Alaskan Homesteaders

Last weekend I took my son for a walk down some of the trails in the ravines of the North end of Tacoma, a happy jungle adventure was the plan.

We started out from near Stadium High School, to follow some trails that I hadn't been down since the mid 1980's. I remembered that a few spots were pretty steep, but he has gotten to be a big boy, big enough for a jungle adventure. And if you know the way, you can go around the hardest parts.

As we got most of the way down the long wooden log stairway that leads into the woods below Stadium Way, the bad shape of the stairs and handrails struck me, so we held hands. And the growing amount of trash, food wrappers and empty beer cases was a bit depressing, but did not prepare me for what we saw at the bottom of the stairs.

On the other side of some bushes was an encampment of perhaps a half-dozen small tents, arranged around a cooking fire. The area was strewn with garbage and discarded clothing in the dirt. A large dog, a rotweiler, growled at us, and got up. Fortunately he was chained to a tree. One of the inhabitants got out of his tent to look at us as we hurried on. A rat scurried out of our path as we left the area.

The rest of our walk on the trails to the beach at Old Town was delightful, even in the unkempt condition of the rest of the trail, and I just cannot see asking Parks Workers to deal with human excrement and chained dogs in performing trail upkeep.

The issue of where the homeless should go is a tough one, they cannot be forced into shelters if they don't want to go- but it reminds me of four men, three were homeless, sleeping in an abandoned house, who decided to seize their fates and make something of their lives, more than drink and drug in a marginal existence.

It began one winter night some years ago, here in Tacoma. Three of these fellows were sitting around their makeshift fireplace of bricks and a sheet of metal in a cold dark house when one of the men read a newspaper article in the flickering light.

He told the others of land in Alaska, free land for homesteading, and tore out the address of the Government Office before consigning the rest of the paper to the flames.

Most often, this sort of plan is called a pipe-dream, but these three went to a mutual friend, a disabled vet who had a tiny apartment, who agreed to allow them to use his home as a storehouse and mailbox.

All of the rest of the winter, the four men used every bit of cash they had to buy gear and supplies, and pore over the Plat maps that arrived in the mail. These men got temp jobs and day labor and saved their money. In the spring they left for their new home in the North.

A couple years later, one of the men came back, he didn't like the cold so much, and told me the story. The four men settled four properties in a huge rectangle, a partially finished cabin near the center, by a stream running down from the mountains. The area is wooded, with all sorts of game and fish, they hunted with compound bow and arrow then tanned the hides and made venison jerky. There was gold to be panned from the stream that was fresh and clear and cold, washed down from the mountains standing in the North where eagles wheel and soar. The bear and elk and moose they shared the woods with came down to drink from that same little stream winding through the forest.

My friend trusted me enough to show me a dark brown leather bag of gold dust as big as my fist, sewed up with sinews and drawn closed with a leather thong.

I was looking at a thing out of time, a piece of history come alive, and he knew me well enough to know how I treasured his trust. Men have fought over bags just like that, in the gold fields.

The four men spent the summer repairing the cabin, just three walls when they arrived. They hunted and fished and stored up food. And that first winter they shared their one room home. It did have an outhouse. On weekends there was the snowshoe trek under the multicolored Arctic auroras into a settlement to shower, read mail and watch satellite TV. Men went for company as much as anything else, going to a lodge with a huge common room, the way that mountain men would winter up together a century ago.

Now the land is theirs, and these men who started out in an abandoned house on the hilltop of Tacoma are respected business owners, one in City Government, and the four partners gather every summer to go out to the woods, their forested lands won by risk and hard work; patient endurance of the cold and privation. They dreamed a big dream, and made it come true.

by David E. Freeman

davidefreeman@yahoo.com

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