The Road to Freedom

I'm sitting in the Homer Public Library watching the timer tick away (I have 17 minutes left) before I'll be kicked out of the computer because my allotted 45 minutes will be finished. This does not make for a very creative setting to put my thoughts out there. I'll give it a try, but I may come off as kind of "newsy." Such is life.

Ahhh, where to start? I think I'll start from where I am and go back and fill in the blanks as time allows. Yes, I'm back in Homer. I just finished my 6th day as an Advertising Sales Representative for the Homer News (great! a "session time warning" just popped up to alert me that I have only 15 minutes left. I'd better start typing faster.) Okay, I think it makes more sense to start from the beginning...

Kwethluk was a nightmare - simply put. Life out there was beyond hard, it was ridiculous. The outright shunning that I experienced was the hardest thing I think I've ever been through and I didn't even know it at the time. Shortly after I sent Sarah back to Homer on February 8th, to finish out the school year, I started checking out the help-wanted ads in the local Homer newspapers. To make a long story short, I was offered a terrific opportunity at Homer News and I took it, hungrily! When it came time for me to let the school know that I would be leaving, the Dean (who was the closest thing to a friend that I had, but even then really wasn't) asked me if I had told the other teachers (or anyone out there for that matter).

"No. There's no one for me to tell. I mean, I don't have any relationships with anyone so it would be weird to just walk up to them and say, 'Hey, I'm leaving next Friday.' It would be awkward, like 'so what?'"

It's strange to admit that I actually lived someplace for 8 months and there was not a soul to even tell I was leaving when it came my time to go. It's even stranger to think that that happened in a village of 700, not New York City. That's just not me. It's not who I am. I'm the one who gets along with everybody. It made me question myself, question my own validity, question my very existence. Did I really matter at all? It makes me flushed to think those thoughts even now.

I borrowed a fellow-teacher's snowmachine, and carted my tubs one load at a time until I had taken all 53 plastic tubs (rubbermaid totes) and boxes to the post office. It took 10 trips. I moved it all 100% by myself. I didn't ask for help and no one offered to help. Fellow teachers even stood outside the school chatting with one another as I made trip after trip past them to the post office. The dean waved.

That pretty much sums up my existence out there. The lawlessness left me breathless. In the end, I was sleeping with my outside doors barricaded and a loaded .357 magnum on my bedside table. I never dared let Nali run loose for fear of her being shot or attacked by another loose dog. It all came to a head over the "Power of Words" blog post. Villagers were terribly angry that I had told the world that they used honey buckets and were English "challenged." My safety was threatened and I couldn't stay there any longer. Believe you me, I was heavily editing my words on this blog while I was in Kwethluk. But, even that wasn't good enough.

So, Thursday, March 17, was my last day teaching at Ket'acik Aapalluk Memorial School in Kwethluk. I paid the husband of a teacher to drive me, Nali, and Reggie, up the Kuskokwim River Ice Road Friday morning so that I could catch the 9am flight out of Bethel to Anchorage. The Yupik man who gave me a ride in his bright red, extended cab, Ford 4x4, was a friendly chap by the name of Alexie. Tall for a Yupik, he stood over 6 feet tall. This broad-shouldered, dark skinned, middle-aged man had quite a story to tell. The ride was about 40 minutes long with gave him plenty of time to tell me about growing up 100 miles away, at the base of the Kuskokwim Mountains. Looking at Nali reminded him of his own dog that he had as a boy when he and the dog would go moose and she-bear hunting in the mountains. He was never afraid when he was out with his dog.

When I asked him how much longer before the ice road would start to break up, he replied, "Oh, about April 18th or 19th." I smiled to myself in the dark of the cab as I thought of how specific he had been. Not April, or even mid April... but April 18th or 19th. He was a man who knew the seasons out there well.

It was still dark when we arrived at the airport at 8am, but we had made it without incident, driving the narrow 2-lane, plowed, bumpy-like-a-gravel-road ice road out on the Alaskan tundra. I paid Alexie and he wished me luck as he helped carry in my luggage to the small, one-room terminal for Alaska Air. I had given Nali a Benadryl just before I left home, hoping to calm her down some for the trip. It hadn't phased her a bit. She was friendly and perky while I checked in, and I got many compliments, as usual, on what a beautiful dog she is. (Reggie had howled from inside his pet carrier most of the way to Bethel - poor kitty) Nali had gotten to ride with me, sitting on the cramped floor space by my feet on the passenger's side of the truck cab. She's such a good pup.

