Ambler AK, Permafrost, Wildland fire...
and a break from race!
We all have to earn a paycheck – or have done a better job prepping for retirement than I did. So I still go out on wildland fires to manage and coordinate the medical component. I’m currently in Ambler AK – 45 miles north of the Arctic Circle and maybe 75 or so east of the Bering Sea. I think I assumed that the arctic circle is where it starts to get cold and snowy and frozen and beautiful.
At its core, the Arctic Circle is simply a geographic boundary that delineates the southernmost point in the Northern Hemisphere where the sun can remain continuously above or below the horizon for at least 24 hours. The Kobuk Valley National Park is a bit north of here and sometimes has temps of 100 degrees in the giant sand dunes.
I’m on the Goldrun Complex group of fires. Ambler AK and our chunk of ground is along the Kobuk River. I’m surprised that I had not heard of a major river in the United States that’s almost 300 miles long and over a quarter of a mile wide.
On the way here – including the two days in Fairbanks getting oriented - I heard over and over, “Everything is different in Alaska.” That has turned out to be a true statement. Everything is unimaginably expensive because there are no roads. Everything here in Ambler comes in by an expensive plane ride or an expensive boat ride. A supply order, even something a small as a few MRE’s and a few gallons of gas can be $15,000 dollars. The going price of gas, if you can buy it from someone, is $20.00 a gallon and the tiny general store and grill has a monthly electric bill of up to $3,500.00. That’s why a burger is $21.00.
And it’s not only the cost. It’s the time. Want food tomorrow? You needed to call the market in ‘town’…Fairbanks…and order it a week ago.
I’m can’t tell you much about the 8 fires that comprise the Goldrun Complex, but our online site can. There are even pictures.
But I can tell you a little about the Native Village. It’s small…less than 300 people. Subsistence living is the way people…well…the way they live. Literally the way they stay alive. I’m told that every household harvests all of their protein. Shee fish and salmon, bear, deer, caribou, moose, as well as smaller game. There are no vegetable gardens due to the short season.
The most dangerous animal here is the moose, and that’s saying a lot because this is grizzly country!
It’s not pretty here. At least not from town. No spectacular views of the forest, which the village is surrounded by. Scruffy and un-spectacular black spruce. Distant view of the Brooks Range. No roads in or out, but dirt roads crisscross the town. I’ve only seen three cars or trucks, and one is an ambulance – of sorts - and the fire has rented the other two to move supplies around – mostly from the dirt airstrip a mile to our HQ. Everybody - and I do mean everybody – operates an ATV. Kids maybe from the age of 8 or 9; parents with themselves and 2 or 3 kids on a single-seater; kids with 4 friends, also on a single-seater. Testing how fast a driver (usually solo) can take a tight dirt corner appears to be a village sport. The roads are never plowed so a snow machine is the only winter motorized travel.
All of the homes I’ve seen have an abundance of junk strewn around. I don’t understand that and it seems like it would be awkward to ask, “Hey, how come your home is so junky?” So I’m left just speculating that it simply represents a different set of practical values. “My house keeps me warm when it’s cold. It keeps the mosquitoes and critters out. It keeps me dry when it’s raining. What else is a home supposed to do?”
Where I live in Grand Junction we have sub-divisions, tucked away down some leafy, winding road. No gate, but the homes are imposing, palatial, cold, do not exude ‘Welcome’, and gated with a hard -to-penetrate gate and wall. I’m not drawn to either, but I’d take the attitude of the village over the attitude of the cold, palatial subdivision.
The perma-frost seems to be a sacrosanct land feature. Digging fireline is forbidden as it will expose and thaw the permafrost. The permafrost shifts dramatically, so water pipes are not laid in the ground as the shifting permafrost would snap them. They’re above ground and drained in the winter months. There are numerous community wells. Small heated buildings with a straight-down, vertical pipe to the water source. There are cisterns located in the homes and folks lug water and fill the cisterns by hand.
Likewise, there is no village sewer or individual septic tanks. Instead, each home has it’s own mini waste processing plant. I have no idea how it works. But pipes, below ground, are not a thing here.
This is a place for hardy souls. As one older White resident born and raised here said to me, he’s planning on moving to AZ one of these days. “This is no country for old men.”
Houses are built on stilts about 3 or4 feet or so, so that the homeowner can get below and shim and re-shim this and that side as the ground shifts and undulates. The floor is exposed, but heavily insulated.
The community seems kind and curious. Wherever and whenever I have walked about, someone stops their ATV and offers me a ride, and then stays to talk, even kids and teenagers. Sometimes I’ll hear a cheery, “HI” . I’ll turn a look and there’s a kid, just saying hi and giving me a smile.
We ate MRE’s – military Meals Ready to Eat - for several days…except the tiny general store also has a grill.
So I have wandered there several times until we started getting real food and hired a couple local women to cook it for us. One of them, an old lady, gifted us with caribou for a biscuits and gravy caribou base instead of a the traditional western breakfast of pork sausage based biscuits and gravy. She also brought in a gallon or so of a blueberry sauce she had made by going out to the tundra where the blueberries are plentiful, harvesting 20 gallons, and making her secret sauce. No sugar added, so the mild sweetness was perfect.
It’s hard to describe the isolation and the self - sufficiency of an arctic circle village that is a roadless 323 miles from where they call town – Fairbanks. A life flight is 3 hours minimum. There’s a clinic here staffed with rotating RNs from the lower 48. I asked one how often the extended transport times resulted in poor outcomes. “Frequently”.
Actually Ambler is a place for old men, and old women too. They just have to be tough.
Wonderful piece, Wayne. Takes me back to my last AK assignment in Circle (also on the Arctic Circle but accessible by road). That country more accurately and robustly defines the notion of “hearty.” Thanks for sharing.
Wow Wayne, thank you for the deep dive! Well done!