Farewell Wrangell

 

Yes, we’re moving again!

Transition. 

Moving. 

Goodbyes. 

Unknown...

 These are rare events for most, but have become part of our normal life over the last 13 years. This will be our 8th move in the last 8 years, and our 4th house purchase. For myself personally, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve moved in my life, probably close to 30. This is good for some things, like the fact that moving is not typically stressful or difficult for me. But leaving friends who have become close is never easy. And moving with kids has its own challenges. They’re not used to moving. For Darius and Addy this is most of their life that they remember.

  Chadd has been transferred with AWT to the Ketchikan post for a 2 year contract. Ketchikan is another island in southeast Alaska, just a 6 hr ferry ride or a short 30 min flight from Wrangell. It has a population of 8000 people (compared to Wrangell’s 1,900), three elementary schools, a college, a Three Bears,  a Walmart, and what my boys are excited about (But won’t hardly get) a McDonald’s 🤦🏽‍♀️

When we first moved to Wrangell we were uncertain how long we would stay. But after our 2 year commitment was complete and Ketchikan came open Chadd applied and was accepted. We are leaving 2 months shy of 3 years from when we arrived. 

  We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time on this  island. Wrangell is a bit like stepping back in time when towns were small enough for literally everyone to know everyone (or be related to everyone!). With its populace of 1900 residents  the experience of small town safety allows keys to be left in vehicles and kids walk to stores alone. The nearness of neighbor kids within walking distance on a network of trails between houses, biking to run errands, and our kids walking to school were some of my favorite aspects. We’ve enjoyed the constant community events, sports and performances, and we can never forget Wrangell’s incredible Fourth of July entire week of festivities. The numerous hunting, fishing, hiking, camping and river are a whole other world of adventures that speaks for themselves. 

After the mudslide it was ever more clear the priceless value of a community that rallies around to help their own when disaster strikes. I’ve never been part of such universal volunteerism and service. Although I’ve done many missions trips, this was different. It want someone else coming in to be the savior. It was by the people themselves, for their neighbors. Good hearted people still do exist. 

We are each looking forward to Ketchikan uniquely. Chadd will enjoy the brotherhood of troopers and additional LEO (Coast Guard, NOAA, Fish and Game) that the one man post of Wrangell lacks. We’re both anticipating a larger arena of fitness opportunities. Darius is excited to get into soccer and Addy is exuberant to start gymnastics. Cyrus is the most apprehensive. He has quite the gaggle of friends in Wrangell he dreads leaving. He is my extreme extrovert and fears isolation as a consequence of relocating. But he is also very quick to make friends. And we all delight in exploring new trails and beaches. Plus, I must say the additional grocery, medical and resource options on a larger island will be appreciated. 

So goodbye Wrangell, thank you for allowing us to participate in your tight knit community for almost three years. Take care, and keep up the good work!

For more details on our tribute to Wrangell see here https://youtu.be/5p4cYHl4odY?si=qD9Hk9ZMCxaqQbrn

A Devastating Mudslide in Wrangell Alaska

 

Natural disaster stuck the small community of Wrangell on November 20, 2023 at 8:51pm pm. 
Extensive rainfall the entire fall season culminated in acutely heavy precipitation that day combined with high winds created the conditions that lead to the devastating 700 feet wide slide that continued into the ocean killing an entire family of five and an elderly gentlemen, and cutting off transportation on the single road leading to 70 homes.  In a community the size of Wrangell, this affects every single member. 

We heard sirens that night passing our home and my husband immediately dispatched to the scene upon hearing the CB radio transmission. He was gone all that night searching for survivors and each of the subsequent days and nights with brief breaks for a change of clothes or a couple hours of sleep, as were all the other first responders. One woman survived with a miraculous story of being trapped in her attic on top of the pile that was her home, carried by the power of the mudslide. 

