Living with Essential Oils

Living in a cabin off the grid in Alaska definitely comes with its challenges. However, essential oils have become my go-to when it comes to problem solving.

Ironing spray. I use a butane iron with an ironing board that consists of a tea towel spread over a large, wooden, cutting board. There is no temperature or steam selection on the iron, but I’ve learned that I never really needed them anyway. I don’t iron anything delicate. (I told you we live in the backcountry of Alaska, right?) However, I do a lot of sewing and quilting and it takes steam to get those fabrics wrinkle free. I fill a spray bottle with water (river water) and add a few drops of whatever-mood-I’m-in-essential-oil. At the moment, it is Spiced Orange, and it makes my fabrics and final result smell delightful, in addition to providing me with that extra umph that I need to make my fabrics crisp and smooth.

Bug Off. Mosquitoes, flies, gnats, no-see-ums. All of those little pests could easily drive me from my garden or off of the tundra during berry picking season, but thanks to a lethal combination of essential oils and witch hazel, my handy spray bottle keeps them at bay. Sometimes, I buy a combination already put together by my essential oil provider, or sometimes I just mix a few drops each of peppermint, eucalyptus, and lavender into a half cup of witch hazel and call it good. Basil also works well.  I laugh when I’m putting it together, feeling like a mad scientist, thinking that the peppermint is giving me extra energy, the eucalyptus is actually repelling the pests, and the lavender is making me so relaxed that I don’t care if there are bugs around or not. True, I do have to reapply every half hour or so, but I feel better about not spraying poison on myself or the plants around me.

Fly Away. If you have an outhouse, you know where I’m going with this. Summertime brings flies that can and will swarm the outhouse by the thousands if not kept at bay. I walk out to the outhouse, open the door, and they rise out of the depths through the toilet seat hole like a great mass of Death Eaters from Harry Potter’s worst nightmares. Never fear. A spray bottle filled with two cups of vinegar and 10 drops each of peppermint, eucalyptus, and basil will do the trick! Spray that magic potion on every surface, inside and out, and down the hole, for good measure, and your problems are solved. Another hint – you might want to take your coffee grounds out there and pour them down the hole as that kills mosquitoes breeding in the moist, yucky stuff that shall not be named. There is nothing more unsatisfying than looking out at the beautiful view from the outhouse as flies buzz up the hole behind your hiney and mosquitoes take a bite or two. Problem solved.

Purification. I’m 50 and proud of it. However, my bladder is not what it used to be and I often have to go to the bathroom two or more times during the night, at least once for sure. I did tell you we live in the Alaskan wilderness, right?! That means that a trip to the outhouse in the middle of the night is not at the top of my bucket list. So, I have an indoor port-a-potty that I use for those emergencies. I’ve tried the commercial deodorizer packets but they leave a chemical smell lingering in the air. I have a very sensitive sense of smell, so I use a synergy blend essential oil, Purification being my favorite. The scent is clean and natural and totally deodorizes to my satisfaction. The scent is a combination of lemongrass, rosemary, and citronella.

Heal Thyself. Whether you suffer from sickness or sore muscles, I’ve got the answer. I came down with pneumonia for the first time when I was 40. I had always had a tendency to get bronchitis from a simple cold, but that was the first time that it went a step further. I’ll never forget in the doctor’s office that day, when she used the phrase, “Well, when you get to be this age…” This age? This age! How? When? Did that happen? Eight of the last 10 years have brought pneumonia back to me in various degrees. Eucalyptus oil, rubbed on my chest, opens my lungs better than the dime store vapor rub. In addition, it’s great for cold sores and head congestion.

No matter your age, sore muscles afflict all of us sooner or later. Whether it’s that knot just below your neck on your left shoulder after a long day at work, the sore muscles from last night’s racketball extravaganza, or the achy knee from the abuse of motorcross or football, capsaicin is your friend. Personally, I use a stick (looks like a deodorant stick) that’s infused with capsaicin oil (found in spicy peppers). Its natural heat melts knots and soreness away. Try it.

My diffuser and a variety of oils

Diffuser. For my birthday this year, my daughter gave me a battery-operated essential oil diffuser. She knows me well. Most days, we enjoy fresh fish or wild game meals fried up in an iron skillet. Being without conventional electricity means there is no exhaust fan in the kitchen. Our cabin is 400 square feet, including the bedroom loft. Are you getting a clear picture yet? Or rather, are you smelling it yet? That diffuser is a godsend, swiftly changing the cabin scent from spicy fish to gentle lavender or fresh orange. Whether it’s the diffuser or a homemade candle with essential oils mixed into the beeswax, freshness is only a moment away.

