A Year of Selden Life

That got to be a long time. I love that this page has become a family history for us. A personal mini memoir of how the years have gone.  I haven’t logged onto this website for almost a year now. I apologize for not updating it. Life gets so very busy and so much has happened.

 

Last fall, as usual we did all the normal stuff we do getting ready for another winter on the trapline. We dried up veggies, made Sauer kraut, put curriculum together for homeschool, Tyler guided caribou and moose hunts for Double Shovel and we had meaningful visits with friends before winter. For Blazes 5th birthday last year, I let him get a hamster. Many wondered how we Seldens would care for the hamster with our lifestyle and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go either. I thought about asking permission at the homeschool office here in town to leave him there for the winter. In the end, the kids had so much fun with him over the summer that we decided to try bringing him along to the bush.

I bought a smaller terrarium for him so I could pack him with warmth and cushioning. It added an extra element of excitement for our travel day out to the bush. Tyler drove the boat up with his brother and 6 dogs and the kids and I flew up to meet him when he got there.

Since I had Sidney, we’ve slowly been adding improvements to our energy and light system. We use 12v sealed batteries that work together as a bank. They are so heavy that we are limited to buying one or two new ones every year and sometimes when we get to the river we will test the batteries and find one that’s gone bad. The most we’ve ever had in our bank is 5. We really don’t have room to store many more than that anyway. We have 2 medium sized solar panels that keep these batteries juiced during the season that there’s sun but in November when the sun goes South they don’t have any effect. We end up running our little Honda generator at least once a week to charge up our little battery bank to keep the lights on and charge our headlamps and accessories. Last fall our friend Carolyn sent us a wind turbine to try out. I was excited to give it a whirl since the river corridor is generally a pretty windy area. Tyler’s brother Dusty was around to help us with our bush engineering and install it.

Before we left town Dustin bolted an old trailer jack piece onto the base of the turbine. We were thinking this would give us enough length to use a couple u bolts to connect to a wooden pole once we got to the cabin. We cut a beefy 15 foot pole, dug a 3 foot hole and then buried our post like a telephone pole. We had been warned by anyone with experience with wind turbines not to mount it to the cabin because the noise and vibration would drive a person nuts. I had bought 30 feet of wire for it so we were limited in distance from the cabin by that. The shorter the wire the better the draw, so it’s a balance between length away from the cabin and still trying to get some good energy. Once we got the pole up and fastened the turbine to the pole we began to screw the blades on and realized that because of the turbines need to spin around freely for wind direction that our wood post was too thick and the blades couldn’t clear it on full rotation. We were in luck because we had an extra post in our old dog yard that was just the right size to bolt into the bottom of our trailer jack post already attached to the turbine head. then we passed the wire through the insulation at the corner of our window and into the regulator that keeps surges from overwhelming the battery bank. It was days before we got our first wind of course, because that’s just how life goes. Tyler was gone one afternoon and I was playing scrabble with the kids on the front stoop when the wind started to pick up and boy did I notice. It makes a deep whooshing sound like an oversized heavy fan would. In a part of the world where pure silence is the norm this noise felt fairly intrusive to me. There were times where I wanted to just take it down but then the addiction to electricity always kept it standing in the meadow. Solar panels provide much more current than a turbine, at least ours do. When the wind is going… and I mean when, there is enough draw from the turbine to keep the lights on, it doesn’t charge up the batteries like the solar panels can but it can at least keep up with my light use when the wind is blowing. It’s tough because just as the sun leaves us, the solar panels are done and I can hardly stand to be in the cabin without the lights going all day because it’s so dim mid winter. I used to be more tough and a couple kerosene lamps were all we kept going all winter. The older I get the more addicted I get to cheery lighting. I’m like the cookie monster only with lights.

The fall was lovely this year. Tyler did beaver trapping and the kids and I got to join him a few times. The kids and I dug into homeschool, hunting grouse and running a rabbit snare line. We took the dogs for walks and caught a few grayling. When the snow came it stayed on the ground for good and we had snow for Tyler to get around with the dogsled for the first time in years for trapping opener on Nov. 1. The forecast was looking like a record trapping season for us. Tyler was gone a lot and staying very busy getting all of his gear out. Then, on November 23rd, 2 days before his 42nd birthday, Tyler had and accident.

