Selden Family Update March 2021! Back in Fairbanks Area

Hello to everyone that takes the time to look at our website from time to time and try to keep up with our story. You are all very sweet and loving people!!! We hope that you all had a great winter despite the pandemic. If you had a hard time – hugs from our family.

Those of you that tried to order items from our shop while we were away, we apologize. I mark all of the inventory as 0 or ‘out of stock’ when we leave for the trapline – that’s my way of shutting down shop for the season. We cant possibly run the shop from our wilderness home and it would be either very expensive to hire someone or a major inconvenience for one of our friends to ask them to run things while we were in the bush all winter. We don’t have internet out there, and we normally don’t even receive mail for nearly 6 months of the year. We have a ton of catching up to do every year when we get back to civilization. We have a giant box of mail to go through, unpaid bills to address, hundreds of emails to sort through, family and friends to call that we haven’t spoken a word to in nearly 6 months, 4 feet of snow covering everything like our cars, driveway and long walkway up to our house. We had to pick up our laying hens right away from their winter sitter and settle them in and the dog houses needed cleared out and strawed. We have to restock all of our groceries since our fridge is empty all winter. In other words, it takes a couple weeks for us to get settled into our other life – the Fairbanks or town life. We are finally getting settled down now and I’m taking the first opportunity I’ve had to tell you how we did this past season.

Tyler ran the boat into the trapline last fall with a load of gear and our dogs. I flew in to meet him On Sept 17th. He got our bull moose the day before I arrived and there was a ton of work to do as soon as the kids and I landed. I helped pack our moose  the 1/2 mile from the river to our cabin the same day I arrived. Nothing like jumping right into things. Though I also flew in with a heavily loaded plane of supplies that needed to be hauled up to the cabin, the moose quarters were priority since they are the biggest bear attractor to leave unattended near the river. Not to mention it would be a disaster to lose our winter meat! We got our moose hanging in the smoke shack that first evening and started smoking the quarters to preserve them until freeze up…which can take up to a month. Between the warm weather and the bugs that somehow survive despite numerous heavy frosts, the meat must be smoked to keep it in good condition that long without a freezer. The meat gets a nice smoky, dry crust on the outside of the quarters which wards off bugs and bacteria, preserving the inner flesh for quite sometime.

(A short, amusing story written by Tyler. One afternoon this past Fall Sydney and I were together at the smoke shack, tending the meat – a favorite Fall activity of mine. On a crisp late September day on the river, with the sun shining, a light breeze out of the North, camp in order, the meat hanging and the worst of the hectic, late-summer scramble behind us – there are few things as calming and pleasurable as watching alder smoke filter through the cracks of that little slabwood shack. Sydney and I worked together, I poked and spread the coals inside the Yukon stove, without instruction she brought me wood. When there was enough I placed the small, green sticks atop the bed of burning red coals until I could fit no more, closed the door and sealed the damper. We had done well – the air was filled with the sweet, sharp scent of alder and the shack filled with dark smoke almost immediately. The job complete, I turned to leave but not before Sydney reminded me that we still needed to get a piece of meat out for dinner like Mom had asked us to do. “I should have done that before we fed the stove huh Syd?” I said, laughing at myself. “It’s okay Dad,” Sydney responded, “It will only take a second.”  “True. You wait out here,” I instructed Sydney in stern voice, “It’s too smoky in there for a little kid.” I grabbed a sharp knife we keep poked into a crack in the boards up high where the kids can’t reach it, took a deep breath, ducked my head and plunged into the clouds. Dodging man-sized moose legs and swinging rib cages, I made my way to the the back of the room and reached up to cut off a choice hunk of backstrap for the evening meal. Just as I turned to make my exit, I heard the door slam shut behind me, followed immediately by the tell-tale click of the door latch. Sydney had locked the door. I was trapped inside the smoker. By that time it was so smoky in there I couldn’t take a breath. I laid down on the ground where it was a little better and said in my sweetest voice – “Syd, open the door for Daddy. I need to come out.” The sound of mischievous laughter and the pitter-patter of little feet on the trail as she ran away. “Nope, nope, nope. I won’t let you out!” In desperation, I tried a different approach: “SYDNEY, OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!”, I roared. Silence. She was gone. I thought for a moment. I could always break the door, but that wouldn’t be good. I had to leave with the boat the next morning and had plenty to do without adding a door repair to the list. So I chose to wait it out, see what happened, as long as I didn’t pass out it’d be fine.

