Alaska: A Whole ‘Nother Scale
The first port-of-call of a fantasy I am living (a.k.a. a research project I am working on about rocket mass stove builders and their innovations) takes me to the cabin of Lasse Holmes. (He’s “Canyon” on the rocket mass heaters forum). He has a homestead on 20 acres in the mountains above Homer, Alaska. Homer’s on the Kenai Peninsula.
It’s a thrill to be visiting him here. I’ve travelled to 22 foreign countries, but even though the state of Alaska is part of the US, and I can honestly count 23.
From the moment I transferred to the plane for Anchorage from Salt Lake City, Utah, I knew I was somewhere else. Suddenly I was in a group of people all of whom don’t give a fuck about fashion, yet are uniquely expressive people. On the flight, they all seemed to know each other. There was such a din of conversation between companions and strangers alike that you couldn’t hear the heavy metal pop over the PA, no nor the emergency preparedness spiel, nor the inflight movie. People are dressed to withstand the temperatures and their activities in those temperatures, cleavage is not an issue. Nor color coordination. Kinda refreshing.
I generalize (and exaggerate) ALL the time: Here’s one. The Kenai Peninsula celebrates both wild animal conservation and wild animal exploitation: People are either catching fish or counting fish.
I land at midnight, my host and I spend the night in Anchorage, at friends’ and in the morning, he reviews my pack for what clothing I brought. He drags an enormous parka of his mothers from the back of his well-equipped truck and I swallow hard. He’s calm, patient, practical, instructive. If you want to get out into the beautiful places, you have to be ready for the conditions. Here’s something I wouldn’t have thought about: Did you bring anything that can’t handle the freezing conditions in the back of the truck? My camera? No. That stays with me anyway, duh. Toiletries: Bottles and vials of liquids, especially in glass: My Korean ginseng. That would have made a big shards-of-glass mess. My laptop? Actually if that heats up slowly to room temp before you turn it on again it should be fine. Things you have to think about. Prepare about. How to enjoy the sweaty (1-mile) snow-shoe hike from the truck to his cabin while the fingers ache with the cold. I read in an outdoor guide’s advice on staying warm called Cold Comfort that “poor goose down lofts less than good duck down.” (An editor’s field day, and my delightful new mantra).
The stove Lasse lives with is almost too scary to show you: I would be most afraid someone seeing this would try it themselves. Lasse is a brewmaster, an inventor, a whiz at welding stainless steel, worldly, a macrobiotic cook, and blues harmonica player. Every horizontal surface of his sturdy timberframe-and-strawbale cabin is crammed with books: almost all of them practical manuals on homesteading, beer brewing, and macrobiotic cooking. His stove fits his own needs for warmth in conditions like winter temps that can dive below 15 degrees F; it can start getting cold enough to fire up the heater from October to April. It may be easier to say he doesn’t fire up his stove in July. He needs to cook as well as heat water with wood. His stove fits his abilities too. As a brewer, he has access to lots of stainless steel kegs, and can weld stainless steel, so his building blocks include kegs, beautifully machined stop-cocks, and piping. So much of the art of rocket mass heater building is determined by needs, available materials, and abilities.
Our busy plans to visit several of the rocket mass heaters Lasse has installed around town is peppered with jam sessions with friends, dogsled running, beer brewing, and sharing his volunteer spot spinning jazz records for the local radio station. How Alaska is it around here? Well, on my first night, we were enjoying a local brew in the pub, Down East Saloon, hearing a Portland band and making new friends, when the door-man took the mic and instead of announcing that someone’s pick-up lights were on, announced a one year-old moose grazing in the parking lot, so be careful as you go out to your cars. Alaska is on a whole ‘nother scale.