Wash Day

Laundry View

Wash day starts early. The sooner I get the laundry up on the lines, the more likely it will be dry by the end of my day. My days are not measured by daylight because that would give me a never-ending day in the summer and only an hour or so in the winter. However, that’s another story in itself.

Rainwater bucket

Water Barrel

Wash day actually starts with the rain. Our rain collection system provides clearer water than we can get from the river, so it’s much better for laundry. However, in the winter, melting fresh snow does the trick. The water catchment system drains into a 5-gallon bucket under the cabin. Every time a bucket is full, we dump it into a large 35-gallon trash barrel. We try to be extremely vigilant about this when it rains. To have a bucket run over means wasted water, so we catch every drop we can.

Using an old, plastic, Folgers’ can (the 3 lb size is most useful), I dip out the water and pour it through a strainer, to catch any pine needles that may have floated down with the water off of the roof, into a large, steel, cooking pot. I carry that into the cabin and heat it up on the propane cook stove. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at knowing when it’s the right temperature without even touching it. The secret is that as soon as all of the cold moisture droplets on the pot have evaporated, it’s the perfect temperature to wash clothes. I don’t want it to boil, but I want the water to be hot enough to completely dissolve my homemade washing powder and clean the clothes well.

My proud propane stove moment, short-lived!

One particularly hot day, I decided to heat the water on our portable camp stove outside. My thought was that it would not only keep the cabin from heating up, but also prevent so many trips in and out of the house, every one of which lets in more flies and mosquitoes. We had just enough propane left in the canister for me to finish my four loads of laundry for the day. Being extremely proud of my enterprising effort, I anxiously told Gregg about it over dinner. He laughed and said that those little, green, propane canisters cost 20 bucks a piece at the AC Store in town. I swallowed hard and decided to always use the kitchen stove from now on.

Heating up water on the kitchen stove

While the water heats up, I get my laundry tub ready, fill it with clothes (it has a 5 lb capacity), pour in the detergent, and bring a chair from the front porch down to the wash area. The area where I wash laundry is five steps down from the cabin, on the deck that leads to the Lodge Walking Trail. It is a 12 ft square platform on which the generator and rainwater barrel sit and is the perfect place to let wash water drain off the edge and down the hill.

When the water is warm, I carry it out of the cabin with potholders and gently pour it into the washtub which I straddle with my legs to keep it from turning over while I fill it. It is a sealed round barrel that builds pressure from the hot water being sealed inside as I turn it over and over. I fill it with two-thirds of my heated water, saving the rest for the rinse cycle.

Washin' Clothes - 5lbs at a time.

Now the real work begins as I sit in the chair and roll the tub back and forth, round and round for five long minutes. Who needs a gym with resistance training classes when you’ve got a laundry barrel like this?! On a pretty morning, while turning that barrel, I look out at the dogs splashing at the edge of the river, and I am thankful. It’s one more mindful experience. When one has to really wash their clothes, not throw them in a machine, push a button, and walk away, clothes don’t look nearly as dirty at the end of every day. I have a set of “work” clothes and a set of  “clean clothes” that I wear again and again for several days.

After the five-minute wash cycle, it’s time to wring and rinse. Again, this is not a button on a machine. After inserting the drainpipe and opening the lid of the wash tub, I remove each item, one by one, and hand-wring it before placing it in a clean, empty pot like the one in which I heat the water. When everything has been rung out, I snap each item back into shape and put it back into the washtub with the rest of the now-luke-warm water, and give it a quick spin or two. At that point, it’s time to let the clothes sit for a minute while I refill the pot with water from the 35-gallon barrel and put it back on the kitchen stove to warm up for the next load. Five pounds of laundry is not very much – three shirts, two pairs of pants, and a pair of shorts fills it up, so I usually do three to four loads of laundry at a time.

While the next load of water is heating, I head back out to roll the tub back and forth, round and round for another five minutes. Whew! It’s time for the final wring dry. It’s a wet job and my hands get more of a workout than they did when I owned the bakery and shaped 40 loaves of bread at a time. But, it’s good, honest, hard work and I enjoy it, take pride in it, even revel in my good fortune to be this close to nature while doing laundry.

Wash Day!

After every piece is wrung out and snapped and put in the clean pot, I fill the tub with the next load and washing powder. Then, I’m off to hang the first batch on the clothesline, which is actually a combination of several lines hung around the porch and side of the house. Heavy items go on the porch where they’ll get the most sun and wind. Smaller items, like socks and underwear, can go around the side where the line is closer to the hillside.

