I love living in a small rural community. Our little Alaska community has about 1,700 people, and while our homes are scattered out, along the highway and the scattered side roads, we all seem to know what each other is doing, whose kids are graduating from high school and college, whose parents are in poor health, who has new babies, and so on. That's how life in a small town or small rural community is.
Maybe I'm biased. OK, well I am biased. Lots of people like cities, after all. They like the hustle and bustle, they like the bright lights and fast times. I've spent a lot of time in cities myself, and yeah, there's fun to be had there. But I'm not a young man anymore. I like my peace and quiet. I like hearing an owl calling when I go outside in the early mornings, or on occasion, wolf song coming from the woods.
In large part, this is because I'm returning to my roots, having grown up in a small rural community in northeast Iowa. My wife, on the other hand, grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, but she loves our little rural community as much as I do.
This isn't just an American thing. While visiting the small mountain town of Nikko, in Japan's Tochigi Prefecture, during a festival, we happened across three old Japanese dudes in traditional dress. They were sitting on the steps of the drugstore, each with a smoke, each with a beer, and you didn't have to speak Japanese to know they were sitting there catching up on local gossip. Still, here in the USA, we seem to have refined the art of small towns to a fine edge.
Which brings me to the Sheep Creek Lodge, at mile marker 88 on the Parks Highway. The lodge is a restaurant, bar, and an informal community center, on the highway between Willow and the Talkeetna turnoff. They also have a couple of guest rooms in the main building and a bunch of cabins scattered around, to catch the summer tourist trade. It's a typically Alaskan business, with typically Alaskan customers.
We're among those customers. My wife and I have, for several years, eaten lunch there every Saturday. The lodge has the best food between Anchorage and Fairbanks, plus we know all the people who run the place and work there. One of my fonder memories of the lodge comes from one summer Saturday when we came inside and a guy seated at the big table near the door with his family commented, "You can sure tell who the locals are. They get hugs."The lodge is more than just a local business. It's a hub of the community. They host wedding receptions and other family events. They have New Year's Eve events and Christmas buffets. Everyone in the Valley knows the lodge, everyone knows about the family who runs it. It's something all of us in this part of the Valley have in common.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, we got the news: The lodge's septic system had failed, rather badly. (Not that there's a good way for a septic system to fail.) When it's a restaurant and bar that's involved, that means the doors are closed, and the cost to restore the septic system, well, it's considerable.
Last Saturday was the last day they were open for business until the problem is resolved. My wife and I were there, as usual. The wait staff was holding up; these are Alaskans, and we grow 'em tough. But it was hard to leave. The young lady who works as bartender, who is kind of a surrogate granddaughter to us, was hugging my wife and tearing up.
But here's where the resilience of small communities kicked in.
The septic system is going to cost a lot to fix, but it rapidly became apparent that it was going to happen. There's a fundraiser to get it done, and the community, all people from Willow, Trapper Creek, Talkeetna, Caswell, up and down the Valley, have rallied around the Sheep Creek Lodge. People with time and resources are jumping in to help. People who have equipment are offering to volunteer to help with the excavation and other work. People with time to spare are offering what help they can. We have neither time nor equipment, so we kicked in some cash. The lodge will be back, because the community wants it.
My wife and I love the Sheep Creek Lodge. We have since we moved into the area. We love the place and the people who work there. And, our community being what it is, we are pretty confident that it will be back up and running soon. They are already planning events to help with the fundraising, and the plans to get the septic system fixed are already underway.
That's the great thing about small communities. We look out for one another. And here's the thing: As a biologist who specialized in field zoology and animal behavior back in the day, a quick look back at human history tells one that, through most of our history, this is how we have lived, in small communities, measured in hundreds of people, not millions. It may be my personal bias talking, but big cities to me seem to be bad for people; too cold, too anonymous. It's like living in a huge rat utopia, with all the pathologies that come with that. No, I think we are physically and behaviorally geared to live in smaller groups than that. I prefer living in a smaller community, where everyone knows what everyone does. In my case, that means I occasionally get stopped in the post office or the hardware store by somebody with a news item on their phone, asking, "Hey, Ward, what do you think of this here?"
There are a few downsides. Bad news travels fast, too. When someone is misbehaving, cheating on a spouse, snagging fish illegally, or mistreating their dogs, that spreads. Ostracization is often the result, and in a small community, that can really sting.
All in all, though, I'll take our life in our small Alaska community over anything else. If you want to know why, just look at the Sheep Creek Lodge, and note, you just don't get any more America than this.
