What's to See on the Road to Innisfail?

We're finding it no longer as easy as it used to be to take long road trips, but it’s worth the effort when one shares the fun and the driving with good friends.

Bill and Barbara are not only good friends, they are cousins and our trip to Innisfail, Alberta, this summer was not the first we’ve shared with them. Bill’s sister Vicki and her family are also good friends and the 800-mile drive north to their home in Alberta, Canada, can be counted on to deliver lots of good times.

Here are a few photos from the driving part of the trip. We took the North Cascades route, past the Oso slide to Darrington and then over the mountains to Twisp so we could see for ourselves some of the damage left by this summer’s wildfires. From there we drove through the beautiful Canadian Rockies to Calgary and north over Alberta’s rich farmland to Innisfail, a small town with much besides its charming name to recommend it.

I’ll share some of our experiences in the next posts. Meanwhile, hope you enjoy the pictures!

At the Washington Pass overlook on the North Cross Cascades Highway

Barbara and Hank on the overlook trail

Weather beaten snags look down on the road we'll soon be driving

Stopping for construction where fire, then flooding damaged the road over Loup Loup Pass

Following the pilot car past a washout and mud slides

A roadside picnic in southern Alberta

Passing scenery on the prairie near Innisfail

Heading home with the first snow of the season on the Rockies

Lunch with a view at Cranbrook, B.C.

A rest stop with a view along Route 93

The Columbia River has its source in Columbia Lake, behind us. It flows north, then south, west, south and west again until it reaches the Pacific Ocean.

There are cops and speed limits even on the wide-open roads of north-central Washington, While our driver explained our transgression, I snapped these combines harvesting wheat.

Whirlwinds  (dust devils) move dirt from one place to another.

A friendly horse outside of Waterville

The textures of harvest time

Shadows of evening coming off the Columbia Plateau near Wenatchee

Full moon over Leavenworth

Created for Light

A friend reminded me of something today I needed to hear. We’ve reached the stage of life where more and more of the important people in our lives are going ahead of us into eternity. Many who are younger than we face serious health problems. It’s harder than it used to be to maintain an optimistic attitude. Grief seems to lurk behind every silver lining. But my friend said: We are created for light and joy, not for darkness.

We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t grieve, but gratitude for what we still have and for what lies ahead does a lot to dispel the cloud of pessimism the enemy would use to shut out our joy.

Hank’s mother found these words in a Dear Abby column years ago. The author wrote the lyrics for his wife of 60 years. The paper is yellowed and brittle, but his thoughts are ageless.

    AUTUMN DAYS
        When autumn days remind us that the summertime is gone
        And the shadows show the sun is on the wane,
        It seems so easy to forget that life continues on
        As we revel in our strolls down mem’ry lane.
        But then I stop to reason that living knows no season,
        And realize our numbered days are few.
        That’s why I don’t recall if summer skies were gray or blue
        But live each lovely autumn day with you.

                    Francis Stroup, Dekalb, Illinois
                    ©Universal Press Syndicate   

Pickled Beets and Our Funny Garden

Our untidy garden is just right for two people.

Should I make pickled beets this afternoon, or should I write about the beets and other edibles our pocket-sized piece of ground produced this year?  My blogging has been as haphazard as my gardening this summer. But our funny garden has been at the top of my long list of possible blogs for weeks, so maybe I’ll write and then pickle.

Potatoes that grew in the rhubarb patch.

Hank planting ever bearing strawberries last spring

Our garden is not one of those orderly works of art I admire in other peoples’ yards, with neat green rows of veggies laid out in geometric perfection. Beets, carrots, herbs, and squash are more-or-less confined to the big wooden box Hank made so I could plant and weed standing up. For most of the summer, peas climbed chicken wire trellises crowded between the apple tree and the blueberry bushes. Raspberries ran wild along the back yard fence and the rear of the garage. Wherever we found an unplanted square foot of ground, we tucked in a potato or two. As the zucchini finished its season the winter squash we’d planted along the side fence scrambled into the garden box to take over the zucchini’s space. And cosmos and nasturtiums seeded themselves to add color in unexpected places.

