When my mom visited my Alaskan home for the first time, she looked around my 325 square foot one-story log cabin with a half loft and said “but where is all your stuff?” I could not help but laugh at her reaction. The joke of a cabin dweller is that you know you live in a cabin, not a house, when you can see all the possessions you own at once. From whichever spot you are standing in. She was in fact looking at everything we have, which in reality is not a lot. My dad’s reaction was by far the more hilarious one. He sat on my couch, taking inventory of our four 15-foot long walls, and said under his breath, “My God, Teresa.”

I have friends who gush about my perfect life, living the reality of the “tiny house” phenomenon. I just have to smile and do my best to not give them a reality check of what it is usually like living in a home smaller than my freshman-year college dorm room with another person. Although I suppose most of those friends’ assumption of a “tiny house” would at least involve a separate bedroom, a bathroom, and maybe even a “cutsy” lounge space for watercolors or crafting. I do not assume that they envision a 325 square foot cabin with no dimensions, doors, and only 4 corners.

I will admit that at times a small cabin is incredibly cozy and even has its romantic moments. Stringing up Christmas lights during the dark winter months makes the logs glow with warm light. Having a dinner party of six seems like a rambunctious affair. When there is space for only one loveseat (not even a full couch), there is no choice but to cuddle up to watch a movie. Although then the dog follows suit and someone usually ends up on the floor. It is typically not the dog.

For the most part however, a “tiny house” involves awkward arrangements of personal items and overlapping uses of space. My toothbrush lives on the shelf beneath the pint glasses. The dog’s crate doubles as a side table for the couch. Leaving dirty dishes out for the night is not an option, as they take up the only prep space next to the stove to prepare morning coffee. There are no doors inside the cabin, making the dramatic gesture of slamming the door in frustration quite difficult. Unless you were to physically leave the cabin in such a fashion, which is not incredibly appealing when it is dark and minus 30ºF outside. The thought reminds me of a favorite Mitch Hedberg joke: “I got into an argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent. That's a bad place for an argument, because then I tried to walk out and slammed the flap. How are you supposed to express your anger in this situation? Zipper it up really quick?”

At least I only have 325 square feet of floor to vacuum; there’s the silver lining. Needless to say, we are building a house on our 12 acres of paradise, and we are going all out. Two stories and 1,000 square feet. I cannot express how excited I am to have stairs.

Just because it is light out does not mean it is daytime. Just because it is dark does not mean it is time for bed.

It seems a common reaction of the average working individual to look at a calendar and double take: “How is it May already?” The reaction is not necessarily a surprised one (as the person is likely well aware of the month), but rather simple disbelief that time can pass so quickly.

In Alaska there is one sure thing that will remind you of the time of year – the sun. It makes larger arcs in the sky each day from the winter to summer solstice. It can hardly be said that the sun “rises in the east” and “sets in the west” in Alaska. In winter, the arc starts just above the horizon in the southern sky, and each day becomes a little wider. Eventually the arc begins and ends in the northern sky when summer arrives.

My cabin has big windows on all sides, and the sun rises and sets in each and every one of those windows at some point throughout the year. When winter takes hold, the sun only glows from behind the mountains out of my south-facing window. Twenty-two days after the solstice, not a day sooner, it will finally break through the low passes in the range, flooding my cabin with sunlight in five-minute spurts before disappearing behind a mountain’s peak. By February, I can no longer work comfortably at my east-facing computer desk in the morning. The dawn beams come streaming through that window rather than from the south. By March, it is impossible to block the glare on the TV coming through the west-facing windows in the evening. At that point, I know spring has arrived. The sun signals summer when in the early hours of the morning, still the middle of the night for that matter, the sun’s rays burst through my north-facing window. It becomes near impossible to sleep through the constant daylight shining right into my eyes. Even with curtains, the light will find the cracks and remind me that summer is here.

