Those Remarkable Alaskan Women (And I Don’t Mean Mrs. Palin)

Above The Timberline

by Wayne Mergler

ANCHORAGE, AK—(Weekly Hubris)—2/14/11—Last summer, during the very height of the tourist season, I noticed two elderly women from Kansas or Iowa or Idaho (I don’t recall exactly which one), hovering raptly over a Sarah Palin display in a downtown Anchorage gift shop. I was well aware that the owner of the shop (a friend of mine) is no fan of Mrs. Palin, but he is a fan of making money during the tourist season and so he had a complete display of tacky Paliniana: Sarah Palin calendars, Sarah Palin books, both written by her (supposedly) and about her, Sarah Palin paper dolls, Sarah Palin mugs, Sarah Palin collectable coins. The thrilled ladies were stockpiling the items, pulling them off the shelf, oohing and ahhing, and enthusing about how much Grandma back in Omaha (or Boise?) would love these.

I must have had a bemused look on my face because one of the ladies smiled at me and said, “We are fascinated by her!”

I said something like, “Yes, I can tell,” and then, unable to help myself, I asked, “What is it about her that you find so fascinating?”

“Don’t you find her fascinating?” the woman asked me, shocked at the suspicion that I might not.

“No,” I replied. “But tell me why you do. I want to learn.”

“Well,” they both chimed in together. “She is amazing! She is remarkable! You must admit that she is remarkable.”

“I think the phenomenon of Sarah Palin’s skyrocket to fame is remarkable,” I said.

“She is amazing, fascinating, unique,” the women went on.

I have since learned that this is a somewhat prevailing opinion among some Republicans, some Midwesterners, and many people over the age of 60. When pressed about why Palin is perceived as remarkable, they usually give variations on the same themes: she is a woman, first and foremost, a mother of five, who was a governor and a mayor, who is a conservative, who nobly refused to abort her handicapped child, who hunts and fishes and shoots guns and kills things, who praises the Lord, and who, on top of it all, is pretty.

All of this, somehow, makes her remarkable.

And, of course, she lives in Alaska, where you have to be rugged and tough and out-doorsy, where you have to confront mama grizzlies (the four-legged and two-legged kind), where you can see Russia on a clear day . . . and, on top of it all, she’s pretty.

I contend that if Sarah Palin were fat and grandmotherly and gray-haired, there would be no Sarah Palin phenomenon. One of the unfortunate truths about 21st century America is that a woman can be truly remarkable only if she is attractive. If Sarah Palin looked like Barbara Bush at 80, she would not be considered so remarkable, no matter how many caribou she slew or kids she pumped out like a Pez dispenser. She would just be like all of our moms. If Hillary Clinton were exactly what she is today—brilliant, capable, strong, a dynamic leader—but were also “really hot,” she would now be President of the United States. No matter how brilliant, how talented, how capable, how strong a woman might be in our culture, if she is without beauty, she is not remarkable and, perhaps, not ever fully a success.

In the last year or so, I have discovered that nothing irritates an Alaskan woman more than to be told how remarkable Sarah Palin is. The image of this hardy Alaskan woman, tough and gun-toting, shooting the dinner that she then drags home, skins, cleans, and prepares for her children’s dinner, her five wholesome, milk-fed children, all the while wearing heels and sequined eyeglasses, all the while being—you guessed it—pretty, is enough to make the real women of Alaska cringe and rage. Where is their reality show?

In truth, the women of Alaska are, by and large, a truly remarkable sorority. There are real remarkable women here, not manufactured for TV reality shows and right-wing politicos, but women of grit and substance and strength and imagination. And, yes, beauty. In fact, many of the women I know in Alaska make Sarah Palin look like a cardboard cut-out.

Most of the women I know here do what Sarah Palin does—short of running for the Vice-Presidency of the United States and quitting her job as governor halfway through her term—and do it so much better. Many Alaskan women hunt and fish. Some fish commercially, some enjoy sport fishing. Some work for Alaska State Fish and Game; some for the Feds’ Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Palin clearly does not know what she is doing in the wilderness,” says an acquaintance of mine, a biologist for the state, who also is an intrepid hunter. “Look at her TV show. She is so awkward traipsing around in the bush. She carries her gun all wrong; she does incredibly stupid things, like floating up to a sow bear and her cubs, with her own kids in tow. No real outdoorsman would do any of those things.”

