November 16, 2003

• Alaskan Survival
  …and a new muffin recipe

  
  

  

  
  

  Recently, some comments have expressed curiosity and/or interest in how I survive Alaskan winters and why Greyfox and I choose to live here.  I appreciate this chance to express my love of this part of this planet I love, and the opportunity to crow a bit about my survival skills.

  
  

  When I asked Greyfox for his input on this, he said “Clean air and clean water are a biggie.”  Anyone who has never had them, who has lived with chemically treated city water or the rusty or sulphurous stuff that comes out of most of the aquifers in the southern and western U.S., would not understand this.  Perhaps there are many others who would not value them as highly as we do, either.  Personally, having lifelong respiratory problems, ever since the first time I experienced air I couldn’t see or smell, without even that hazy brown layer I grew up with on the prairies, much less the choking smog I experienced in cities such as Harrisburg, PA, Los Angeles, CA, Amarillo, TX and Anchorage, AK, I knew this was the place for me.

  
  

  Yeah, Alaska has its own smoggy city.  I need to make it clear that the Alaska I love is far from cities.  A hundred miles from an international airport, seventy miles from the nearest hospital, fifty miles from fast food, bowling alley, movie theater (yeah movies and bowling are singular, one of each in Wasilla), and 23 miles (either way, up or down the highway) from public libraries, our spot in the Upper Susitna Valley, along the Railbelt from Seward to Fairbanks, is what I mean when I talk about what I like about Alaska.  That we live within sight of North America’s highest peak and the tallest monolith, base to peak, in the world, is a big plus for me.

  
  

  Another factor Greyfox talked about was the people here.  Not particularly all Alaskans, and probably not even all of our nearest neighbors, but most of the people who have been here for a while, like Iditarod musher Charley Boulding, right, in Greyfox’s words, “don’t act as if they have something to prove, like city people with white collar jobs.”  He should know.  That was him most of his life.  I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms, but I agree with him.  I noticed long ago that my long-time neighbors here are fairly mellow and project both competence and confidence.  When you’ve spent a few winters here, you tend to either get those things or get out.  I have watched many people come here enthusiastic and leave disappointed, during the twenty years I’ve lived at this milepost on the highway.

  
  

  For both of us there is another factor, too.  Greyfox said, “being in close proximity to masses of people is psychically oppressive and emotionally distressing.”  I concur.  I’m more comfortable surrounded by a few wild animals than by crowds of people.  Ever hear of the “behavioral sink” phenomenon, when lab rats are crowded together in a cage? 

  
  

  My psychic and emotional health and survival are as important to me as are my respiratory health and physical well-being.  It is my preference to keep my psychic channels open for a number of reasons, both personal and professional.  I could not bear to do that in most places where the human population isn’t so sparse.

  
  

  So that’s the why of it for us.  As I was working today, tending the stove to get maximal heat from it because the temperature has dropped fifty degrees, from a foggy and chill 40°F to 10 below zero, in a couple of days, I thought about survival skills.  As I was making my latest batch of gluten-free muffins and a batch of brownies for Doug, as much for that extra oven-heat in here as for the baked goods themselves, I chuckled a few times over some of the answers I came up with.

  
  

  How do I make it through an Alaskan winter?  I could give the simple bald truth and say, “quite well, thank you.”  I do it with skill and competence plus probably some native intelligence.  I do it, as I do life in general, with ingenuity and inventiveness, a talent for improvisation, mickey-mouse, or in military jargon, “field expediency.”  Most days I do it with joy and laughter, too.

  
  

  I don’t screw around where survival is concerned.  My son, who was born in this state and moved to this valley before he was two years old, seems to take his own survival skills for granted.  They are second nature to him, but I still think about them.  I don’t go out in my car without adequate gear to walk several miles in whatever weather we’re having at the time:  cold, wet, windy, whatever it is, I prepare for it and don’t trust the vehicle to keep me from the elements.  Shit happens.

  
  

  I have acquired, and make sure to maintain, a supply of adequate outdoor gear.  During my first winter in Alaska, frostbitten kneecaps taught me that miniskirts don’t make it at -25°F.  It took me a while after that before I was mentally comfortable with the “fat” look that longjohns indside my jeans give my butt, but by now I’ve long outgrown such self-defeating vanities.  I go for comfort.  Today, here in this drafty trailer that I’m still in the process of winterizing by sealing around windows, etc., I’m wearing longjohns and jeans, wool socks and insulated boots, a thermal knit undershirt, winter-weight turtleneck, and a flannel shirt with quilted lining.  My head is covered, too.  That’s something else I learned:  we lose 75% of the body heat that dissipates from us, through our heads.  Before I go out the door, even just to the outhouse, I put on a hat when it’s cold.