It’s was the worst accident we had ever faced before on the trapline. On that morning Tyler had his sled packed and ready to go cut trail and stay in a tent for 2 nights. It was a beautiful mild day. A few hours later I was surprised to hear the dog team pull back up and when I looked out the window it was upsetting to see Tyler hanging over the handlebar of the sled. I ran out without my boots or coat immediately to ask if I should hit the SOS button. He told me no… so I quickly went in as fast as possible to put on a coat and boots. He told me he really hurt his leg and needed help getting in the house. It was terrible for him to put any weight on his injured leg at all. Once he got sat down in the chair I went for my first aide bag and handed  him a glass of water and a hydrocodone before I tried to take his boots off. It was lucky that his tightly laced boots where keeping pressure on his injury. When I took off his boot the swelling hadn’t set in much yet. I could see the points of injury pretty clearly. There was a red angry lump on the fibula where it connects to the ankle joint and another just about 4” above that also on the fibula. There was a goshawk in a trap that he was going to free. The sled was faced downhill on our narrow trail. Tyler had set the snow-hook. When Tyler got in front of the sled all the dogs surged together at once popping the hook and ramming the brush bough into his fibula before running him over completely. The sled was packed for camping and very heavy. Sidney went out to fill a bag with snow for an ice pack while I went out to unharness and put dogs away. We were both letting the consequences of this accident wash over us.

I made a bed for him downstairs since he couldn’t get around. He couldn’t even get himself a glass of water really. We started having the chat that went on for weeks…weeks! Should he leave? Should we get him flown out? Would we suffer for this for the rest of his life? Would he be crippled if we didn’t send him in? How do we know? Can we handle the weight of this? The year before we had let our sat phone go because its such a pain to use and the plans are very expensive. The only communication we had through this was our satellite messenger which texts only. There were some friends and family urging….send him in!!!!! Tyler’s dad was especially concerned because he himself has had debilitating problems from an ankle injury many years ago. If he needed treatment we knew that we were on a timer for making a decision. We ended up getting contacts for 2 doctors and an ER nurse. Doctors stand  firm by the Hippocratic oath and both had misgivings about telling him it was ok to stay and wait it out. It was going to be hard to get him out of the trapline. It would cost us a lot of money but every penny would be worth it if we were securing his quality of life in the future. Logistics wouldn’t be easy. I’d be alone in the wilderness with the kids and dogs for who know how long and meanwhile he’d have no one to take care of him easily in town.  He wouldn’t be able to drive even if we had easy access to our vehicles back in town. Had the whole family moved back to town we would be spending and wasting a lot of money. I keep the bulk of our school curriculum in the woods. We had our box of Christmas gifts we so carefully selected months in advance. We had our perishable food we planned on consuming before we left. Logistically, leaving just a couple months after arriving would force us to waste and spend a lot of money.

There were some promising elements to the injury. Though it was excruciating, he could bare weight on that leg as well as rotate the ankle in a small circle showing good signs of range of motion. Throughout the next 24 hours after the accident his leg down from the knee swelled up like a balloon. He was in a lot of pain and even cried. The ER nurse told us to do cold then hot baths on it throughout the day. 4 times a day I put snow in the bucket of water  for cold and kept the pot going on the woodstove for the hot baths. I was truly thankful for our pitcher pump well because I was going through a lot of water. We were pretty sure it was the Fibula only and the fibula is a non weight bearing bone. Its used for balance. The ER nurse was skeptical of Tyler’s decision but also supportive and agreed that there was a huge likelihood that we would go through all of the logistical trouble and expense only to find that medical staff would likely give him a boot and send him out the door telling him to take it easy for 6 to 8 weeks. Tyler is very stubborn and is the toughest man I have ever met. He’s the epitome of manly. He refused to leave and spend our savings. That meant he was going to be on the bench needing care for a very long time. It was challenging mentally every day. Everyday I hashed out whether or not we were making a terrible mistake. It was tough on our marriage. He wasn’t a jolly good fellow sitting on the bench downstairs of the cabin for nearly 2 months.

Eventually there came a time when he needed to use the outhouse. I fetched our longest pair of wooden snowshoes for him and duct taped the points for a little traction on the wooden floor to act as crutches. He would get very frustrated and bored. He can’t stand being stuck indoors. About 3 weeks in I blew my top one morning at my stubborn husband. “That’s it!,” I said,” your going to town.” I’d rather parent alone in the wilderness and take care of the dogteam any day than deal with this! He assured me he wasn’t going anywhere and that it was going to be ok.