A few very long minutes passed and I heard the door to the cabin open. Ashley came out and called for me in a sort of panicky tone. “Tyler! Where are you?” Ashley later told me that Sydney had gone inside with a terrified expression on her little face, as if she was being pursued by something. Ashley had a feeling there might be a bear in the yard. I yelled out from the floor of the smoke shack – “I’m out here, Sydney locked me in the damn smoker!” I imagine Sydney eyes must have bulged at that moment. She had to know the wrath was about to descend. “Sydney Elaine Selden!”, I heard Ashley say in a fearsome tone that only an angry mother can produce, “you get out there and let Daddy out right now!” Once again the pitter-patter of little feet, the clicking of the latch and at last, the sweet salvation of fresh air. I rolled out of the shack and took in a lungfull. I coughed, rubbed my burning eyes and looked up at little Sydney. Fat tears were gathering in her eyes, already she was upset and feeling guilty and I hadn’t even delivered my ass chewing yet, but I still figured I had to say something. “Sydney that was dangerous, why would you do something like that? I couldn’t breath in there.” A pause, some adorable sobbing. I could see that she was thinking. Between breaths she managed a charming answer which made it impossible for me to stay mad. “Daddy, I don’t know why I did it. I’m just a little girl.” True enough, I thought, a good answer. Little kids don’t know enough about the world to resist their impulses sometimes. I reached out and scooped her up, kissed her teary cheeks. When she had calmed down and caught her breath I explained to her how the way we lived out in the woods was different. We were on our own. There was no help out here. We had to look out for one another above all else. Tempting as it may be, we couldn’t afford to play foolish tricks on each other. Wise beyond her years this little girl already knew that. She put her arms around my neck and squeezed. “I know Daddy, I was foolish. I’ll never do it again.” I retrieved the piece of steak meat, a little dusty by now,  and we walked back up to the cabin together where us adults had a good laugh over the whole thing.)

The gnats or midge flies were pretty bad last fall, some old timers said they were worse than they’d ever seen them. It was nice to have a brisk wind to keep them from getting in your eyes and mouth, especially when around fresh meat. The grayling were well fed and abundant because of all of the bugs around. The bugs find still water to get a drink and that’s where the grayling are hanging out in the evenings that time of year – lurking in the shadows awaiting an opportunity to gorge themselves. It was really fun to take Sydney fishing because we could just pull a grayling in every 3rd  or 4th cast. She sure loved reeling them in – squeals of delight and infectious laughter echoed off the surrounding forest! Sydney just loves any adventure and gets excited to go out to the woods. She derives much entertainment out of our big moves in and out of the trapline every year. Blaze is more a man of routine and after just turning 1 he had a hard time adjusting to trapline life. For the first couple weeks out there he would follow me everywhere, crying if I left his sight – even to use the outhouse! He eventually became familiar with our wilderness life and did great all winter. He’s doing the same thing now with our town transition. He cried one day when I shoveled out our truck the entire time because he was completely unfamiliar with vehicles and wanted me to hold and comfort him, poor guy. The sound of an airplane overhead, common in Fairbanks, still sends the little wild man into a state of anxiety, he runs to either mom or dad for reassurance. Though overall, he’s getting used to the Fairbanks cabin now and is thankfully starting to self-entertain again.

Once the local ponds and sloughs started to ice up we spent about 3 weeks beaver trapping with the kids. It was really nice time to share as a family. We’d get up in the morning, have our oatmeal and coffee and Blaze would be toddling around pointing at his snowsuit and rifling through the hat/mitten bin as soon as breakfast was over – his way of begging us to get him dressed up to go. Sydney would be chatting away in excitement about what we might discover in the woods that day, how many beavers we would catch, discussing different strategies with Dad. The temperatures during that time averaged at about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s no problem, rather mild in fact, if your dressed right, but it’s a lot of tedious work to get two toddlers dressed up to go outside in those temps. It would often take us somewhere between 20 minutes and a half an hour to get the family out the door to go beaver trapping, haha. Having young children is teaching Tyler and I a lot about patience and learning to accept a slower, perhaps less productive, pace in life. Sometimes we would pull them in a sled and sometimes we would put them in backpacks. We would use the backpacks to free up sled space if we had a lot of trapping gear to haul into the ponds , and also to hopefully pull home a beaver or two.  It was fun to guess the beavers’ weights before hanging them on the scale. The largest one we caught last fall was an old codger who weighed 57 lbs.! It was a lot of work getting the kids into some of these beaver ponds. To get to one pond we had to get the sled over 5 large dams. One dam was about 5 feet tall! Tyler and the kids thought it was great fun to careen down the other side of the dam once they reached the top, as a mother I didn’t like it so much. There wasn’t any more than an inch of snow yet, forcing us to pull the sled over a mountain of mud-mortared sticks. Our beaver trapline would have us traveling anywhere from 2 to 4 mile a day. It was a great year to go out and get some beaver – by the time we pulled our sets we had 15 total, 7 adults and 8 kits (or first year beaver).

