#25: So WHY Are You Going To Skagway In The Wintertime?

_______________________________________________________

IT'S CHRISTMAS 2018, and my normal outlay of decorations are conspicuously absent. No cedar boughs on the patio rail, only a bare-bones light string, a mix-match at that, with no attempt at artistry but embarrassingly tacky. Indoors, I have but one tree, the tiny one. Bubble lights on the mantel, the standard creche. No Bedford Falls village with its street lights and pond where Harry nearly drowned, and icicles hanging off the roof of Bailey Building and Loan. I find it all so understated that the Christmas mood of 2018 evades. Ah, but into the vacuum rushes a thrill far more exciting. I'm going to Skagway three days after Christmas! There is simply no time to take down all my decorations and pack. And I'm sure as heck not going to take it all down in March when I get back. Hence the stripped-down attempt at holiday cheer in favor of the adventure ahead.

"So why do you think Skagway in the winter is a good idea?" friends ask.

Miss Bea and Be (me)
at her summer cabin in Carcros, YK

Well, coffee with the gang down at the Station. Knitwits every Saturday at Grandma Ginny's for another. Good music from "Jess and J-Dot" and "One-Juan Stand." Miss Bea, of course, the last gold rush baby. If I remember right, the story goes that her father was a gambler in the Gold Rush of 1898. At some point he gambled away the house. Miss Bea's mother left the guy and moved to Juneau. Some years later, Miss Bea's father made good and got either his old house back or made enough to buy a new one. He sent word to Juneau and Miss Bea's mother hopped the ferry and came back. Guess what? Miss Bea was born--circa 1920s--the very last of the gold rush babies.

Alice's room: the front upstairs room
 with all the windows

I'm anxious, too, to see if the ghost who lives (or used to live) in the bedroom above the Skagway Inn's dining room is sound asleep in the great big bed between the floor mirror and bed stand, with a diary from 1898 on top of it. Or whether she truly did "get on with her death" like I suggested she do. She did follow me out of the Inn the summer of 2011, but abandoned me the minute I crossed the street and told her that my boss (yes, I called my boss, not knowing what else to do with her) suggested I invite her to down to the HAP office. Whoosh. She was gone just like that. And in all the summers that followed, I haven't found her. If she's still there, maybe she and I can have a nightcap of Jack Daniels and toast the mysteries of the past.

Lynn Canal, Skagway AK

copyright Jaime Goebel 2018

Owner AK Green Jeeps

and Southeast Tours
Used by permission.

I want to tromp out to Smuggler's Cove, too, to see if the eagles are out. To see the sun glance of Lynn Canal in the afternoon light. To see if I can find a fox trail.

I want borrow a four-wheel jeep and go out to the once-upon-a-time Dyea Gold Rush town, where 20,000 people prepared for the ridiculously steep Chilkoot Trail and gold beyond, now just one propped up wall of a real estate office. My understanding is that the National Parks Service has cleared a few of the hemlock and Sitka Spruce from the natural forest reclamation of the last 120 years to expose the old grid of streets so one might get a better sense of history. To snowshoe in the shadows is a number one adventure to be had. 

Tim Saulter

Of course I want to catch Senior Lunch at the "White" church every other day, where Tim Saulter cooks up enough food to take some home. A guy who describes himself as a hairy Pillsbury Doughboy, Tim is a self-confessed admirer. But while I'm highly amused by him and can at times take advantage of his generosity and find his friendship one I'd be loath to lose, I don't share the same ardor. I try to tell him not to take it personally: I find most men unappealing. In 66 years, my heart has gone thumpity-thump but twice--both men finding someone else to marry. "Mitty" takes my apathy with good humor, and lunch at the white church is something I look forward to. It's where all the cool "old" people hang out and the best stories are told.

The real adventure, though, is the dog-mushing. A friend is coming up to visit in January and a whole  gaggle of us girls in town are going with her--one more thing on just about everyone's bucket list.

#22: What DO People Do In Winter?

(reposted from January 1, 2013)

You Say Tomato, across the street from my studio

Skagway in the winter is an interesting place to be, and I’ve been here since Thanksgiving—the idea being that it’s just as easy to look for nonexistent work in Alaska as it is in the Lower 48.  A few years ago, my son Blake introduced me to Skagway and seasonal work, driving motor coaches full of tourists into the highways and byways of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon.

Anyway, so here I am after three seasons, trying out Skagway in the wintertime. I’m keeping myself busy working on my book Skagway: It's All About The Gold and applying for everything from park ranger to police dispatcher to bank teller—and the usual office administrator and web design positions. All the while, I’m immersing myself in the history of the 1897 Gold Rush, reading, writing, drawing, my creative nature for the first time in years surging forth. I wake up each morning in the dark, wind howling outside; go to bed at night in the dark, wind howling outside. (They were not exaggerating when referencing this wind!) Rarely have I been happier. And it’s occurred to me that Skagway’s 1,000,000 summer tourists might be interested in what this place is like in the frozen dark months. What the heck do people do in the wintertime? How do they get through the day with a smile on their faces?

One of the things they do is socialize.

Arizona Lunchbox, a long way from home

I arrived on Thanksgiving. The room I’d rented at Windy Valley Lodge (a once-upon-a-time motel remodeled into apartments across the street from You Say—actually, You Say Tomato; I’m giving you the local lingo here) was not available as expected. Not for a few days anyway. What to do? Did I say they weren’t kidding around about the wind up here? Temperatures below zero, snow everywhere, wind punching down off the pass. I sat shivering in my car, my faux-fur-lined jacket meaningless, watching the boughs of Sitka spruce whip and snap. Mitty! I could call my buddy Mitty.

I’d met Tim Saulter while working for Alaska Excursions the summer of 2010. He’s a year-round resident. With shaking, numb fingers I poked at his name in my cell phone.

“Sure, come on over!” he boomed, talking tightly around his ever-present baby cigar.

I was once sick while driving for HollandAmerica-Princess…could hardly talk for the barbed-wire ball lodged in my throat. “Mitty,” I’d texted, “Can you go buy me some throat lozenges?” Half-hour later showed up at my hotel room (HollandAmerica housed us in the old Westmark, two to a room, kitchen and free laundry down the hall for a measly $196 a month—love, love, love that company) with a grocery bag full of stuff that he tumbled onto my bed. Throat lozenges, EmergenC, ginger root, fruit popsicles, mixed nuts. “What do I owe you?” I mouthed.

“Nothing."

Knowing I could count on him three years later, I drove over to the corner of State and 15th in the biting cold. This is how we identify residences here. No street numbers, no mail delivery. “I live across from You Say.” “I live on the corner of State and 15th.” “I live behind the Molly Walsh Park.”

"Mitty" Tim Saulter cooking for the senior citizens

Tight quarters at Mitty’s. In winter, he cooks lunch three times a week for the senior citizens. His living room is a storage room for a winter’s worth of canned peaches, boxes of pasta, sacks of flour and rice. Floor to ceiling. This is where you'll head should World War III break out. It’s also the place to be when you have no place else to go.

But Mitty barely had time to buzz my cheek with a kiss and mumble around his cigar “make yourself at home” before flying out the door to Thanksgiving dinner. Like I said, everyone socializes. Being Thanksgiving, all my friends were over at someone else’s house. Lonely, but not lonely, I poked around and opened up a can of Mitty's tomato soup.

SO THIS IS SKAGWAY. This is where you never go homeless, where you never go hungry, where friends move over and let you have their bed. Even it means they have to sleep on a camping cot next to a bicycle next to a crate next to a freezer.

I'm learning what folks do during the winter. And I like it.