The community of Wrangell responded in force. Private boats went out looking for survivors and then transported those stranded by the covered roadway. Residents offered the rooms, food, clothing, and furniture to the displaced.  Accounts were set up for monetary donations for fuel for the boat transport and individual families. The parks and rec coordinated and community Thanksgiving meal and donation center that was quickly stocked by eager to help neighbors. If you have to be in a town with a disaster, I do not know a better place than Wrangell. 

      

The Memorial service for the entire Heller Family was held yesterday,
January 13, 2024. It was heart wrenching. Such beautiful lives cut short.
This community will always remember them
and never be the same.

 

Kara Heller was 11 years old. She was in my son's class and he played with her every day. Her smile in this picture is captivating and pains my soul that she didn't get to live longer. May the joy she brought to the world live on.

Definition of Adventure

When your sonar says your boat is on land, 
you better be sharp! As chadd said while navigating the boat over shallow water with his head out the window, “Who needs video games when you have this!”

What makes an adventure?  We all enjoy a good adventure movie. A perilous quest. A daring expedition. A life changing venture. This recent goat hunt (attempt) was iconic of adventure, with a little more misery and a little less triumph. But what makes it an adventure verses just a journey?

My husband and I have been in enough true adventures to come up with this definition of the necessary attributes of what makes an adventure:

1. Fear. Danger. 

Crazy man. And you expect me to do that next??

Grizzly tracks.

In Alaska adventure injury and death are not just a possibility, they are at the forefront of every step and decision.  Alaska will kill the unprepared: Fresh Grizzly tracks in berry covered banks of a salmon spawned creek, hypothermia, drowning, falling down a cliff and cracking a skull, breaking a leg and not being able to get back, wolf packs, angry moose, landslides,  flash floods, frostbite, drastic tidal changes… did I miss any?

Obviously none of these dangers should be a result of your own poor judgement  or at least if so, you will learn from it and make a different mistake next time  

2. Travel

You can’t really have an adventure in your back yard  I mean, maybe create one for your 5 yr old  but not a REAL adventure. You have to go somewhere. It may utilize a boat, four wheeler, side by side, dirt bike, 3rd world public transportation, bike, canoe, or your own two legs.   But it definitely includes getting OUT. 

3. Natural Beauty

Your eyes behold grandeur, gorgeous seascapes,  impressive mountain ranges, or water cut gorges. You see herds of giant moose browsing, a wolf stalking, wales blowing, porpoises jumping, eagles diving or salmon jumping up cascading falls. Sometimes it’s in the tiny

Salmon spawning. They swam and jumped around us

each time we crossed the creek.

 details, a drop go dew on a giant leaf, the coolest pattern in a rock, a bright red salmonberry beckoning you to pick it, or a perfect mushroom that makes you wonder if it’s edible or poisonous  

3. Pain and suffering. 

Meet: Devil's Club.
This plant is so aptly named I think Hell must be decorated
with hoards of them. Every inch is covered with 
toxic thorns, included the leaves, berries, even the roots!
You'll only make the mistake of trying to grab
 the branch when slipping once. The thorns don't just stab you,
they leave a rash that stings for the next several hours and or break off 
and remain embedded to fester for days.

Devil's Club poisonous berries. Don't let the beauty fool you.

Trekking through fields of Devil's Club that stab through
any pants, jacket or gloves.

After a night of rain, North Creek became a rushing
river, making staying dry impossible. We waded most of the way back
with XtraTuff boots sloshing and weighing 5 lbs more water logged. 
Keep in mind that water is FRIGID.

Ok this might not be frost bite, but my entire foot
was numb yet had stabbing pains. You know it's pretty bad
when you start to think about what it takes to cause 
permanent tissue damage.