Swiss chard that survived the winter in a sheltered spot by the house came back this spring. If the bugs didn’t like it so well, we’d have had a fine crop to eat ourselves.

We had pots of tomatoes on the back porch, strawberries along the driveway, and flowers everywhere.

The wild shrubs in the front yard which we planted as tiny starts in 2009 have become near-trees. I feel like we no longer manage our growing things. They’ve taken control and dictate how we spend our time, or at least, how we should spend our time.

Wild roses bloom in the front yard

Our wild garden just getting started

Son Rob, our landscaper, with the results of his handiwork, 2011

My favorite "shrub", an American cranberrybush

Our wild garden this summer

I know we should ruthlessly tear much of our funny garden up by the roots and return it to beauty bark and grass that needs no more than a weekly mowing. But come next spring, we’ll look at that empty garden box, the flower beds, then at the seed packets and juvenile plants in the garden store, and once again we’ll go overboard.

By the way, I decided to blog and pickle. Here are the results.

MATA Flies at Kako

The Missionary Aviation Association plane taking off for more passengers

A year ago this week, Hank and I took flight for an unforgettable Alaskan adventure.  We jetted to Anchorage, rode in a thirty-passenger propeller plane to the small town of Aniak, and were met there by a three-passenger bush plane. We landed in the beautiful, remote, roadless Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta at a place called Kako. Kako, which means “clay” in the Yupik Eskimo language, is the site of a gold mine dating back to the early 1900’s. It’s also the location of Kako Retreat Center, founded and run by Dave and Vera Penz with the help of volunteers from across the U.S.A.

The Penzes spent nearly thirty years reaching out to the isolated villages of the Delta. Although Dave finished his tasks on earth this past April, Vera, in her eighties, is still hard at work.

We went to Kako for the annual Ladies’ Berry Picking Retreat. We helped in any way we could, but I was also there to gather information for a book whose working title is From Clay to Gold—God’s Alchemy at Kako, Alaska. It tells how Dave and Vera Penz shared God’s love with Alaska’s people. Airplanes were and are an absolutely crucial part of their work.

Alaska teens at the Berry Picking Retreat

Sharing a favorite song in Yupik

Kako Retreat Center

In the roadless areas of Alaska, planes and pilots are essential for medical emergencies, grocery and mail runs, retrieving visitors, traveling...or for any purpose one would use a motor vehicle in the other forty-nine states. Pilots help Kako build bridges of friendship to the far-flung people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. They also bring villagers in for retreats, camps, and classes. There may be thirty-five to fifty young people at each of the six sessions of summer camp. Fifty women planned to attend this year’s berry picking retreat. That’s a lot of flying when the planes can carry only three to five passengers at a time.

A few times, Kako events had to be cancelled because no pilots were available. (Dave’s pilot’s license lapsed in recent years because of health problems.) Sometimes airplanes go down for repairs. In such instances, friends of Kako may loan a plane and/or offer their flying skills. Last summer, we rode in a plane loaned by the Christian Pilots’ Association of Alaska because Kako’s Cessna 182 was out of service with a cracked engine casing.

The Cessna 182 was repaired by MATA. another group that has provided invaluable help over the years. MATA (Missionary Aviation Training Academy) is based in Arlington, Washington. MATA trains missionary pilots to serve in fields all over the world. They often send planes and pilots to Kako during summer camping season, along with teams of other workers. They repair Kako’s planes and rebuild engines at reasonable prices.

Inside MATA's new building

When KRC’s Cessna 182 turned out to need a complete engine overhaul, MATA’s maintenance specialist, Dary Finck, took charge of the work. He flew the engine from Kako to Bethel, where Lynden Air Transport took it on to Fife, Washington. From there he hauled it to MATA’s new building in Arlington. Many of the needed parts were donated, as was the labor of those who worked on it. Donations also paid for most of the freight.

