Who's Driving: Windshield Time With a Small Alaska Newspaper

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

The writings included here were selected from Who’s Driving columns in the Copper River Record, a community newspaper operated by Mary Odden and Jim Odden from 2005 through 2010. Many of the pieces chosen for this book have been revised, now that Mary doesn’t have to face a newspaper deadline. A few were alternate columns that did not appear in the newspaper at the time but seem appropriate to publish now.

The Fresh Until date has come and gone for most of the political and Alaska natural gas line columns. With a few exceptions, those subjects have been left out of this collection. Included, though, is our puzzlement over the fleeing of the fleeting Governor Sarah Palin, plus a bit of poking at some other vivid people we elected.

This volume is created with appreciation for the citizens of the Copper River Basin, our home for over 30 years. It is for people who want to learn more about life here and for the loyal readers of the CRR who know too much already. It comes with special thanks to my page-producing cohort in crime, graphic designer and dog-whisperer Karen Cline, and with a shout out to former co-owner Marian Lightwood, as well as present owners/editors Matt and Judith Lorenz. A weekly now, the CRR is fresh and lively, still holding us together and still going strong.

The book is dedicated to the memory of Sam Lightwood, to the memory of Pat Lynn, and to the memory of Jean Huddleston, all marvelous friends and guides to the CRR when we were behind the wheel.

- Mary Odden, Nelchina, January 2018

NATURE

GRIZ MEETS MY HOUSE

We are surrounded by wildness, and wildness has been very polite over the years, always giving us a call before it comes to visit.

Not so for our neighbors. Our friend Lee was once saved from a bear attack by a Cal Worthington Ford commercial. Lee didn’t like Cal Worthington commercials, so when Cal appeared on his TV, he turned the volume down in time to hear a grizzly bear breaking down the door of his cabin. He fired a pistol at the door and the bear ran off, apparently unharmed. Various electric fences and warning devices have been a part of his life since then.

Others have had destructive bear visitors who broke windows and tore sheds apart. Before we had any experiences like that, we attributed other people’s bear incidents to bad luck in the placement of their residences—obviously on old bear trails.

But this year three grizzly bears came off the nearby mountain to reclaim a bull moose our daughter had just killed in their neighborhood. It made sense, in a bear kind of way, for them to visit us.

After the hunt, we hung the moose quarters in the woodshed. With no solid walls and no door, this was a good place for the cool breeze to set up a protective rind on the meat. The meat would cure and become tender but the air flow and the temperature in the wood shed would keep the flesh from souring. With no hindrance but cotton game bags, easily torn away, the bears started helping themselves to backstrap and rump during the night. They ran away when the dogs and Jim went outside to check out the noise early the next morning.

You never know how a dog will act around a bear until the first time you see that dog in proximity to a bear. We had cause to celebrate the great intelligence and courage of our black lab and her geriatric yellow lab companion several times that second day, as the bears tried to return and the dogs lunged and barked—well okay, not too far from the house and with their tails tucked, but still—driving the bears back into the surrounding woods.

We hurriedly processed all of the moose we could get to by evening. Half the big animal had already gone down the highway with our moose-packing partner, so we only had to take care of the other half. We managed front shoulder and ribs and loin. Only one bear-chewed hind quarter was left to cut and wrap and freeze. But it was night and we were supposed to go somewhere, so we moved the quarter into the tool shed and closed the heavy door—tight.

We made a call to Fish and Game to find out what to do about the bears. They told us that shooting the bears would be considered hunting if it was an adult boar or sow, or defense of life and property if it was a sow with cubs. So if we had to kill a bear, there were two ways to not go to jail.

We didn’t want to shoot any bears and by evening it seemed like we had managed to chase them away. We were gone from the house for several hours. When we got home, we found the garbage can tipped over and everything scattered but no bears in sight. Jim checked the shed and we went to bed.

Five minutes later, we heard the bears outside again, and this time we saw them up close—a sow and two cubs, young of the year, back at the garbage can. We yelled at them. The dogs barked and growled but wisely didn’t venture off the porch. The bears paid no attention, just rustled through cans and bottles and coffee grounds. They were illuminated by the yard light, silvery forms with faces intent on their plunder, 15 yards from us and the dogs and the door.

We went back into the house and watched the bears through a window. Suddenly, they all vanished. I held my breath. Then came the sound of glass shattering, followed by the sound of our big metal toolbox crashing to the floor inside the shed. We ran to a south window, shined our lights on the sow as she broke the other shed window, climbing in and out of the building. Dimly, we could see the moose quarter inside the shed swinging like a punching bag from the raking she gave it.

The beauty of the bears, duly noted as we watched them in the yard light, had now become violation and fear. This was a vulnerability I hadn’t felt before, in spite of living decades in woodsy places. This was Grendel or his mother. This was a Sam Peckinpah movie, and I don’t watch Sam Peckinpah movies.

After long minutes of listening to and watching the bears trash the shed, Jim held a flashlight along his rifle barrel and shot the sow. We had given the bears every kind of notice officially required of us, but the sow’s carcass laying in the grass the next morning, with the cubs visiting it before they wandered off, was immensely sad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are tons of bears, more than one per square mile in our country. I know that nothing is wasted if we can see it on a big enough screen. I know that the bears had to lose when they brought their wildness to us. I am grateful for the calm skill of my husband, and grateful that the bears are gone. One of them cannot come back.

Many of us came to our love of wild places because we packed a gun into the woods. Like those words of older people you don’t consciously hear until years later when you need them, these memories are part of my treasure trove. There is an eastern Oregon desert before sunrise following my uncle on a deer hunt; there is a snow-covered Montana ridge where I walked up on elk cows and calves, clouds of their steamy breaths hanging in the air. There are different kinds of being fed.

Those hunts were all memorable for the walk or boat ride or some goofy little girls playing cards in a wall tent. Once I found out after a hard hill climb to the elk altitudes that Jim had stuffed the cast iron griddle in my backpack. Though we’ve always lived in or next to the woods, the hunts have been travels away from home, and exquisite fun, and to our human benefit.

I don’t love wildness any less for our scary bear encounter. But these new memories, as they come back like bears in the night, remind me that the give and take in nature is deeper than I had imagined, and not all on my terms.

BARELY EDIBLE NATURE

Eating a Snowshoe Hare is all strings and sticks—like I imagine it would be to try and eat a banjo. We tried and failed to eat a hare when we worked in the Brooks Range, sadly consigning the remains directly back to nature. But this rabbit is a gift so we have to eat it.

Yes I know it is a hare and not a rabbit. But it has big ears and big feet. And the word rabbit, as Trisha Bruss once pointed out, just sounds more edible.

This creature, whatever you call it, is a very Alaska thing. It lives right here; it dies right here. Prolific enough to be brilliant as a species, it is dumb enough as an individual to be eaten by me.

This Christmas Hare was gifted to us by wonderful Swedish people for whom this is a tradition—bringing a dead hare to your friend’s house during the Christmas season and hanging it festively on a nail outside the door. The animal is long and white and furry. After the turkey and the cookies and even the lutefisk have all vanished into feasting guests, it still hangs—waiting.

I pulled it down on the thirteenth day of Christmas to skin it. We soaked its spare frame in salt water for several days until yesterday, when we boiled it to loosen the meat from the bones. Minus the use of pressure cooker, tenderizing the rabbit took about eight hours. Without extracting it from the water, we carried the pot down to the water