It’s Kind of a Big Deal: A Day at the Arctic Circle

I arrived at milepost 115 of the Dalton Highway at 11:30 am to be greeted by a dozen others who had clearly begun their day much earlier than I. I, after all, was travelling just 60 miles south from Coldfoot; whereas everyone else had traveled 200 miles north from Fairbanks along a, better than expected, gravel road built in 1974 in order to construct the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

 

I’ve been travelling to, and beyond, the Arctic Circle since the summer of 2000. Several hundred of those trips were as a guide, while several dozen were as a traveler myself. Beyond the Arctic Circle sits an amazing piece of Alaska where few (an arguable term, of course, but used here as a comparison with other more popular travel destinations) have ventured. The Brooks Range, The North Slope and Arctic Coastal Plain, an unimaginable wilderness, yet for many the Arctic Circle remains the destination. 

I hesitate to describe the actual Arctic Circle in detail for fear it will distract from people going on their own mission of discovery. It is, basically, a wayside along the highway; only a few hundred feet separates it from the highway’s edge. Luckily a stand of trees cushions the noise of passing semi-trucks, which lumber by without much notice of the place’s significance. Two outhouses, several picnic tables, and fire rings are nestled neatly in the trees along the far side of the wayside. But the most significant feature is the sign, a sign the lets you and everyone who views your photos in the future know that you were here, not just anywhere, but here, at the Arctic Circle, 200 miles from Fairbanks, thousands of miles from anywhere in the lower 48, standing at 66°33’ north latitude, along the only road that crosses the Arctic Circle in the entire United States. We shouldn’t forget that many more thousands of people fly across the Arctic Circle every year, but those unlucky folks never get to take a picture by the sign. Instead, they must return with stories of a ceremonial Arctic Circle crossing in the air, only GPS, a non-existent line and the pilot’s word as guarantee. But here, people take a photo, share a story, maybe make a new friend, and turn back to Fairbanks or, the determined few, continue north toward Coldfoot.

 

Today, my summer fling in the Brooks Range, sent me south from Coldfoot to count the number of people who ventured north to this one notable, or at the very least photographable, sign.

 

I’ve often thought this was more than a check-it-of-the-list destination; however, I am uncertain what more it could be. Like all places we take the time to get to, I imagine it holds a different charm for everyone. For me, this place has literally become a wayside with a pretty sign and, many times very thankfully, an outhouse. Maybe I have, after 10 years of traveling this long and lonely road, learned to take this important stop for granted. So instead of leaving for a day of work to count visitors, I left determined to figure out why it is people come all the way up here for a picture.

 

The first group I met came here for a picnic. Having parked their RV in Fairbanks, two couples from Texas and Idaho piled into a small-sized SUV to venture north. They came prepared: Pringles, Oreos, Watermelon, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, carrots & celery. A regular feast to be spread atop a picnic table hammered by years of similar use. To my pleasure and surprise they invited me to join them and offered me watermelon, to which I accepted noting that, I have not eaten watermelon in well over two years thanks to its high cost in Alaska. The watermelon came with only one string attached. I was asked by the male half of the Texan couple to discuss my political views to which I kindly declined and deflected the conversation back to their own adventurous travels. Next a couple from Louisiana who have vacationed in Alaska five times or more in hopes of seeing rare and exotic birds. They missed the spring migration north to the coast because by mid-June many of the birds have already met their mates, built their nests and are quietly awaiting a new brood to train and bring south. Even without birds, the couple had again found Alaska to be a pleasurable vacation and hoped to return in early May or Late August next year. Good idea, I encouraged.

 

A lot of motorcycles journey up the Dalton Highway. It has become one of the last great adventure roads in north America, reaching the farthest north point accessible by road in North America at the Prudhoe Bay oilfields. Two guys from Oklahoma, so proud of their home state that they spit shined the license plate at each stop so the Big O of Oklahoma shone proudly, missed the wayside while heading north so they caught me by surprise entering through the north exit and sneaking in from the opposite direction. People on motorcycles, I have discovered, do not want their picture in front of the sign as much as they want their bike’s picture in front of the sign. To humor family back home, I am convinced, they step into the picture too. Even my own brother, a Harley man, has numerous framed pictures of his bike at various impressive destinations. Unless there is a pretty, scantily clad woman sitting on the bike, I suppose humans are just a useless distraction. Snap, snap, vroom, vroom and off they went, the letter O disintegrating into the distance.

