Life at Fifty Below Zero: An Alaskan Memoir on Teaching and Learning

By Christina Reagle

Life at Fifty Below Zero: An Alaskan Memoir on Teaching and Learning

Do you know what a honey bucket is? Can you empty one? are not typical questions asked of prospective teachers. Hired to teach in a small rural village, accessed by plane or boat is also not a standard teaching

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wild Eagle LLC
• Release date: Jun 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734502114

Book preview

LifeAt50Below_FrontCover_Final_04152020

Dedicated to my sons, Zach and Jeremia.

Always remember your Alaska roots.

LifeAtFiftyBelowZero_FullBook_TitlePagePublisher-Logo

wild eagle publishing

wildeagle.co

Copyright © 2020 Christina Reagle

Wild Eagle logo is © 2020 Wild Eagle Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

used in any form whatsoever without the written

permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations

included in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-7345021-0-7 paperback

ISBN: 978-1-7345021-1-4 eBook

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Book cover and interior design by Otterburn & Co.

https://www.otterburn.co

Set in Garamond Premier Pro

All photos are from the author’s private collection.

table of

contents

Author's Notes

I. Going to Alaska

Going up the ALCAN

Orientation to Rural Alaska

Moving into bush Alaska

II. Teaching and Learning

Marshall

Summer of 1973

Holy Cross

Allakaket

Nulato

III. Back and Forth

Summer 1976

Fairbanks and Nenana

IV. Juneau, Anchorage, and Beyond

Arriving in Juneau

Working and Surviving

Leaving Alaska

Afterthoughts

Endnotes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Author’s Notes

Freezing is 32° Fahrenheit

or 0° Celsius.

‘Below zero or minus’ refers

to the temperature below zero Fahrenheit.

50° below zero or minus 50 means it is 82°

below freezing (Fahrenheit).

That is damn cold.

PART I

---

Going to Alaska

Going up the ALCAN

1972

It was a beautiful Saturday morning with the sun filtering through the redwoods around our small cabin in Felton, California. We sat sipping our morning coffee in the beauty and silence of the majestic trees when the phone rang bringing us back to the day ahead. Jed answered it as I sat petting our black lab, Hidalgo. My mind drifted off to the weekend to-do list when I heard Jed say, Yes, we are still interested. After a few minutes more he hung up and looked at me. We have been hired and are to be in Fairbanks in two and a half months. The idea of being teachers in a rural Alaskan village sounded so simple when Jed suggested we consider it in mid-March. Now it was April 10 and we were to start an orientation program in three months.

During the final semester of completing his California teaching license Jed had a professor who entertained the class with endless stories about Alaska. He just finished working there and shared experiences of various ‘bush’ teachers hired to work in remote villages all over Alaska. One week he mentioned recruiters from Alaska would be in San Francisco to interview potential teachers for the Alaska bush. When Jed arrived home that evening he said, How would you like to investigate the possibility of teaching in Alaska for a year? I had taught a few years in the Garden Grove area and currently was teaching in San Jose, California. I casually said, Sure, I am up for an adventure for a year, not really thinking we would be hired.

The following week we drove into the city for the interviews. My five years of experience included teaching grades K– 6, which unbeknownst to us made me an asset. There hadn’t been any mention about attending a six-week orientation session with new-to-Alaska teachers until the phone call. The pressure was now on since my current school year didn’t end until June and I had recently accepted a new district teaching position. As we started planning, I thought we were making a lot of changes for one year. I still think the reason we were hired was my response to a question during the interview about a honey bucket. I knew what it was and said yes I could empty one.

Running off to Alaska to teach in a small village on the Yukon River sure seemed like a good idea in March. Now the reality of what that meant was staring us straight in the face. We were interested in a simpler lifestyle but didn’t feel we could realistically live off the land. Paid work was necessary to us and Jed had a National Guard responsibility to complete. His first job as an administrator at Los Angeles Airport helped us recognize the corporate world wasn’t for us. When we agreed Jed would become a teacher we knew we wouldn’t have much money, but would always have jobs. Teaching in Alaska had never been part of the equation.