Perfume. Did you know that there are even essential oil blends created to imitate pheromones? Crazy! But, hey, who am I kidding? I’m in! Being married to a hard working man almost 12 years my senior, if I can get a leg up in the attraction department, I’ll take it. The scents are subtle, woodsy, and musky. I learned a long time ago that the scent men are most attracted to is pumpkin pie (for women, it’s vanilla). No big surprise there if you’re familiar with the old saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” A little cinnamon behind both ears and you’re good to go! Seriously, using essential oils as an alluring fragrance has a long history of success, and if you can go all natural with what the earth intended instead of spraying on overpoweringly perfumey fragrances, why not?!

Dandelion Oil

Lotions, soaps, shampoos. Always looking to reduce the amount of man-made, chemically enhanced substances from my daily life, essential oil infused skin and hair care was a good fit from the start. I find them to be more gentle and cleansing at the same time than other over-the-counter products. My husband finds the soft smelling scents seductive, which is a definite plus. Lotions and soaps made with essential oils tend to have a lighter scent that soaks deeply into the skin. I’ve even embarked on the adventure of making my own dandelion oil, known for its skin healing properties (recipe below). All natural shampoos made with essential oils instead of artificial additives also seem to keep my hair cleaner longer, a definite plus when a bath or shower means hauling 40 lb buckets of water up 40-some steps from the river to heat on the stove.

At the end of the day, the benefits of living off grid in an old Alaskan trapper’s cabin definitely outweigh the challenges. It’s just a matter of shifting the way I think about daily life. Using essential oils requires a lot less label reading for toxic chemicals, giving me more time for the things I enjoy, like sitting on the porch with a glass of wine, watching the silver salmon jump their way upriver. Cheers!

Dandelion Oil

Topical use only: Healing for Psoriasis, Eczema, or other dry skin ailments. Also, soothes sore muscles.

1.     Pick and dry full-bloom dandelion flowers. Getting rid of the excess moisture is key to preventing bacteria or mold from growing.

2.     Fill a sterilized quart jar 2/3 full of the dried flowers and pour enough organic olive oil in to reach ½ inch below the bottom of the lid.

3.     If you’d like, you can add a few drops of your favorite smelling essential oil at this point. Personally, I like the natural olive oil scent.

4.     Tighten two-piece lid and place in a sunny location for two weeks.

5.     Strain oil through cheesecloth into smaller, sterilized jars. Tighten lids and keep in dark location for up to one year.

Optional: After the initial two weeks, you can strain the oil and add another batch of dried dandelion flowers, and set in sun for another two weeks in order to make an extra-strength batch.

A Toast to the Tundra

Land of the Midnight Sun

As I was foraging on the tundra this morning, I began to contemplate what makes a food particularly American. From hot dogs and apple pie to roasted turkey and mashed potatoes, what do you think of when you think of American food?

American food is seemingly its own genre, often separate from what a family in America might consider traditional foods. For example, you might ask someone living in Texas and they might answer that BBQ is most definitely an American food, while Pasole might be a traditional food in their family. Is Pasole really less American than BBQ? I think not.

Fireweed

Here’s a scenario for you. Most Fourth of July celebrations include hamburgers and hot dogs, even in Alaska. Even in Unalakleet. However, there are no cows or pigs or chickens out here. In order to have an American celebration, food has to be flown in – potatoes for French fries, ice cream, soda pop. Our local traditional foods include salmon, caribou, moose, greens, berries, rhubarb, whale, seal, bear, crab, and water fowl of all sorts. Are those less American?

For the first time in my life, I am going to live off the land. No job with a regular paycheck. Thankfully, I live in a land of abundance. I took a trek up the hill behind the cabin today. Along the way, I noticed rose hips and currants ripening in the woods and when I came into the tundra clearing at the top of the hill, I felt like the richest person in the world. The wind brought with it a view of never ending mountains and not a person anywhere. When I looked down, ripe blueberries dotted the ground, salmon berries were turning orange, cranberries were just starting to turn yellow, and Fireweed was in full bloom. There was even wild rhubarb here and there. All are amazing foods and they couldn’t be more American. They literally grow wild in my back yard.

Wild Rhubarb

Gregg already has a moose hunt planned for this fall, I plan to go with him caribou hunting, and we already have 30 pounds of salmon in the freezer. It looks like Nuka, our one-year-old Chocolate Lab is going to be a great bird dog, so we’ll have plenty of water fowl. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s the epitome of American food!

Muktuk (whale blubber) in Alaska is as American as pasties in Michigan or cheese curds in Wisconsin. Jambalaya in Louisiana is as American as lobster rolls in Maine or tacos in New Mexico.  I’m grateful for the rich diversity of our country as a whole, but I’m even more grateful for abundance of life right outside my front door.

The Wind & the Water

The salty scent of Spam and beans, simmering in goose stock made from river water, on the stove provides the perfect warm and dry backdrop for me to reflect on the water that sustains all life and the wind that mimics water in its purpose and value.

