Alaska delivers an overload of memories, joy

Heading for Alaska three weeks ago, I recalled in writing some things I'd learned from our fourteen years living there. Now with a two-week visit over and done I've brought home what Alaska Air couldn't charge me for — an overload of memories.     

Any time you get a blue sky driving across Hatcher Pass mining country, you've hit the motherlode.  The green velvet-appearing tundra carpet; mountains unfolding around every curve; wildflowers hidden in the grasses — it was spectacular. But what I found especially fun — a boy and his mother on a Sunday afternoon out with his toy dinosaurs. He wanted to arrange them in different settings and take photos. What a backyard for that young guy. What a mom to indulge his idea. 

We were traveling along the highway on the Kenai Peninsula when we wondered why there were a few cars stopped ahead. “And what to our wondering eyes should appear” — not a reindeer, but a caribou with a massive trophy rack nibbling the grass. I didn't see how he could hold his head up. I could have hung an entire load of laundry on that thing. 

I was a little disappointed in my favorite bird — found on just about any lake in Alaska — the loon. I've never thought of loons as bullies, but this one came deliberately shooting vertically out of the water, like an Orca breaching, scattering a little family of ducks who were drifting peacefully. As with people, you hope they're not all like that. 

Our daughter had a guest from Turkey while we were there. It was Murat's first time in America. He and she and our 15-year-old grand fished the nearby Kenai River several late nights for us. Fish and Game does a daily count of salmon entering the river. One day there were 70,000.   

Those fillets on the grill with some Yoshida's marinade are unbeatable. Adding to their flavor will be the memory of watching a teen grand employ his filleting skills at 5 in the morning. And the yawns from tired fishermen who had stood in their waders all night.   

Not many would associate a peony farm with Alaska. They bloom out of season for most places — acres of pink and white and red — and are shipped around the world. The owner's daughter told me 800 were headed for a celebrity wedding in the Bahamas. Has the world downsized when a fresh flower stretches between Alaska and the Bahamas?     

Our 20-year-old grand girl tends rhodiolas, a popular medicinal plant, on a local farm. The fields are bordered by woods. She's got a pistol tucked in her belt in case an aggressive moose decides that she's the game. Murat, a narcotics cop in his home country, was curious to examine her gun. She wasn't about to hand it over to someone she hardly knew — law enforcement or not. She eventually relented, but only after unloading it. 

It's not a memory I expected to bring home, but it's one of my faves. I was in a Walmart (they're everywhere!) where I'd stopped for donuts to bring to our grands. Two little girls in line ahead of me were looking at a package of $2.22 Twizzlers. “If grandma were here she'd buy them for us” — to which their mother replied, “Then you should have brought grandma.” 

I had only one choice. “I'm a grandma, and I'll buy you those.” That's how it is in Alaska.