The Adventurer's Son(2)

After picking me up at the Fairbanks airport, Zinn drove south with me in the back seat, nose to the window, soaking in the view. It was my first trip to Alaska and already I was intoxicated by the midnight sun and the landscapes uninterrupted by buildings, fences, or anything man-made beyond the gravel road. Three hours later, he turned his Ford pickup off the Parks Highway and headed east toward Healy.

Zinn drove slowly to keep the dust down as we passed woodlands of stunted spruce and dwarfed aspen covering the foothills of the Alaska Range. He guided the Ford across the one-lane trestle of a railroad spur leading to the coal mining district at Usibelli. I looked under the railroad ties at the bossy Nenana River, its glacial gray waters writhing, hypnotic and terrifying. Beyond the bridge the road twisted past soft cliffs smoking with burning coal seams. To the south, scabby peaks rose above pale tundra, their summits cradling winter’s lingering snow.

My uncles lived and worked at the Usibelli coal mine. A collection of scattered sheet metal and wood clapboard buildings set among tractor-truck trailers, Usibelli itself was barely a company town for the Usibelli Coal Company. Both uncles worked long hours operating heavy machinery that stripped coal from rolling hills. While my mom had sent me there under their care, it was clear Brian and Zinn were busy. It would be up to me to entertain myself. Luckily there was plenty to do under the benign neglect of my uncles.

Exactly nine years older, Brian shared my birthday. Kid-sized and kid-hearted, with bright blue eyes beneath brows that seemed always arched in amusement, Brian sometimes stuttered, but his staccato statements merely emphasized what he tried to spit out. Maybe because he was the baby in his family and I was younger—but old enough to be a brother—he introduced me proudly to his friends as “my little nephew.” Like Zinn, he often called me “Rome.”

“Hey, Rome!” Brian grinned as Zinn carried my bags into Brian’s bunkhouse room my first night in Usibelli. “You can sleep here. Zinn and me gotta work tomorrow but we’ll try and take you out on Zinn’s Kawasaki this weekend.” Zinn, who had brought his wife, Faye, their three-year-old son, and infant daughter to Usibelli, stayed in a house next door. Faye was supposed to keep an eye on me, but she rarely did.

Brian gave me a quick lesson on how to survive in the bunkhouse, empty all day while everyone was off stripping coal. “This here’s the oven. And here”—he opened the freezer—“are the Tater Tots. Just turn on the oven, put the Tots on the cookie sheet, and cook ’em up until you can smell ’em. Eat whatever you want, but don’t b-b-burn down the bunkhouse!” he instructed with a laugh. “Now, if you’re gonna leave camp,” he said, turning serious, “take Moose with you. See ya tonight, Rome!” And with that he left for work and I left with Moose to explore.

Moose was the camp dog. Zinn claimed Moose was half wolf, and I believed him. His coat was thick, unlike that of any dog I had ever petted, and he was tall, with long, lanky legs and big feet on an otherwise German shepherd frame. He wagged his tail and looked at me with a dog smile when I rubbed his back.

There were no computers or televisions in rural Alaska in 1970. In their place, I had books and a taxidermy correspondence course, a .22 rifle my uncles entrusted me with, and a Kawasaki dirt bike that was too big for me. The motorcycle’s front brake lever was broken in half, the result of a kick-start failure. To kick-start the bike required that I launch my skinny frame up with both feet off the ground, shove the kicker down with my right foot to fire the ignition, then engage the clutch and first gear, all before the bike fell over. It didn’t always get going in time. When it did, I toured the mining roads, thrilled to drive on my own; but I grew bored just zooming around.

Most of my favorite explorations were on foot and off-trail with Moose out front. We pushed through willows and alders, rock-hopped, waded streams, and explored two nearby ghost towns called Suntrana and Lignite, where the coal had been mined out but the scent of diesel still lingered. Wood frogs waited in tundra ponds, magpies in shrub thickets, red squirrels in boreal woods. I carried Peterson’s field guides to identify the birds and mammals. The books nourished my dream of growing up to be a scientist; the nature near Usibelli gave my dream form.

In early autumn, Zinn took me on a bowhunt for moose off the Stampede Trail. The midnight sun was gone and it got dark at night with the northern lights shimmering overhead. We left early to find a moose, and my toes didn’t thaw until the frost had melted off the red leaves of fireweed. I tried to be as quiet as I could, but Zinn looked back at me. “You sure are noisy, aren’t you?” His big fake teeth flashed in a smile. His real ones had been knocked out during a fight with his best friend.

I doubled down on not stepping on any sticks, not brushing noisily against any bushes, and certainly not talking. I kept close behind, carrying Zinn’s eight-pound .30-06 rifle that he said we might need for bears. Zinn spotted a brown bulk that we stalked quietly together until he asked me to wait while he went ahead. I sat patiently cradling the rifle. Careful with its scope as Zinn instructed, I watched bugs crawl and leaves fall.

Then Zinn appeared mysteriously out of the brush. “It’s a cow,” he whispered, aware there might still be a bull nearby. We could only take a male moose, so we continued our hunt until the pungent odor of high-bush cranberries hung thick in the woods. “Moose lay down now ’cause it’s too hot for ’em. We won’t have any luck. Let’s go back to Usibelli.” Zinn’s lessons were based on his humble farm roots and a trip sailing around the world in the U.S. Navy.