Weather it be a scratch, a bruise, swarms of no-see-ums and mosquitos, icy threatening cold, frozen numb hands and feet, sopping wet clothes and boots filled with freezing cold water, thorns and thistles stabbing you and coming along for the ride in your skin, impossibly steep climbs with a pack on your back slipping 2-4 steps back every other step and your foot or pack get snagged by an evil willow branch just when you almost made it, and exhaustion… Think about Frodo stranded in the middle of flowing Lava, Peter in the epic battle to defeat the evil army, Dori getting stung by a jellyfish. One key when you know that what you are currently living in will be an adventure you tell stories of later is when you really wish you were back on your soft couch with a nice fuzzy blanket watching other people have adventures on a big screen. We call this Type 2 Fun: Not fun in the moment, but epic retelling later. Some adventures include way more of this than others.

4. Strategy

My indomitable man digging out our stuck boat. This time he
really thought we might be stuck for good. But
he never gives up! With strategy, ingenuity, tenacity, and brawn 
we made it out once more.
 I have no idea how his body churns out 
enough heat in ice cold water, while it's raining, 
after trudging through temperate rain forest river water.

This looks so docile in a photo. His pack weighed 60lbs+
and that ledge had about 1/2 inch of grip space. 
But there is something so raw about the sensation of the 
cold rock on your hands, the sound of the rushing waterfall
below you, and the chill of the cold spray threatening
if you should slip. 

The stern of our boat was lodged into the mud. 
Chadd came up with this brilliant idea to shove our 
pack raft under the prop and lower the prop back down. 
This effectively raised the stern just enough that we could
crank and push it a few more inches. Repeat times 50
and we FINALLY got it to deeper water.

This was in 2020 back in the MatSu Valley during
moose hunting. Yes, we got it out (or I should say
Chadd got it out).

In every adventure you face a problem that you don’t know how to solve. You have to use your brain to come up with a solution. Our problems have included: getting heavily ladin ATVs up a muddy Suicide Hill; malfunctioning vehicles; working for an hour to dig, come-along wrenching, pushing and pulling a boat out of shallow water for over an hour; navigating the Stikine River that changes channels every week in a prop boat (bad idea); winching and gunning a side by side out of a thigh deep mud hole; climbing up waterfalls with all gear packs on our backs; and figuring out which would be less miserable: climbing a briar and Devils Club covered 45degree slippery mountain or risking an unknown path. 

5. A Mission

This is what we were going for, Alaskan mountain goat. 
We didn't even get high enough to look for them, 
this time...

You must cast the ring into burning lava, rescue the lost girl, escape from the loosed dinosaurs, defeat the White Witch or shoot the prize mountain goat. Even if you don’t succeed, the mission remains, until next time…

Most of the time we ARE successful.
My Caribou from 2018. 

Chadd's Black Bear earlier this year.

6. Friends

What is an adventure if you’re all alone? It may include the above 5, but who would you share it with when you’re telling the stories for years later. True adventure is experienced with friends or family. 

And there you have it. If you want an adventure, make sure to include all of these features. Or just come visit us in Alaska and come on a goat hunt. We could use the help packing down the meat  ;)

South East Alaska Montage

 

Zarembo Sparkling Spring

 

This weekend we kicked another goal on our Southeast Alaska bucket list: Drink naturally sparkling water from the Zarembo spring.

 

We took our boat about an hour over intensely choppy sea to reach Zarembo Island.  Zarembo is an island in Southeast Alaska that is 183 square miles (by comparison Wrangell Island where we live is 210 mi.²). It is a popular location for deer hunting, trapping, fishing, as well as poaching, spotlighting, and other nefarious activities. It also hosted former logging, which left around 100 miles of gravel logging roads

 

 

We docked our boat at St John's Harbor and walked down the gravel roads. We forged a creek and squished across  a large mud flat. The mud flats are areas that are traversable with some sturdy Xtra Tuff boots at low tide, but completely covered with water at high tide.

 

We had to wander around looking for a while, but finally we found it! It looks just like a small pile of rocks, but there really is carbonated water bubbling right out of the ground. It's ice cold and tastes a bit like iron due to it's high content. It can actually be called an 'iron spring' which is evident by the rust colored mud surrounding it.