Life became crazy—deciding what to mail was challenging since we lacked solid information about our living situation. There were conversations during the interview that not all villages with teacher housing had running water. Neither one of us gave much thought to the lack of plumbing. The administrator who called about our jobs said we were hired too late to have items barged into our village. Only twenty percent of Alaska could be accessed by road, which meant most items were shipped by boat or plane. Vessels from Seattle carried items to a couple of key locations in Alaska where they were then barged or mailed by plane to rural communities.

At first, I didn’t understand. Naively I thought our boxes would be trucked to our new village home. To become more informed, I headed to the library to find information about Alaska. One of our friends suggested looking at Alaska magazines and ordering a MILEPOST, whatever that was. At least now I knew we were hired to teach in a village accessed by air, barge or riverboat in the summer and small airplanes or snow machines in the winter. I was in a quandary with lack of solid information.

After the initial shock settled in we realized neither of our two vehicles, a VW hippie camping Van and my sporty MGB baby, were suitable for the trip up the ALCAN. The first decision was to trade both vehicles for a sturdy four-wheel drive Toyota Land Cruiser. The second decision was to follow the MILEPOST information for ‘Alaska driving.’ The preparations suggested a screen mounted across the entire front end of the car with protectors on the headlamps. The final recommendation was traction tires to handle gravel and off-road driving.

Besides the purchase of an adequate vehicle we needed to rent our cabin in the redwoods outside of Santa Cruz. Determining what to take, packing, finishing jobs, preparing for the unknown—so much to do with limited information left us moving in circles for a few days. As we perused the Alaska magazines, we began to comprehend the complexities of rural communities in Alaska and our role as teachers.

A week before we left we calculated the travel time from San Jose, California to Fairbanks, Alaska. The distance was less than three thousand miles, but the information about the roads and highways confirmed they weren’t the normal interstate.

We left Dawson Creek, British Columbia (BC) early the morning of July 2 to start the big drive up the Alaska Highway, also known as the ALCAN, the Alaska-Canadian Highway. Relentless road reconstruction and modifications in the early years changed MILEPOST 0 several times. Dawson Creek was currently noted as the ‘true’ starting point of the ALCAN.

The ALCAN was originally constructed as a military highway to connect Alaska with the contiguous lower 48 states. Road repairs were a constant occurrence in rerouting, straightening, and changing sections, sometimes done by Canada and other times the United States. The extreme cold weather often caused gaping holes or major road lakes, which made it difficult to drive through or around.

The ALCAN looped through Canada’s British Columbia and Yukon territories, as well as Alaska. Signposts were in kilometers and miles. The accuracy of the miles or kilometers weren’t always current with constant repairs, detours, and changes. We started on pavement in Dawson Creek, but it was to change. The MILEPOST we purchased was considered the Bible of North Country travel since 1949. Published annually it provided mile-by-mile guidance for Alaska Highway travelers. The price was $2.95 and was worth every penny.

Despite improvements the ALCAN was famous for a rough and challenging drive with many legendary stories. Rocks cracked our windshield three times; the first one at Milepost #230, followed by two more at Milepost #269, and this was day one of a typical four-day ALCAN journey. Despite ‘being prepared’ another part of day one was a flat tire at Milepost #269! All of this happened while traveling at the break neck speed of twenty-five to forty-five miles an hour.

Thirty-five miles after the flat at Milepost #305 we called it a day at Fort Nelson, BC. We were exhausted and felt it was a good spot to set up the small tent we purchased in Dawson Creek for a night’s rest. While paying for our campsite bill the clerk mentioned, In early July we often get electrical rainstorms. Heading to our tent site I looked up at the high dark clouds and wondered if he was correct in his prediction.

