Alaska Novel- intro

 "On The Shores of the Arctic"

A novel

Deep in interior Alaska, north of Fairbanks, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs through a harsh, beautiful wilderness, carrying black gold all the way to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay, just short of the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean. 

On its way to the Arctic, the pipeline transverses forests and tundra, and passes in places through brilliant magenta wildflowers, over the regal, snow-capped Brooks Mountains that slope gently downward to green valleys, and across the powerful Yukon River. 

Some Native Alaskans think the oil pipeline is a blight on the landscape. But for me it represented something else: the way my father supported our family, and happy childhood memories that I continued to relive-- many years later.

My story begins when I am twenty-three and living in Washington, D.C. as an employee of the federal government at the Bureau of Land Management.

***

My father was born in 1944 in Coldfoot, Alaska. His family were natives who had lived off the land for generations. He went to college in Fairbanks. According to the stories my father told, he met my mother soon after graduation. My mother worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, D.C., but she was doing a detail to Homer, Alaska, in order to work on a project at the Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. She ran into my father in Fairbanks one summer, where he was working as a petroeum engineer. 

I was born in 1973. That same year, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built. Around the same time, my parents had moved to Coldfoot, to help take care of my father's parents who were ailing. My father had to leave his job in Fairbanks. My grandfather opposed to the pipeline (thinking it would ruin the Alaskan wilderness), but my father saw it as an opportunity to finally make a good salary. So my father got work as a truck driver on the Dalton Highway, delivering supplies to Prudhoe Bay. 

I never knew my mother. According to my father, she left soon after we moved to Coldfoot, and I had no memories of her. Dad said that she grew tired of the cold and dark winters. My father had never lived in the big city and couldn't imagine being able to survive there. But he said that my mother suffered from depression and had to be put in a hospital in D.C. near where her parents lived, and she passed away there a few years later. 

When I was sixteen, my dad was killed on one of his weekly supply runs to Prudhoe Bay. It wasn't unusual for a trucker to die on the Dalton Highway, which was a very dangerous road through the wilderness. His truck overturned around a sharp curve during a winter storm when visibility was low. 

I was devastated by my dad's death and was sent to live with my aunt--my father's sister--who had moved to California. Life in California was vastly different from Alaska, and it took me quite awhile to adjust. Eventually I did, and went to college at America University in Washington, D.C. where I majored in anthropology and the history of Native cultures in the U.S. 

After college, I got a job with the federal government at the U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management. By then, my life in Alaska was like a distant dream--as if it was another lifetime. I had no idea I was about to go back.

***

 One summer afternoon, leadership called all of the Washington, D.C. employees of the Bureau of Land Management into the conference room. According to the rumor mill, most employees were going to be transferred to the West. It was all part of the Secretary of the Interior's reorganization plan for the Department of the Interior. The thinking was that employees in D.C. shouldn't be making the decisions when the majority of the land the agency manages is in the West and Alaska. 

Going into the meeting, I knew I was likely to be transferred. The big question was: Where? I didn't have much tying me to D.C. Although I would miss my friends, I had no other family. I sat on the edge of my seat as they read who was going to be transferred to where. 

"And Sarah, your job is slated for the Bureau of Land Management Central Yukon Field Office, the office that manages public lands in west-central Alaska, including the Dalton Highway Corridor," my boss read from a paper.

I felt my breath catch in my throat. The Dalton Highway. Of all the places they had to pick from, they had to send me there. 

Alaska. For the past 7 years, I had tried to forget the past. I had adjusted to my new life, and had no desire to go back. However, I realized that I didn't have much of a choice. The federal government was the most secure job I could get, and it was unlikely I could find another federal job so quickly. Without a family network, I only had myself to rely upon.