Into Alaska - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 91

In the weeks that followed people came to realize that their homes and businesses had been
situated on a moraine field at the foot of the Valdez Glacier - an exceedingly unstable,
waterlogged foundation. Waiting for no one, the town simply picked up and found a new
location with better soil conditions four miles away. Within two years the whole town had
been moved and re-established.
There is a real can-do spirit in the north. They've learned to rely on themselves alone and
don't wait around for anyone to help them. The docent at the museum told us about his
personal experiences of living through the oil spill - how the fishermen tore out into the
Sound in their own boats, desperately scooping oil out of the ocean by bucket, trying to
save their fisheries.
The docent talked about the earthquake and moving the town. He went on to comment
about the flooding in New Orleans and how baffled the locals are by the fact that people
there are still wallowing in misery, waiting for help. Northerners wait for no one. Self re-
liance is a lesson they've learned the hard way.
The north is vulnerable to economic cycles of boom or bust. Nowhere epitomizes that bet-
ter than Valdez. When the Gold Rush got underway in 1897-98, 4,000 stampeders showed
up overnight …and left just as quickly.
When Congress approved the Trans-Alaska Pipeline terminus at Valdez thousands moved
in to be part of the construction boom …and left when it was finished a few years later.
Attheheightoftheoilspillclean-upinthe1990s10,000peoplemovedintoworkorreport
about it. Now they are gone and the boarded up hotels and cafes bear sad witness to the end
of that boom, such as it was. But the town's visitor center and two museums tell the tale: a
people too in love with the north and too stubborn to give up, ever.
I met 96 year-old Samme Gallaher, doing a book signing at the museum. She's the author
of Sisters: Coming of Age and Living Dangerously in the wild Copper River Valley. It's a
tale of raw survival in an unrelenting wilderness. Samme arrived in Alaska at 15 years of
age and quickly picked up the necessary life skills: following trap lines through waist-deep
snow, sleeping out at minus 40 degrees, mushing dogs over frozen riverbeds and shooting
marauding grizzlies. The topic literally bubbles over with Samme's irrepressible energy for
a life that as she tells it, seems like so much fun.