets us past another waypoint, which is Winter Solstice, which is mid-December. This may not mean much to folks down south, but to us, it means that the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer. Daylight is a commodity here that we trade for anything we can do outdoors. And there are so many things to do outdoors here.
So trapping through February spits us out at March’s front door. About this time our allotment of sunshine per day is noticeably longer. On sunny days, even if it’s cool out families will start hanging out at Sandy Beach, which is really only sandy at low tide. But it’s wide open and seems to funnel in the warmth of the sunshine. (One thing you notice here is that many people will plan their weekend and most daily activities around the tide tables.)
Then before you know it, April sneaks in. This is when we get our checks from the fur auctions, and usually stretches of sunny weather lasting two or three days. It will warm up to mid-50’s, great for hikes up into the hills, and fishing starts full swing around this time.
Just before May 1st everyone is remembering why they stay here from one year to the next, and while we’re not looking, the first of a long parade of different sizes and shapes of cruise ships slides into the harbor and drops anchor.
Bingo, made it through winter without a scratch!