The Alaskan Retreater's Notebook: One Man's Journey into the Alaskan Wilderness
By Ray Ordorica; Skyhorse Publishing; $14.99.
Description: In the fall of 1978, Ray Ordorica packed everything he thought he would need into his Toyota Land Cruiser and drove north to Alaska. He came to a land he had never seen, to find something he wasn't even sure existed: a wilderness cabin he could use for a year or more to live, think, relax, read and write. Ordorica found his cabin and fixed it up. Although it was just an un-insulated 12-by-16-foot, one-room log structure, Ordorica spent three winters there in relative comfort.
Ordorica's life in that cabin fulfilled a dream he'd had for more than 10 years. During long winters in Alaska, it occurred to him that there must be many others who have put off an extended wilderness visit out of ignorance or fear. They have as many questions about Alaska as he had before he arrived: How do you cope with 40 below? How do you get water? Is it totally dark in the middle of winter? These questions and many more gave Ordorica the idea to write the "Alaskan Retreater's Notebook," a memoir about one man's journey into the Alaska wilderness that explains how to live with the country — and not fight it.
Excerpt: He came into my life one cold evening, the Northern Lights dancing overhead, the whole world quiet and white. I was standing there on the frozen road, looking at the stars, heartbroken over the loss of my pet cat, and morosely pondering my future. He came down the snow-covered road from the east, and didn't see me until he was just a few feet away. He caught some slight movement from me, stopped, and looked directly into my eyes.
At that moment both our lives changed, entirely for the better. Neither he nor I were the least bit startled. I greeted the little fellow with soft words, and it seemed like he was reading my mind, knowing my thoughts. He showed no fear, and I showed him no animosity. I felt at that moment I was supremely blessed, as I looked into his eyes in wonder … We stood there for awhile, and presently I thought I'd give him some the food I'd stockpiled for my late cat. I suspected this little guy might just want some of it. I told him to wait a minute, went inside and put some canned cat food into a bowl for him, and put it outside on the ground. I left him alone and watched from the cabin to see if he'd eat it. He did. Would he come again? I sincerely hoped so.
At the time, spring was slowly on its way, as always with great reluctance. I noted it in my Red Cabin Journal:
And the sun shines and the wind blows and the clouds stream by, pausing only briefly to block the sun, a blushing maiden with a need to momentarily hide her smile. The birds patter on the porch, and the trees watch and wave outside my window. Wind spins around my stovepipe, telling a tale as old as time and as inscrutable as the meaning of a moonbeam. Icicles deliver their drops to the ground with intravenous regularity. Spring is almost here, hiding just over the hills to the south.
Over the next few days, my little fox friend came back to Red Cabin just about every evening for a handout. In short order, he ate up all the cat food I had stored for my departed kitty. I looked forward to his visit every evening, about suppertime, and always found something for him to eat. Our new-found friendship seemed to mean as much to him as it did to me. His presence did a lot to take my mind off the pain of my recent loss. I realize it now, but not at the time — I was slowly letting my departed kitty go to her maker without holding on to her tail and trying to keep her with me. I had a living creature (with a much bigger tail!) right there in my yard to care for, feed and worry about.
Connecting Alaskans
By Heather E. Hudson; University of Alaska Press; $60
In the mid-1800s, the telegraph introduced the era of electronic communications, as wires were strung along roads and railroad tracks in Europe and North America. In 1861, the transcontinental telegraph reached California, replacing the Pony Express, which took ten days to carry messages to the West Coast.
Meanwhile, explorers and traders in Alaska could wait a year or more for news from the outside world or directives from their headquarters in St. Petersburg or London. However, it was not the communication needs of the northern frontier that caught the imagination of entrepreneur and adventurer Perry McDonough Collins, but an opportunity to link the United States with Europe.
Early attempts to lay a submarine cable between Newfoundland and Ireland failed, leaving a window of opportunity for an alternative — a terrestrial telegraph network from the U.S. Northwest through British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, across what was then Russian America, with a short submarine link across the Bering Sea to Siberia — then traversing Russia to Europe.
Collins convinced Western Union to put up the venture capital to attempt to achieve his breathtaking vision of stringing telegraph wire through vast expanses of unexplored northern wilderness. Survey and construction crews were soon working their way north through British Columbia, while a team of surveyors and a naturalist explored routes up the Yukon River from the Bering Sea, and two teams pushed through the wilds of eastern Siberia.
But the northern venture was soon abandoned. The transatlantic cable was finally laid successfully in August 1866, although the crews in Alaska did not receive orders to abandon their work and equipment until 11 months later.
Soon thereafter, in 1867, Russia sold Alaska to the United States, but it was 35 years before a telegraph line would be built across Alaska. The U.S. Army, responsible for maintaining law and order and providing many public services in the territory, needed to link its posts and forts within Alaska and to connect them with the rest of the United States.
Alaska governors repeatedly asked for funds to build a telegraph line in their annual reports to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The first Alaska network connected at the border with a Canadian telegraph line through the Yukon Territory to Skagway, where messages had to be sent by ship to Seattle. Eventually, submarine cables were laid from southeast Alaska to Washington state to complete an all-U.S. route.
First known as WAMCATS (the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System) and later ACS (the Alaska Communication System), the network carried both civilian and military traffic but was owned and operated by the military until privatized by an act of Congress in 1969 and sold to RCA (the Radio Corporation of America).