  
  

  Winterizing the house is a must, but we never seem to get it done before cold weather, even now when cold weather is coming later and later every year, what with global warming. We tape plastic sheeting over the windows to seal out drafts and increase the insulation at those holes in our walls.  We close off the lesser-used back rooms of the house unless we are in there.  We put down draft stoppers, usually ragged old towels, at the bottoms of those doors and the outside doors.  We also lay in a good supply of wood for the woodstove. 

  
  

  This week we are adjusting to the winter routine, getting back into remembering to stoke the stove before the fire burns too low, so that we don’t have too much fluctuation in the temp in here.  Doug and I started “Visqueening” the windows yesterday.  Visqueen is or was (haven’t seen it for years) an exceptionally clear type of poly sheet, used specifically for windows.  We use regular 5 mil construction poly, which allows us a misty, hazy, distorted view from those windows, but lets in whatever sun there is.

  
  

  The other facet of survival is the mental part.  I almost cracked up from withdrawal symptoms my first winter here in the Valley.  I had never lived off the power grid, had only a few brief times been without running water, and was accustomed to thermostatically-controlled central heating.  For decades before moving here I had used a nightly hot bath at bedtime to relax my fibromyalgic muscles so I could sleep.  I was addicted to TV, and often used to read books while it droned away in the background.  Until the second winter, when we installed propane lights, I was bonkers without the tube, and not even adequate candlelight to read by.

  
  

  Now, we’re on the power grid, but we prepare for outages.  Every room has a battery-powered light stuck to a wall, and each room has at least one flashlight.  All three of us could grab two flashlights apiece and head out the door (if for some reason we’d want to) and there would still be flashlights in here.  We also have the little generator we used for our entire power supply at Doug’s and my old place across the highway, plus a bigger generator that our benefactor Mark left here when he gave us this place.  If the outage became lengthy, we could fire up one or the other and have light and maybe even the internet.  I’d need at least three layers of surge protection, though, before I’d trust my computer to a little gasoline generator.  No prob, we have that already because I don’t trust our electric co-op, either.  I’ve known it too long and too well to trust it.

  
  

  Instead of hot baths (we shower at the laundromat once or twice a week), now I use a hot water bottle if my muscles are cold and tight at night.  I don’t have the TV addiction anymore, and can always find a way to light up a book if I get bored.  Plus, we have games we play to pass the time when for some reason we don’t have the use of the PS2 or the comp.  Greyfox likes Trivial Pursuit and sometimes Doug and I will indulge him, although it’s really too trivial for our tastes.  Doug likes Scruples, and we’ve played it a few times when the power was off.  Our favorite game is one we made up:  “Where Did that Come from?”   It starts with a simple round of free association, where one of us says a word and the next one says a related word, etc.  The twist is that when one of those freely-associated words doesn’t seem to go with the one that came before, someone else asks, “Where did that come from?” and the one who came up with it has to recall the chain of associations he went through to derive it.  It may not sound like much, but when played by a family of geniuses with warped senses of humor it can be quite entertaining.
  

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  Beans, Corn and Squash Muffins
  

  
  

  [A question from leafylady about the honey I used in the previous versions of the recipe causing sugar cravings led me to eliminate the concentrated sweetener altogether this time.  The "pumpkin juice" and the pumpkin are sweet, and I had been using the sweetener only to help the muffins brown attractively.  The results are not as pretty as when they are evenly brown, but are very tasty.]

  
  

  Start with a used jack o’lantern.  Cut the pumpkin into strips and remove the rind with a potato peeler.  Pressure-cook the chunks of squash for 15 minutes and reserve the liquid.  You may puree the pumpkin, but I prefer it chunky style, so I just mash it with a potato masher.

  
  

  Preheat oven to 375°.  Line muffin pans with paper liners or grease muffin cups (will make 24-30 muffins).  Whisk together in a large bowl:

  
  

  
  

  1 cup garbanzo bean flour
  1 cup corn flour (not meal)
  1 cup sorghum flour
  1 cup non-instant nonfat dry milk powder
  1 cup soy protein powder
  1/4 cup buckwheat flour
  1/4 cup tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
  1 teaspoon salt
  1 teaspoon baking soda
  1 teaspoon baking powder
  1 teaspoon xanthan gum
  2-3 teaspoons “sweet” spices such as cinnamon, ginger, cloves, pumpkin pie spice, or Chinese five spice, to taste

  
  

  Beat separately:

  
  

  
  

  3 eggs, then add and combine:
  1/2 cup vegetable oil
  1 1/2 cups mashed pumpkin
  2 cups plain unsweetened yogurt
  1 cup pumpkin juice (the cooking water from the pressure cooker)

  
  

  Spoon into muffin tins.  Bake at 375° about 20 minutes until center springs back from a light touch.  Excess muffins (and jack o’lantern meat) may be frozen for future use.
  

  • 8:38 pm
  • 12 Comments