Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier

The past week has ebbed and flowed with both activity and pure laziness. I find myself settling into the slower pace of autumn, and trying to mentally prepare for the onset of winter.

The trees in my yard are now totally bare, and the ground is covered with dull brown leaves. Gone are the beautiful golden canopies which shaded the yard from the sun. My world is becoming “plain” again, with muted colors of brown, tan, and gray.

A few days ago, my outside thermometer read 29F. I didn’t see any frost on my deck plants, and my sunflowers were still doing OK, although the leaves seemed to be drooping. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the cold came and killed off all the flowers. That cold came last night.

I woke to a sugar coating of frost on my deck plants, my sunflowers, and the ground. I almost lost my footing when I went out to take photos of my flowers; the deck was slippery too.  You’d never know that the morning was so chilly, as the sun is shining brightly now and it feels like a typical autumn day.  As I type this, it’s 44F, but it feels much warmer with the sun shining. I just wish the trees still had their leaves. Then I could pretend it was still early fall, and we had several weeks ahead of us before the first snow falls.

Here are a few photos I took this morning:

My poor sunflowers. One bloomed and has faded, and the other hasn’t had a chance to fully open:

Last Thursday, I took a drive with my friend Lisa. Lisa’s husband Charlie is deployed, and she works during the week, but she had Thursday and Friday off. Our travels took us to Denali Park, where we drove into mile 30. Unfortunately, the foliage was well past peak, and skies were overcast. We didn’t see one animal, nor did we see the mountain.

On the way to Denali, we stopped in Nenana to visit the Native Cemetery which is situated high on a hill overlooking the Tanana River.  I had stopped here once before, with Steve, in the early summer months and was quite taken with the beauty of the cemetery, with its rolling hills and narrow pathways which wind between the gravesites.

On Thursday, the cemetery was particularly beautiful. The trees provided a golden-orange umbrella over the individual graves. A slight breeze blew,  severing the bond of hundreds of leaves from the branches. They fell slowly - twirling and spinning like huge pieces of confetti. The only sound was that of the wind, rustling in the trees.

Most of the graves were surrounded by picket fences.  I’ve found this to be quite common in Alaska. I did a little online research in an attempt to find an explanation for these fences. In some cemeteries (particularly in the western US), the fences were erected to keep coyotes away. Perhaps that’s the same reason here? To keep wolves or fox from traipsing across the gravesite?  I also read that in some cemeteries, the gravesites were fenced to give the appearance of private property or personal space;  much like you would fence the property where your house stands.

Here are a few photos I took at the Nenana Native Cemetery:

Some of the graves had to be moved, back in the 20s, so that the railroad could be built. One of my favorite websites for researching Alaska history is the SLED - Statewide Library Electronic Doorway site. From there you can connect to Alaska’s Digital Archives. From the site: “Alaska’s Digital Archives presents a wealth of historical photographs, albums, oral histories, moving images, maps, documents, physical objects, and other materials from libraries, museums and archives throughout our state.”

I found this photo of the cemetery, which was taken shortly after they moved some graves to make way for the railroad.

The largest marker/memorial in the cemetery is a huge concrete Celtic cross which marks the resting place of Miss Annie Cragg Farthing.

(Here is an old photo of the above memorial from the Alaska Digital Archives)

I did some online searching for information about Miss Farthing, and found this incredible account of her life here. Here’s an abridged version of what I read there. You can read the entire account, by clicking on the link.

Annie Cragg Farthing

In the list of missions started by Mr. Bet-ticher, that at Nenana was mentioned. It has grown into one of the most important enterprises of the Church in Alaska, and brings on the scene one of the most notable of the many notable women who have been connected with the Alaskan mission, Miss Annie Cragg Farthing, sister of the present Bishop of Montreal.

