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Alaska Harvest
by Amy Mayer

Excerpts:

       As my plane lands at the tiny airstrip in Lake Minchumina, Alaska, I hear dogs howling. “Your dog team is here,” the plane’s one other passenger says to me. Moments later I’m standing on the hard-packed snow as the plane takes off for its next stop.
       But the dog team we heard isn’t, in fact, my ride. It’s too cold to stand still, so I heft up my bag and the groceries I’ve brought to share and walk toward a small building.
       Soon, a man in insulated coveralls and a wool facemask approaches. “Who’re you expecting?” he asks.
       “Julie or Miki Collins,” I say.
“Oh, I haven’t seen them yet today,” he answers. “They should be along soon, though.”
       The kind man then leads me to a tiny room that seems to house all of the phone cable for the entire village. He opens the door and a waft of warm air spills out. He tells me I can wait inside.
       By the time I’ve taken off my hat and mittens, the door opens and I hear more dogs. The Collins sisters have arrived.
       Julie and Miki Collins are 40-year-old twins who sustain themselves in the Alaska outback by hunting, trapping, fishing, gardening and gathering berries. They also write a biweekly column for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner’s Sunday magazine, Heartland. I’ve come to Lake Minchumina to meet them and learn more about life in rural Alaska. But during my week with them, I learn just as much about myself and life in general . . .

. . .

 . . . On Wednesday morning, Julie hooks up a team of dogs, about half the 19 dogs in their yard, and heads off on the trapline. Then Miki and I fall into a sort of routine. Each morning, she tells me what she’s up to and indicates whether I might be able to help. Usually I can’t, but I go along anyway. One day we take a small team of dogs and go out to check some traps not too far from the house. Miki explains the job. You build cubbies to hide fox, marten and lynx traps. You catch beavers while they’re under ice. You can use beaver castor, a smelly musk, as bait to lure other animals. You bring a gun along in case you’ve got a wolf who isn’t dead yet. These lessons allow me to see how Miki and Julie, and probably most trappers, use as much of the animal as they possibly can.
       The twins follow the same principle when they hunt. If they shoot a grouse for food, they save the feathers for bait in their traps. And while Alaska law would allow them to kill two moose per season, they go hunting every fall hoping to shoot just one decent-sized bull moose. If they’re successful, they can send some meat to their parents in Fairbanks and still have enough to feed them all winter . . .


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