Zarembo mineral water was actually bottled and sold by a company in Seattle from the late 1890s to the 
early 1910s. The advertisement read:

"The water from under the sea." The natural, sparkling Alaska mineral water. Unexcelled for table use. Puts vim in "high balls." Delivered at your door.

It was introduced to American consumers in blue colored bottles at Portland's Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905. We think when we find the rare blue beach glass it may be from an old Zarembo mineral water bottle.

 Watch our YouTube Video here

Sources:

https://dggs.alaska.gov/webpubs/usgs/wsp/text/wsp-0418.pdf

https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/advert/id/88/

 

Why Alaska

 I hate to admit it, but I’ve been going through some sunny vacation withdrawal. However, it has caused me to take a deeper dive into why I choose to live in Alaska, why I love and am proud to be an Alaskan.

In Alaska you have to fight and work for what you have. Nothing is fed to you on a silver platter. Alaska makes strong kids, and stronger parents. 

You have to scrape ice off your windshield, shovel feet of snow, warm your car up 15 minutes ahead of time, and blow on little ones hands or freeze your own armpits to warm them. To reap the gem of various meat harvest bounty you have to brave impossible terrain, know how to field dress, pack heavy quarters over mountains and ravines, then wash, clean, cut, grind, and package. The bounty of the rivers, lakes and seas require knowing what, how, when, and where, working a net or hook for long hours, and equally as much time cleaning, hauling, processing, smoking and cooking.  To forage you must research and experiment in gathering mushroom, berry, chaga, birch sap, fireweed, fiddlehead ferns, sea lettuce and much more. If you’re brave you can harvest roe, clam, oyster, and scallops. You can learn to trap and tan otter, mink, martin, fisher, beaver, wolf, wolverine, coyote, lynx, arctic fox and rabbit. 

If you want to stay fit you will either spend countless hours in a gym or brave ice, snow, wind, sleet, rain, and darkness to run, hike, ski, snow shoe, fat bike, snowboard, snow machine, ice skate and sled! 

As a mother of young children you will be challenged with long dark winters of kids pent up inside- pushing you to creative outlets such as headlamp tag, blanket forts, rearranging furniture, play dates, dance parties, swimming, any and all community activities available…( I shouldn’t even try to begin this list) all while harnessing and bolstering your own seasonal discouragement. Oh and you better get good at planning ahead, depending on where you live, if the barge breaks down the grocery store will be out, and your Amazon order is running 6 weeks late…

You may have to brave the dangers of frostbite, wolves, bears, devil’s club, 12 ft seas, hypothermic waters, thin ice, avalanches, landfalls, ATV-swallowing mud holes, high winds, 20 to 50 below 0 temperatures, erratic weather, deadly crevasses, icy roadways and extreme tidal changes. If you want danger- Alaska is the place to be. 

In Alaska I’ve found you have to be intentional with friendship. With the tendency to hibernate within your own four walls, if you don’t initiate and seek out social engagement the seclusion can be soul crushing. 

I’ve experienced the challenges of life in remote or urban third world countries of Haiti, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Philippines. But Alaska is just a whole other level.

But– with these challenges, you also get the freedom to walk wherever the dang you want on open mountains, likely without another soul in sight, and (hopefully) put a trophy on your wall. You get to see open roads instead of rows of traffic jams (mostly, except for Parks hwy and the commute to Anchorage…). You get to enjoy all four seasons in beautiful exchanges- actually five including “dark winter” and “light winter” :) You get to relish in the most gorgeous blue sky days with crisp, clean air, aroma’s of the season and calendar-worthy landscapes. You get to live in a tourist destination and show off the impressiveness of your state to enthusiastic visitors.  And in Alaska you can develop real friends who will drop what they're doing to help you, because they’ve been through the same challenges as you and they get it. 

Yes, I choose to live here. Alaska has made me stronger, wiser, and more resilient.  Besides, if not here, where else would I be?