People often ask how I deal with the darkness in winter. What they should be asking is how I deal with the constant daylight in summer. Each pose challenges for the psyche, but I fully embrace both. It gives me energy to watch the sun work its way through the sky, making dramatic changes as seasons come and go. Winter offers peaceful twilight, allowing for quiet evenings in front of the fire. As daylight creeps back, the long to-do list that piles up starts being checked off. Why not chop wood at 11PM when the bugs are put to bed and the sun is still high in the sky?

Before I know it, the sun isn’t coming up until my drive to work in the fall. Soon I do not have to use my sun visor on the highway on the morning commute, which means winter is arriving once again.

“Fun Hog” month is how we refer to March in Denali. It is the long anticipated arrival of spring for year-round residents. Spring in Interior Alaska does not evoke birds chirping or tulips popping out of the ground; there is likely still over a foot of snow and nobody flinches if daytime temperatures don’t make it above -20°F. The arrival of spring here means only one thing for certain: daylight. The sensation of going to bed and rising with the sun is one that has almost been forgotten. For Alaskans, it is time to cash in vacation days and go play.

For my first winter camping trip longer than a weekend, I could have done without the -30°F thermometer reading when my musher, 10 sled dogs, and I hit the trail. The two-week adventure would take us from the entrance of Denali National Park to Kantishna and back. For someone who spends all summer inside the Park, it was an incredible thing to see Toklat River frozen rather than flowing, Eielson Visitor Center blanketed in snow, and an empty Park Road. For the most part, the winter skiing & mushing trail stays off the road, wandering its way through the river valleys instead. Every once in awhile, we would hop onto the road for a low, straight stretch. It was surreal to see a 30MPH sign sticking out of the snow, signaling cars that hadn’t passed that way in months.

I would have written it off as a ridiculous notion if three years ago someone told me that I would seek out and be thrilled by a winter camping trip where temperatures stayed below zero, 15-30 miles of skiing per day would be involved, and better yet, I would be sleeping in a tent in winter, not a cabin. But I found myself with a smile on my face, in nothing but a base layer at -10°F relaxing in the sunshine. I was looking at Denali with a bluebird sky backdrop eating a well-deserved Snickers after skiing up and over Stony Dome. I had spent the last several hours skiing after a team of sled dogs going faster than reasonable for pulling 500 pounds of sled, musher, and gear.

I have camped more nights than I can count in wilderness all over this country, but no trip quite compares to stepping out in the morning to rosy, snow capped mountains, frozen landscape, and nothing but deserted horizon.

While there are certainly colder nights and more snow in New England than in the Park, winter still reigns, even as more light returns each day.  Year-round staff busily work at setting up all the details for the summer.  Simon and Jenna flew in to the lodges to see that all was well. Interviews for new staff are nearly wrapped up, and now the tough decisions begin about who to hire.  Emails fly back and forth between returning staff expressing enthusiasm in contemplation of another season of work.  In the office, reservations flood in, and cabins and rooms fill up for the season to come.
 
Each year as the summer season approaches, year-round staff compare numbers of guests in the previous season to those booked for the season to come.  Last year?  Two thousand, four hundred twenty-one guests.  That makes for a lot of people ferried from the Park entrance to the end of the road, a lot of world-class meals served, and a lot of questions asked.  How do you do this?  Do you stock supplies over the winter?  How does the food get here?
 
The simple answers?  A knowing smile, no, and the same way the people get here.  Truck, Cessna, or, as shown in the 2013 photo from early May, late snowmelt necessitated flights from Talkeetna, over the Alaska Range, and then snow machine to cover the four miles from Kantishna.  With supplies.  Enough to last until the road opened to traffic.
 
In another part of the office, Jenna reviews the previous season’s inventory as she ponders prospective orders for the season.  Inventory lists show what a successful season looks like, and the revelation is mind-boggling.  In 2014, we soaked through 12,000 tea bags.  $3,960.  As I sit here with my single cup of Earl Grey, I can’t quite get my arms around that number.  Marginally easier to visualize are the 1,170 pounds of coffee beans, brewed into my addiction of choice at a whopping cost of $11,466.  Then there are those 5,000 (five thousand) pounds of flour for daily bread and yummy cookies.  That’s one hundred 50-pound bags of flour hefted in and out of the Warehouse.  Hmmm.  No wonder our bakers are so fit.  And the eggs:  5,400 eggs.  Per month.  Twenty-eight thousand (28,000!) total eggs consumed.
 