 

Later in the day I met 7 more motorcycles carrying 8 people. Four were from England. Unlike the Okies, they took picture with the bikes then moved the bikes aside, stripped to their skivvies (under garments for the more refined readers) and took some pictures in the sweltering 80 degree heat of Alaska’s interior sun. One guy, maybe thanks to tender feet or maybe thanks to a secret knowledge of true coolness, kept his chunky black motorcycling boots on as he paraded around in boxers. A true masterpiece of which I can never expect to see a comparison.  Amid the flurry of bikers I met Jim, a post-middle aged man who appeared to be riding a modest road-bike. Based on size alone, size of man and size of bike, I assume he is unable to carry an ounce of extra weight in his panniers. My suspicion is confirmed when he declines a shiny laminated 81/2 x 11 certificate commemorating his crossing. He tells me, I don’t need the extra weight. 

 

The most impressive of the group pulled into the wayside around the same time as Jim. They included three humans and only two motorcycles: two friends one of whom a dad with his 11 year-old daughter Quinlin riding on the back all the way from Florida. I asked if she got tired sitting on the back of her dad’s bike and she told me, “no, I just take naps.” Dad looked at my shocked expression and said, “she’s tied on.” Holy cow, if only I had accomplished such daring feats at 11 years old, I may not be the timid, antithesis of a risk-taker that I am today. Later I met back up with Quinlin in Coldfoot where we exchanged more stories from the road. She will, I imagine, return to Alaska some day, maybe as a seasonal worker, maybe on vacation, but certainly her decision to return will be shaped in part by that photo of the three of them (bikes included) in front of the Arctic Circle sign.

As if an 11 year-old tied to the back of her fathers bike wasn’t good enough, The next two motorcycles proved a story to be beat well into my foreseeable future. A pair of Harleys arrived at the sign around mid-day. Harleys, due to the weight of the bike, gas consumption and high cost, are a rare sight on the rugged, 500-mile Dalton Highway. As if riding in style to the Arctic Circle wasn’t impressive enough, one of them had a medium-sized mesh carrier strapped to the back of his mud-encrusted maroon Harley, peeking out the top, a wire-hair terrier named Reagan. Reagan and his Harley-riding partners had been driving since Arizona winning both admiration and sideways glances everywhere they went. I won the compliment of the day when they asked me to pose for a picture with the bikes, the dog, and the men exclaiming, “we need to get our picture with the prettiest girl at the Arctic Circle.” Looking around, I chose to ignore the fact that I was the only girl at the Arctic Circle.

Rarely do the truckers stop by the wayside. They generally opt for the closer and easier to access roadside outhouse, but occasionally they pull in to snap a picture through a cracked window and continue on. Other times they pick up a wayfaring hitchhiker who has little cash but loads of determination. If only determination could be spent like cash, I have often considered, then many of us would be truly rich. Along this highway, determination does occasionally get you to some great hiking or to the oilfield-contractor’s town of Deadhorse, just seven miles shy of the Arctic Ocean. Before reaching their destination, many kindly truckers will roll into the wayside so their temporary company can snap a quick picture. I saw none of this, however, during this day at the Arctic Circle. But, oh yes, a truck did loudly announce itself as it gathered the attention of the entire parking area. To my glee it was a trucker named Georgie, a local favorite and increasingly famous veteran of the road thanks in large part to his contributions to the History Chanel’s hit series Ice Road Truckers. Georgie is a positively radiant human being. His smile is contagious. He is a certain charmer always willing to loan out a heartfelt conversation, even if he has no idea who you are, which, I am sure was the case when I approached saying, well if it isn’t the famous Georgie! He had an important passenger along for the ride, Don, who I took to be the head of Georgie’s trucking outfit, Carlisle.  Don also asked me to pose for a picture with him, gave my hand a firm grasp while thanking me for the great work I had been doing. Thanks, I smiled while wondering, just what am I doing here?