The fresh water of the Unalakleet River runs some 90 miles from the Kaltag Mountains to the Bering Sea, where it stirs into the icy arctic salt water in swirls and waves. Sitting in a boat, some ten miles upriver, anchor holding us securely in place, the current tinkles past as it hits the aluminum hull, sounding not unlike wind chimes fluttering in the breeze. It makes me pause to reflect on the similarities of wind and water and my love for both, my need for both.

Just then, a gust rustles through a nearby Aspen, rising head and shoulders around the surrounding willows on the bank. The quivering silver and green leaves sound like rushing water, a waterfall. Closing my eyes, I can see the waterfall, clear and fast, bubbling over the rocks, here and there moss-covered. I open my eyes to a calm slough with tundra cotton gently sailing through the air and landing on its surface, giving it the look of quarter-size snowflakes landing on black ice. The gust settles and the glittering silver leaves settle into the still green of summer. I’m pulled back to the task at hand.

The spin of a reel. The plop of the spoon lure.  The gentle, rhythmic reeling in of the line. Fish on! Suddenly, the line whines like a loose zipper as the salmon takes off with the hook, leaping out of the water with a flip of its tail. Leaning back, the pole strains into a perfect, upside-down “U” in my grip. The fish swims against the line in the shape of the infinity symbol, over and over. There is a message here. A connection. Man and fish. Wind and water. Sometimes the man wins and the fish ends up in the frying pan. Often, the fish wins, wriggling its way off the line before it can be coaxed into the finality of the boat.

The wind blows and the river rises, summer and winter. At times, the wind can be heard a long way off, heading toward me like a hundred thousand buffalo hooves in the deep snow, but it is summer. As it gets closer, the sound changes to a rush of water. I look upriver from the porch, as the wind is usually coming from that way, the east, half expecting to see a tsunami rolling toward me. Instead, I see the distant trees bending my way and in the next instant, the wind is in my hair, cool and fresh, blowing the mosquitoes back into the tall grass and offering a cool respite from the late August smell of decaying Humpies along the shore of the river.

My memory goes back. I grew up on and in the cool lake waters of northern Wisconsin, spending hours alone fishing from a canoe and getting temporarily stranded more than once on a nearby island in a windy rain that made it impossible to paddle home for several hours. I was never afraid. I could see our dock from where I sat, huddled under a giant pine. The storm wouldn’t last forever, but this cycle of wind and rain, on and off, now and again, would. Somehow, that was settling, comforting. The calm would come again, eventually. While I waited, it gave me time to quietly listen to the wind and the rain, as it drowned out all sounds of wildlife. The only sounds were those of wind and water. A stormy home life lay just beyond that dock. That pause in my day filled my head with thoughts of simply paddling the other way, forever. But, alas, after the surge abated, some sort of inner compass led me home. The same compass that led me to this very porch on which I now stand, overlooking the river and the distant Whaleback Mountains, contemplating the life and sounds around me.

Unalakleet is a water village, surrounded on three sides by water, both fresh and salt. Its name means, “Where the east wind blows.” It is no coincidence that the wind and the water are an infinite life force here. It is divine providence.

Match.com

July 2016 at the Unalakleet River Lodge

Stage Left: Enter 48-year-old high school English teacher from Wisconsin, now residing in a remote Alaskan village on the Bering Sea, teaching Spanish to Eskimos.

Stage Right: Enter 60-year-old trapper/fishing guide/small engine repairman from Minnesota, who has spent the last 25 years earning his Sourdough title in that same remote Alaskan village on the Bering Sea.

Front Center Stage: Match.com

It all started with a Wink.

Kathy (aka Alaska_Soul) had been dating on and off via Match.com for 15 years. Finding herself single and headed to the Alaskan bush to teach, she began checking out profiles for men in the Unalakleet area, located on the Norton Sound, south of Nome, Alaska. Her lifelong dream had been to live off the land in an off-grid cabin somewhere in the wilds of Alaska. She wasn’t getting any younger and with both of her adult daughters building their own lives in the Lower 48, it was time to make the jump.

In a state whose motto is, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd,” as relating to how many single men live there, the selection was pretty slim in Unalakleet, according to Match. But, Kathy wasn’t looking for love as much as she was looking for peace and quiet. Still, there was one profile for a clean-shaven man who caught her eye.

She winked.

First Dance.

Gregg (aka Buckshot Gordy) had put a profile on Match.com after much urging from his trapping partner. He’d corresponded with a few women from around Alaska, but nothing ever stuck. Living off-grid in his self-built cabin on the Unalakleet River, the only year-round resident on the river, didn’t provide him much time for online dating. However, he did run a small engine repair shop in the village where he had a cell phone and internet.

He had let his Match subscription lapse, but still occasionally checked to see who was on there. One day, there was a wink. He winked back.