When I awoke in the middle of the night to dripping of water and the buzzing of a mosquito, I swatted at each time it came within ear range I knew he was right. The saturated feeling was getting worse as each drip landed on my forehead, my feet, and three to four places in between. Luckily, Hidalgo, an eighty-pound black Labrador retriever, was cuddled up in the Toyota Land Cruiser with our Siamese cat, Soltar. If he were in the tent more dripping would occur because of the enthusiastic wagging of his tail. He loved water and at this moment I knew he was drier than me.

The torrential downpour we were experiencing was more rain than either of us had ever experienced camping. Maybe the mosquitos that joined us in the tent also felt it was more rain than usual for them. How can a microscopic size creature be so annoying? The long night taught me swatting mosquitos in a small tent shared with another adult resulted in constant dripping.

We were both exhausted from a long frustrating day with unplanned events. And now when we needed rest to rejuvenate, mosquitos had other plans. My normal drifting off to sleep tricks weren’t working. Each time I heard the aggravating buzz my eyes popped open. I wanted and needed to be the winner over this mosquito invading my privacy.

July in the far north was certainly different than California, Oregon, and Washington. At midnight in Fort Nelson, BC the sky wasn’t dark, but maintained a glow of soft light across the horizon that lasted two to three hours. Alaska magazines borrowed from the library explained about endless days, but now the reality was more than I imagined. I found it difficult to sleep when it was still light. I loved summer, but this was bizarre and the adjustment was harder than I thought.

Here I lay exhausted and soaked to the core on my way to empty honey buckets in a remote village of less than two hundred people somewhere on the Yukon River. Getting wetter and wetter by the minute, made me realize I agreed to this adventure so it was time to put on my big girl pants and become positive. In 1972 Alaska teaching jobs paid well compared to California and other states, plus we talked about an adventure out of the United States. Many people told us Alaska was similar to a third world country because of its remoteness.

Counting the raindrops and trying to drift off to sleep I figured there were four more days on the road before reaching Fairbanks. I decided it was time to relax, not worry, and enjoy the journey.

The next day a second flat tire happened at Milepost #519. Oh well, the drive was spectacular with a landscape of wild flowers in assorted colors and a backdrop of incredible green trees of British Columbia. I watched the countryside and felt the beauty of the surroundings welcome us to the Northern Country. Somehow my itchy mosquito bites were soothed as I calmly looked around.

Each flat tire cost us two hours of time, as well as the thirty or so miles of nervous driving with no spare. Why had the MILEPOST not suggested two spare tires would be a good idea? The ALCAN had little spots in the road every fifty miles or so that assisted motorists with various vehicle problems. Sometimes there was a campground, a gas station, or a motel of sorts that included a tire repair shop.

The second day ended in Watson Lake where we washed muddy clothes and dried out the tent. After a restful night at Watson Lake, we headed for the great Yukon Territory. Not too far into our third day, the ALCAN delivered its third and final flat tire at Milepost #747. The time drain discouraged us, but after observing other people along the highway, our three cracks in the windshield, and three flat tires seemed like nothing.

We arrived in Whitehorse that evening and set up camp. The next morning we had our first peek at the enormous Yukon River that started in British Columbia and moved through the Yukon Territory emptying into the Bering Sea. The Yukon River was 2,300 miles long, the third longest river in North America. Seeing the Yukon intensified our anticipation of the village where we would teach since it was located along this river, only hundreds of miles downstream.

Feeling invigorated and refreshed we were anxious to reach the border. Our excitement was quickly subdued when an unanticipated delay occurred costing us several hours. Despite having papers confirming jobs in Alaska our California hippie appearance made us suspicious looking. Jed had a mustache and shoulder length hair. My hair was long with a leather headband to secure it from blowing around. Although I left my mini-skirts and hot pants in storage in California my current outfit was a tie-dyed, colorful shirt and patched Levi’s. I wore an Egyptian bicep arm bracelet.

