I don't know what I expected. More birch. Maybe a neat little game trail that wandered down to the creek, with mushrooms peeking through bunchberry and faded fireweed. Definitely not the clumps of chest high grass deep enough to hide a moose, and certainly not the water oozing up to my ankles. And it was raining, too.
I should probably start at the beginning.
Two years ago when Bush started applying to grad school, we chose El Paso partly because we'd never been there and it was close to family, but mostly because we couldn't stay in Alaska and were tired of moving, and Fort Bliss was big enough that Rick could also serve his school service-obligation tour there. So we bought a house. Naturally, six months into the program, we were told that we weren't likely to stay because there weren't enough job-specific slots for Rick. Fifteen months in, when we got the list for Rick's possible assignments, El Paso was on the list but it was made emphatically clear it wasn't an option. Fort Hood was as good as we were likely to get.
With no small amount of ill grace, we started looking at houses. Wherever we wound up we would have to buy again, thanks to the zoo we had accumulated here in El Paso. Unfortunately, we didn't have a down payment lying around and couldn't get another VA loan unless our current house sold, which would be nearly impossible to time right to avoid being homeless for a few months. Only one card remained. A decade earlier we had bought his grandmother's house in Arizona. We'd had offers over the years but had always refused. It never felt right. It still didn't, but we didn't have a lot of options left. We offered it to extended family, and it sold right away.
As soon as we were under contract, we got Rick's orders--for El Paso.
Friggin' Army.
So now the race was on to figure out what to do with the money before inflation destroyed it. Without any better ideas, we started haunting Zillow, looking for small pieces of land in Alaska. A rental property would have been smarter, but I've done the transcontinental landlord bit and I don't like it--it would be even less fun in a place where the winter actively destroys houses. There were a couple of nice plots around the interior, but when we stumbled on 120 acres right outside of Fairbanks for the right price, we decided to leap. Rick and I had mostly agreed that we wanted to settle up North, but we had some contradicting visions of what that meant. Rick wanted bushcrafting and cabins and homesteading. I wanted internet and a flush toilet. This seemed a decent compromise.
After nearly twenty years moving on Uncle Sam's whim, I have a hard time committing. I also have slight concerns about buying real estate sight unseen. So we made an offer, but I also made plans to go up to Alaska and actually see the land. Because Rick had to work and I'm apparently a masochist, I brought the kids with me.
The flights went pretty well. The highlight was having Lady A greet us as we flew into Anchorage. The low point was the turbulence and gastrointestinal upset (courtesy of manky Seattle airport sandwiches) that had me considering just finishing the flight in the bathroom instead of climbing over my seat mate for the hundredth time. But we all lived, so that's what matters.
Airplane bathroom anxiety selfie
We nested in the terminal for the several hours. We also got a snowy little flurry of welcome. On our last flight, we had the plane practically to ourselves. The girls were excited to be able to spread out. At the flight attendant's suggestion, we took up the last four rows and enjoyed the glorious elbow room.
Some of the random psycho sculptures hanging around the Anchorage airport. Aeryn christened this one Shalissa.
2 a.m. in between flights. They were a little loopy.
Aaaaaand they're down.
After picking up the car, we hit the last day of the farmer's market and ate our weight in cream rolls. It was a busy first day as we got groceries and visited several friends. A good friend let us crash at her house. Fall had hung on, the birch trees dripping gold and the mornings just chill enough to see your breath--though not cold enough to stop my kids running barefoot across the yard.
Misty ponds and swans. Welcome to Fairbanks.
Giant cabbage.
The first of many friends.
The backyard view from our host's house.
We dropped by our old neighborhood. We took pictures and a quick turn around the walking trail--a very quick turn, as several of the girls had forgotten how cold it got when the sun goes down and had refused to wear their coats.
One of Rick's hugelkulturs from a couple years ago.
This car has been in the Siku Basin parking lot since before we moved. Yes, that's lichen.
Creamer's Field was a must, as were The Santa Claus House and The Knotty Shop. At the girls' request we went to the Museum of the North and the Fountainhead Auto Museum. We had a couple lovely hours and even managed to make it a learning opportunity. Most of us, anyway.
Ducks, some of the last birds to leave Creamer's.
Learning about subnivean vole holes.
More educational discovery.
And then there's frickin' Aeryn, playing Candy Crush. Why is that even on there?
