Cube Cove, 1984
Posted January 2018
I’d heard flying into Juneau could be frightening, but since I’d already flown in small planes and landed on gravel bars up north, I didn’t think too much about it. I settled into my seat on the Alaska Airlines jet, enjoyed coffee and breakfast, and opened my dog-eared copy of Stephen King’s latest book, Pet Sematary.
South of Yakutat, the sky clouded over and rain pelted my window. I looked for a glimpse of the ground below and the mountains I knew were around us, but saw nothing. One hour later, through increasingly dark skies and disturbing turbulence, two bounces indicated we were on the ground. When I walked down the gangway and looked around, bases of fog-shrouded mountains at the north and south of the runway showed themselves through driving rain. They had been invisible during our approach.
Holy shit. We flew through that? I thought, grateful I had not seen the peaks from the air.
After Andrea and I claimed our duffels and daypacks, we stepped outside in the damp May air. This trip was my first for the Corps of Engineers and Andrea, a senior biologist, had been assigned to keep tabs on me, the new archaeologist. My task was to locate a cabin ruin and assess whether it was worth saving. The cabin’s salvation could potentially hold up a logging permit application from the Corps. Andrea would scope out endangered species and other environmental issues. One nest of Peregrine falcons might also deep-six the logging application.
A guy from the floatplane company she’d hired found us almost immediately. We piled into his truck, me in the back, the junior member of the team.
“Ladies,” the guy said. “I’m Gus. I guess we’re going to sign us some papers down at the floatplane basin so we can take you to Admiralty Island tomorrow.”
“That’s right,” Andrea said in a barely audible voice.
Gus turned to me and put out his beefy hand covered with grease.
“Hi, Gus. I’m Georgeie,” I said, shaking his giant paw without hesitation.
When he climbed into the driver’s seat. I noticed curls of red hair sticking out beneath his Peter-Bilt baseball cap.
We drove south through town, passing more sailboats than I’d ever seen.
“Over there’s Douglas Island and the water between here and there is Gastineau Channel. All this used to be Tlingit territory, but we kind of crowded ‘em out when gold was discovered here in about 1880,” Gus said matter-of-factly.
Over a halibut dinner at the hotel, I asked an important question, or so I thought: “I didn’t see anything looking like a shotgun case at baggage claim. Where’s our shotgun?”
“We don’t have a shotgun,” Andrea answered softly.
“Really? Why not?” I asked incredulously.
“You have to supply your own gun if you want to bring one. I don’t shoot and I guess you don’t either,” her little-girl voice growing annoying
“Well, no, I don’t. But what about grizzly bears?”
“That’s the rules. There aren’t any shotguns you can check out at the office.”
“Isn’t that looking for trouble?” I asked, stupefied.
“Could be, but we haven’t lost a person yet,” Andrea replied, her voice rising ever so slightly in annoyance.
I decided not to pursue the conversation—it seemed useless. I made my way back to my room where I read a few pages of my book, and fell asleep.
The six a. m. wake-up call came sooner than I wanted it to. I grabbed the receiver and slammed it back in its cradle, immediately jumped into my clothes, then ran downstairs to consume as much coffee as possible along with a hurried breakfast. Andrea yawned and talk was minimal. Apparently, neither one of us liked an early morning
Outside the lobby door, Gus honked and waved from his truck. The weather had turned sunny, the sky a beautiful blue. I breathed a sigh of relief and offered a prayer of thanks to the gods.
“C’mon, y’uns, get in the truck. Time’s a wastin’.”
Conversation proved impossible due to my sleepiness. I left that to Andrea and Gus. We arrived at the floatplane dock, our aircraft bobbing up and down next to the old wooden structure.
“Get in, folks. The pilot will load your stuff so it’s balanced,” Gus said.
I let Andrea, the de facto boss, get in first She took the front seat. I made it onboard after one or two attempts at navigating between he stationary dock and the bobbing plane.
Our pilot bounded out of the office and ran to the dock. My mouth dropped and I became fully awake. A young guy with rippling muscles showing beneath his plaid shirt, he had a bulge in his Carhartts in just the right place, and a thick head of blond hair.