The engine shone as if brand-new when it was returned to Fife and placed on a barge for Anchorage. From Anchorage it was air freighted to Kako and installed in the plane by volunteers from a local Alaska airline.

Dave Penz, Dary Fink, and Hank Husby with the rebuilt engine

Vera Penz at MATA's headquarters

MATA’s Executive Director, Gordon Bakke and his wife Elaine, a nurse, served as missionaries for twenty-two years in Zambia, Africa. He joined MATA in 1999, soon after its founding. Gordon met Dave and Vera in 2002. Dave told Gordon he could use help with flying, so Gordon took his first trip to Alaska that summer.

For seven consecutive summers Gordon flew his own Cessna 182 from Arlington to Kako, following the Alaska Highway for much of the distance. He flew helpers in and out of Kako. He flew in attendees for family camp, and kids from the villages for kids’ camp. He also did the required annual inspections on Kako’s aircraft.
   
All the people at MATA are volunteers. The organization exists on donations. It is not a flight school; rather it is a training program. Each student is on his own program, since many have regular jobs. For a commercial license, a minimum of 250 flying hours is required.

Requirements by mission organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators’ JAARS are higher—four to five hundred hours. One way for new pilots to earn those hours is to fly for Kako. MATA pilots at Kako fly an average of two hundred flight hours per summer, flying kids and other passengers to KRC, bringing in cargo, then making the long flight back to headquarters at Arlington.

Websites for MATA:

www.mata-usa.org/

www.facebook.com/MATAUSA

Other Sun Breaks posts about Kako:

http://rainsongpress.blogspot.com/2013/07/adventure-ahead-in-kako-alaska.html

http://rainsongpress.blogspot.com/2013/08/were-at-kako.html

http://rainsongpress.blogspot.com/2013/08/kakos-beginnings.html

http://rainsongpress.blogspot.com/2013/08/ladies-berry-picking-retreat-at-kako.html

http://rainsongpress.blogspot.com/2013/09/making-good-use-of-resources-at-kako.html

A Long Fall on Mt. Pilchuck

The upper chair lift ran to the location marked on this old postcard.

This old photo shows the lower part of the completed chairlift.

50 years ago: Mt. Pilchuck Day Lodge and ski rental shop 

Not too many people survive a fifteen-hundred-foot fall down a mountainside and live to tell about it. My friend and Granite Falls classmate Gary Weber is one of them.

Fifty years ago this winter, Mt. Pilchuck State Park put into operation its new Riblet Tramway Company’s double chair lift. It ran from just above today’s parking lot to the 4000-foot level of the mountain. A Herald newspaper story dated December 31, 1963 described how they tested the new machinery. They loaded containers holding 400 pounds of water on the chairs going uphill, then ran them all the way to the top of the lift. They tried out the regular and the auxiliary motors. They checked the brake system thoroughly. Then the testers climbed on and rode to the top and back. They pronounced the chair lift ready for business, starting the next day, January 1, 1964.

Gary and another classmate, Dick Larson, had been working for the Forest Service at Verlot, but in the winter they had the job of taking care of the road leading to Mt. Pilchuck State Park. He also worked at the park itself. He was there for the construction of the chair lift. One of the workers wrestled a machine on skidders, like a donkey engine, to where the top of the lift would be. He attached cables around the base of trees or to boulders and winched the big machine up the nearly vertical inclines. Once it was situated, he ran a cable down the mountain for hauling equipment to where it was needed.

One day the boss, Wendell (Wendy) Carlson, told Gary to up and help the man on top. It was no quick hike, two miles or more by trail. Gary started out, then looked at the nearby cable, running around the pulley and back up the mountain. He was young and strong. Without stopping to think, he grabbed the cable, swung his legs up and around it, and hung on for a free ride to the top. No one saw what he was doing. Part way up, the cable stopped. Gary hung there, twenty-five feet above the ground. He was six feet three and athletic, but eventually, his arms and legs became so tired he knew he would fall. The snow looked deep and soft. He let go.