The first load is done and I head back inside to get the water, which is probably just about the right temp! This process is repeated until the laundry is done, which takes about half an hour per load.

Clean fingernails have to be the best side benefit of doing laundry by hand. The major downers are the super-dry hands. Thankfully, I keep plenty of lotion around!

Heavy items like jeans and Carhartt work pants can take up to two days to dry, and that’s with 24-hours of daylight! Alas, it is finished! Time to go work in the garden.

Different Strokes

I’ve been a single mom for 19 years. My daughters are now 26 and 23 years old. You might be thinking that the mothering is over. The truth is that it’s never over. Their feelings, their wants, their needs are always on my mind whether I just got off of the phone with them or it’s been weeks since we talked.

“I just want you to know I’m happy for you,” Sarah, my youngest, told me today, through tear-filled eyes.

I am visiting her and her husband and my new 2-month-old grandson. My 11-day visit ends today, when I go back home, 3,180 miles away.

I’ve always dreamed of living in an off-grid cabin in Alaska. Ask anyone who’s known me for more than 10 minutes. My girls were raised with me telling them that, one day, they would have to bring the grandbabies by plane or 4-wheeler to visit me in my cabin in the wilds of Alaska.

“I’ll make sure to have plenty of sleeping bags for everyone to camp out on the floor,” I’d tell them.

Neither one of them can remember a time when I ever told them different. It was who I was going to be. It was more than a dream. It was a goal. It was a plan. It was my destiny.

That was never their dream; it was all mine. I never pressured them to follow in my footsteps. I never even suggested it. I always encouraged them to follow their own dreams, create their own paths, live their own lives.

The year that I turned 40, I put the plan in motion by taking a teaching job in Homer, Alaska. April spent her senior year of high school there, loved it, but was intent on moving back to Wisconsin to pursue her dream of being a teacher. She has done that and so much more. She’s now teaching 7^th grade English, happily married, and has spent several summers traveling the world. I am so very proud to call her my daughter!

Sarah was in the 8^th grade when we moved to Alaska. She, too, graduated from high school in Homer and then went on to attend the University of Alaska – Anchorage for one year before following her own path back to the lower 48. She now works for a dental office, is happily married, and gave me my first grandbaby two months ago. What an amazing woman she has turned into!

Still, despite it all, they have a hard time understanding why I continue to live my life in Alaska, why I don’t move closer to them, and how I can be happy living so far away, especially now that grandchildren are starting to arrive. It is difficult for me to hear this, in part because I feel guilty for all the obvious reasons, but also because I feel jealous that they receive my complete support and encouragement to follow their dreams, but I don’t receive that from them, not anymore.

It’s not that I wouldn’t love to live near them, but I’m not the one who moved away from Alaska. My sense of self is much different from theirs. I suffer from severe anxiety in crowds, need a lot of time to myself, and yearn to live in the quiet solitude of the wild. My daughters know all of this, of course, because they grew up with me.

I always imagined myself alone in my dream life; however, I was lucky enough to meet Gregg, a 32-year Alaskan from northern Minnesota, who followed his dream at age 30 to a riverside cabin that he built along the Unalakleet River, home of world-class salmon fishing as well as world record-size grizzly bears. The only person to live off-grid on that river year-round, he is my match. Together, we get to live out our common life goals and make our dreams a reality. Crazy amazing! 

Is it so wrong to revel in my good fortune at living my life-long dream? Do I have some sort of synaptic disconnect that keeps me from moving to the upper Midwest to live near my children and their families? Should I keep my happiness to myself so as not to make others feel bad?

As I reflect back honestly, I wasn’t always 100% supportive of their decisions. I questioned their motives. I questioned their sensibilities. I questioned them. I should expect the same. After all, I taught them to question.

Perhaps one day they’ll find the answers they’re searching for and be as happy for, and proud of, me as I am for them.

Your comments are welcome.

Making Lemonade

Sunday evening - May 21, 2017

I don’t need your sympathy. I’ll have your envy in no time.

Tonight, we are rich, wealthy beyond measure.

I woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of songbirds. I rolled over in our flannel sheets under the homemade quilt and felt the breeze come through the window screen over my head and brush across my shoulders. I could hear the occasional creak of a kitchen chair as Gregg sipped his coffee and scribbled numbers on his latest Sudoku puzzle, a morning ritual. I smiled to myself, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and ran my fingers through my gray hair.