But the statistic that amuses the most and prompts hoots of laughter is toilet paper.  TP.  Outhouses and bathrooms require lots of paper, apparently 1,680 rolls of it.  The details continue:  each of those 1,680 rolls contains 2,000 inches of paper which divides out to 280,000 feet.  Taking that another step, you end up with fifty-three miles of toilet paper.  Picture a TP trail going eight times up and down the Wickersham Wall.  Or covering the trail out and back to McGonagall Pass with enough length left over to make up for the amount that washes down the McKinley River.
 
Now that is a statistic.
 
Exuberantly everyone prepares to pitch in with the work, the lugging and hauling, stowing and shelving, dusting and scrubbing.  Thoughts spring forward to the guests’ smiles at the first whiff of morning coffee, their joy at finding a basket of Focaccia on the table, and the satisfaction of seeing that little white roll hanging on the wall.

        Mid-January is the time we hear back from our previous summer staff whether or not they’ll be returning to work for another season at Camp Denali and North Face Lodge.  This time of year is also when we will get an update as to where our Staff has scattered to during the Annual Staff Migrations that occur in late fall and spring.

         After a long summer working at Camp Denali, our daring staff are more often than not itching to begin a great adventure, return home to visit family, start new winter jobs, or discover more of Alaska.  Being that we are isolated from the rest of the state for most of the summer, our staff takes time planning trips to hike, paddle, climb, and generally explore the different corners of Alaska at the end of the season, just like many of our guests do on their vacations.  Many summers, staff will borrow, buy, or rent a car and drive to the Lower 48 discovering the wonders of Eastern Alaska, and the Yukon and British Columbia, Canada.

         The choices of exploration and winter work run the gamut.  This past fall, three of our staff members Tom, Eric, and Tess, drove from Fairbanks to Massachusetts.  One of our hosts, Sadie, took a Yoga Instructor course in New England and is now working at a Yoga center in Costa Rica for the winter.  Our Housekeeping Coordinator, Kendall, and her husband, Justin, hiked the Camino de Santiago in Spain and are now exploring Central America.  Finally, our Executive Chef, Chris, chose to spend his winter backcountry snowboarding on Mt. Baker as he has done in the past.

         Another path chosen by our staff is that of working in Antarctica over the “austral summer.” Two of our current staff members, Kristen and Max, are working as cooks at McMurdo Station.  This site is a U.S. Antarctic research center on the south tip of Ross Island. The working season in Antarctica matches up well for our staff because it allows ample time to travel in the spring before heading back to Camp Denali in late May.

         Each season our dedicated staff members work tirelessly for more than three months providing amazing experiences for our guests.  The time of year when they journey south and begin adventures or go back home is a well-deserved and rewarding time. We relish in hearing their plans before departing and look forward to the migration north in the spring when most of them return to Camp Denali, stories in tow. 

In mid-December a mysterious set of animal tracks appeared along a favorite local trail near our winter office (outside the Park).  We call the trail “the bluff trail” because it meanders along the edge of a bluff with a gradual drop about 500 feet to the Nenana River.  The area is boreal forest, dominated by white spruce trees and wiggly-trunked aspens, braving the sometimes high winds along the bluff. We commonly see animal sign along there….from black bear scat laden with berries in the fall, to perfect lynx and snowshoe hare tracks in winter, along with the ubiquitous and ever present runs of red tree squirrels and voles.  Twice I’ve seen the tracks of wolves…..about the size of salad plates; they couldn’t possibly be confused with even the largest sled dog in the area.

