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Author's note: Life is a journey and circumstances change, as they always do. It was with bittersweet thoughts that I recently recalled this story from 10 years ago while tending a brush pile fire with my two grandchildren, rather than my husband, Gary. He moved into the Palmer Pioneer Home in February. Our daughter and grandchildren traveled from Colorado to visit us in July. Perhaps some of the glue that holds our almost 40-year marriage together is cutting and stacking firewood and burning br...
"I think I opened the wrong door and went into the 'men's'", her friend said to my sister, Shirley, after returning to their car, which was parked in the driveway of my house. "The one I went into had a urinal." Shirley laughed and said, "No, you found the right place...his and hers in the same outhouse." They had stopped at my house for a pit stop on their one-day trip from Glennallen to Anchorage a few months into COVID. Sometimes Shirley would call and give me a "heads up" first, but not...
Living at our place on Chena Hot Springs Road out of Fairbanks the spring of 1975, my husband Gary and I wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible. We had five acres, but no electric power. Besides tending our garden, greenhouse and two honeybee hives, we decided to raise our own meat. So, we purchased thirty Cornish Cross chicks and two Holstein calves. Of course, these cute little peeps soon outgrew their cardboard box. We built a small plywood shelter and created a fenced enclosure with chi...
My sister, Jeanette, who lives in Soldotna, made arrangements for the four of us siblings to go on a farm tour, though Margaret Adsit, original owner of Alaska Farm Tours. As the date got closer, it turned out that only Jeanette and I could attend. We showed up at the Palmer Visitor Center promptly at 9 a.m. June 18, 2018 and learned we were the only guests for the morning tour. At that time, I'd lived in the Mat-Su Valley for a total of 22 years on and off since 1984, so I knew quite a bit...
My first bike ride of the season was on April 1 this year, two weeks earlier than spring 2021. That first ride is always thrilling after months of winter snowshoe lap exercise. The sides of the subdivision roads still had plenty of snow, but the road surface was finally ice free. During my ride, I noticed more trees that had blown over during our horrendous January wind storm, but I also saw litter peeking out from snow banks. Instantly I was reminded of my huge litter-gathering project last...
I became alarmed when what I thought could become treasured gifts to my grandchildren might turn into indecipherable codes by the time they received them. Back in 2013, it was called to my attention three times in less than a week that cursive handwriting was on the way to becoming obsolete. Since before each grandchild was born – Harlen in 2006 and Amelia in 2009 – I have kept a journal for them. Written in cursive. The plan is to give these diaries to them when they turn 18 or graduate from hi...
Editor's note: Al Clayton, who died in 2008, wrote this story about a cold misadventure. It's been edited and submitted by his daughter and Senior Voice Correspondent Maraley McMichael. I made a snowplane and used it for many years for various trips and adventures. It was a great vehicle to travel through snow, especially on frozen rivers in Interior Alaska, similar to modern day snowmachine travel. Built in Seward in the mid 1950s, it had a metal tubing frame, reinforced canvas-covered body,...
There are many Alaskan wintertime sports. I always preferred cross-country skiing over downhill, but my son, Patrick, is the other way around. The Hatcher Pass Mountains in the Matanuska Valley are a winter playground for skiers, snowboarders and snowmachiners. During his high school years, Patrick and his friends loved to downhill ski in the area, mostly because it was close and there was no lift ticket expense, not to mention the abundance of white fluffy powder. The absence of a chair lift...
"Whoa!" Grandpa McMichael exclaimed as my husband, Gary, drove down the boat launch at Finger Lake Campground near Palmer, right out onto the lake ice. We were only 30 feet offshore when Grandpa demanded, "You turn this car around and take me back to shore, right now. I'm not kidding!" Gary's mom and dad were up from California spending the Christmas holiday with us. This was not their first trip to Alaska, and they were always ready to go adventuring with us no matter where in Alaska we lived....
One winter while living in Slana, a couple months after our devastating 2002 Denali Fault earthquake, I took a two month leave of absence from my school aide job, and my husband, Gary, and I drove our truck camper Outside to visit family in several states. One of our stops was at his sister Diana's home in Gilroy, California, which is located near an outlets shopping complex. This really excited me since I had not had time to drive to Anchorage to shop for replacement items destroyed in the...
One November many years ago my son taught me something about how the streams of love and loss flow through our family. It was the day our dog died, an eight-and-a-half-year-old Springer spaniel named Bandit. Before school that morning, we discovered she had spent the night on the front porch, not moving to her doghouse to sleep as usual. Immediately I wondered what was wrong, and when I went to check, she didn't seem to be able to move by herself. I took her to the Wasilla Veterinary Clinic righ...
Late one evening in early October 2005, I stood at the top of the stairs in my home in Slana, unsure of what to do. Having just finished working on one of my quilts, I had switched off the lamp intending to go downstairs, but found myself in total blackness. Should I blindly feel my way down, holding onto the railing, or should I turn the lamp back on, run downstairs, turn a lamp on, run back upstairs, turn that lamp off, and then be able to descend the stairs in safety? "Commercial power is...