When the Alaska border delegate saw us he asked to search our car. We showed him papers about our jobs but he still wanted to do a quick search. After securing the cat in her travel box and putting Hidalgo on a leash, we forgot one important detail. During the trip we indulged in our final small amount of weed. Being conscientious about not littering the environment with trash and hoping we would have another opportunity to use the pipe sometime in the future we stuck it in the glove box.

When the border cop found the pipe and empty bag a complete turn of events happened. He told us to pull over to the side where three uniformed gun-toting border patrol agents thoroughly searched our car. Everything was taken out and carefully pawed through—suitcases, boxes, camping equipment, dirty clothes, bags of dog and cat food, as well as the cat’s litter box. We stood shocked and realized our new life might abruptly end. Our imaginations were dancing about with nervous anxiety. We could lose our teaching licenses. Having spent most of our funds to get ourselves to Alaska we were now concerned about having to call a parent to bail us out of jail. And, what would the border patrol do with Hidalgo and Soltar? It was a tense couple of hours as we watched and waited.

Finally, the customs’ agents were convinced we didn’t have more pot, so they let us reenter the United States. The border patrol agent told us they would keep the pipe to add it to the contraband display case they proudly hung in their office. As we slowly drove into Alaska, our tires were once again on pavement creating a smoother and more comfortable drive. The warm temperature felt good and the narrow road was thick with trees. There were no buildings, just a road with an occasional house briefly seen down a dirt path. Suddenly a moose walked out of the trees from a side road. Despite the fact I saw pictures of them in the MILEPOST and Alaska magazine I was struck with the strangeness of his body shape. I knew immediately he was male because of his growing rack. How could his stilt like legs hold up his massive upper body and head? It was nice of him to welcome us to Alaska and not walk into our car. I gave him an appreciative smile.

The long daylight hours helped us reach our destination of Tok. It was 11:00 p.m. We were once again dog-tired beyond description, but pleased the Tok Lodge had a room for our weary bodies. The next morning as we ate breakfast we noticed a couple at the counter. Intuitively, we suspected they were headed to Fairbanks to become Alaska bush teachers. They confirmed our suspicion as we laughed and chatted a bit.

As we walked out of the café heading for our cars I shrieked, Oh no, and started running toward our car. Soltar was hanging by her collar out the window and standing on her tippy toes. Before going to breakfast we threw our bags in the car, walked Hidalgo, and checked on Soltar. The morning was already warm and there were no trees to provide shade. To keep both animals cool we rolled down the windows for air. We wanted to be sure Soltar wouldn’t jump out and run off so we leashed her to a handle in the car. There were a few minutes of concern by everyone, followed by a belly laugh. This terrifying moment was the only hiccup with Soltar’s travel.

The Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

—Robert W. Service

Orientation to Rural Alaska

July 7, 1972

When we arrived in Fairbanks on Friday it was eighty-two degrees. The warm temperature surprised me. I had no shorts or summer clothes with me other than a couple of short sleeve shirts and one halter-top. Alaska magazine advised the number of mosquitos made clothing that displayed skin a bad choice for Alaskan summers so no shorts accompanied me to Alaska.

Instead of a hotel, the Alaska Rural Schools Project (ARSP) placed us at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus dormitory for the six weeks orientation program. The dorm was cheaper than hotels and camping in bug territory might not be a good introduction to Alaska. Alaskan mosquitos were known to drive people out of the state before they were even settled.

We dropped the luggage at our assigned room and met other ‘newbies’ that were part of the bush teacher crowd. Our new friends, John and Mary, mentioned several people were headed to the Malemute Saloon ten miles south of Fairbanks in the community of Ester. Since it was a warm summer day the group decided a trip to Ester for a first Alaska beer was appropriate.

