Takotna

The Monday after Bouchercon, I left Anchorage for Takotna (left), to take part in the Alaska Sisters in Crime “Authors in the Schools” program, which sends mystery writers out to talk to students in communities across Alaska. “I left Anchorage” makes it sound easier than it was. I was surprised to see so many rifle cases and knives at the airport—things you need in the Interior, but not in Boston—and realized I needn’t have sweated stowing my Leatherman in my checked bag. Reaching the check-in desk, I was asked my weight. I misheard and answered, “Oh, not too bad. About five minutes.” Your weight, and that of your baggage, is all important when you’re traveling in the bush, where the planes are teensy and load balancing is something of an art.

And it was in the airport that I got the first sense of just how many more men there are than women. It’s not ten to one, as is popularly stated, but about 114 single men for every 100 single women. I don’t know what the statistics are for all men and women, or how this varies across the state, but I will say it was not only my bright red “I’m-not-a-deer” jacket (very useful in Maine, in hunting season) that made me stand out while I was in transit. I had more doors held for me and more offers to carry my bag in twenty-four hours of transit than I have…ever.

I first took a small commercial plane to McGrath (left), and from there, took an even smaller plane (just enough room for me, the pilot, my bag, and his deliveries) to Takotna. It was just a short hop, about twelve minutes, but complicated because of the weather: fog or clouds means you stay put. There aren’t many other ways to get to Takotna; presumably you can travel by boat when the river is high enough, and there are a few roads to other local villages, but pretty much small planes are it. I was later told that the airstrip in Takotna is one of the ten most dangerous in Alaska, and that seemed like a fair assessment to me: we came in over a ridge to land on a very short strip on top of a mountain. Not a lot of room for error, but the students later told me I got the best pilot, Mike. It’s neat to learn that they think of bush pilots the way other kids think of bus drivers. I expected to be nervous, but I really loved flying in the Cessna (I think it was).

Takotna (right) was established as a gold mining town in the early 1900s. Now, there are about fifty people there year-round, including about 9 students in the junior-senior high school (if I remember correctly, there were four in grade school). When you live in a small community, I learned that anything new draws attention, and me wandering around the village was definitely new.

While I was at the school, I spoke to the students about what goes into a mystery, about writing in general, and about archaeology and archaeologists (I also did a couple of talks, one for the writers in the village and one for the library group). Among other things, I gave the students a couple of writing prompts (“What would you tell an Outsider about Takotna?” and “Create a superhero or action hero character. Describe what his (or her) powers are, what he stands for and against”). What I like about doing writing prompts is that you see that there are many different ways of approaching the same subject (in this case, setting and character, respectively), and in this case, it was a great way for the students to tell me about their community.

The landscape around the community was gorgeous, even in the rain. When the clouds broke, you could see Mt. Takotna (right, below) across the river. I realized, though, that it is easy to think about looking at lovely landscape without thinking about what it is to live in it year round. It’s like when out-of-state college kids and their parents come to New England in the fall when it’s crisp and collegiate and the leaves are glorious colors and it’s the best place in the world to be. Then four months later, when the leaves are dead and gone and the mercury drops, everyone’s wondering what’s so appealing about a February nor’easter. It was definitely fall there in Takotna and it snowed the night I left, so I was left with a bare impression of what winter might be like (when I got home, it was an unseasonable 80 degrees in Boston, so the shock was acute).

During an Alaskan winter in the bush, it’s colder and darker longer than around here, and if you don’t plan your food and fuel consumption just right, you’re going to get into trouble. Imagine having to fly in all the food you don’t hunt or grow—fresh produce is at a premium—and then having to store it for a month (or months). You have to be a jack-of-many-trades, because there’s no corner garage to bail you out when something breaks, and the Geek Squad won’t make it out your way when your hard-drive crashes. I like and admire the idea of taking such responsibility for yourself, and I’m good at tactical and strategic thinking, but I’m not sure I would find that kind of life easy. The neat thing was that one minute I’d be hearing stories about hunting, trapping, fishing, and three- and four-wheelers, and the Iditerod (the mushers and dog teams stop in Takotna every winter), things that I know nothing about, and the next minute, we’d all be talking about things we had in common: cats, books, music, and movies.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to meet the people I did, and to see rural Alaska up close for a few days. Alas, I have to gainsay the prognosticators: I was never attacked by bears, black, brown, or otherwise. I didn’t actually see much wildlife at all while in Takotna, probably because of the season and the weather (I reckon all the critters were probably inside having cocoa because it was too rainy out). But the ones I did see, I’ll write about in the next post.

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