Haines Border Visit, Part 2

1998, Dalton Cache Border Station, Alaska, noon. Oneida finished counseling the maintenance workers on their benefits but wondered if she really needed to fly all this way to see them. The cold, dark winters of Alaska, with few hours of daylight, must give them lots of time to read regulations; they know as much as I do.

The Station’s window was a snow scene she was familiar with from life in Anchorage, but Haines was fifty miles away, and the next town was in the Yukon, over one hundred miles away. Oneida was in civilization, but not really. Heavy equipment had plowed the parking area, and snow was pushed to the sides in twenty to thirty-foot mounds. There were no treetops here; everything in nature was covered by nature – snow and more snow. It was unsafe to step out anyplace that was not plowed, or you risked being buried.

Twenty below. Heading back to Haines, she stopped at the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. Eagles were on the river eating salmon carcasses, but most were in the trees; she stopped counting the perched ones after two hundred and fifteen, their white heads blending with snow-covered branches.

Haines had few shops and one motel with a per diem rate, so there was not much to see, but she found an artist gallery to explore. Enchanted by swans, she purchased two tiny identical swans, with eggs in their nests, carved by an Alaskan Native from walrus tusk. That purchase was the trip’s highlight.