Scenes From Alaska
By winter 2015, I was six months into writing the first draft of The Mahoneys of West Seattle. And things were going fairly well. I knew who everybody was and I knew generally where the story was going. One place it would be taking me was Anchorage. In the beginning of March, it was clear that Anne would be starting a contract job in Alaska. That chapter would begin with specific scenes from Alaska. She’d flying back to her father’s cabin and spending time with the people who were part of her years growing up in Anchorage.
Most of the novel is set in the Seattle area, which I know pretty well because I moved there in 1990 and made it my new home. Apart from a few years in NYC for grad school, I lived in or around Seattle (including the U District, Capitol Hill, West Seattle and Burien) until 2018. But Alaska was a place I only knew second-hand through books, magazines and the anecdotes of friends. And as I got close to writing scenes from Alaska, I grew anxious enough about getting it right that I booked a three-day trip north, which was all I could afford.
I stayed at a B&B downtown (The Copper Whale Inn). The first night, I met friends of friends at Humpy’s Alehouse on 6th Ave. We spent a few hours chatting over dinner. They gave me lots of great insight about the city, the surrounding area and what it’s like to live there.
A Town Called Girdwood
The next morning, I drove south to Seward. On the way, I pulled into the small town of Girdwood and stepped into Kobuk Valley Jade Company. It’s a large, fascinating store where you can see the jade boulders mined in the Arctic region being cut and shaped into jewelry and other products. (It’s well worth a stop if you’re in the area).
It was a slow morning, so I ended up in a long conversation with the owner. He told me stories about the local area, about the Chugach Mountain Range. It essentially began across the street at the Alyeska Resort. He also shared his experience in the Alaska fishing industry, his dealing with the local government and so much more. It was all great material.
Scenes from Alaska Included Seward and Talkeetna
I had more conversations when I got to Seward that afternoon, and the next day when I drove north to Talkeetna. They all helped in shaping the scenes that would be set in those places. After both days, I had dinner at the Glacier Brewhouse, which was a short walk from my B&B. I ate at the bar and happened to find myself sitting next to an oil industry engineer on both occasions. On the first night, it was an engineer going to the North Slope. And on the second night, it was one returning from there. They were both happy to chat about what life was like up north. One even showed me photos of the living conditions in the oil company camps.
Two of the books I picked up on the building of the Alaska pipeline.
Before flying back to Seattle, I stopped by Title Wave Books and picked up some used paperbacks about the building of the Alaska pipeline and the effect it had on the lives of so many people living in, and moving to Alaska back in the ’70s and ’80s. They helped a lot in writing the North Slope scenes. The character of Maddie is inspired by the description I read of one of the few women working as a pipefitter on the Slope back then.
North Slope Blogs Were My Library
Because a visit to the North Slope was beyond my reach financially, I relied on blogs written around the year 2000, or ones that recalled the experience of working up there at that time. I bookmarked many in a web browser, along with Wikipedia pages for “pingos” and “thermokarsting,” and Google searches for things like “oil industry soil sampling methods on the North Slope.” One folder had forty such links. As I check them again now in October, 2021, I see that a good number of the links are broken, particularly the ones from the 1999–2000 period. (I list some of the surviving links below if you’re interested in reading more.) In another folder I saved links to YouTube videos showing the world in and around Deadhorse, Alaska and the many camps.
Dorm Rooms in the Oil Camps
In using information from such sources, I always tried to have specific facts and descriptions show up on at least two separate blogs. I did make one intentional change in the description of living quarters in a work camp. From what I’ve read, oil companies were, and still are, very good about making sure employees and contractors are able to easily communicate with family back home. So typically dorm rooms are equipped with phones and calls are free. The lack of a functioning phone in Anne’s dorm room might be a stretch, but I felt it was necessary to heighten the sense of separation and disconnection she experiences from her family back in Seattle.
As I write this, it’s twenty one years after Anne’s time on the Slope, and from what I understand there has been a change in the climate up there. The low temperatures I cite in the novel were taken from historical weather records, but current temperatures are higher.
North Slop Links
Grizzly Bear Denning on the North Slope
Prudhoe Bay Oilfield Worker FAQ