This is my life, I sighed deeply, rolling out of bed and heading toward the eco-friendly porta-potty on the other side of the bedroom.

After a quiet morning of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on the radio while we ate breakfast sandwiches (caribou breakfast sausage, eggs, and pepper-jack cheese on mayonnaise fried English muffins), I worked on a crossword puzzle until Gregg came in from outside asking if I’d like to go for a boat ride up river and fish a little. I pulled on my Xtra Tuffs, Beaver Hat, and Outhouse Jacket (Duluth Trading Fleece), and was out the door in 30 seconds.

Eighteen miles up river (Unalakleet River), Gregg shut the motor off in an eddy where we saw Dollies jumping, and we started casting. The river runs fast, but the eddy we were in kept the boat stationary without an anchor. Inside of 45 minutes we had both caught five Dolly Varden (about one gene away from an Arctic Char, as Gregg explained) and each had two others that jumped off the line before we got them to the boat. We let them all go. It was just for fun. Fish are so easy to catch here that if we want fish for dinner, all we have to do is walk down to the shore in front of the cabin 15 minutes before dinner, cast a few times, catch two, and fry them up. Voilah! Dinner! There is no reason to catch fish eight hours and 10 miles from where we are going to eat them.

The boat ride was chilly and I was glad for my beaver hat. We saw a moose, dozens of geese, a pair of swans, an eagle in her nest, and an osprey even flew overhead with his Dolly dinner in his claws.

There was not another human soul on the river all day. Not a boat. No one. I was reminded of a time 15 years or more ago when I took the girls camping and canoeing in Arkansas one chilly March weekend. Highs were in the low 50’s and we had frost at night. We canoed down the river in our coats, hats, and gloves. When we stopped on a sandbar for our picnic lunch, April (my 10 year old daughter) asked me, “Mom, do they only let one boat down the river at a time?”

“No, honey. Everyone else thinks it’s too cold to be out.”

“That’s crazy!” was her adamant response.

I thought of her today, 26 years old and married to an avid outdoorsman. They would have loved today, almost as much as I did! I’m hoping that I will be able to share this paradise with them this summer.

It was only 1pm by the time we were back home from our river adventure. Since the sun never sets this time of year, time means… nothing. After a lunch of summer sausage sandwiches, we went to work in the garden, tilling, weeding, and planting bean and pea starts. We nursed the rhubarb and raspberries before heading to the upper deck to get the flower starts into the flower boxes.

After a cocktail break, but before starting dinner, we went out to forage. Initially, we were looking for fiddleheads, but found none. Instead, we came across a crop of Ayuu, the leaves of which make a medicinal tea good for most anything that ails you. We also admired the new crop of cranberries, rose hips, and wildflowers that were just coming up.

The rain started as we were heading back, common at the end of a “hot” day, which today was defined as since it was above 70 degrees. We were able to collect 15 gallons of roof runoff in less than one hour, which mean water for washing dishes and taking baths tonight! That’s three fewer trips up the 40-some stairs hauling water from the river, in addition to giving all of our new plantings a good water!

Chicken-fried Caribou tenderloin nuggets with mashed potatoes and corn for dinner (dogs get all of the scraps) and blues music on the radio brings a peaceful end to the day. Bucket baths and a movie on the flatscreen, while sitting in the recliner couch before retiring to the “treehouse” bedroom loft makes a perfect end to a perfect day.

No time clock, No schedule. No boss. No plans (lessons or otherwise). Just clean living, hard working, and true love in the form of an intimate companionship where we are constantly looking for ways to make life easier for one another. Sometimes that comes in the form of Gregg making an extra step for me to get down to the garden or me making dinner.

I’ll now sign off as Bob Dylan croons on the radio, “I have no sense of time.”

Holding On

I am from broken hearts and broken homes,

Shattered dreams and drowning tears,

All washed away in this fast moving river called Life.

I am from second chances

Rising above the horizon like a late sunrise on a winter’s day,

Replacing nightmares with daydreams, fire with the phoenix.

I am from long nights and even longer days

Where the abundance of the land does more than sustain,

It revives.

The edge of the world is at my doorstep,

As a constant reminder of where I am from,

Ebbing and flowing, in and out, back and forth,

Like a flawless feather being blow through the breeze

Only to land delicately on the river and eventually

Ride out to sea.

I am from death mitered with life,

Mountains melting into the sea,

Changing seasons spinning into years

Of holding on.