One thing I’ve learned in my years as a naturalist is that sometimes the most helpful description of an unidentified species includes the type of habitat it was seen in.  For instance, if someone saw a “big, brown bird”, asking where is was (cliffs, lake, tundra meadow, dense forest, willow thicket?) can help scores in its potential ID.  There are outliers, of course, but typically an animal’s habitat falls within fairly narrow parameters.

So, this mysterious animal track.….Austin first spotted the tracks and attemped to describe them to me, and I was flummoxed.  It had small feet, only about one inch long, with a very prominent tail drag mark.  It had very pointy, clawed toes (like a squirrel’s?) and walked with a gait that was walking, not hopping.  I was racking my brain to think what it could be...baby porcupine? (no--still too small and porkeys have rear feet like bears with a furry-looking, large tail drag), a tree squirrel dragging a stick?  (no--they hop, and the tail marks swooshed side to side), flying squirrel? (no--the tracks walked around on the ground too much, and they hop, not walk), pine marten or elusive long tailed weasel?  (no, they hop...also don't have long pointy toes), Ashley’s dachshund? (no--his feet are obviously doglike with a longer gait and no tail drag).  What other small animals inhabit the forest here that could leave such marks? I studied them long and hard, and even took the attached photo. The tail looked to be solid....like a possum tail....not furry. They honestly looked like the tracks of a large, common RAT.

And then it hit me....muskrat!

Yep. Confirmed with track descriptions from a tracking book.  Now the only mystery is: what was it doing on the bluff trail!?  The nearest lake was perhaps two miles away, and the river was very, very far below.  Spruce forest is not the realm of the aquatic muskrat!  Many ideas came to my mind…perhaps the family unit had grown too big and this was an adolescent pushed out to find its own way in the world?  Perhaps our snowless winter has been producing too much ice that is crowding them out of their lairs?  A few days later, our neighbor, Fritz, showed Ashley and Teresa a curious set of tracks near his home. Indeed, they were the same. 

One mystery solved, another began.

Winter is upon us!  While it has arrived a bit late here in Denali (we only have a few inches of snow currently and November was unseasonably warm) the joys of the season are now in full swing.  Whether it’s ice skating or hockey, community events like yoga or craft bazaars, mushing a team of dogs, or simply holing up with a good book or a podcast, our winter staff is enjoying it all.  And to keep our internal temperatures high during it all, we always enjoy a good soup recipe.  This one comes from Laura Cole, who was in charge of the kitchens at Camp Denali and North Face Lodge for many years and now runs the exquisite “229 Parks” restaurant at the park entrance area of Denali.  Bon appétit!

Spicy Tomato Soup

Cilantro stems add a refreshing flavor to this spicy soup.  It is great served either hot or cold.

**This recipe makes a lodge-sized serving of a whopping 30 cups! While perfect for holiday gatherings, you may wish to size it down for your family!

4 T   Olive Oil                                                                                                 

3 C  Red Onion, diced                                                                                             

1 1/2 T Garlic, minced                                                                                                         

1 T Kosher Salt                                                                                                        

1 T Crushed Red Pepper Flakes                                                                      

3 C  Cilantro, chopped, stems included                                                                      

4 each   28 oz Cans Crushed Plum Tomatoes in Juice                                             

1 Jalapeno Pepper, seeded & minced                                                          

use care with pepper the juice is very hot           

8 C  Rich Chicken Stock                                                                                                         

1 T  Sugar                                                                                                                                  

4 T  Fresh Lime Juice                                                                                              

1 1/2 C   Sour Cream                                                                                             

1 1/2 C  Basil, cut into thin strips                                                                      

In a large stock pot heat oil over medium high heat.

Add onion & garlic, sauté until tender & slightly golden.

Add salt & red pepper flakes. Stirring to combine.

Add jalapeno pepper and sauté until tender.

Add tomatoes & their juice.

Simmer on high heat for 10 minutes, when liquid has reduced by 1/4, stir in sugar & lime juice.

Stir in chicken stock.

Reduce heat to medium, simmer for 20 minutes to combine all flavors.

Add cilantro.

Taste & adjust seasonings.

Serve garnished with fresh basil & a hearty dollop of sour cream.