On small planes, gold mines and Alaska summers

This morning, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in a little while.

“What, exactly, have you been doing recently?” he asked. “I’ve been seeing a lot of pictures of you with small planes and stuff.”

The question resonated with me because I think it speaks to Alaskans’ communal experience in the summer time. Frenetic, happy roaming in the many hours of daylight, punctuated by sporadic trips home and to the office to do things like shower, clean laundry, vacuum seal fish and catch up on professional work. Friends and family members pass like ships in the night, trading tales of various adventures in chance encounters and spur of the moment barbecues.

I have, indeed, spent my fair share of time on small planes this summer. In early July, I had the great privilege of flying out to the gravel runway in Kantishna, deep inside Denali National Park, where I spent a few days with my mom at a lodge where I'd been invited as a guest speaker. Then, after a short stint at home, I got on another Bush plane bound for a grass airstrip not far from Mt. Susitna, home of the Su Salmon Co. — a small commercial setnetting business where I help out as a crew member each summer. A friend flew me back to Anchorage earlier this week, where I’ve been catching up on work and life before I ship out again Monday.

Max Graham, Northern Journal’s mining correspondent, has sustained a similarly peripatetic schedule this summer, balancing an apprenticeship at a Fairbanks area farm with professional and personal trips to various points south and west.

As a result, as you may or may not have noticed, our publication schedule has slowed a bit. I’m sharing our summer details with you not to justify ourselves so much as to explain that the Northern Journal staff, I think, is a lot like everyone else in Alaska this time of year: just trying to fit everything in. And I think that our travels and experiences ultimately will do a lot to inform our journalistic work into the fall and winter, because they take us out on the land and water to new and unfamiliar places — where we can connect with other Alaskans, learn about their lifestyles and values and understand what kinds of stories and themes are relevant to them.

With that said: My last big trip of the summer starts next week, when I’ll head out with my sibling and two friends to paddle the Blackstone River, off the Dempster Highway in the Yukon Territory. Northern Journal will go dark for the following 10 days, but part of my trip back to Alaska will entail a stop in Dawson City, where I plan to speak with Yukoners for a story about how their lives have been affected by this year’s escalating cross-border tensions with the United States. On that same drive, I also hope to meet with miners in the tiny Alaska community of Chicken: Amid a substantial rise in the price of gold, Max is working on a story about a boom in small-scale placer mining here in the state. 

We’re looking forward to bringing you those stories, and many others we’ve been reporting this summer, once the mayhem settles down a bit.

If you’ve got mining contacts in Chicken, or know folks in Dawson City that might have cross-border perspectives to share, we’re in the market; drop me an email. We’re always looking for story ideas and general feedback, too.

In the mean time, may your dipnets be full, your gardens bountiful, and your homes and yards frequented by friends, family and other loved ones until the days shorten and school goes back into session.

We’ll be back soon.

—Nat