We got all checked in and I said "goodbye" to the pets as they were taken out to the cargo hold and I loaded into the cabin of a large plane - a 747, I think it was. It was the biggest plane I'd ever flown out of Bethel, but it was over half empty that Friday morning as I settled in to my own private row of three seats to myself and read The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo on my Kindle all the way to Anchorage (about an hour flight).

The rest of the trip was uneventful, though I did fly on a terribly small plane in to Homer (4 passengers, the pilot, and the cargo hold was simply in the rear of the cabin). I actually got to sit in a seat right behind Nali's kennel so that she could relax and see me the whole way. It was interesting to see that she didn't really mind flying at all, just curled up and napped away the 40 minute flight from Anchorage to Homer.

Then, the real adventure began.

I had bought a 1997 Subaru (sight unseen) from someone I knew (or thought I knew) and they were meeting me at the airport with it. Really, it seemed like an ideal situation... until I actually got in to the car. I had also rented a 2 bedroom "cottage" in town (again, sight unseen) that was supposed to be "cute." You can see where this is going. So, I got into the car and the folks I bought it from were going to follow me over to the cottage. As I drove the car, my heart sank. Yes, it had black leather interior... but, the doors were held together with black duck tape. The engine light was on. The brakes scraped. There was a 3 foot long crack in the windshield, and the steering wheel pulled hard to the right. I wanted to scream by the time I had driven it the couple of miles to my new abode! When we got there, I simply told them that I couldn't take a car like that. I listed off all of the things that were wrong with it and they looked at me like, "Damn, she's not a dumb broad! What now?" They agreed to give me back the money I paid for it and they drove it home.

It was just about then that the landlord showed up and unlocked the front door. I moved myself, my pets, and my luggage into the empty space and sighed heavily as the landlord shut the door behind him to leave. It was filthy and falling apart and reeked of fuel oil. There were rat turds in the cabinets. The floor was muddy. The windows in the bedrooms had broken locks and so could just be pushed open from the inside (or pulled open from the outside). But, the fuel smell - that was the real clincher. I stood in that empty house without a car and took a deep breath to keep the tears at bay. Sarah was down the road at the house where she had been staying with friends for the past 6 weeks. Did I dare even call her to let her know I was here? I made the call and asked her to get the number of a local cab for me - thinking that I'd take a cab to a car rental place and at least get a car for a few days. Her "adopted" father, and a true friend of mine, offered to let me use one of their cars for the next couple of days. So, we got the car, she moved her personal belongings in to the house, I had a queen bed and dining set delivered that I had bought from someone else I knew in town, and we settled in for the night. There was no hot water in the shower, but we stayed up late talking at the dining table by candlelight. Because there were no window coverings in the house, we didn't want to turn the lights on for everyone to watch our every move.

The next morning, we awoke at 5am, 6am, and 7am to a rooster crowing for about 3 minutes at a stretch. He lived next door. As a matter of fact, there were also goats next door. There were 5 single family dwellings on that lot. I found out later that the landlord is known as the local slum lord. We got up early, went for coffee, and headed to Soldotna to go car shopping. I found a terrific 2004 Chrysler Pacific (silver with black leather interior) that I bought on the spot. Since Sarah can't drive, we went back to Homer, met up with another friend of mine who drove us back to Soldotna that evening so that we could bring the car home. Yes, I actually have friends in Homer! What an amazing place to live!

When we got back to the "cottage" that evening around 10pm, the fuel fumes were so overwhelming that they made my eyes water within a few minutes of being in the house. I was determined not to spend a second night in that slum - even though there was now hot water in the shower. I must have called six or seven hotels and finally found one, The Driftwood Inn, that would take pets and rent by the week. $400/week for a room modeled after a ship's cabin, which meant a full-size bed pushed into a corner with a twin bunk hanging over it, tiny TV mounted on the wall and a bathroom small enough to shave your legs in the shower while sitting on the toilet. But, it was clean! We settled in for the night and then spent the day Sunday moving the rest of our things out of the "cottage." That included getting a storage unit and moving the bed and dining set into it (thanks to a friend, once again - the same one who moved it in to the cottage the day before!).

Well, this library computer has let me type away, giving me many extra 15 minute segments. But, it is now set to shut off in 3 minutes. So, the story will have to be continued later... (rest assured that we have a wonderful place to live, now).