Our first summer we lived in Eagle River campground, about 30 miles north of Anchorage. We picked berries for the local candy lady Nora, who swore more than anybody in town, and made the best lowbush cranberry candy there ever was. We usually spent our money right there at the shop. Mom painted signs and we learned our way around and made friends, got our library cards and generally lived in the woods. Nights were spent with parties of "old timers" met in the local bars, all sitting around our campfire telling stories of the way it used to be. Days were spent on the river and in the woods exploring.

Coming home from Paradise Lodge one night Harry rolled the camper, with all of us in it, including his St. Bernard, Madame Bates, and our poodle Chocolate. After rolling down the hill a few times, just missing the river, I remember walking out of a big hole in the back and thinking I saw the whole thing before it happened. On the only straight stretch of the world's windiest road. We all came out shaken and without a scratch thank God, except for my Mom's china babydoll which had been smashed in the camperbed above the cab, where we usually slept and sometimes rode. We got a ride home with Linda Hill, Mom's best friend, who was a botonest and a volunteer fireman. She drove 70 miles an hour all the way and scared us to death.

Winter was coming on and with our only "hard-shell" home gone, the campground was no longer an option, so Mom put out the word. Within a week we moved to Independance Mine Ski Lodge as caretakers.

Independance Mine

Independance is 30something miles up the mountain from Palmer on Hatcher's Pass, and is the "shortcut" to Willow, or at least it used to be. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world, that little valley between mountain peaks. There weren't any trees, it being above the tree line, just meadows full of squishy tundra and wildflowers and little animals.

The lodge was originally built for the owner's mistress. It was big all around (when you had to sweep and clean it). The main room was open all the way to the roof and was very spacious feeling, echoing like a church. There was a walk-in fireplace made of gold ore (the gold had long past been picked out) at the far end, and a sweeping staircase with a beautiful bannister at the other. Seven large bedrooms upstairs opened onto a balcony above the main. There was a bar and a kitchen where my Mom would make homemade doughnuts on Sunday mornings. We had a resident ghost who opened windows and doors, and his big black lab named Sniffer (still alive-barely) who's toenails would click across the floor when he walked. There were also two goats, one of whom was later shot by a big game hunter who mistook her for a dahl sheep. She was hung in the basement and eaten, though not by me. As summer wound down we learned all the nooks and crannies, me, being 12, and my sister Sara, 10. We also learned how to pump the diesel for the generators and shovel coal for the boiler and lots of other fun stuff. Looking back now it was always fun.

Old broken down buildings littered the sides of the road. We weren't allowed to go in but we did anyhow. The Assayor's Office, The Kitchen (meals were cooked and brought up to the Lodge for the Lady), and other assorted buildings for who knows what. All full of treasures.

Our first visitors of the ski season were the American Army Biathalon Cross Country Ski Team. About 40 guys with their own cook who took over the bunkhouse. They came in helicoptors and stayed about a week but it didn't snow. We confiscated all the little "survival" stuff they left behind, like cigarettes and can openers. When they did come back to stay we became terrific friends with them all and would steal beer from the bar in trade for cake from the cook. They'd pull us up the hill on our sleds. I always wondered what happened to them.

My mom would make everything from scratch for the guests as the owners didn't "fund" anything very well. I'm pretty sure she and Harry worked for free that year. When the season really started the place filled up with old timers and people who didn't want to go off to Alyeska (the big resort down by Portage). At night there'd be huge poker games with men who had pockets full of money in huge bundles. That's what they'd come for. To play cards and drink. Me and Sara would run them errands, like making popcorn, for loose change and sometimes even were allowed to bet in the games.

One of the nicest things was the sauna. A little building built over the creek. Everyone would get naked and steam off the rocks till you were ready to die of heat and then you would either jump into the creek through a trapdoor in the floor or go outside and roll in the snow. Major exhiliration. Some of us would just take a shower.

At night Sara and me would take the tow-rope up the mountain and slide down in our sled. Sometimes it snowed so much you could jump out the second-story windows with no problem, or build snow forts in drifts packed tight by the wind. Once it snowed seven feet in one night. We looked out the next morning and you couldn't see any of the cars. The snowmachiners went wild. One fearless yet somewhat stupid guy took a jump and sunk so far down he had to be rescued on snowshoes. Things were just big there.

We had amazing freedom as kids there. No school for a year because it was too far away, but living there was an education in itself. We also worked very hard, cleaning up after the weekends, shoveling paths between the Lodge and bunkhouses, hand cranking that dang diesel (until somebody finally got smart and gave us an electric pump). Things it's illegal for kids to do now-a-days but somehow gave us a since of pride and ownership.

Right before Christmas we moved back down to Eagle River...well, Chugiak. I didn't want to leave there. I ran away and hid in the top floor of the bunkhouse and they put out a search party on snow machines. I had my sled with me. It's the first time I ever told anyone how many spankings I should get...when they finally found me all safe. I rode to Chugiak tucked in the back of the truck under a mattress (which blew off halfway there), still mad about leaving MY home. I gave in when I really started freezing. I'll never stop missing that year...that place.

Chugiak

We moved into a one-room "provin' up" shack. It had a bedroom, living room, tiny one-person kitchen and a bathroom. A "provin'up shack" is what people build to get land from the state in lotteries. You get the land and then you have to live on it for a year at least to keep it, so people would build these little tear-down buildings. Though the one we lived in stood for many years at the end of Jayhawk Drive.

Our house was not insulated and we weren't too very used to winter, even after Independance, and some mornings we'd wake up with our hair frozen to the walls. Mom painted signs and threw out Harry and I started the seventh grade at Chugiak High and Sara went into the sixth.

Mom was always amazing. We did all kinds of signs. My favorite that year was re-painting the carousel horses for Golden Wheel Amusement..Alaska's only carnival. They gave us half a caribou which we kept frozen in the old car out back and chopped off meat with a hachet for dinner, lunch, breakfast...that caribou lasted a long time. The hardest was painting Christmas windows when our brushes kept freezing to the glass.

Back in those days we hung out in the bars. We always did. And in Alaska kids were allowed in so that's where Mom picked up work and we'd play pool or pick berries for the regulars and make money. Listen to the band, usually country. It was an age of freedom and hardship and happiness and the first year of the Pipeline so money was just starting to really flow. I can remember the smells and the faces and the awakening of myself and knowing this was where I belonged.