EXTREME COLD IN THE INTERIOR OF ALASKA

It gets cold in the interior of Alaska! I don't mean that pansy ass 10 below zero cold or even the 35 below that I saw a couple of times in Great falls Montana. I mean COLD! So cold that your outside mercury vapor night light will not come on in the dark. So cold that your vehicle heater never warms up on the fifteen mile trip to work. So cold that stepping outside of your house is a survival situation. -60F is cold. So cold that if you manage to spit it will freeze solid before it hits the ground. Bears hibernate in this kind of weather but humans are not that smart-they just stay indoors and get cabin fever. But sweetthing wasn't one to stay indoors nor get cabin fever.

We had a dog. We got him as a puppy and he grew up to be a huge, 100 pound black and white collie who was one of the most beautiful dogs that I have every see. Sweetthing was bound and determined to train him-and she did. She read everything she could find about training dog and even ordered magazine about dog training. The poor dog, who we naturally named Blackie, was kind enough and gentle enough to bare the brunt of the training and smart enough to figure out what she wanted. By the time we left Alaska Blackie was trained to pull a sled with kids on it as well as answer to over a hundred voice commands and field trial hand commands. But I digress, as usual.

It was one of those days when the -60F thermometer had bottomed out when sweetthing wanted to take advantage of the short hours of daylight to do some training outside with Blackie. ( The term daylight is a misnomer because in Dec-Jan the light during the day, what there is of it is more like daybreak. The sun barely is visable in the south much like a sunrise all day until it disappears and the northern lights start to wander across the sky.) So, sweetthing decked out in the bunny boots, parka pants, and parka with the genuine wolf fur lined hood and put Blackie on a long leash and headed for the woods. She was enjoying herself and I suppose the dog was also but it got dark-and there it gets dark in a hurry in the winter time.

Sweetthing realized she was lost in the woods at -60F and in trouble. She had no idea how far along the trails she had wondered and it was too dark to backtrack. But, trooper that she is she didn't panic but instead she give the dog its head and told him to go home-a command she had taught him a couple of weeks earlier.Blackie led her through the dark right up to the artic entrance door and into the house.

Later that night when I got home she was pale as a ghost.She started to cry when she told me about the adventure and was still hugging the dog while she talked. I started to scold her then bit my tongue and kept my mouth shut and let her cry out the shock and fear on my shoulder and she finally turned the poor dog loose.

This episode turned her aainst Alaska in the winter. I had my retirement papers in and approved and was to retire on the first of April. I already had been interviewed for a job running an unemployment office in a remote fishing town on the Alaska coast and was planning on taking the job if I got it and I was sure that I had it if I wanted it. We had already sold our home in thhe bush and were looking forward to relocating in Bethel.But,sweetthings little outing in the woods changed everything. She let me know she was going south and if I stayed I would have to stay by myself.

I love this woman and there was no way I could stay and no way I could convince her that all this adventure had done was enhance her character. We came back to the lower 48 and four years later back to her home in Florida. It gets cold in the interior of Alaska!