The beaver meat was much needed for dogs and bait, because the salmon return was at a record low last fall and no one was allowed to put their nets in the river, including us. To protect the stock the state was forced to shut-down the fishery and all up and down the Yukon River and its tributaries, no one was able to harvest  salmon this year! It truly was a disaster for a lot of people that depend on this iconic and extremely important natural resource. Personally, it was pretty worrisome for us with the dog team. We’ve come to rely on heavily supplementing their diet with chum salmon. We heard that the chums were contracting an infection and dying off in droves when they entered the Yukon. I need to read more about what it is exactly that is happening to them now that I’m back in town and can do the research. It is most likely related to ocean temperature rise. If we hadn’t of killed a moose this last fall then we would have been eating beaver as well, but since we were well supplied in the meat department we didn’t have to compete with the dogs for beaver or lynx meat this year. We ate some anyway because we like it as a treat – the young beaver are especially delicious. I wrap the tail in tin foil and roast it right on top the woodstove and Blaze loved eating the sticky, meaty fat inside. We saw a lot of animal tracks with the kids on those short beaver trapping walks: ermine, hare, squirrel , lynx, wolf, red poles, mink, otter and something really special that doesn’t happen every year, caribou. Sydney gets excited about all the tracks or ‘sign’ as us trappers call it and already knows how to identify and differentiate many animal prints. Wilderness raised kids are little naturalists in training. As soon as Tyler pulls a beaver out of the icy hole Sydney will get excited and ask me to cook some up for dinner. As we rub snow into the beavers fur to absorb the water and dry it we will talk to Sydney about the beaver. Is it a male or female? How old is it? Beavers gain about 10 lbs a year and live to be about 10 years old. A mature female will have anywhere from 1 to 6 kits a year. We don’t take any more than 3 beavers from a lodge so there will be more another year at the same location. After a day of beaver trapping we go home and have a little bite to eat before the kids take a nap. In the evenings Tyler skins and butchers the beavers and puts the fur on a stretcher to dry. I would often spend my evenings sewing. Sydney needed new winter shoes and no commercial manufacturer I’ve ever heard of makes a winter boot warm enough for a toddler that lives in the arctic, so a bush mom is forced to take matters into her own hands. I have learned to make all of their mukluks and mittens.

 

Tyler just sent all of the beavers we caught last fall to the tannery. I’m keeping all 15 to sew with. I’ll make a new hat for Tyler next year and I can make whatever the kids need and have some left over to make items for the website store. Tyler just finished cleaning and bleaching a few beaver skulls too, which look really cool with their big wood-cutting incisors.

Right after we were wrapping up the beaver trapping and Tyler was getting geared up to get out the rest of the trapline, I became very sick. This usually doesn’t happen in the woods because we aren’t in contact with other people to get viruses and other bugs. I had a sore throat, swollen glands, stiffness and a consistent fever. Most of the problems and pain seemed to stem from my mouth… in the end, it turned out to be an infected tooth that needed removed. I’ll tell you all about that adventure on my next entry.

After my recovery, which took a few weeks, we were back to life as normal by Thanksgiving. Tyler started trapping and we had a really nice time over the holidays with our two sweet toddlers enjoying the magic of Christmas for another round in our lives. Tyler trapped and did a lot of writing. He almost finished the first draft of a manuscript we are hoping to get published sometime in the the next year or two. I’m really proud of him for working so hard at it and his writing made me cry at times because he is such a sweet and thoughtful man. January dragged on a bit waiting  for the return of our Arctic sunshine to deliver us from weeks of cabin-bound darkness, haha. Luckily, time flies when you have two tots around to distract you – they are our sunshine even when we haven’t seen the sun in 6 weeks. The sun finally shone again by the end of the 3rd week of January and our sun Blaze was so excited to see it he did happy dances whenever he’d find a sunshine spot coming through the window inside the cabin. Cuteness galore! Tyler wrapped up the trapping season towards the end of February and did very well on wolverine this year. I spent the long dark hours of winter sewing whenever I could. The kids were fantastic. They are so good at self-entertaining without very many toys or gadgets around – no screen time worries for these guys. Sydney is hungry to learn and already has quite an interest in sounding out words and spelling a little bit. She can write some of her letters. She will be 4 on April 29th. Blaze is our busy man. He likes to do things with his hands – you can tell already he is going to be his Dad’s best buddy. He never complains about the cold or even seems to get cold to begin with. He wants to be outside….all the time.

Though challenging in many ways – the isolation, loneliness, tedium, endless dark, a plain diet, the added labor of doing everything by hand – a winter spent in the wilderness, apart from all the noise and distraction of modern life, immersed in the peaceful quiet and serene beauty of unspoiled nature, cocooned with our little family in the wood-fired warmth of a snug cabin, is worth it every time.

Hope you enjoyed the update, there is so much more we’d like to share with everybody, it’s just a matter of finding the time. I’ll try my best to get a post up on a regular basis. We’ve added some new products to our shop – handmade black bear mitts, beaver trapper hats, bone danglers (by Tyler), wolf and black bear claw necklaces, wolverine skulls and hides, Nancy Becker’s new book – Trapline Chatter, etc.  https://alaskaseldens.com/shop-the-last-alaskans/  Love and warm wishes to everyone! And thank you all so much for the support – you’re the best!