“Well, we do have a lot more mountains, and space in general, that’s for sure. A lot fewer people, though. You can go hundreds of miles and see almost no one.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Quiet. When I draw my pension, that’s where I’m heading—the wilderness of Alaska, the Last Frontier. A cabin in the woods with no crowds, no electric, not even a bleedin’ telephone. Peace and quiet and no one trying to shoot at me. Maybe you can take me on a tour one day, what?”
“Sure thing. Look me up when you get there and I’ll give you the grand tour. Maybe do some fishing or hunt a moose.”
“Oy!” exclaimed the sergeant. “I will. Thanks, mate!” He walked away with a dream-like glaze across his eyes.
Marcus was always amazed at the fantasy perception most people held onto regarding life in Alaska. He was endlessly getting asked what it was like. Did he live in an igloo? Did he have a dog sled? Did he herd reindeer? Was there really gold just lying on the ground?
The truth, of course, was much different than almost everyone’s imagination conjured up. That was why the population of the largest state in the U.S. stayed so small.
The closest Marcus had ever come to an igloo in Alaska was the snow fort he built as a child to play snowball wars with his best friend, Linus. His neighbors had driven dog sleds, but he wanted nothing to do with them, as it was a filthy life of daily cleaning dog poop in a yellow pee-stained patch of snow for a front yard. He had hunted and eaten caribou, but never herded the domestic reindeer, and didn’t know anyone who did.
And as much as he would have liked it, there was no gold that he ever saw lying around on the ground. The only prospectors Marcus had known as a youth were always dirt-poor and barely eking an existence out of the ground where they endlessly dug.
Life in an arctic wilderness was, at best, harsh. Marcus grew up on a homestead that had been carved out of the wilderness by his grandfather’s hands at a time when there were only a hundred people in an area the size of the whole of Devon County in which the city of Plymouth sat, population one million.
Homestead life, also known as bush life, in Alaska was particularly harsh. Summers were spent growing what crops the ground could yield, which was usually massive amounts of extraordinarily large potatoes, beets, and carrots, and sometimes good seasons of broccoli and cabbage. Barley and oats were the only grains that really grew well. With the exception of several varieties of small, tart berries, there is almost no fruit to be had in the whole state.
In addition to self-sufficient farming, life off the grid was filled with firewood cutting (nearly twenty cords of it every summer), roads and trails to be mended, milk goats to be tended, and all the construction a homestead may need. The fair weather construction-working window in the interior of Alaska is only about five months, from late April to late September. The rest of the year, October to the beginning of April, the whole region is blanketed in a deep covering of powdery snow and locked in by temperatures as cold as negative seventy degrees Fahrenheit.
Most newcomers to the interior of Alaska usually end up retreating to the relatively warmer climate of the southern city of Anchorage within a year or two or, as often as not, leaving the state altogether to return to a place with four seasons and long hot summers. For this reason, in the one hundred plus years of western civilization in the area around the major interior city of Fairbanks, the population had never passed a maximum of one hundred thousand people. That population was spread over an area the size of nearly the whole of England, Scotland, and Wales combined.
Marcus wondered to himself how long Pops, raised in London’s infamous East End, would really choose to stay in such a place.
As he returned to his meal of roast pork and mashed potatoes, Marcus glanced at the envelope Pops had handed him.
“So what you got there?” White asked. “A letter from your mum?”
“A love letter from some broken-hearted wench he left in California, no doubt,” Barclay put in slyly. “Check it for perfume, mate. If there’s pictures, you’d better share.”
Marcus laughed at his comment. “Man, there’s no woman in California for me. More than likely, it’s my mum or dad. They’re the only ones who write via post anymore. Everyone else does e-mail, although admittedly I only check in a couple times a month.”
“Well, we’ll let you keep the letter from your folks to yourself then. But if there’s any hot ladies in there, and you don’t tell us…” Barclay wagged his finger toward Marcus.
Marcus stuffed the letter into the pocket of his trousers and finished his meal. Just as the last bite was entering his mouth, Colours Sergeant Smoot entered and strode over to the table, a serious look on his face.
“What’s up, Colours?” White asked. “You look like you just ate a rotten egg.”
Colours Sergeant Smoot looked the three men over quickly, then said in a low voice, “We’ve been called out. Just Mike Company, 2nd Troop. Finish your last bit of chow and head to the briefing room right away. Be there with the men in fifteen minutes—the colonel is on the way there now to give us the word.” He turned and walked back out.
All three of them went silent. Barclay quickly gulped down the last bit of his milk as he rose from the table. Johnson and White followed, carrying their trays to the small window that lead to the galley. Twenty-three year old Corporal White stuffed a remaining handful of fried