Finally, the day came to see the property. The weather turned grey and drizzly as we drove the twenty minutes or so out on Chena Hot Springs Road. I was pretty optimistic. The road was mostly flat and well-maintained, potential neighbors waved as we passed, electric and phone poles went right to the property line. We pulled over at the corner of the property. The realtor met us and we started off. In particular, I wanted to see the creek that supposedly ran the length of the acreage. As someone who grew up in a desert, I'm always a little dubious when people start throwing around "creek" and "river" because 9 times out of 10 in the Southwest there isn't any water involved at all. The realtor, a girl from Sitka (an island in Southeastern Alaska), put on a pair of tennis shoes and led us into the wild.
Our walk started off nicely enough. The first part of the property had a stand of birch and spruce. A couple of minutes later, we hit the first of the muskeg. For those of you who don't know what the hell that is, it's moss and lichen--often deep enough you sink into it a little when you take a step--and is often found in boggy areas, particularly around permafrost.
Not the best sign.
The muskeg gave way to tuffets and hillocks of tall grass with little spots of marsh in between. It was rough going. We had to be very careful looking where to step to avoid turning an ankle, especially since the grass hid swampy holes and the fallen logs crumbled underfoot as often as they held. The rain picked up as the terrain got worse, so I sent the girls back to the car. Only Aeryn pressed forward with us.
We hit the first sizeable pond shortly after and had to detour around it. As we picked a winding trail around dead trees, we found dozens of tracks where moose had post-holed through the mud, fresh piles of poo, and a moose-nest crushed into the tall grass. Aeryn seemed pretty oblivious to all of it. The realtor and I, on the other hand, made it a point to talk a little louder and keep our heads on a swivel. The last thing we needed was a run-in with a thousand pounds of moody deer. The realtor was very small and I'm out of shape. Anybody who got stomped into the swamp was staying there.
Luckily, the moose left us alone. That was where the luck ended. My feet were soaked. It was chilly, but not cold enough that all the mosquitos had died. Worse, our detours had thrown us off course and we were very disoriented. After an hour, we turned around. We had never made it to the creek, but I had seen enough. I documented as much as I could.
Best as I can figure, the purple trail shows as far as we got.
I showed the girls the pictures and expressed my concerns. They all just looked at me with blank faces.
"What did you expect?" Brenna asked, surprised.
"I don't know. Like behind our old house, I suppose. Definitely not so marshy."
"Um, Mom?" Brenna said gently. "Did you ever go off the trails?"
"Once or twice. Why?"
Leah snorted. "Because that's what it's like up here if you go more than ten feet off the road. We used to play back there all the time. It's all smushy and wet. That's just Alaska." Her sisters concurred.
I ignored them and called Rick. I told him about the bog and wading through water and around trees.
"So when you say 'wading,' how high are we talking? Knee deep? Hip deep?" He asked.
"No, just to my ankles."
He laughed. "That's nothing. That's totally workable." Then he waxed poetic about Swamp Phase of Ranger School, building trails, composting, and hunting regulations in the area. At some point he mentioned the draining of Nauvoo. In the end, he said if I really didn't like it, we could pass. I thought about it. I looked at the trees and listened to the rain dripping through the spruce and the birds screaming at each other despite the rain...Like so many things in life, it wasn't what I imagined it would be, but it was still good. So, to the relief of our realtor, we signed the papers.
The rest of the trip was a blur of favorite people and good food. We were super busy and still didn't get to see everyone we wanted to. Bren, Leah and I got to paint with our former teacher. We watched beavers in the river and saw a silver fox on the last day of our trip, just hanging out in the neighborhood. There wasn't much sleep that night--I wanted to leave the house in good condition so my friend and I stayed friends and Brenna finally figured out how to work the Wii--but we managed an hour or so before we had to catch our 2 am flight. It had been overcast much of our trip, but when we were loading into the car the sky was blazing with green fire. We had to stop and watch. It was a perfect ending.
Someone was mad I wouldn't share the baby.
The Dipper
My camera sucks. This was just the beginning of the flare.
The trip home was uneventful. The girls crashed hard on the flight from Fairbanks to Seattle. For all of its size and bougie shops, I will never love the Seattle airport. The highlight of our layover was that I'm pretty sure I saw Oscar Nunez from The Office. Otherwise, we set up camp by the playplace and Bren was perpetually denied every time she tried to buy a fish-shaped cheese-cake-filled waffle snack from Lucky Louie's Fish Shack because they were always out.
And that's the story of our bog.
Not Alaska or a bog, I think this is Mount Hood. We flew over it twice.
