Dear Gary and Readers of The Big Wobble,
THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE ‘STORY’
Before I get started on this and because you have an international readership, I’m going to give some facts that will help clarify what your readers will be reading.
1) 1 gallon is equal to 3.785 liters.
2) There are 3.28084 feet in one meter.
3) 1 pound equals 0.45359237 kilograms
4) 1 mile equals 1.60934 kilometres
As I sit in my cabin beside this Alaskan river with winter coming on, I ponder the (heat) question. How are people in whatever part of the world they live in that gets really cold, going to stay warm? I have concerns even for countries that are not on my "want to visit list!"
The reason I have concerns for those places is because in the Holy Bible, in the book of James, chapter 1, verse 27 we read, “...the religious observance that God the Father considers pure and faultless is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being contaminated by the world." I do not care where they live, I want them to be warm, fed, and clothed.
And I’m praying for you, Gary, and your queen. I’m praying for Holland because it can get cold there. I’m aware that like most of us, you do not have deep pockets and gas, heating oil, and diesel has gone berserk in price and availability.
I am blessed. I live in a small cabin that has outside dimensions of 12 feet by 16 feet. Not much to heat and I’ve got a minus 40-degree Fahrenheit (which I believe would also be minus 40-degree Celsius) sleeping bag. I have some warm Eskimo dog mushing clothing, that most people I know do not have, as well boots and mittens.
5 Gallon, 18.8 Litre
But now here is the big problem. A lot of Alaska has communities you cannot drive to, they are off the road system. In fact, there are 230 villages in rural Alaska. 82% of these communities are off the road system. All of them depend on barge, barge plus air freight, or just air freight to get 100% of their supplies. This info was delivered to me by MARC, Missionary Aviation Repair Center. They help get missionary's, pastors, and supplies to many of these villages. They also work on the needed aircraft for this job.
A barge, once a year, and in some places twice a year, brings in all the fuel and supplies. I was told by a man who lives there that this fall, when the last barge comes in, heating oil delivered to Bethel by barge will be now over $9.00 a gallon. From there it is loaded on a fuel plane and flown to other communities that help distribute it to other villages. They do that by their fuel airplanes.
I met a man a couple of weeks ago who is from the villages north of the Arctic Circle. He said in the village of Allakaket, just unleaded gas is now $26.00 a gallon. They depend on snow machines, four wheelers, and outboard boat motors to help them hunt, fish, go to church, or even go shopping at the store. Can you just imagine filling up a five-gallon gas can, that would be 18.925 liters, and paying $130.00? And if you are out there and burn firewood for heat, your chain saw will need gas. And... it's only getting worse. I’ve attached a picture of a 5-gallon gas can, which is 18.8 liters, sitting next to my coffee cup to give you an idea of ratio. You’re not getting much for what you are paying for.
My biggest concern is the elderly and the single mums. This is why many villages still use dog teams in the winter for hunting, ice fishing, going to the next village to visit family, and so on. And here is something you won’t see down in the lower 49, yes, I said lower 49 because Alaska is also over Hawaii, or even way over there in Holland, my dear brother, Gary! “Kids, go get in the dog sled and sit in the front so mum has a place to sit, we’re going to church, now load up. And after church were going to go visit your Uncle Ggagga Nk'dlih and have some birthday cake over in Hogatza!”
But now I want to bring up a sled dog problem. Sled dogs need feed. You do not feed working dogs the food most, at least in America, feed their dogs. Their lives, and you and your family's lives depend on your dog mushing team staying healthy, happy, full of energy, and warm! Siberian sled dogs have been documented staying bedded down at minus seventy-six-degrees Fahrenheit and doing well as they had been feed well and had good bedding. I have a couple of friends who live about two miles apart. One recorded minus 84-degree Fahrenheit and his neighbor noted minus 86-degree Fahrenheit. Because you have to keep their food top notch and plentiful, you treat them as family. And the mushers I know who live there do just that.
You either need to feed a professional grade dog food like I feed, along with fish and meat, or just all the massive quantities of fish and meat supplies stored up for the winter, as well as the rest of the year. In the winter, a dog that is working and having to stay warm at times way below minus 40-degree Fahrenheit will need 10,000 calories a day, plus. I've been looking at moving to a small village at the end of the road system with a dog team. From mid-September, for sure the 1st of October, until mid-June the road is snowed in. It is not possible to keep this 95-mile stretch of road open in the winter, in fact after the road opens back up it is still a 3-hour drive to the next small village because the road is so rough and steep in places, no paved road here. But guess what, you can take your dog team and make that trip to that next village in a day. Spend a couple of days their eating sour-dough pancakes and laughing with close friends who have no phone there either, then mush back home. And no barge can reach this village or the second village. It's impossible. To go buy supplies, it is a three-hundred-and-sixty-mile ride, which is a 579 Kilometers one-way drive that takes over nine hours in good weather.