The snow was deep...about ten feet. As he realized how deep, he arched his back and threw out his arms. He stopped himself from sinking, but he was already buried in snow nearly to his neck. After a long struggle, he rolled himself out of what had almost become his grave. Gary headed for the trail, overcome by the realization that had it not been for God’s intervention, no one would have known what happened to him until the snow melted in the spring.

Later, after the towers were erected and the chair lift was operating several days a week, a problem arose. The towers oscillated when the lift was running. The rough ride made customers nervous. Gary was trying to find a solution, working with the cables on one arm of the topmost 40-foot tower. Without warning, a weld at the base of the tower broke. The structure began to topple. Gary knew he’d be crushed beneath it if he rode it down. The last thing he remembers is leaping out, away from the tower’s fall.

Those who saw it happen said he looked like a tumbling rag doll as he struck the slick rock below, slid down it, then bounced and rolled 1500 feet down the mountain. He flew through the opening of a large hollow stump, on the edge of a 200-foot ravine. That’s where he was when he woke up.
   
Other workmen reached the spot, expecting to find him dead. They pulled him from his precarious refuge and laid him down. Jim Carlson, operations manager and brother of Wendy, Gary’s boss, called Mountain Rescue at Everett’s Paine Field to send a helicopter. When it got there it couldn’t land because of turbulence and the dangerous terrain, so it dropped a litter and hovered at a safe distance.

Gary told those with him, “Just set me on my feet. I’ll walk.” They did, but he collapsed, unable to feel his body. So his friends loaded him onto the litter and carried him to where the helicopter hovered. It dropped a line to attach to the litter. As the cable lifted Gary toward the open door, all he could think of was how small that line looked. Surely it would break and he’d again be falling through the air.

Then a burly African-American medic reached out and pulled him into the chopper. “I’ve got you, boy,” he said. Gary relaxed, knowing he was in good hands.

Unbeknownst to Gary, John Larson, another man who was working at the top, had been struck by a cable which snapped as the tower fell. He had a broken leg. The helicopter had already picked him up.

When they reached the hospital, Gary’s body was still covered in packed snow. Though in shock, he remembers chunks of snow falling from him onto the x-ray table. Although the x-rays discovered no broken bones, Gary’s entire body had turned black and blue. He was covered with fist-sized hematomas (areas where broken blood vessels had leaked and the blood had clotted.) The doctor told him the snow had saved his life because it kept the bleeding down.

Back home again, he decided to take a hot bath. No one had thought to warn him against doing so. His wife Thelma had gone to work and only his little daughters were at home. The hot water loosened the blood clots and suddenly Gary felt very ill. He knew if he passed out, he would probably drown in the bathtub, so he rolled himself over the edge and crawled to the bedroom, unable to reach a telephone. He told his little girls, “Daddy doesn’t feel well. You can help by going to your bedroom and playing quietly.” The children obeyed, and Gary lay there, sure he was about to die, until he felt better. He later found that some of the clots had broken free and passed through his heart.

Gary, convinced that God’s hand had been upon him, recovered and returned to work. Not until later, when he took his son for a ride on the Mt. Pilchuck chairlift, did he discover one result of that terrible fall. As they glided through the air, paralyzing fear suddenly seized Gary. He couldn’t move except to grab the center bar in the double chair. He held on so tightly he nearly snapped his knuckles.

It happened again that summer when he climbed the apple tree to pick the fruit. Even though the ground this time was not far away, fear still froze him to the trunk of the tree. What helped him to overcome the panic was going to work for the Public Utility District. (Though he worked as a heavy equipment operator, he sometimes had to climb the poles.) Gradually, he felt safe strapping on hooks and spurs and going up a pole, although he never felt quite at ease in the new bucket trucks.

A healthy respect for high places was one legacy of Gary’s long fall on Mt. Pilchuck. Much more important was the redoubled conviction that God has a purpose for his life. He is quick to acknowledge that God used these experiences to bring him back to the faith-filled life.

Thelma and Gary Weber today

*1st 3 pictures courtesy <http://www.hyak.net/lost/10.html>