“Hi, ladies, I’m Derek. I’ll be taking you over to Cube Cove this morning,” he said. His smile revealed a set of even, pearly white teeth.
“I’m Andrea, and this is Georgeie,” Andrea said with a coquettish smile.
“Hi,” I waved from the back seat.
“Well, hi. Okay, we’re off in a sec, so buckle up!”
I turned my head to watch him walk away, his athletic ass swaying back and forth in his jeans.
I heard slamming of compartments and sucked my stomach in as Derek adroitly stepped in front of me and squeezed himself into the seat next to Andrea. I could have touched his butt. Instead I studied the weave of his pants.
“Alright, guys, I’m going to turn ‘er south into the wind and rev ‘er up. Hold on!”
The plane made a deafening roar as it plowed through the water, waves reaching up to the windows. I’d never been on a floatplane before and doubted it could escape the drag of the water. But with a mighty surge of the engine, we were off. Derek flew us west as we climbed over Douglas Island. A string of mountainous islands and the Gulf of Alaska lay in front of us.
Blue-green spruce forests covered the islands. Although there were fewer cabins the farther west we flew, fishing boats dotted the water as far as I could see. I thought the landscape beautiful, but so different from my usual haunts in the high Arctic. Although the sea and islands teemed with life, I found them scary. How would I find anything in an impenetrable forest, and how could I keep from being found by a lurking grizzly?
Reaching the west coast of Admiralty Island, we turned north and began our descent into aptly named Cube Cove. We slowed, Derek cut the engine, and in moments we were skating across the water, the cove as smooth as glass. When we were close to shore, Derek put on a pair of waders, hopped out, secured a rope to the front of the plane, dragged it partially onto the beach, and tied the rope around the stub of a tree trunk.
Now came the fun part—deplaning. Andrea opened the front right window, stepped onto the wing, and carefully put one foot, then the other, in the ankle-deep water.
“I’ve never done this before,” I said, nervously stepping onto Andrea’s seat and starting my exit. I put my right foot on the wing, leaned out, and yelled, “Now what?”
“Hold on to the top of the window and put your other foot out on the wing. Then, if you have to, sit on the wing, and slide into the water,” Derek said.
“Okay,” I said.
I decided to sit on the wing and planted my right butt cheek on the metal surface. I extended my right foot over the water and then maneuvered my left foot and leg out of the plane, flexed the knee, extended my right foot into the water, unfolded my left leg, hung it over the edge of the wing, and slid off.
“Tahdah!” I threw my arms open wide in a gesture of accomplishment, amazed I hadn’t topped my boots and that my feet were still dry.
Andrea took no notice of me, probably thinking, Well, she’s in her thirties and she’s never done this before? Jeez.
Derek offloaded our daypacks and equipment and put everything on the beach for us. I grabbed my shovel.
“Watch what you do with that shovel, Georgeie. You could hurt someone with that!” Derek said, grinning.
“It’s our only bear protection,” I said.
“You don’t have a gun?”
“No,” Andrea said nonchalantly. “It’s not allowed.”
“It’s none of my business, but that seems really stupid,” Derek said, his brow furrowing in concern.
“We’ll just have to make a lot of noise if we see a bear, I guess,” Andrea answered in her increasingly annoying little-girl voice.
“Well, I’ll be back to pick you up at four p. m. on the dot. I don’t want you girls out here too long without bear protection.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“Well, so long. Stay safe,” Derek said as untied the plane, got back inside the aircraft, revved the engine, backed up, took off, and was lost to view in less than a minute. The sound of the engine lasted a while longer.
Andrea and I were alone. The thick forest looked ominous. I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Let’s walk along the shoreline first until we reach the drainage at the head of the cove,” Andrea said, looking at her topo, “then walk uphill for fifty feet or so and make our way back through the forest.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure I liked that plan.
I unwrapped my shovel, hoisted my daypack on my back, flung the shovel over my shoulder, and caught up to Andrea who hadn’t waited for me to get my stuff together. Keenly aware of everything in my field of vision and every sound I could hear—our steps, the breeze in the trees, a hawk’s cry—I wished for eyes and ears in the back of my head.
