Fire in bush Alaska produces no warmth

Recent snowbound days in my Lake James pine-slab cabin brought to mind long periods of cabin fever in "bush" Alaska and of a day I wished I'd just stayed home.
Our sitter/housekeeper Suzie, a 4-foot-2 Eskimo dynamo, had been weather-bound several days returning from a medical clinic trip to Bethel 45 flight minutes away. Although Alaska Native Health Service paid her transportation, her flight stymied by weather left her stranded midway in St. Mary's Mission with a cousin. Our children sorely missed her and the teenager trying to fill her housekeeping duties left a lot to be desired. So my husband decided to pick her up — any excuse to fly! Housebound, I was an infrequent ride-along that Sunday afternoon.
The temperatures were bitter, but winds calm as we left our Yukon Delta village of Kotlik and proceeded inland across the tundra. By the time we approached the foothills where St. Mary's Mission perched there was considerable turbulence. As we rounded the knoll in front of the village, the winds were so fierce that my pilot husband was forced to "slip" the little plane in sideways, a maneuver I'd never experienced. I thought we were crashing! We'd barely rolled to a stop when I tumbled out of the cabin and thanked God to be safely on the ground. My second uneasy thought was that I'd have to fly back to get home to Kotlik.
My husband told me to go into the village and find Susie while he secured his ski-plane on the river ice. He said we needed to get away before the weather deteriorated further. I walked off as he was placing an aviation flameless heater in the passenger foot space.
Susie's cousin graciously offered hot tea, which wasn't yet served when the anxious pilot entered and rushed us out to his plane. He preceded us. As Susie and I turned the corner of the last house I saw a ball of flame flying through the air, across the river ice.
The flameless heater had flamed! He threw the heater and the passenger seat cushion across the river ice, both ablaze. My husband frantically tried to beat the fire out of the passenger floorboards and shouted, "Get snow!" But the river was as hard as concrete. I could not gather enough for a snowball. He beat the fire with his heavy Army surplus mittens and put out the flames on the melting plastic dash while I smothered the seat cushion on the river ice.
When I remembered the clear-plastic gas indicators, 6-inch tubes directly above each door, my heart quickened. Fortunately, those were the first flames he squelched followed by the heater itself.
The Aeronca was aqua-green. As I stood watching my pilot husband fight the fire all I could see was a huge pile of money going up in smoke. Next, I thought, "How would we return home?" But I had no time to dwell on it. Before I knew it he was shoving our little babysitter into the backseat with her luggage, which included a box containing a cat — a gift from her cousin.
"Buckle up," he told her as he propelled me onto the burnt passenger cushion turned backwards. Doing so snarled the safety belt, meaning I had none for the 45-minute flight. We were airborne before I fully realized that he had covered a gaping hole in the floorboard at my feet with a doubled-over scatter rug and stuffed a sleeping bag into the melted windshield hole in front of my face. The hole was big enough to throw a football through.
Susie and I shivered with terror and bitter cold all the way back home. She had only her expertly knitted woolen gloves, so we traded off warming our hands in my fur-lined mittens. Her poor little cat bawled the whole trip back to Kotlik. Needless to say, we felt like joining the feline.
Instead of a refreshing Sunday ride, it was just one of several times that I would have gladly remained housebound. And it was one of many times during my 23 years of bush flying that I thanked God to be back on His good earth.
Linda Edwards is a member of the Morganton Writers Group.