 (But I’ll still look forward to my next hot climate winter vacation ;)

What Life is like in Wrangell

Your opinion of a place depends largely on why you are there, where you have lived before, and how connected you are to the community. This, is one of 2,435 (the 2021 estimated population, plus 5 Yoders :) opinions on life in Wrangell. 

 I have never felt so welcomed into a town. Right away nearly everyone who walked by our street either shouted and waved a "Hi! Welcome to Wrangell!" or stopped to chat for a while.  I have never once lived in a place with such a welcoming, safe, serving, and group-oriented community. It is so refreshing! 

How many people wish they had a sense of belonging, a group, a circle, or a gang? Even before COVID I heard many a depressed client respond when asked that she doesn't really have many friends, or doesn't get out much. It's a human condition to desire community. But what is community? This is what we have already seen in the short 10 days since our arrival:

Down Town

 Community is... seeing a poster for a community clean up day and actually showing up. It is making little brown bags of secret toys for boys or girls signed "From the Toy Fairy" and placing them around town for children to find. It's volunteering to work the concession stand, help coach a little league team, or starting an event called "Touch the Trucks" where kids get to go inside police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and dump trucks. It's hearing that there's a new family in town without their belongings and inviting them to use your washer and bringing them fresh baked sourdough bread, toys for the kids, a queen mattress, French press and freshly ground coffee. It's volunteering for the fire department or starting a non-profit organization to help grieving loved ones pay for a funeral. It's posting on the community facebook page that you found a mitten on the trail, holding it for the owner to claim. Community is EACH PERSON taking that step that they wish others would. I'm sure there are "the Loners" as a driveway sign reads at a home out the road. But the large majority of residents here embrace the community mindset. We have been told by many life long Wrangellites, "It's a great place to raise kids!" If only more towns would follow suit. 

Driving in Wrangell is a breeze. With such a small town it is a quick an' easy 2 minutes to down town to run errands at one of the surname stores. I'm still trying to get them all straight, after walking into many asking for an item only to be pointed across the street.  If you want to drive "out the road" (up the one longer stretch of road), it's about 20 minutes or less to campsites, cabins, trails, and a lake. And there is literally NO waiting on traffic!! (cue angels singing). The Wrangell town passed a law that it is legal to drive ATVs on town roads so I just take the side-by-side down to do my grocery shopping and errands. It's so convenient! But sometimes you don't even need to drive. Cyrus walks to school and walks home, hallelujah! I feel like I have so much more time in a day! He and Darius can also walk to the school playground together and my neighbor even sends her 7 yr old son to walk to the post office to get mail. It's very safe and the community helps keep an eye out for kids.

Simovia Hwy, AKA "Out the Road"

Everyone in town has a P.O. Box instead of a mail box, and everyone is on town sewer and town water. We've heard the town water system is old and has traces of 5IAA. As our water filter hasn't arrived in our moving pack yet, I drove up the road and filled jugs up with water piped from a fresh spring. It gets tested regularly and tastes great!

We enrolled our kids in little league baseball and T-ball, which is a first for us. It's such a community event, parents volunteering or chatting and siblings playing in the playground and sand pit together. It feels like a slower pace of life, rather than rushing to this and that event.

This is the entirety of the produce section of City Market grocery store

Grocery shopping

Grocery shopping is a bit different. There are two basic “grocery” stores. The barge delivers on Tuesday to each, so the best time to get fresh produce is Wednesday. However, some produce is just never fresh- similar but slightly more so than in the Mat-Su Valley. We expected prices to be much higher, and for most things it is- like a carton of about to spoil strawberries for $10. But there are a few random items with prices similar to Wasilla, both in produce and dry goods. I also discovered that if something is on sale it’s not because it’s approaching it’s expiration date, it’s because it’s already expired! 

Sorting and picking up our Costco order. 

