Sunshine

A Chapter by Serge Wlodarski

I was staying at the hotel in Chitina, the town nearest the mine. It had been a busy, wealthy town during the gold rush that ended 60 years before. Now about one hundred people lived here, eking out an existence off of tourists who come to fish in the nearby rivers or to visit the old mine sites.

I told my story to Mrs. Uukarn, the lady who runs the hotel. She said, “You need to talk to Sivoy. He is a professional guide. He knows how to survive in the mountains.”

If Willie Nelson was Inuit, he would look like the wiry fellow Mrs. Uukarn introduced me to. No last name, just Sivoy. I found out how strong and healthy the seemingly old man was when he put me through a week of wilderness survival training.

He thought I was an idiot when I explained my plan to haul seeds up a mountain and store them in an abandoned mine. I could tell he was being hard on me, just to try to run me off. It didn’t work. I toughed it out.

We made shelters out of snow. He taught me how to start a fire without matches, and how to boil water without a cookpot. I learned the right way to fall into a crevice, and how to crawl back out. At the end of the week, Sivoy said, “Be here at 6 a.m. Together we will visit Mixon’s Folly.”

By the time we reached the mine entrance, I was exhausted. Sivoy looked like he was ready to run a marathon. He had already told me, “It will take time for your blood to adjust to the thin air.” After a short rest we walked the length of the mine. Our footsteps made an eerie echo down the gently sloping, curved tunnel. The flashlights showed the marks on the wall where Henry Mixon’s drill bits and wedges had slowly carved through the rock.

Henry may have been crazy, but he knew how to dig a mine. After almost 100 years, very few rocks had fallen from the walls or the ceiling. There was graffiti left by previous visitors, and a layer of dust on the floor.

I took pictures. I measured the temperature and humidity. For storing seeds, you want cold, dry air. It was the middle of summer and I figured this was the worst case scenario for the weather. If it was cold and dry enough now for seed storage, it would be the rest of the year.

According to my research, temperature at or under twenty degrees Fahrenheit is acceptable for seed storage. For optimal storage, zero degrees or lower. Outside, it was a brisk 15 degrees. As we went deeper into the mine, the temperature gradually dropped. Beyond the 200 foot mark, it leveled off at a very frigid 6 degrees. Not perfect, but pretty good.

The optimal relative humidity varies depending on the type of seed but should be somewhere beteween 5 and 15 percent. Mixon’s Folly came in at a moderate 10%.

I was certain the abandoned mine would make a good seed bank. I would need permission. It is located in a federal park, the Wrangell�"St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Commercial operations are allowed on these properties, within the guidelines of the National Parks and Wildlife Act of 1974.

I ended up in a government building in Juneau, sitting on the other side of a desk from an intimidating lady. She looked at me over the top of her glasses and said, “Young man, you realize there is no gold in Mixon’s Folly, don’t you?”

I nodded my head and said, “Yes ma’am, I am one hundred percent serious. I am not interested in gold. I’m a seed guy.”

Eventually I wore her down. She handed me a stack of forms to fill out and a list of other people I would have to talk to. It took eight weeks, approval from a half dozen different agencies, and almost ten thousand dollars in fees. When I returned to Chitina, I had a business license for my new corporation, Mixon’s Folly Seed Bank, and a 50 year lease on the property.

Job one was repairing and upgrading the trail. There is a public road all the way to the Erie Mine, where Henry Mixon once worked. A few of the old buildings had been renovated and turned into a visitor’s center. Guides give tours of the mine, and it is a popular jumping off place for hikers.

Mixon’s Folly is nine miles north of Erie Mine. There is a well used hiking trail for the first six miles. It only rises 1000 feet in elevation and is an easy walk. I had permission to widen the trail enough to make it passable for an all terrain vehicle.

I rented a Kubota excavator. It had a hydraulic arm with a digging bucket. I used it to scrape the trail level, and to push rocks out of the way. After I’d roughed in the trail, the blade attachment made easy work of leveling out a path.

When I hauled the Kubota back to the rental place in Valdez, I used the same trailer to carry back a Gator ATV and a Polaris snowmobile. Summer or winter, I wouldn’t have any trouble navigating the first six miles to the mine.

Next came the fun part. The last three miles went up more than 4000 feet in elevation. That, combined with the ice and snow, meant that only serious mountain climbers could attempt a direct approach.

Henry Mixon overcame the steep grade the same way mountain people have always done. By using switchbacks. The trail he carved zigzagged back and forth up the steep slopes. By stretching the climb out to seven miles, the narrow trail had a grade of about 11%. It was steep, and potentially deadly if you fell, but passable.

By then I had managed to infect Sivoy with my enthusiasm for collecting seeds. He agreed to help with the upper trail. There were many places that had been washed out, or covered with debris by avalanches.

It would be impossible to get the Kubota or any kind of heavy equipment up the narrow, steep trail. The rest of the work would have to be done with shovels, sledge hammers, pick axes, and elbow grease. Same as Henry Mixon, a century earlier.

Sivoy and I filled in the gaps, cleared the debris, and installed safety ropes. And, I learned that my Inuit guide had a sense of humor. He began referring to the operation as Morton’s Folly.

It was late October when we finished repairing the upper trail. Sivoy pointed out that the average low temperature in downtown Chitina would soon be close to zero. The mine is 9000 feet higher up in the mountains. Winter is brutal and deadly at high altitude. Even he would have a difficult time surviving if he got trapped at high altitude in a bad winter storm. He suggested we suspend on-site operations until after the spring thaw.

That made sense to me. But I couldn’t resist getting started on the seed bank, even if my first effort was mostly symbolic. On a supply run to Fairbanks, I’d bought one of every package of vegetable and flower seeds at the Home Depot. The lady at the register gave me a funny look when I set the hand basket, filled with seed packages, on her counter. The look didn’t get any better when I grinned and said, “It’s okay, I’m a collector.”

Sivoy accompanied me, Halloween morning, on one last trip up the mountain before winter set in. I carried the seeds in my backpack. When we reached the end of the mine, I placed plastic containers, filled with seed packages, on a shelf. Every trip to the mine, we carried a few pieces of lightweight, modular shelving.

I shook Sivoy’s hand, and said, “Today is October 31st, 2014. At 12:15 p.m., I declare Morton’s Folly Seed Bank to be officially open for business.”

What Sivoy did next left me speechless. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a piece of wood. He had carved it into an elaborate mask. Eagle feathers adorned the mask’s edge. He placed it on the shelf next to the seeds.

“The Inuit word for mask is kiinaguk. This is our representation of the spirit of the wind. I made this kiinaguk for my good friend John. So that a cold wind will always blow, high up in these mountains, and help preserve his seeds.”

He took a drum from his pack. Made by stretching and tying a piece of caribou skin taut around a wooden hoop. Sivoy did a ceremonial Inuit dance, while he played the drum and told the story of the wind spirit.

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