Her first quinquennium of service was divided amongst different stations; she took the place of a worker at Anvik out on furlough; she was colleague of Miss Lizzie Woods at Circle City; when the Fairbanks hospital was started she became housekeeper there. But upon returning to Alaska for another period she was given charge of the newly-established mission at Nenana…

…For a long time there had been need of a native boarding school situated in the central part of the interior of Alaska. The school at Anvik was too far away, and the language there spoken differed widely from the language of the middle Yukon; parents were loath to send their children so far. Miss Farthing began such a school in a log cabin on the bank of the Tanana River, just above its confluence with the Nenana, in the fall of 1907. With five thousand dollars secured from the Men’s Thankoffering made at the General Convention of 1907 a large house was built to serve as a dormitory during the next summer, and St. Mark’s mission tract was laid out and outbuildings constructed. Thus there came into being an institution which has had a powerful effect upon numbers of young Indians, both male and female…

…It is no exaggeration to say that Miss Farthing’s work has left a mark broad and deep upon the Indian race of this whole region that will never be wiped out. The writer on his journeys among the Indian missions found that a visit to Nenana was a cure for the discouragement that must sometimes come to all those who are committed heart and soul to the cause of the Alaskan native. To see tall, upstanding fellows of sixteen and seventeen, clean-limbed and broad-shouldered, wild-run all their lives, unaccustomed to any restraint at all and prone to chafe at the slightest; unaccustomed to any respect for women, to any of the courtesies of life–to see them fly at a word, a look, to do her bidding, to see them jump up and hold open the door if she moved to pass out of a room, to see the eager devotion that would have served her upon bended knee had they thought it would please her, was wonderful…

…When early in the school’s history an old medicine man at Nenana had been roused to animosity by her refusal to countenance an offensive Indian custom touching the adolescent girls, and had defiantly announced his intention to make medicine against her, she resolutely, staff in hand, attended by two or three of her devoted youths, invaded the midnight pavilion of the conjurer in the very midst of his conjurations, tossing his paraphernalia outside, laying her staff smartly across the shoulders of the trembling shaman, and driving the gaping crew helter-skelter before her, their awe of the witchcraft overawed by her commanding presence. It gave a shrewder blow to the lingering tyrannical superstition of the medicine man than decades of preaching and reasoning would have done. No man living could have done the thing with like effect, nor any woman save one of her complete self-possession and natural authority. The younger villagers chuckle over the jest of it to this day, and the old witch-doctor himself was crouching at her feet and, as one may say, eating out of her hand, within the year…

…Miss Farthing’s death was in keeping with her self-sacrificing resolute life. There was a Canadian half-breed of those parts who was determined to secure one of Miss Farthing’s Indian girls in marriage; Miss Farthing was determined that he should not secure her, as much because of the girl’s tender age as of the wild drunken character of the man, who procured clandestine liquor continually from an unscrupulous trader near by. One dark cold night in November, 1910, Miss Farthing was awakened by a thundering beating on the door. Arising and opening, she was confronted by this man, flown with drink and with a gun in his hand, who told her he had come to kill her because she would not let him have the girl. “You may kill me if you like, but you shan’t have that girl,” she replied. Her wits about her, the dauntless lady succeeded in pacifying him somewhat and in taking his gun away from him, and then, because the night was bitterly cold and she thought he might freeze to death in his intoxicated condition, she let him stay in the hallway and gave him some blankets to lie upon–by this time maudlin in his regrets. The children, some of whom had been awakened by the noise, were sent back to bed, and the man passed the night in the hall, and in the morning, thoroughly abashed and ashamed, was given some breakfast. When she was remonstrated with for refusing to prefer a criminal charge against him she replied, “I will never allow it to be said that I am afraid of any native; he won’t come again.”