The temperature was balmy compared to up north. I found the weather actually relaxing to a degree.
I looked for artifacts as we walked, but found none. Perhaps the cabin ruin would be interesting. Would it be in ruins? Was it habitable? Anything significant about it worth preserving? I hoped for something interesting to pass the time quickly.
Along the side of the drainage, I tried to excavate a test pit at the margin of the beach and the forest.
Christ almighty, I thought. Digging here is a lot tougher than up north. There are all these roots and shit. This is going to take forever.
“Here,” Andrea said, “I brought a pair of root cutters. These’ll help.”
I got down on my hands and knees and began cutting out roots and weeds, then troweled down about 20 centimeters, placed the dirt on the ground next to the pit, and troweled through it to see if I’d missed anything.
I don’t like working down here, I thought. It’s far dirtier, there’s much more soil, and all these fucking weeds.
“Well, nothing here,” I said. “I need to find that cabin ruin that has everyone’s panties in a twist.”
Andrea seemed stunned by my choice of words, her eyebrows raised high on her forehead. “Okay, I’ll catch up. I’m going to take some photographs along the way and record general notes.”
I found myself blazing a trail through downed branches covered in moss while avoiding the many large fir trees blocking my way. My footing precarious due to the damp and wet of the understory, I grabbed at a thick stalk of something for support.
“Shit! What the hell was that?” I yelled, immediately withdrawing my hand from the stalk and catching my balance.
“That’s oplopanax horridus,” Andrea said calmly. She seemed pleased to showcase her command of Latin. “It’s commonly called Devil’s Club.”
I stared at my work-glove covered hand full of prickly spines. Some had penetrated into my skin.
Many other swear words came to mind, but I decided to take the high ground with Andrea. She wasn’t the swearing type in the office, and probably wasn’t out here.
“Well, I can understand why it’s called that. I thought it was some kind of big maple sapling. I didn’t see the spines.”
I continued to slog through more Amazon-jungle-like vegetation until I saw a couple of upright pieces of milled lumber.
“Those aren’t natural,” I said. “They look like posts of an old cabin.”
Andrea did not respond audibly, so I approached the uprights and could see two small horizontal logs on the ground on either side of a gap, the threshold of a long-vanished door.
“Yup, this is the cabin I’m supposed to evaluate, and this is the front.”
I could see an outline of the cabin’s perimeter fairly easily because the logs were still in place, but found no floorboards. Either the cabin had had no floor or the boards had been scavenged, along with the door, walls, windows, and roof. Cautiously, I stepped inside, avoiding anything made of rusty metal like tin cans, tools, or nails. My last tetanus shot had been at least five years earlier.
“This cabin’s nothing much because there’s not enough left to tell a story,” I said.
Andrea nodded and may have said “Uh-huh.” She took pictures of the area and I asked her to photograph the cabin remains.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m relieved the ruin isn’t going to slow down our environmental assessment for the new logging project.”
“Shouldn’t,” I answered. “There’s a record of who built the cabin but the homesteader left in the 30s.”
I drew the ruin , walked around it several times, and walked out in several directions looking for paths, an outhouse, other structures, or artifacts on the ground, finding nothing.
“If this were on the Slope,” I said, “the landscape would be easier to read. There’s probably stuff on the ground, but I can’t see it.”
I thought I heard a twig or two snapping and the wind blowing through the trees. The sounds of the forest made me jittery, and I stared into the dense woods, trying to discern anything out of the ordinary, but my gaze met only with trees, trees, and more trees. There had to be a bear lurking nearby. I knew it.
“We can walk to our pickup point along the beach if you like,” Andrea said. I thought she might have picked up on my nervousness.
When we broke through the forest and brush to the beach, we sat down to have lunch and stared west across the cove. I had to admit the setting was serene with the forests of Admiralty and Chichagof islands, and the waves gently rolling into the cove.
Because we’d finished our tasks and had a couple of hours to wait for the floatplane, we walked back slowly to our pickup point while chatting. Andrea was divorced, had a daughter in college, and hated birds. I was working on my PhD in anthropology, had no kids, and was married—not the most thrilling discussion. We sat down at the north entrance to the cove and waited for Derek.
