I was discussing life in the Last Frontier with a colleague living in Chicago this morning. He mentioned that the Midwest was finally past a winter marked by snowstorms and even more massive rain and wind events. As he should be, he was pleased to be moving beyond that. Having spent my share of time in major cities, I could empathize with him. Perhaps after the horrors of an urban winter, I suggested he and his wife should head out to Bar Mar or one of the dozens of other great dinner spots in Chicago to celebrate.
“How about the winter in Alaska?” he asked.
We’ve had a crazy winter. During the four mid-winter months, we had four inches of snow in Anchorage. (Normally we get about forty inches.) It’s been below zero four times. In a normal winter we see below zero weather twice. But we have had three storms where winds of more than a hundred miles an hour pounded our home. And another is due tonight. (Normally we have one windstorm.)
“As I recall,” he offered, “your normal spring escape is to your remote cabin on Alaska’s largest lake. You and Carmen pack a gourmet meal, and a bottle of great wine, take the dog and fly in, and celebrate spring overlooking a wilderness river.”
That’s not going to happen this year, I told him. Late last fall we received several pictures from a friend who was spending winter at the lake. He boated over to check our cabin after a couple of lodges in the area reported a rogue brown bear had broken into their buildings. Sure enough, the bear had hit us too; literally tearing out a back wall and trashing the inside. He smashed all of the cabinets, the stove, propane refrigerator, and tore into all the emergency food supplies I leave in the cabin. (It’s common in remote Alaska to leave food enough for someone surviving a plane crash or other emergency to live for a month in our cabins.)
So, this year our first trip in will not be a celebration of the end of winter. Rather it will be the mother of all clean ups, the destroyed furniture, fixtures, and equipment in a pile on the floor, all coated with a mixture of kerosene, maple syrup, pancake mix, cooking oil, motor oil, and every other thing that the bear could tear open while looking for a meal. Then figuring out how to get the materials to rebuild and laying out a plan to repair our little piece of heaven.
“You were really lucky you weren’t there,” he offered.
That statement says a lot about how differently people live in the world. I wish I’d been there, That bear would not have gone on to trash eleven more cabins last fall. Once a bear finds food in a building, they become obsessed with finding more, until they die.
As a writer, that reminded me how important it is to clearly describe settings and explain plots. Every reader comes from a different background. My job is to take readers to places, they might never visit, and give them adventures different from their own lives.