If you didn’t get enough dog food before the pass closed, no problem. Weather permitting, the airplane that delivers your letters three and sometimes four times each week, would fly in for this community. Now five years ago it was just $2.00 per pound but the cost has gone way up. So, I need dog food. It comes in fifty-pound bags. I paid $68.00 dollars a bag back then. So $68+$100 for the shipping cost is only $168 per bag. Oh, one more problem, I need for my team three bags a week. So, three per week, times four weeks per month, is just a mere $2,026 per month, times eight months is just a little chunk of change, $16,128 if I had to have it flown in. And, no more gas or heating oil was coming in on the road, or coffee, tea, beans, rice, toilet paper, laundry soap, bread flour, etc..., but at full price plus way over, not the $2.00 a pound you could have it in the good old cheaper days!!!
So, I tell you this since the cabin I want is on a dead-end road that is not kept open in the winter. Town is about seven miles away. If I wanted to go to the library (one of the few places with electricity) that is open just three days a week, so I can use the computer because there are no cell towers out there to keep in contact with people, this is where you go. It’s the only place. Or if to the store, or gas station to get some chain saw gas, or church, or the coffee shop to visit friends, I'll be mushing about 14 miles per round trip. Oh, yes, the few in this small community who have electricity get it by a diesel-powered generator. And because the price of diesel keeps going up, the price is insane. By the way, solar panels don’t work because of the lack of light in the winter.
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Now, part of the reason I bring up the sled dog issue is that you can no longer count on the salmon runs being big enough. You have to gather hundreds of pounds of salmon with your fish wheels so you can have basic needs met and not have to worry about flying in or barging in hundreds of pounds of dog mushing feed that is beyond the abilities of most Alaskans to now buy. And why are they not there? All I can say is it's partly the radioactive pollution that is coming from Japan, and some new sources I now know about that Big Family Members don't want us to know about.
Plus, the insane price of gas, heating oil, and diesel, staying warm in most of Alaska is going to be overwhelmingly impossible for so many. Sadly, as so many villages are not on a river to receive shipments from barges, this tragically creates an even bigger crisis. Many have no trees within sight or even a couple days ride to glean firewood. Those close to the ocean used to collect driftwood or gather seal oil, or blubber. The seal oil and blubber was used as oil for lanterns, which provided heat and light.
If the rapture of the church is held off, I will go live in such a village, within sight of a forest. I'll burn firewood, eat wild game, fish, lots of beans, rice, and oatmeal, and have a very small house so it will stay warmer easier. I plan on having just a four-dog team to pull my favorite sled that is so light I used to take one hand and load it on top of the dog truck. Yep, I bet it would now take two. You know what, that is almost how I’m living now. Well, praise God, I love this lifestyle!!! But don't worry, I have a very good German built short wave radio and I can listen to "King Jesus North Pole," a radio station that has a powerful broadcast out of North Pole, Alaska.
Often many of us are asked why we like living like this in small villages? The answer is simple. Many Alaskans, including myself, love the ‘pre-modern’ era where you have to use a dog team and a good hand saw to bring the firewood home, just like it shows in my picture. We still visit one another face to face where there are no cell phone always in your hand with you looking down and wearing out your thumbs on its screen. When you go visit your neighbor, you’re not interrupting their T.V. time, Yep, those things need electricity and waste hours of time daily. Neighbors helping neighbors, just like in the ‘good ‘ole days!’ We don't focus on non-essentials.
More people are going to have to take a close look at the ‘pre-modern’ era and what it has to offer in order to survive because tougher times are headed our way. And... people are going to have to get out of their small worlds, link arms and help one another.
Speaking of non-essential food items, such as ice cream bars, they will have to be reserved for ultra special occasions such as birthdays and weddings. A woman I know from the town of Unalakleet that gets its supplies directly from a barge or airlifted in from lower Alaska, had to pay $56 and some change for a box of 6 generic ice cream bars. There’s got to be more economical ways to celebrate!
And Gary, I have been ponding your last three posts. You totally amaze me how you can connect dots that most of your readers did not know existed. I read your posts and I pondered them for days. And I totally agree with you that many, like NASA, constantly change their stats in their favor. I can verify this as an Alaskan monitoring solar storms and earthquakes. I have had the blessing of watching solar storms that were out of this world later to find out - by their statistics - they never happened. And I’ve gone through earthquakes so hard that I bounced off the wall and hit the floor but later those earthquakes either ‘didn’t’ happen or were reduced in intensity. I can now correctly spell NASA (NEVER A SECURE ANSWER). Thanks for the truth as you sound the Shofar from the top of the wall.
Love you, Brother. That’s it from Alaska for now.
Bill Laughing-Bear
Stay warm, buddy!
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