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ALASKA 2001 Thursday, Feb. 15 Anchorage, Alaska The flight to Alaska from St. Louis was delayed an hour before take-off due to weather. The ride itself was real rough, and LONG. Four and half hours to Portland, due to headwinds, an hour on the ground, another three and half up to Anchorage. Landed at 2:30 AM St. Louis time. In bed an hour later. I awoke after three hours sleep, my body clock still on St. Louis time. It's 8AM in Anchorage. Still no sign of the sun. Not even a smudge on the horizon, although I think the cloudy sky may have lightened some. Hard to say. The Hilton is under construction. Somehow, mystery conferences always find the hotel under construction. Must be a rule. The office got an email from Fairbanks that the military base library would like me to stop by on Sunday, after my reading at Gulliver's Books.We're trying to arrange it. I'm on a 1:15 PM panel here today. Friday & Saturday, Feb. 16 & 17 Left Coast Crime is in full swing. Lots of people here, and over a hundred mystery writers. Quite a gathering. I spent the morning writing Art Of Deception, ate lunch and appeared on a 15 Minutes with the Author program—an Andy Warhol concept of a room full of readers facing an author with questions. I talked about Undercurrents helping to solve two real life homicides, fielded some questions and took pictures of the attendees. Then I stayed around for Michael Connelly's presentation in the same venue. He did a nice job of explaining his sticking to his newest title, in the face of his publisher's complaints, how he borrowed the title from Chandler, and how relevant it was to the story. Then he read some from the new book and told a great research story about visiting the Getty Museum. Michael and I were led over to Darwin's Theory, a local bar, where Alaska Magazine shot pictures, mostly of Michael, for a spread they're doing. We were joined by Patrick and Rob from The Poisoned Pen and hooted it up with the owner. I wrote some more in the afternoon before attending a reception where Native Alaskans entertained us. I spoke to Vicki Hendricks and ran into Martin J. Smith and turned in early because of jet lag. Woke up (again) at 4:30 AM and got up and started writing, to get it out of the way. Today is slightly busier. I have provision my trip to Fort Yukon, pick up a survival suit that I'm told I'm required to bring with me, and then be on a panel with Michael and others this afternoon. Hopefully my camera software arrives by Fed Ex and I can post some pictures here in a few hours. The panel went really well. Fun to be up there with everyone. I have discussed my protection against the weather for the trip to Fort Yukon on Monday morning. The rule here: dress for the weather, not the vehicle. Hence, I will be bundled when I venture into the twin engine scheduled to take me up into the bush. Tomorrow, early, it's off to Fairbanks for a reading there in the afternoon. Monday morning I leave very early for Fort Yukon and my wilderness experience. Sunday, Feb. 18 7 AM I picked up my sleeping bag yesterday, to be used in Fort Yukon Monday night. Today, I pack up and head out to the airport and fly up to Fairbanks. It's still hard to get used to the morning sun not rising until after 9 AM. Even now, it feels like the dead of night. I've been told that if the weather is nice, I should try to sit on the left side of the plane, as the views will be spectacular. If I can get some good shots, I'll post them here later today. I'm doing a reading/signing at Gulliver Books in Fairbanks from 2 - 4. Then I'll wander Fairbanks, I suppose in search of someplace to eat dinner. Life on the road. I'm missing my family, as always, and I've been looking forward to getting home, ever since I left. But the conference, Left Coast Crime, has been terrific. I can feel that everyone has had as good a time as I have. There have been many who have done activities like cruises and dog sledding and air tours of the landscape. It has been more successful than anyone imagined. Tomorrow, the real adventure begins. I was given a briefing on Fort Yukon yesterday by the organizers of Authors In the Bush and I can tell I'm in for a wild few days. I'll pack up now, and start the journey. Fairbanks, Alaska 5 PM I had a beautiful flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks where I was met by Sherry, and driven to Gulliver's Books for a reading/signing. I was greeted by enthusiastic new friends! Truthfully, I didn't expect anyone on a sunny Sunday in Fairbanks, Alaska. To my surprise, there were about twenty people, all wonderful, and we sat around talked for nearly two hours about writing, research and thrillers. I've enjoyed Fairbanks so much already, and I've only been here a matter of hours. Tomorrow, snow is expected. I'll be flying up to Fort Yukon in a small plane to speak with the 100 kids at the school there. They have me scheduled for a different group of students every hour, for the rest of Monday and most of Tuesday. Should be a wild ride. Can't wait! Monday, Feb. 19 9 PM Fort Yukon, Alaska The flight into Fort Yukon is both spectacular and slightly intimidating. Rolling hills of dormant, deciduous trees, birch, willow and cottonwood, peopled by forests of stunted spruce, snow-covered mountains rising out of frozen creeks and rivers. A gray sky, ground fog, and our five-seater twin-engine plane chugging through the thin air. Intimidating, because there is nothing out here. No roads. No villages. Nothing. To look at a map, one might think there is a village here, a village there, but these villages are smaller than Fort Yukon, and Fort Yukon has a population of 500. We landed in a carpet of fog—a brilliant bit of flying. Both our plane and the van that picked us up were held together by duct tape. Every window in the plane. The dashboard of the truck. Without duct tape, things wouldn't work in this part of the world—plastic gets too brittle at 30 below and breaks into pieces—later taped back together by some industrious fellow. I was driven into the small town—snow floor roads, of course—snow mobiles zipping left and right, through unmarked intersections in the trees. A small log cabin here and there. Smoke rising. No sign of life other than that smoke, and the detritus of chopped wood out front the door. Then, town itself, a very few awkward buildings—board and bat—a sign, a post office, a tiny market. Fort Yukon School is enormous, given its neighbors. It