But, of course, none of this would matter at all if it weren’t for the fact that we hear so often about how amazing Sarah Palin is. Women who actually hunt are particularly annoyed by this.

“I don’t know very many women in Alaska who don’t do what she does,” my oldest daughter told me recently. “We all have kids, we all work, we all juggle families and careers, we all enjoy the outdoors, we all hunt and fish on occasion, we have all confronted bears and moose and wolves at one time or another. It is simply a fact of living in Alaska. Why all this makes Sarah Palin so amazing is a mystery—and an annoying one at that.”

This all got me to thinking about the women I know here in Alaska. In the 43 years I have lived here, I must say that the women of Alaska have been my chief mentors, women who amazed me from those first early days here.

I was in my early 20’s when I arrived in Alaska. The first people I met were my colleagues at East Anchorage High School, where I taught English to 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. One of the teachers there, a history teacher named Nelda, was my first landlady in Anchorage. We rented a charming house from her in downtown Anchorage, right by the park strip, which in the early days had been the Anchorage airfield, before the International Airport was built.

Nelda was not only a brilliant teacher and a charming woman, but she had built her house, the one we subsequently rented from her, all by herself. I don’t mean that she paid to have it built. I mean that she built it herself, literally, from the foundation to the roof, with her own hands. She also did all the wiring and all the plumbing by herself. This nearly blew me away, since I was a Southern boy, used to ladies who were charming and lovely and who fluttered with cases of the vapors if they had to open a window by themselves. My own mother once burst into tears because she broke a fingernail opening a drawer. So a woman like Nelda was new to me. Especially since I can do nothing with my hands more technical than changing a light bulb.

Nelda, in addition to building and wiring and plumbing her house, also had a pilot’s license and flew small planes all over the dangerous Alaskan skies. Once, when my car wouldn’t start after school, it was Nelda who tinkered under the hood for ten minutes and got it running again. I probably should have been embarrassed by my own sad male ineptitude, but I was so impressed and awed by Nelda that I didn’t really have time for self pity.

Then there was Margo, a guidance counselor, then in her 50’s, who had been one of  the first female test pilots in World War Two. She is in the history books. And Micki, a champion skydiver, who spent, I think, more hours free-falling in space than she did walking on earth. She is a legend in the skydiving world.

Then there was Ellen, who had been a French Jewish Resistance worker during World War Two and had been arrested and sent to Auschwitz, whence she barely escaped alive when the camp was finally liberated at the war’s end. Ellen was a formidable lady, a French teacher, who was once, famously, accused by an African-American parent of being prejudiced against her child in the classroom. At the parent-teacher conference, Ellen swept into the room, her dander up, rolled up the sleeve of her blouse and flashed the tattooed number on her forearm under the parents’ eyes.

“You accuse me of prejudice?” Ellen said, in her magnificent French accent. “Look at this! You tell me I know nothing of prejudice! I KNOW prejudice! And I will not be accused of it!”

Then there were two long-time companions, Ann and Mary, who invited my wife and me to dinner one evening at their home. They served caribou and moose steaks and stew, fresh salmon, freshly-picked blueberries, and vegetables from their garden. The meat and fish had all been hunted, fished, cleaned, prepared, and served by Ann and Mary. I can’t really think of a more delicious meal than I had that night.

Then there was another Margo, my daughter’s beloved mentor and music teacher, who had had a career in Hollywood as a musician and starlet in the 1930s and early ‘40s. She had been friends with the likes of Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Ava Gardner, and others. She had the photos to prove it and she told story after story, enthralling stories, of her Hollywood years. Now, after the glamour of Hollywood, she spent happy times in a cabin on the Susitna River in south-central Alaska, living off the land, enjoying every moment of her life.