On the heels of this incident there followed a period of double labour and intense anxiety. Because a nurse who had volunteered for the hospital at Fairbanks had drawn back and failed when it was too late to procure another, it was deemed necessary to withdraw the nurse from Nenana to take her place. That left only Miss Farthing and the teacher at the mission. A child fell sick and grew rapidly worse. Miss Farthing attended to her domestic duties all day and sat up nursing the child most of the night for the best part of a week, refusing in her masterful way, to let the teacher share her vigil. “I won’t have you sleepy in the schoolroom,” she said. One night as it grew towards morning she made her way heavily upstairs and awoke one of the larger boys, bidding him come down as she felt ill. He jumped up and dressed hastily, noticing with what difficulty she went down again. When he was with her she asked him to open the door and help her out on the porch. It was a mild morning and just at the earliest dawn. Here she sat down on the steps and he beside her. She told him that she was praying to God to send someone to look after her children, and with that her head fell on the boy’s shoulder and she became unconscious. It was her last utterance. Telegrams were sent at once to Fairbanks, nurse and doctor started without delay and made the journey of seventy-five miles without stopping, but when they arrived Miss Farthing was gone–and the little sick child was gone too. An autopsy revealed a clot of blood on the brain, and the doctor said she must have had some severe shock. The midnight ruffian with his gun and his threats was doubtless shock enough, and the intense strain that followed had, no doubt, its part in the fatal issue.

We begged her body from her brother (who had telegraphed instructions for its shipment to Canada), knowing her expressed soldier’s wish to lie where she might fall, and we buried her high up on the bluff overlooking the mission, the little child beside her, within sight on a clear day of that Mt. Denali (or McKinley) upon which she loved to gaze; and we reared a Celtic cross of concrete on the spot.

On that November day God took to himself a very noble gentlewoman and a great missionary. The Alaskan mission has not, I think, a dollar of endowment, but in the life and death of Annie Cragg Farthing has nobler riches than any amount of money can represent. Her spirit has impressed itself upon the school, has, in large measure, entered into each of her successors, and although at this writing ten years have passed since her death, she yet lives powerfully in memory and influence.

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On the way back from Denali, Lisa and I stopped to have lunch at Rose’s Cafe, located on the Parks Highway near Healy. It was my first time eating at Rose’s, but not Lisa’s. I ordered turkey and swiss on toasted whole wheat bread. It was delicious! Lisa had a cheeseburger, which she enjoyed too.

I glanced over at a family eating at the table next to us and noticed a little boy eating a pancake. This was no ordinary pancake, and now I know why the price for this pancake was $5. There was only one, but it was the size of a pizza, and at least 3/4″ thick, if not more. The boy made good work of half of the pancake, but his family members had to help him finish it.

When we finished our meal, we continued home to Fairbanks, but decided to take a spur-of-the-moment drive on the Stampede Road. Once called the Stampede Trail, this road was carved out of the wilderness by early miners working the area’s Kantishna gold fields and antimony mine. The Stampede Road gained notoriety more recently when John Krakauer’s best-selling book, Into The Wild, was published. This is the same road that young Christopher McCandless, the subject of the book, took to enter the wild, but never returned.

The road is paved for the first couple of miles and then goes to gravel. Initially the gravel isn’t too bad, but as we drove further, the road became even more potholed and washboard. We had to travel at a crawl to keep from breaking anything on Lisa’s truck, and the ride was quite bumpy. In fact, it was so bumpy, that I actually felt myself getting a little carsick!

We reached an area where we found quite a few trucks and trailers parked. Being that it is hunting season, we knew that hunters had dropped their main vehicles here, and continued onward on their 4-wheelers. We turned around and retraced our route back to the Parks Highway. Here are some of the views from the Stampede Road:

We didn’t get back to Fairbanks until after 8pm. It was a long and wonderful day of girl talk and beautiful scenery. I really enjoyed myself, and hope that Lisa and I can do it again sometime.

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This past weekend, the majority of our military families said goodbye to their soldiers, as they headed off to Iraq for another year-long deployment. It’s so quiet on post without the soldiers here, and I know they are missed in the civilian community too. I had to run a few errands on post, and as I drove towards the front gate, my eyes filled with tears when I saw the deployment banners hanging on the fence. It’s been three years since Steve deployed, but those feelings of worry and sadness will never be forgotten.

Godspeed to our Stryker Brigade!