Unexpectedly, a barge on Chatham Strait appeared from the south and turned into the cove. We looked at each other in surprise.
“What the . . . ?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Andrea said.
The barge sailed past us toward the drainage where I’d dug the test pit. As we watched transfixed, the barge dropped a gangway. Several large steamrollers drove out of the barge and onto the beach, moved inland crushing the forest, and leaving a wide swath of destruction. The ground shook like an earth tremor.
“Holy shit,” I said, Andrea’s reluctance to swear notwithstanding. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”
“It’s like D-day, or something,” she said.
The sounds of trees cracking filled the air.
A second barge appeared in the cove, pulled up next to the first one, and began offloading dump trucks, a few all-terrain vehicles, and, finally, three pre-fab houses on huge flatbeds. An invasion had begun.
“Holy shit,” I said a second time.
“Holy shit,” Andrea agreed.
No one saw us sitting on the beach. No one got out to look around the area, or even take a pee; all of them were headed inland. We heard a few voices carry, but could not make out any words; there was laughter, too. I thought I saw smoke rising from a cigarette.
They don’t give a shit about the trees or anything, I thought.
“I guess we don’t have to write our report up,” Andrea said, frustration and dismay in her voice. “They didn’t bother to wait, did they?"
The racket continued throughout the rest of the afternoon. The sounds reminded me of antediluvian contests among dinosaurs. I expected to hear loud screeching, and see a T-rex race to the beach pursuing some poor smaller creature. Any bear in the area was most likely swimming to Chichagof or Baranof Island by now.
Derek arrived on time, first flying over the barges and tipping his wing, presumably to take a look at the activity. He headed toward us, landed, and drifted to shore.
“Holy shit. That’s something you don’t see every day,” he said using the same words I’d spoken not long before. “Must be setting up a logging operation or something.”
The loggers, or whoever they were, apparently didn’t spot Derek on his way in or on our way out. They were oblivious.
During its heyday, in the late 80s and early 90s, Cube Cove reached a population high of 152 people. By 2000, the number of inhabitants fell to 72, but the census still recorded 25 households, 48 percent of which had children under the age of 18. There was a school, a post office, even a taxi service. 98 percent of the people were white, 2 percent Native. I remember the town occupying a full page in the southeast Alaska telephone book. By 2002, logging operations ceased and the school closed. Cube Cove was later abandoned.
The location is as uninhabited now as it was the day before it came into existence in May, 1984. I’d like to fly over Cube Cove today to see if any long-lasting damage to the forest can be seen, and I wonder if the company ever got its permit.
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ABOUT ME: I'm an archaeologist by training and an adventurer by nature. The two go hand in hand, don't they? I drifted far away from home, like an iceberg floating in the Chukchi Sea and wrote my PhD dissertation on
the prehistoric Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska.
Before that, I spent too much time at George Washington University, finally writing my MA thesis on the prehistory of Mongolia. Really. I finally made the journey to Mongolia in August 2014. At the time, I thought it the best trip of my life.It now ranks number 2 behind a tour of the "stans"-Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. One of my many travel goals is to link my adventures in Mongolia and Kazakhstan by visiting far west China. Urumchi and Kashgar may not be on everyone's list, but they're on mine. Later this year, I'll be sailing on a NOAA research vessel to Antarctica via S Georgia Island, where Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried. A life long dream, again, not on everyone's list.
Destiny and a longing to see great and new things led me first to Alaska, the Last Frontier, the Great Land. You'll see memories below. My initial Alaska experiences are from the '70s, when I was in my 20s. Times and field work have changed, but not me.
Come with me and see if some of these things strike a chord with you, if you have archaeology and anthropology in your blood, like weird and cool stuff, or are an explorer at heart.
Well, fellow travelers, let's blow this pop stand. Follow your inner Belzonis, Geists, Shackletons, Raineys, Nansens, and Schleimanns. Remember when you last felt that sense of embarking on unknown ventures?
If you have a story or comment to contribute, please do, because we're all in this together. Drop me a line at archaeofun@gmail.com