And there was Jacqui, who came to Alaska during World War Two. She had been a New York model, tall, slim, and gorgeous, but she came north doing war work of some kind. She quickly met a dashing young bush pilot named John and married him. In those days, the bush pilots were the glamour boys of Alaska, the heroes, the hotshots. She and John soared happily into the skies until his retirement many years later. During the Great Earthquake of 1964, still the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America, a 9.2 on the newly revised Richter Scale, Jacqui, with her baby son in her arms, ran out into her front yard as it began to crumble into clods of earth all around her. Falling to the ground, Jacqui and the baby rode their chunk of earth like a toboggan as it flowed toward the cliffs over Cook Inlet, and then stopped, miraculously, just shy of falling over the precipice.

And the amazing Ruth Moulton, who died a few years ago. In 1959, the year of statehood, Ruth came to Alaska from Maine as a young woman, and stayed. During her years here, she hiked and climbed a vast area of the state. She hiked the famous Chilkoot Trail of Gold Rush legend twice and had planned to do it a third time. I was going to go with her on that last trek along the Chilkoot, since I had hiked it myself in 1971. By now she was 75, but undaunted, and wanted to get together a group of folks who had hiked the trail in the past. We were set to go when cancer suddenly claimed Ruth’s life. It was a shock and a loss to all of Anchorage. Ruth had been a pioneer fighter for parks and recreation areas in the city. Today, the downtown Town Square park is named after Ruth Moulton.

And Linda, whose story once made the front page of The New York Times. During the ‘64 earthquake, Linda was a high school senior in Seward, Alaska. After the devastating quake, a tidal wave swept over Seward, suddenly and ferociously. Linda and her parents managed to climb onto the roof of their house. As the tidal wave swept in, flattening the other houses in their neighborhood, it miraculously picked up Linda’s house, swept her and her family out to sea, and then, hours later, brought them back in and deposited them just a few feet away from their point of departure.

These (and others) were the first women I met in Alaska, that first year of teaching at East High School, when I was little more than a kid myself. They all took me under their collective wing, taught me, protected me, advised me, laughed at my naïveté and stupidity, encouraged my eagerness to become an Alaskan as soon as possible.

In Alaska, they are wary of you for the first year. So many people—particularly in those days, when the winters were significantly colder than they are now—aren’t up to the winters here and bail out of the place by April. When I made it through that first winter, I was OK in their eyes forever after.

Of course, it wasn’t just the women who were remarkable to me in those days. The men were amazing, too, but somehow I expected Alaskan men to be amazing; to be tough and rugged and formidable and colorful. And they were! But the women were a surprise to my naïve, sheltered, Southern boy’s mindset and it is they who stick in my mind most indelibly.

Before Sarah Palin was tapped from obscurity  to run for the Vice-Presidency of the United States, the most famous woman in Alaska was probably Susan Butcher, the spunky, pigtailed gal, originally from Massachusetts, who won the internationally-famous Iditarod Sled Dog Race four times. I remember then hearing tourists express amazement that a woman could possibly achieve such a thing, even while competing against men. But she did and she became a legend in the process. (And, of course, there is also Libby Riddles, who was the first woman to win the Iditarod, all while, I might add, being pretty and blonde to boot.)

One lovely lady I met outside of school merits mention here. Carrie was a pioneer Alaskan, a lady who came to Alaska in the early days, following the Gold Rush. When I met her she was quite elderly. I was in my early 20’s; she was in her 80’s or maybe even 90’s. We were probably a strange pair, but I found her enchanting. I had visited her in the Alaska Pioneer Home for the elderly, working on a writing project and wanted to interview an old-timer, a sourdough, as we call them in Alaska, about the early days. I visited Carrie many times and our talks grew more and more colorful and intense with each meeting. She was a brilliant storyteller and I promised to steal from her shamelessly when writing my first novel. She laughed and gave her hearty approval.

One afternoon, over tea, when we were talking about the old days, Carrie said to me, “You know, Wayne, in my day, the only women coming to Alaska were schoolteachers and whores.”

“Why, Carrie,” I said. “I never knew you were a schoolteacher.”

“No,” she said, with a twinkle in her eyes. “I never was.”

In the 42 more years I have lived in this amazing place, I have, of course, met many other women (and men) of dazzling originality and color, some heroes, some rogues, some funny, some tragic, all fascinating, all amazing, all remarkable.  And I am not alone. All of us who live here know people like this. So maybe it is understandable now why some of us find the romantic notion of Mrs. Palin as nearly superhuman a little puzzling; even downright annoying.