The garage sale signs were posted on each side of the driveway, so I knew we were expected and welcome, but I still had mixed feelings. An older gentleman in our community of Slana back in the summer of 2010, had sold his home and moved to Tok. His lifetime accumulation of personal belongings needed to be removed from the property. A Norwegian immigrant, he moved to Alaska in 1966, making his living as a commercial fisherman, a trapper, and a carpenter. He embraced the homesteader lifestyle....
Since 2014, I've enjoyed working each Wednesday and Thursday morning in the Flower Department in the Barn at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. Wednesdays I fill the "vase" bottles with water and help exhibitors with their entries and Thursdays I'm one of the judges' helpers. For this volunteer work, I receive a free ticket for myself and one extra for each of those four days, as well as parking passes. But, after working my volunteer shift I'm usually too tired to take in many fair activities....
I don't recall one of my first fishing experiences, but according to a family photo, grayling were caught in a little creek near Twin Lakes, about mile 28 of the Nabesna Road in the summer of 1958. At three years old, I'm sitting with my mother, wearing a huge grin and holding three grayling on a stick. Mom holds a pole with a grayling still attached. I do remember standing on the bank of the Twentymile River just south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway. Dad stood a few feet out and scooped up...
January 15, 1963: Dear Mrs. Ridener. It is cold up there. I do not want too go. But I'll have to. I love you Mrs. Ridener. I love the collass too. Your frend Maraley While going through boxes of family stuff in early June 2015, one of my sisters found this letter that I'd written to my second grade teacher. The fat, three-quarter-inch tall, penciled letters and misspelled words ('collass' instead of 'class') plainly showed I was happy with my life in Anchorage. But my dad accepted the position...
One of the best music concerts I ever attended took place right here in downtown Palmer at Vagabond Blues, back in May of 2017. From Scotland, Dougie MacLean sang and played his guitar. He said he'd been a traveling minstrel for 44 years. About 25 years ago, my husband Gary and I attended one of Dougie's concerts at the Performing Arts Center, but this second one in 2017 was even better because I didn't have to drive to Anchorage. And I was so physically close to Dougie, I could see his strands...
"So, Mom, what do you want to be called when you become a grandma?" my daughter, Erin, asked in the weeks after we learned she was expecting our first grandchild. This question set off much discussion and research that would continue all through her pregnancy. I could never have guessed my name would become Grandma Aye-Yi. Short for Aye-Yi-Yi! Our two children were very fortunate to have two grandpas and two grandmas as they grew up. My husband, Gary, and I thought nothing of calling both sets...
Recently I came in from my afternoon snowshoe laps and quickly removed all my winter gear. While waiting for my tea water to heat, I pondered my enjoyment of my favorite winter exercise. I hadn't gone out the previous day because of a 6-degree temperature along with our famous Mat-Valley winds, which were blowing snow sideways. But, my recent session had been exhilarating. Fresh moose, snowshoe hare, and mouse tracks all showed that I wasn't the only one to venture out once the "blizzard" let up...
Not many 18-year-old girls that I know would take on the job of being "camp cook" for five construction guys. I don't know what gave me the idea I could do it. It just happened – the job fell into my lap. In 1974 my husband Gary worked for Mercer Construction and they had just finished a big job in King Salmon. The next job was remodeling bathrooms at Ft. Wainwright Army base and, after that, they were to remodel kitchens in the family quarters on Eielson Air Force base. We all moved up to F...
I sat at my dining room table this past Nov. 19, ready and waiting for the appropriate time to click on the link for our daughter's college graduation. Erin said she didn't know many details about her outdoor graduation ceremony for Colorado State University, but the invitation link stated the program would be from noon to 12:30 p.m. After making adjustment for Alaska time, I sat waiting with curious expectation. Soon I found myself thinking about attending our son's college graduation in...
"My favorite place in Alaska is my Grandpa Clayton's cabin down at Kenai Lake," wrote Taral Clayton, my nine-year-old-niece back in 2004. "My Grandpa has a lot of neat things inside the cabin such as a whale bone, moose antlers, caribou antlers, and tree funguses. I like to go to Kenai Lake because there are so many different exciting things to do." I had just started reading the rough draft of her paper titled "Kenai Lake," which was a third grade school assignment. Since Taral knew I was a...
Thanksgiving means different things to different people. For me as a child growing up in Glennallen, it meant a big turkey dinner that we always ate with just our family of six. Dinner was served at the usual time in the evening because Dad worked at the Copper Valley Electric power plant during the day, even on Thanksgiving. As I got older, I helped more each year with food preparation. We set the table with the real silverware out of the wooden chest, but used our everyday dishes. Most of Mom'...
"Where have you guys been all week?" our son, Patrick, demanded when I answered the phone one morning back in October 1999. He was calling from his home in Colorado. "We haven't gone anywhere. Why, what's up?" I asked. "I've called three different days, morning, afternoon and evening, and you're never home. I thought something happened to you," he scolded. After we discussed which days and what time of the day, I realized we'd been out of the house on each occasion. In the morning we had gone...
Every woman needs a ladies night out once in a while. I experienced one such evening in the fall of 2004 during the years my husband and I operated Nabesna House Bed and Breakfast out of our home in Slana. To prepare for my time away, I came in from weeding the strawberry patch, took a shower, and carefully remembered not to apply deodorant. Then I drove four miles to my friend's house, parked my car and rode with her to Mentasta Lodge. We looked around and spotted the Mobile Mammogram Unit...