The Malemute Saloon was like stepping back to the Gold Rush days. Ester was an old gold mining camp with a saloon built around 1906. The swinging doors and barstools were rickety with age, perfect for the atmosphere. The floor of the Malemute was a mixture of dirt and peanut shells. Based on the depth of the mixture we guessed on how often it was swept. The honky-tonk piano player was incredible. Recitations of Robert Service poetry provided occasional breaks for the musician. The music and poetry continued throughout the day and into the evening. Patrons ate their fill of peanuts with a purchase of a fifty-cent dill pickle. The pickles soaked in large wooden barrels scattered throughout the Saloon.

The man reading the Robert Service poetry excelled at creating the illusion of living in the Wild West with a gold miners’ timbre in his speech. The voice was spellbinding. I found it had a haunting affect, making the words linger in my mind long after we left. One person in our group said, Hearing the poetry read in this particular environment was like watching the words speak out loud. Walking to the car I heard another person mumble, The old Saloon made the poetry come alive. What a mystical place to hear, The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee?

As we left the saloon to drive back there was animated talk about feeling we had stepped into another era. I heard someone getting in his truck say, I heard Robert Service poetry in college, but it never made me see old miners like I did tonight. The experience and the constant light outside left many of us a bit off balance. It didn’t matter if we visited the Malemute Saloon at 2:00 p.m. or left at 2:00 a.m., it was always daylight. Summer in the far North resulted in twenty-four hours of sunshine, a new experience for many of us. It disturbed normal sleep patterns. The warmth of the sun didn’t diminish in the late evening. With no air conditioning in the dorms slumber was difficult. People tossed footballs and Frisbees around at all hours as they played in the midnight sun.

Over the course of the first weekend and week of the orientation program I learned Alaska specifically looked for married couples to teach in the bush. This revelation was a new concept to me. California didn’t follow this practice, but other states with large rural areas did. The orientation group was a mix of new teachers and individuals with several years of teaching.

In 1972 part of the hiring process for new rural teachers was attending the Alaska Rural Schools Project. On Monday morning, July 10, at 8:00 a.m. the orientation officially started. The Institute for Northern Research, a part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, was responsible for coordination of the program. The primary goal of the Institute was the preservation of the Native cultures in Alaska. The Alaska Rural Schools Project (ARSP) was a Ford Foundation grant focused on eliminating the constant turnover of teachers in rural Alaska, so it fit into the mission of the Institute. Preliminary results indicated teachers who completed the program stayed in the bush and were more productive with their students.

Previously new educators recruited and hired from the lower 48 states to teach in Alaskan rural communities weren’t provided much information. When new hires reported to their assigned village on a specific date they often experienced shell shock. Little information about housing, purchasing groceries, communication, and teaching materials was sent to them before they arrived in their village.

Throughout the time we participated in the ARSP we heard stories about educators who arrived in a village, got off the plane, looked around, and promptly got right back on the plane shaking their head, No, not for me. There were even more extreme stories about people starting the year and getting village (cabin) fever after a few weeks. It became obvious they needed help when found running naked through the village at below zero temperatures in hopes someone would call for a plane. We all came to think of these stories as village legends shared over a beer. After we heard them repeated multiple times by different people, we wondered about truth to the stories.

When we announced to friends and family in California about being hired to teach in Alaska they were surprised. No one knew much about Alaska and those that did said it was full of mystery and extreme cold. Clearly, cold in Alaska was chiller than I’d ever experienced. Jed and I were no strangers to snow. We were avid skiers in California snow, but had no idea about living in snow. I was surprised to learn that temperatures in Alaska often needed to warm up to snow. All the talk about temperature was confusing. Knowing thirty-two degrees above zero was freezing made the idea of fifty degrees below zero even more confusing. The term wind chill was new for me. I had much to learn. Reading and hearing the discussions helped, but it was still beyond my imagination.

Alaska magazines mentioned most villages in rural Alaska had electricity, but not all had running water. The village we were headed to was in an area of intense cold. I just kept thinking to myself, I can handle it. I found out we were going to one of the remote villages, so we would most likely not have running water. I suddenly realized we were entering a part of the United States where many normal services and conveniences weren’t available. Communication for emergencies was by a radio connection to one person in the village. This was 1972. What had I signed up for?