Trying to be resilient, positive role models to our young children was key in getting us through this. They learned many things through that experience. Mom and Dad stick together and love through thick and thin. People can do very hard things and come out with enriching life experiences. How to use common sense and not panic in emergency situations. Funny enough, the kids truly benefitted from the accident. I gave Tyler the run around with our homeschool schedule and curriculum and he took over as teacher from the bench while I was busy taking care of him and all of our other chores. We dove into their education and clung to it like a life preserver. Blaze, a kindergartener last season learned to read and write and breezed though his math primer. Sidney, second grade,  was writing essays weekly.

Focusing on the kids was a very good diversion. They make our lives better in every way. I would still take them out on our rabbit line to snare bunnies, which we would cook and feed to the dogs. I always carry my 22 around because I really like to grouse hunt. I got over 50 grouse hunting with the kids last winter. Blaze and Sidney have BB guns and they are both getting to be really good shots. They even learned how to butcher grouse. Sometimes a lynx would come and raid our bunny line and eat up our catch. One day we went out for our check and I had spotted some grouse so I was punching through the deep snow in the willows going after those grouse when the kids yelled at me from back on the trail that I better bring the gun over there…I thought that they were seeing more grouse…they were getting really excited telling me to hurry!…so I headed towards them and there they were looking at one of their bunny snares 15 feet off the trail with a big lynx in it caught by only the paw! They were thrilled to have caught such a fine animal on THEIR trapline. We had a very unexpected and tasty Christmas dinner.

 

Tyler’s foot and ankle were swollen for over 3 weeks and it wasn’t until after the New Year that he started getting around bit by bit. At first he could only start trapping on the river in the open spots where it was easy for him to run the snow machine and he didn’t have to do too many athletics. It’s only fair to point out that it wasn’t only him that was sitting on the bench for so long, it was also our dog team. From an armchair I’m sure it’s easy to think, well, why didn’t Ashley take the dogs out when Tyler got injured and run the trapline? Hahahah…not that easy. Literally I had to take care of Tyler a lot to help his healing. I still had to cook. I still had to take care of the dogs and I took care of the fire and the firewood. I’m a novice trapper, I don’t have a clue where his traps are over the landscape….it’s not an obvious thing except for the marten poles next to the trail. Another angle is that before Tyler even got injured he was working on a trail that was a contentious issue between Tyler and I because of its difficulty and dangerous terrain. I hadn’t really been wanting him working where he was in the first place so I certainly wasn’t going to leave my family and go take over for him. I sewed. That’s what I do. I sewed as much as I could.

Bad luck come in threes they say and we hadn’t finished with our round yet. While Tyler was down his entire line was buried in snow and when he finally got going again and set up once again mid January he had a shingles outbreak! A very painful one. He first contracted them back in our college years when we worked taking care of folks with disabilities in group home settings. The trauma and stress of his accident must have set off the outbreak. While he was down with the shingles we had our third bit of tough luck and we got a severe storm with 18” of snow. When Tyler recovered from shingles he had to start over for a third time. The camp he had set up before his accident was still out there 27 miles, up a mountain down a ridgeline and in a canyon. Our wall tent, good camp stove, chainsaw, spare dog chains and bowls were all out there in what seemed would be an impassable trail at that point, months later and many inches of snow and wind to follow. It took several attempts, but at the end of the season Tyler was finally able to salvage the camp with the dog team. As I type this, that same part of trail that caused us so much grief last winter is burning up in a wildfire. Like pouring salt into the wounds. Everything he did gain out there is just turning to ashes. Life is full of irony.

In the end I was super happy we were all alive and well enough. I was a little more excited to return to town when my sentence was finally up, haha. Tyler’s since had x-rays on his leg and the fibula did indeed fracture and heal in 2 places. I started doing a few vending events in town with my fur sewing. I’m growing a beautiful garden. We got to visit both families for 11 days in April, a trip I think of as the Easter Extravaganza. The kids have been attending some great local day camps. Tyler is building a rental cabin on our property here in the Goldstream Valley outside of Fairbanks. We had a gorgeous litter of pups born right before Blazes 6th birthday. I’m very happy and thankful for the crazy life I get to live.

I have some hats, mittens, beaver tail wallets, can coolers and oosilk earrings available if anyone is interested. I’d love to get an email from people interested in ordering something from me. I listed a few other items in the shop pages of several other things we have available right now. alaskaseldens@gmail.com