stuck in a cold place

I made it to Juneau.
I mention this because for a while there, I thought I might not. I left Fairbanks on Friday, a little later than planned, and promptly got stuck a few hours down the road in Tok, the place that was so cold last week it made national news. I’d stopped to send an e-mail and noticed smoke from under the hood. It was just getting dark. A woman stopped behind me – as people will do when it’s cold in Alaska – and offered to follow me into town. Later, when I ran over a rabbit and stopped again, we checked the oil, found none, and added a quart. It was windy, and you had to be careful with your fingers. The oil turned to molasses in the minute it took to pour it.
This woman and later her husband, longtime Tok residents, showed a kindness that went beyond helping the needy traveler and took me somewhat by surprise.
I followed the woman to her house, where her husband added some more oil. When I noted the cold, the husband explained that it had actually warmed up – it was only 62 degrees below zero, and had been 69 below a few nights before. We could see now that oil was splattered on both sides of the engine.
I spent the next 20 hours at Fast Eddy’s restaurant, the accompanying motel, and the towing and service shop across the highway. I once tried walking the half-mile to the gas station for a candy bar, but turned around when my nose started to tingle. The temperature never got above 39 below.
At first I considered pushing ahead, as the problem itself wasn’t that bad (there was oil in the engine, it just wasn’t showing on the dipstick) and would presumably resolve itself if I could just get out of this frigid cold.
But it wasn’t a good time or place to be driving an unreliable car. Even with bunny boots and down, 60 below would give you a chill fast. And the Yukon isn’t exactly populated. I remembered that awful Jack London story about the man whose life depends on his ability to start a fire in the cold, and I decided to get the car fixed.
The shop, Willard’s, gracefully fit me in to what was clearly a booked schedule – cars, tractor trailers, even a U-Haul were failing in the cold. My problem proved to be a frozen pressure control valve, which meant the truck basically just had to thaw out. The mechanic, short on sleep and with hands that looked like he’d given up on washing them, worked the ice out of various tubes and valves.
At Fast Eddy’s, where I must have drank a quart of coffee, everyone was talking about the weather – about the dog musher with the totally white nose, or the thermometer bottoming out at 65 below, or the pipes that froze in the school and flooded the computer room. I eyed humongous plates of food and watched the cars drive by out the window. I had already missed one ferry to Juneau and worried I would miss another.
When I finally got my truck back at 4:45 Saturday afternoon, I got in and drove. I reached Canada a few hours later, crossed Chilkat Pass around midnight, and drove back into the U.S. a little after 1 a.m. The snow was deep, the trees huge. And it was warm.