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17
September 18, 1997
About two months ago, my friend Andy Sterns and I carried our backpacks into an interior Alaska valley that was at about the halfway point of the trans-Alaska pipeline. Mosquitoes, showing no respect for repellent, bounced madly into our eyeballs, nostrils, and mouths. As we struggled into head nets, I told Andy that I couldn't wait until the wonderful moment when I'd seen and felt the worst of everything I was to encounter on the trip from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay.
Two months later, with the Prudhoe Bay finish line just 10 miles away, the worst was waiting impatiently outside the tent. My girlfriend Clara Jodwalis was with me, as was Jane, the most famous brown dog in Alaska. We all ate breakfast in the tent, something I had never done before that morning because I didn't want the tent to carry any food smells that might intrigue a bear. We broke the rules because this was the last day of the hike, and because it hurt to be outside the tent.
A 20 mile-per-hour wind carried cold raindrops that smacked into the skin. It was my least favorite kind of rain, the kind that is about a degree above freezing, the kind that numbs you after the sting wears off.
Soon, the driving rain became driving snow; snow that seemed to be spit from the Arctic Ocean, snow that would be in our faces as we hiked toward Pump Station 1 and mile zero of the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline.
Our lives were not threatened. Clara, who had joined me at Pump Station 2, and I had good rain gear and the right stuff to wear beneath it. Jane's coat had thickened like a brown bear's during our journey north. We would be OK, but we wouldn't be comfortable.
I installed Jane's pack on her back inside the tent. Clara and I stuffed our packs from within the tent. Then we pulled on our wet boots, took deep breaths and stepped out into the blowing snow. We broke down and rolled the tent, a hand-numbing experience, and turned to face the wind.
To walk with wet feet over ball-bearing gravel was all there was to do. Every time I looked up, bullets of snow raced under my baseball cap and smacked into my eyes. Scolded, I kept my head down.
We didn't marvel at the arctic lakes surrounding us; we didn't count the white-fronted geese. The miles were like those in a running marathon where you know you're not in shape but you hope you can somehow squeak through. We walked with bowed heads, looking at gravel that was wet on one side and dry on the other.
A squinted glance at Clara rewarded me with her smiling teeth. Jane, half polar bear with a new coat of snow, trailed behind without whining; she would be leading on a nicer day.
The miles ticked off under our wet leather boots. At mile 6, we encountered a surprise: a red Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. truck driven by Rob Merdes of Alyeska. Inside were freelance photographer Ben Grossman, and the familiar pink hat of John Arntz, under which was John, who had hiked more than 200 miles of the pipeline with me.
Ben took some photos as Rob and John offered us hot coffee. With the wind pushing wet snow into our faces, the pipeline pad was no place to stand and chat. Outside was not a kind place at the moment. We gulped the coffee and kept going.
At mile 2, the truck returned. This time Alyeska's Joe Dwyer was driving. Joe, a 20-year pipeline man with kind brown eyes, said words as welcome as butter on dry toast.
"We've got a hot shower waiting for you, a room for the night, a nice dinner, even a place to wash your clothes," he said.
Clara, Jane and I hesitated only once during the final two miles. I turned my back to the wind at mile one, looked to the blank sky, and gave thanks for Jane's, Clara's, and my health. I gave thanks for the day's memorable weather, and for the fact that Clara was with me. We turned and continued into the wind. The colossus of Pump Station 1 was visible, as was Joe Dwyer's truck. The 4 million feet of summer distance along the pipeline corridor was now only 400 feet, then 300.
As we approached the orange signpost with a black "0," we saw one more obstacle. A small creek crossed the pipeline pad just 20 feet from the zero. It was the final waterway to be crossed, the last of 800. Clara and I waded through it, as did Jane. I held my hand out for Clara to slap, as was our custom after completing a water crossing. After a few more steps, we reached mile zero, where the pipeline dives under ground and beneath the chain-link fence of Pump Station 1.
I felt a great sense of physical relief. We jumped into Joe Dwyer's truck, leaving behind the wet snow bullets and the water crossings. Clara, Jane and I had just walked 10 miles straight with packs on; the first time I had walked that far without a break during the trip. I also had never before been as wet, with no promise of a break in the weather. I was not sorry the trip ended that snowy day at Pump Station 1.
For me, the trip continued the next day. While Clara, John, and Jane drove back to Fairbanks in my red Dodge, I walked on. Thanks to some asking by Alyeska's Rob Merdes and some permission-granting by British Petroleum's Frank Musgrave, I was allowed to walk from pipeline mile zero to the Arctic Ocean. The eight-mile trip to the southernmost tail of Prudhoe Bay took me a couple hours. I didn't take Jane because she doesn't like roads, and the oil fields didn't offer much more than gravel roads, metal pipelines and water-saturated tundra.
Merdes leap-frogged me with his red truck as I walked to the ocean. A man with a backpack is as conspicuous as a dairy cow in the oil fields, so I was stopped by several people, including an ARCO security man who demanded to know what I was doing. After some radio calls, my non-terrorist status was confirmed, and I continued on.
Finally, I reached the gravel road that led me to the tip of Prudhoe Bay. There, Merdes hung back in the truck considerately, to allow me some space. I walked to the ocean and stood ankle-deep, my boot covered in frothy foam. I reached my wool glove to the water, then brought my hand up and sucked out the water. It didn't taste salty, like the Pacific Ocean did in Valdez four months earlier. It was bland, earthy. I looked out to a horizon of flat water against blank sky, then back at my feet. There were no more steps to take.
It's been two weeks since the Arctic Ocean wet my boots, time enough to reflect on what a summer of walking across Alaska taught me:
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An event sponsored by the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
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