Alaska_Soul messaged Buckshot Gordy through the dating site but never heard back. Buckshot Gordy never read the message because he didn’t have a subscription. Nine months passed, during which they both reread each other’s profile descriptions several times. He figured that in Unalakleet, population 750, they were bound to run into one another. She figured that he just wasn’t interested.

Finally, he showed Alaska_Soul's profile to Sissy, his trapping partner, 30 years his junior and very technologically savvy. She did a quick search on the woman’s profile picture, discovered her blog, and found out that she was the local high school English teacher. That was all ole Buckshot Gordy needed to know.

Out on the trapline

He headed over to the school that November afternoon about 3:30, just as school was letting out, and asked the school secretary where he could find the English classroom. Being a longtime resident, she didn’t even question him, just pointed the way.

Five minutes later, in his grimy overalls, having come straight from under a snowmachine rebuild, and sporting his usual baseball hat, work boots, and bushy beard and mustache, he walked into Ms. Kysar’s classroom and said hello to a few of the boys as he made his way to her desk, where she was finishing up with a student.

“Hi,” he said with a big smile. His blue eyes sparkled from beneath the filthy hat.

“I’m Gregg,” he introduced himself.

Immediately, the teacher thought this must be a parent that she didn’t recognize and she responded, “Hello?” with a question in her voice.

“Buckshot Gordy,” he explained.

“Ohhhh,” she laughed nervously as all of the curious eyes in the classroom watched her.

Wedding Day

“I’m sorry, but I’m really busy wrapping up the school day. Uh-,“ a million thoughts raced through her mind. Awkward, yes. Off guard, yes. Nosey students everywhere. Online dating is embarrassing. Why was he here? He didn’t look anything like his clean-shaven online picture. They seldom do! That smile was drawing her in. In fact, she liked beards.

“No problem. I’ll catch up with you later,” and he made a quick exit. Just like that, he was gone. She didn’t know where to find him or how to reach him.

“It’s just as well,” she quietly thought to herself as the students left and she packed up her desk. He was all she could think about as she walked back to teacher housing.

Driving his 4-wheeler back to his repair shop, Gregg realized that he probably hadn’t made the best first impression.

“Maybe I should have cleaned up a bit first,” he questioned himself, “Well, what you see is what you get.”

He thought they’d probably run into each other around town, but that was about it. She didn’t seem interested. A notice showed up in his email saying that he’d received a message from her, but he didn’t want to pay the activation fee just to read an email that probably just told him she wasn’t interested.

Three months later, Match.com offered a free weekend of communication in honor of Valentine’s Day. Gregg read her email. She had sent him her phone number.  He called.

Shocked to actually hear his voice on the phone, Kathy’s heart crawled up her throat. The phone calls continued over the next couple of weeks. Conversation was easy, but it felt strange to her to be carrying on a phone relationship with someone who was calling from a mile away.

Honeymoon

On his end, Gregg was unfamiliar with dating, having lived off-grid for the past 25 years and spending much of that, months at a time, completely alone on the trap line. But, there was something about Kathy’s profile that intrigued him. Perhaps it was that she enjoyed the outdoors. It did say, “If you can chop wood, that’s a plus.” He laughed at that one, as he tossed another log into his wood stove. Were there actually people out there who couldn’t chop wood?

Finally, they set a date for the first week of March. They would meet up after she finished teaching for the day and 4-wheel up the frozen Unalakleet River. She followed him as they started out onto the river on a well-traveled trail, each on their own 4-wheeler. Here and there, along the way, Gregg would stop to point out landmarks. North River. South River. Fish camps. A free-flowing spring along the north bank where locals got water in the winter. An old log cabin that he first stayed in and ran sled dogs from when he moved to Unalakleet those many years ago.

Seven miles up river, they arrived at his cabin. Warming up with hot chocolate next to the oil stove, they talked until the sun started to go down. It was easy. It was comfortable. It was perfect.

Being that this was her first time on the river, he led her back to town and they said goodbye at the edge of the water in the AC store parking lot, too bundled up to do more than wave goodbye.

Their story goes on from there. Quiet dinners at her apartment followed by movies on the television turned into peaceful weekends at his cabin, reading by kerosene lamp. They became inseparable.

The following April (4/10/17), they were married by the local magistrate with two close friends as witnesses as he put the most unique wedding ring on her finger, a shiny, new hose clamp. You just can’t make these things up!

The Cabin

They now live at the 400sf cabin together, the only year-round residents on the Unalakleet River in western Alaska, seven miles from the Bering Sea, with their three dogs always underfoot. Gregg still works at his small engine repair shop in town and traps in the winter, working at the Unalakleet River Lodge in the summer. Kathy spends her days minding the cabin, working the garden, sewing, canning, and writing.

Take a bow, Match.com! The curtain has closed on another great match.