The Ritual

Every morning, in the winter, we children arose dreadfully...and the ritual to school would begin. We were three, my older brother, younger sister and I. The temperature outside our cabin could range, from freezing at +32 degrees fahrenheit, easily, down to -10 or -20. We would have our oatmeal, warm, if eaten quickly, or cold and jellied if we dottled.

The wood stove would struggle, not to burn, but to heat...and our mother would struggle all those mornings, in that sacrificial way that mothers have, of putting it all together, and making sure it was right for us. She suffered no fools, but would tolerate a little latitude, where our horse play was concerned. On mornings, in the depths of winter, however, there were a list of duties to perform.

Each of us had on our white felt bunny boots, military issue, or mukluks, or tall boots with heavy felt liners, heavy wool socks, military issue mittens, alpaca parkas, heavy wool scarves around our faces and knit wool caps within the parka hoods. The tobogan sled or 2 runner, if the snow pack was crusty enough. There were flashlights, gas kidney warmers in our pockets, lunches, thermoses of hot beverage, usually cocoa, a kerosene cave lantern, snow shoes and a loaded 30/40 Krag rifle.

This was all standard issue, every morning. We would all get in a row at the door, after mom's kisses and hugs, and barrel from the house quickly as possible to eliminate heat escapement. There would be the deep and frozen darkness of 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. The Milky Way would glitter above our heads like a trillion tiny gems. We would head south and east along our well remembered route through snow crystallized to powder, and deep enough to swallow a man.

If it had been a windy night or a chinook, which is a warm wind, in the winter, had passed through, we might find the powdered snow crusted, but it was not always so. Many times we had to don the snowshoes and beat our little waffle patterned trail toward our destination. We would hear the moose moving in their beds of snow and see the great shadows by our lantern light. All the moose knew us kids and we knew them by their markings.

Finally, we would arrive at our bus stop, and in those days, the 1950's, there was one road open, a great bus driver and a hot bus heater, if we would just survive the half hour or hour it would sometimes take, for the yellow bus to arrive.  My older brother usually had charge of hiding the sled, for when we came home, also in the dark, and we never once lost the equipment, or the rifle.

For the five families with school age children, in this part of the wilderness, these methods were normal and expected, and the drivers and parents were well skilled in watching out for the school kids. It's an experience, never to be forgotten, nor was it so severe as for other families. We knew one family whose 3 or sometimes 4 sons would hike 5 miles out and 5 miles home through such snow and cold and darkness. That's another story...


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2015

Photo: Moondogs over Alaska Wilderness, by Sebastian Saarloos