In an effort to be thrifty with money the people of Wrangell use multiple avenues for obtaining food and items. Group Costco orders is one of them. The minimum shipping cost for a Costco shipment from Juneau or Seattle is $300 so if you get enough people to order together it is worth the shipping cost. However, the more people on an order the more chaos and work. The picture to the left is with just four families ordering. The woman who complied the orders and entered them spent 5 HOURS on it. And then when it arrives we all have to take our lists and find each item in the unorganized jumbles of giant packages. They only order about once a quarter so you have to get what will last a while. But try to avoid oversights, like accidentally ordering 6 gallons of olive oil 😬 At least we’ll use it eventually.  It’s a work out just getting groceries!  

Other items are expensive here as well. Gas is currently $3.49/gal. Our house cost way more than other states for the 3 bed/2 bath home with basically no yard pictured here (on Wrangell terms this is a lot of yard!). Paint is $42/gallon for interior wall paint. And a large supreme pizza is $40!

Everyone in town is connected to town water supply  we heard that it is high in the the chlorine like compound called 5IAA. So some people (myself included until our moving packet arrives with a water filter) get water from a fresh spring “Up the Road” at the “nine mile pipe.” It was recently tested and negative for E. coli and tastes great! And kinda fun to go fetch my water from a healthy source  

Everyone seems to have a dog here. They walk them in the park, throw a ball for fetch, and clean up after them pretty well. I can't wait to get our Irish-doodle puppy in June! She will be so well socialized.

The first thing my 8 year old son said when he saw the town from the ferry was, "The houses are so old, and right on top of each other!" True, there is not much real estate in the town, so houses are closer than in Wasilla. Not so close that you can reach over and touch both at the same time, and not town houses or apartments (other than a few apartment buildings), but just close quarters. I could dwell on missing my huge green yard in our former home but honestly there are a lot of benefits of living close. The kids in our neighborhood roam around between houses playing every day. I often have no idea whose kid is in my yard! My children have been playing outside ALL day and coming home as dirty as a bug. Cyrus is in kid heaven. 

And the ocean is ALL around. After all, we are on an island. But the town is also on the point of the island, the beak of the flying duck. If I walk to the top of the hill we live on you can see ocean on three sides. The views are incredible. I have never enjoyed ocean so much, and I haven't even gotten out on the water yet. I guess we're just not "hot sandy beach" people, but Mountain Ocean, now that's exciting. My kids adore playing in the tide pools. We could probably stay out there all day, but watch out for the rapid twice a day tide change that can be up to a 20 foot difference in depth.  I emphasize depth, because what you see in the distance the water moves closer to your belongings that you thought were safely stashed, is much different. We honestly saw the water move closer to us  

about 1 foot every 5 minutes! At a "minus tide" (when the water level is lower than the average low tide) that's the peak time to find all manner of edible clams, sea cucumbers, mussels, and seaweed. I am not the expert on this (yet ;) but we endeavor to learn as much as possible. Our whole family thoroughly enjoys having fun AND gathering food at the same time. Hunting, trapping (to come), and foraging for animal, vegetable, fruit, and mushroom is a blast!

 

In addition to the sea, there is the Woods. As mentioned, it is a temperate (cold climate) rain forest. That means there are HUGE trees with hanging moss and very little undergrowth. There are multiple nearby hiking trails, a campground, and forest service cabins for rent first come first serve. There are also old logging trails for ATV use over the entire island, which we will explore as soon as the snow melts at higher elevations. 

Another notable change for us is the birds. I forgot how I noticed the absence of song birds when we moved to Wasilla from Pennsylvania. But here in this temperate rainforest there is a host of feathery friends I've never seen or heard. It's such a soothing sound I had missed and didn't even know it! A blue tailed crested bird, and red headed wood pecker, a back-striped black bird and several birds singing beautiful songs whom I wasn't able to spot the singer. There is a bird fest going on that I hope to get some more local fauna information from. 

Once we get a boat we can set crab traps, see the entire coastline, and visit neighboring island friends. We have so much more to explore! 

So from a 15 day new resident who moved from Wasilla, Alaska and lived mostly on the east coast of the lower 48, this is what life is like in Wrangell, Alaska.