stands on stilts, three feet off the snow (the permafrost, even in summer is just 18 inches below the surface). I entered the school, lugging my bags and my briefcase, ran into John, the principal, and was shown into his cluttered office. An overworked, but jovial man, John is missing two teachers and a secretary on this day. He checks with the substitute secretary only to find out one of his teachers is on 3 weeks of vacation, a maternity leave because her daughter had a child. He mumbles, "Would be nice if we'd known about that." It's clearly no cake walk managing a school in Fort Yukon, Alaska. The facility itself is spotless, large and nearly brand new. I'm introduced to Rob Russell, and spend the next four and half hours giving my "Hi, I'm an author" talk to 4 different classes. Many of the kids could care less I'm there. The classes are small, five to six kids, and two of them, in each, sleep all the way through my presentation. Rob is terrific at engaging me, and slowly we win one or two kids each hour. Of course it's usually mention of my friendship with (band mates) Stephen King, or Dave Barry that wins the lifting of a head. Then, I pounce on them and try to hold them with stories of product tampering and murder. Everyone, of all ages, likes a good murder story, I find. There are some smart kids here. One or two really respond and we get talking, and I sense the intelligence. We talk. I win a smile a few questions—this, it turns out—is a huge success, according to Rob Russell. He warns me of his most difficult class—it happens to be the last of the day—and I summon some energy, and lay into them the moment the bell rings. I'm off and running on true crime stories, investigations, and bodies floating in Puget Sound. Ironically, this class, Rob's most challenging, is the one that pays the most attention. I've found a rhythm. I'm learning. At the end of this first day, I'm told a man named Richard will pick me up shortly and include me in a tour of Fort Yukon. I nearly laugh at this offer—it seems too small to tour—but sure enough, Richard arrives with a blue school bus, and 8 tourists who have paid 250 dollars each to fly 2 hours across the arctic circle and be driven around Fort Yukon for 25 minutes in 15 below zero, while Richard tells them the history of this place. Richard is an engaging guy, and he's filled with interesting information (lowest recorded low temp = 86 below zero, just a few years ago), and I find myself wanting to tell the tourists to shut up so I can hear what Richard is saying next. This is an amazing place, and Richard makes it come alive. The Hudson Bay Company, trappers, languages, missionaries. Fort Yukon is beginning to thaw out for me. Some people we just seem to hit it off with in life, and Richard and I connect. He's a great guy, smart and funny and content. He has generations of history in this village. He's comfortable here. He has to exercise his team of mushers—take his dog sled out for a few miles—and offers for me to join him. I throw on a few more layers of clothing—it'll be 15 below with a 25 mile an hour wind chill in that sled. He has me harness the dogs with him. (In doing so, I break my eye glasses into five pieces, and slip them into my pocket—half blind now; I've forgotten how plastic responds to such temperatures—you barely touch it and it shatters.) For the dog sled, Richard has me drive—standing on the back, a foot on the break—a mat that digs down into the snow—or feet on the rails, allowing the sled and the dogs, to run. We are going in excess of 30 mph at the start. To keep the dogs out of the way of cars and snow mobiles, Richard yells back instructions: "Hang off the sled and drag your right foot." I do so—at 25 mph—sure enough, the dogs feel this and move to their right. Within a brief few minutes we are more than four miles away from Ft. Yukon—cruising through the bush of Alaska. Except for some nylon rope, Richard points out this could have been 150 years ago. It is breathtaking. It is very cold. He asks for my camera, changes positions on a moving sled, and snaps a photo of me, shouting, "How often do you drive a dog sled?" Laughing. Always laughter. At one point, we climb a steep embankment, we are on the edge of town again, having turned back, and we are leaving the trail to join a frozen road. Richard is shouting instructions back at me: leg left! slow them down! let them run! In my mastery, I allow the sled to roll over. We're going 15 mph, there's a car that appears in the road. Richard is inside the sled on his left, the sled fully over, hanging on. He's still shouting instructions. I am hanging onto the back of the sled, one-handed, fully prone on the road, being dragged on my belly at 15 mph. Iam the only one who can regain control of the sled before that car (which pulls over and stops). I'm skidding, face down on arctic ice, one glove clinging to the back of the sled. Richard hollers again, trapped in the moving sled. I get one knee up—skating on one knee—then a foot—I'm a tripod, zooming down a frozen road. I get my face up and spring, grasping and stretching for the rail of the sled that my right arm is clinging to, and in a quick move, I right the sled, and Richard with it, and jump onto the driver rails with both feet. We're upright again. We sail past the car, down the road. Richard looks back at me and grins. "Pretty good!" he says. "You woulda made me look stupid in front of my friends if you hadn't recovered." He laughs. Loudly this time. He's as amused as I am shocked. I join the laughter. Two men in their forties, ripping down a frozen road on the outskirts of Fort Yukon, Alaska, laughing their heads off in 15 below zero. I'm living again. I haven't felt this good in years. Richard and I take care of the dogs and return to his home, a small house he's borrowing because his froze up. His wife is taking college courses by speaker-phone and the Internet—a writing class!—and I'm told (politely) that I'm tonight's "guest" on the conference call. I sit down and do another 45 minutes by speaker phone to 8 students and a college professor, spread over the entire state of Alaska. This is so out of place for Fort Yukon, and yet such a symbol of how far our society has come, and how hard we try to make sure education is available to all. I leave for the night, exhausted, but so impressed with this town, with America, and so grateful for my new found friends, Kathy and Richard. I have a home in Fort Yukon. © Ridley Pearson