We knew we needed cold weather clothing and were told to consider purchasing a snow machine. As all the information began to settle into my brain I remembered a college class that discussed culture shock. The term now had a new meaning. Culture shock happened when a person entered a new environment where the interaction patterns were different than what the individual was accustomed to, their personal norm.

During the Alaska Rural Schools orientation we learned about the importance of helping to preserve the many different Native cultures in Alaska, Eskimo, Indian, and Aleut groups. Sessions included history of Alaska Native groups and language, as well as culturally specific material. We began to understand how different Alaska was from the lower 48 states. There were several discussions about the importance of encouraging Native students to become teachers in villages. None of us realized how much the information we received would increase our abilities to be effective teachers.

Teachers in rural Alaska were hired by one of two systems: Alaska State-Operated School System (ASOSS) or the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Both were equally bureaucratic and not in touch with bush communities. Alaska Native presenters explained the importance of students’ education not being dominated by Western curriculum. The missionaries hadn’t allowed children to speak their Native language at school. The repercussions of that action still lingered. With few Alaska Native materials, typical Western curriculum were used in many schools.

Instructors in the orientation program were Alaska Natives or current teachers in village schools. Many of the sessions were organized around ways to utilize Alaska Native history and culture into curriculum. Our orientation sessions were in a Lab school set up on the University campus to mimic a typical village school. Strategies to teach across grade levels and include various content areas were shared since many schools only had three to five teachers. After sessions were done for the day, presenters and new teachers often talked until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m.

A whole day was spent learning to order enough groceries to keep us fed depending on the village location. I never thought about how much flour I used in a month or over a year, or that dried milk powder when mixed with cold water was tasty. The other aspect of ordering food was the time it took to finally arrive and the condition it might be in, depending on the item ordered. I never thought about mailing eggs, fresh fruit, or vegetables and what happened if those items froze along the way.

In the fourth week of the program we were sent to visit our village teaching assignment. The first thing I learned was how to measure distance by the number of airplane rides it took to get somewhere. From Fairbanks we flew to Bethel and then to Marshall (our village destination), only two airplane rides. If we were flying from California, the flight journey would be: LA to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage, Anchorage to Bethel, and Bethel to Marshall, four flights. That was a lot of up and down. At least in small airplanes I never worried someone might dance in the aisles.

Our assignment while in the village was to observe the people in the community, learn about the school, investigate the geographical environment, and orient ourselves to our new home. We didn’t realize the opportunity it provided to return with questions and have conversations that helped us gather additional resources.

Our visit to Marshall was great. We met a few students and parents and stayed in our housing. The head teacher was there so we had an opportunity to visit the school and talk with him about the coming year. We were disappointed to find his teaching philosophy was completely opposite ours. He represented what the Alaska Rural Schools Project was trying to make sure didn’t continue. He thought the only thing students needed to learn was how to work as a manual laborer in a big city. He was sure they wouldn’t return to their villages and his comment was, We certainly don’t want them on welfare.

There was no art, music or cultural materials to assist in the content areas of reading, writing, math, history, social studies, and geography. Reading textbooks were the standard ones used across the United States depicting middle class families in cities. We dug around the classrooms and found an older collection of basic readers developed specifically for rural Alaska. The mimeographed booklets used to teach reading in grades one through four had pictures of Alaska Native children in villages. I planned to use them for reading and writing lessons.

Textbooks were whatever was left from the previous teachers or distributed to the schools. Sometimes the BIA or ASOSS offices or a school district in the lower 48 sent random textbooks. Alaska villages were treated as missionary projects for churches so the textbooks were old and out of date. Bush teachers had no required standards of what they were to cover.

After we returned to Fairbanks each couple shared their village experiences. Given that teaching contracts didn’t start until the third week in August very few of the new bush teachers met