 

Don and Georgie left in epic trucker-style shaking the ground as they turned toward the north, the rumble of a diesel engine slowly fading into the Arctic.

 

A handful of small group tours came and went, some departing north while others turned back to the south. I met with nearly 100 people that day and if I were looking for common ground it would be as simple as this: every single person wore a thoroughly infectious smile and no one left without snapping a picture of the sign. 

Tonight I spend the evening along the banks of the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk River, 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle. In my view: Coldfoot Mountain, the river (of course), Cathedral and Twelve Mile to the south and just over my left shoulder a tiny piece of the Dalton Highway. This land does not speak to everyone, but for me, it has become a central theme in shaping my adulthood.



I wonder at times what I might have been if I had journeyed only once into this land, a vacation perhaps, a ten-day float down the Canning or a twelve-day backpack into the Itkilik valley. And yet there might exist another me, one who has never set foot in Alaska; never ventured into the Brooks Range. Because I can’t know that person, I journey instead into this world, a world filled with free-flowing, meandering rivers and unnamed mountains. A place I am spending only one short summer, like the migratory birds or mountain avens. This is my temporary home. One I call upon while…

Laboriously climbing the stair-stepper at the University gym in Fairbanks or monotonously re-writing care plans for nursing school, care plans that have been written and re-written by millions before me. When I need a break, my mind easily slips back to this place full of summer sunlight and shall we say, wilderness, to adopt a long-held American cliché about this land.

I am not convinced this is the best place on the planet. There are too many left for me to see before I make that distinction. For now, however, this is the best place for me; the place I chose, not only this summer but many seasons previous. Here I sit between a sharply drawn line of small moose prints and the lapping waters of the Koyukuk River, atop a bed of river rocks nestled snugly in place by finely ground silt washed out of the valleys and deposited here in this broad U-shaped glacial valley, so vast I can’t imagine its former life beneath a glacier.

But Alaska’s Arctic is not what I wanted to write about tonight. Instead I wonder, who is this person that chose this life?

I was born in Harvey, Illinois in 1977.Many know that year as the release of the first Star Wars film, I have come to know it as the birth-year of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. I moved (or to be more accurate, my parents moved me) to Wild Rose, Wisconsin shortly after an uneventful cesarean birth. In this small Wisconsin town I lived until the age of 18. In those years I accomplished only two reportable items:

1) I both created and destroyed a pretend friend named Simmy
2) I wrote a spiral-bound notebook full-to-the-brim of a novella called “The Hurt Bird.”

There were, of course, minor accomplishments like winning an essay contest for a local ice cream manufacturer. The prize? A bucket of ice cream of my choosing. And not just any ice cream. It was one of those antiquated thick-plastic buckets with a red swivel handle that puts to shame all of today’s mini cardboard pints that barely feel filling after Thanksgiving dinner. Minor accomplishments aside, this life has been pretty good to me.

By some definitions I became an adult at 18. Instead, I battled the idea until moving to Alaska at 21 where:

a) I drank my first beer
b) I lived alone for the first time ever
c) I saw the mountains of the Brooks Range, which would change the path of my life forever.

Between 18 and 21 nothing much happened. I did somehow manage to get a BA in English and environmental studies. Somewhere in there I checked off the list, get married. Then surprisingly, I checked off a new list, get divorced. I discovered poetry. Hmmm… fell in love with the idea of Alaska. If I could tell my younger-self one bit of wisdom it would be this: you can never know what you will become. But this is silliness because I would not listen. I knew what I wanted and how to get it back then. This might be everyone at this age and that is why we should not expect anyone between 18 and 21 to choose their future profession.

So instead of becoming a famous poet, I have returned to school for nursing. Many years from now, I hope to look back on this writing and come to some greater understanding about my decisions in life, but tonight I hope to go back to a small cabin in the spruce trees and dream of lions.

A day in the Arctic

One summer goal completed: set up a blog.

Next step: write a worthy entry.