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I came to Skagway, Alaska with the notion that this is the place to experience the romance of the Gold Rush Days without inconvenience and hardship. Reality set in when we had to rush Max the cat to the veteranian. The doctor was in Whitehorse, Canada, 114 miles away. The three of us, Nancy, Dainean, holding Max, and I, jumped in the car for the two and one half hour drive. There were compensations. We were on one of the world’s most scenic roads, the two lane Klondike Highway completed in the 70s, with sharp toothed mountains towering over us on both sides. At the base of the mountains linear lakes sparkled in the sunlight, long, narrow bodies of water green or intense blue with no sign of human habitation, just wilderness.

Warning signs along the highway read, “Avalanche area Do not stop.” And we could see deep creases scaring the sides of the mountains where avalanches had occurred. I also saw my first bear, a yearling black bear that scurried across the highway in front of us. Whitehorse itself is linear, spread out along the banks of the Yukon River, many of its residents bilingual, speaking both French and English.

After spending an afternoon in the doctor’s office, Max is doing just fine. Four years ago Skagway experienced an emergency of another kind. Nancy, at a community Christmas program, suffered a cardiac arrest. EMTs, local trained personnel, administered CPR and AED. The ambulance rushed her to the clinic and then to get to a hospital she was transferred to a Coast Guard helicopter which flew Nancy from Skagway to Juneau where an Airlift Northwest flight flew her to Seattle. Time elapsed: six hours. Because of trained EMTs that included her husband Frank, sitting next to her, she’s alive and doing fine now. An incident like this gives me a sense of Skagway’s relative remote location and also a sense of its community. When people learn I’m at the Home Hostel, their first question is, “How is Nancy?”

The facilities Skagway does have is a beautiful school K through 12 with 102 students, a full court gym and carpeted classrooms and hallways for the Skagway Panthers. The town also has a well equipped recreation center which includes a basketball court, weight room, treadmills, exercise classes and an outdoor skate park and playground. I could have been a member for $10 a week. Instead, I did morning power walks around town past two bed and breakfasts, built at the turn of the century; a private home, built in 1899, where delphiniums six feet tall were in full bloom, then out to Yakutania Point, a wilderness area that starts at the edge of town and back to the Hostel and Nancy’s rose garden.

The public library has become a gathering place for me. I’ve been to Costa Rica, Tasmania, Cambodia and The Holy Land during Sunday evening travelogues. At the book club, Barbara, 84 and third generation, recommended Lord of Alaska as a background read. Attending the knitting class at the library were local and seasonal women: a young woman gardener from Jewell Gardens where when I visited those gardens was given a bunch of Swiss chard and a purple kohlrabi weighing two pounds. Beginning knitters were two women from Bombay, India with their daughters, the women part of an extended family that operates one of 38 stores that sell jewelry. A specialty at the one knit shop is qiviut, yarn spun from the undercoat of the Arctic musk ox, a soft, precious yarn, costing $92 a skein.

On the same block is the Lemon Rose Bakery. Because I was here long enough, I ate one of everything they offered: cinnamon rolls, apple turnovers, croissants and chocolate chip cookies as big as Frisbees. I prepared my own breakfast and lunch at the hostel but ate dinner with the family, healthy vegetarian meals, often joined by hostellers from some place else in the world. For Friday night fish I had fish (halibut) and chips at the Skagway Fish Market, a casual restaurant. For elegant dining, the Poppies featured a prime rib in their restaurant and afternoon tea in their tea room.

Because I was here long enough, I was in time to see lilacs, bridal wreath, and Nancy’s red peonies in full bloom, an instant replay of familiar flowers that were past their prime at home. I could see the snow melting off the mountain tops on the days we had sunshine and I could meet people on the street and call them by name. I joined the senior citizens for exercise and lunch Friday noons and I helped Nancy and Frank celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary with a potluck at church.

I visited all the National Parks excellent exhibits and because I was local, Ruth gave me a free ride to Dyea, the trailhead for the Chilkoot, where irises and chocolate lilies were in bloom. I ate Dungeness crab fresh off the boat at next door neighbors Dave and Meredith’s crab boil. I attended a town meeting regarding the shooting of a white colored black bear or was it a white bear some called a Spirit Bear. I walked to the First Presbyterian Church with Frank and Nancy, a church that is never locked and the first church in Skagway, 1898.

For a few weeks this summer I was a Skagwayite and found gold in Alaska.

The column, Journal Entry from Ridgeville, is a bi-monthly feature of the Tomah Journal written by Lyda Lanier, 20964 Cty. Hwy. A, Tomah