North to Alaska

I’ve been watching a TV show called “The Last Alaskans”. The series follows seven families who each have a lease inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The leases last until the death of the youngest child in each family. Then each lease expires. These families are the last. I’m fascinated by their lifestyle and it’s easy to watch because I know it’s not one I would have chosen. My cousin John, who is two years younger than I am, left Wisconsin for Alaska to homestead when he got out of high school. His sister says that even in elementary school he talked about moving to Alaska and raising sled dogs when he grew up. At a local winter carnival when he was just a toddler with his family, he unwrapped himself from his blanket and gave it to a Husky. So my Aunt Doris, his mother, drove him to Bruce Crossing, a tiny dot on the border of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Northern Wisconsin where Highway 2 crosses the country. Highway 2 was where he hoped to catch a ride and hitchhike toward his goal. He made it. I lived in another state at that time and was dealing with little kids of my own. I lost touch with his family during those years. One thing I remember is the story of his VW Bug hitting a moose somewhere in the Yukon on his way to or from visiting family and he having to be airlifted a very long way for medical treatment. His cabin was on indigenous land but he had permission to live there …………. until he didn’t. At some point the law was changed and with it, his qualification for residence there. He went back to Wisconsin. The important thing is he really did realize his dream. A couple of years ago I asked his elderly mother how she felt, dropping him off in the late 1960’s at a remote highway intersection literally in the middle of nowhere so he could hitchhike to Alaska. “Well,” she said. “Of course, I worried but it’s what he had really always wanted.”  I can’t decide which person I admire more. John or his mother.

Photo courtesy patrick__b on Pixabay.com