Stan Zuray - Carry On: Stan Zurays Journey from Boston Greaser to Alaskan Homesteader

CARRY ON

Stan Zurays Journey

From Boston Greaser

To Alaskan Homesteader

Stan Zuray

&

Tim Attewell

Cover photo by Ryan Walsh

Edited by Wendy Vogel

Copyright 2017 by Tim Attewell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

Second Edition: July 2017

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1521098899

Dedicated to my Mom and Dad.

Love, Stanley

CONTENTS

Preface From Tim Attewell

In his youth, Stan did questionable things. As a homesteader, he did difficult ones. He relishes none of these acts, and this book is not intended to encourage them.

The names of some people have been altered to protect their identities.

The role of Charlotte, Stans first wife and homesteading partner, has been reduced out of respect for her privacy.

This is not intended to be a guidebook for anyone looking to run away from society and into the wilderness. Stan views himself as a survivor of his own life. Times have changed. Hitchhiking, open federal land, and the days of being invited into a strangers home have long since gone. For these reasons, Stan may have been one of the last to walk this wild path...

...which makes his story incredibly important to tell

Stan

On the Natural Life

Theres this romanticized vision of leaving civilization to live among the trees. Being one with nature, is an ideal that a lot of people seem to fantasize over, but being one with anything means being one with all of it, not just a few selected parts. Beauty is only half of nature. There is a brutal side as well.

I dont claim to have really been one with nature, though, and I dont want to talk up the brutality. I do want to dispel a myth: There was very little romance to the lifestyle, because there was so little time to think, and actually enjoy it. I was in a constant state of motion. Each season meant preparing for the next.

Im not complaining, though. It was the kind of work I wanted to do.

Chapter 1

Fire

Alaskan Interior. June 1, 1973.

It sounded like a jet engine and looked like daylight, though the sun had not yet risen and no airliners would ever make a low pass over this patch of the Alaskan wilderness. Stan awoke not just to the sound and light, but incredible heat. He scrambled out of his tent to see a crackling, roaring inferno consuming everything he owned. The flames climbed high above the shack and onto the four enormous, seventy-foot spruce trees it had been constructed around. The result was an eighty-foot tower of fire in the middle of the Tozitna River Valley, forty miles from the nearest village.

The dogs! Charlottes voice broke Stans trance and the young couple immediately split up. Charlotte rushed to put out the various brush fires that had sprung up all around them. Stan raced to rescue the five sled dogs that were chained up dangerously close to the fire.

He got to Skipper first, a loyal half-wolf, half Newfoundland Labrador that had been with him since the beginning of his journey into Alaska. Skipper had the keenest senses of all five of the dogs, and would often pick up the scent of an approaching bear fifteen minutes before the rest of the team. Now he was barking up a storm at the hot nightmare that had invaded his territory.

Down! Easy! Stan did his best to hold the dog still between his knees. Skippers whiskers had long since melted down to the fur. Every part of Stan that faced the fire was hit by terrible heat. The stinging sensation all over his body served to remind him; he was doing all of this wearing only his underwear.

Well this is going well, Stan thought, fumbling for the chains release. One month in the wilderness and weve just lost our food, clothing, shelter, tools, guns, gunpowder BANG and our ammo.

What had previously been their cook shack and living area was now transformed into a bag of hostile popcorn. Once the first round exploded, Stan knew one hundred and fifty more would follow. There was a suitcase, absolutely packed full of ammo, right at the fires center. Stan released Skipper, who immediately ran to a safe distance and established a defensive barking perimeter around the invasive hot monster.

On to the next dog. Stan held an arm high to shield his eyes from any stray bullets. He wasnt overly concerned about the rifle rounds, though. Without the containment of a chamber and gun barrel, the bullets were dangerous, but not fatal. In most cases, once the powder blew the bullet wouldnt travel far. Instead, the momentum would be applied to the much lighter shell casing, which would spin off wildly.

This was a lesson Stan learned during childhood days in Boston, while making zip guns in his parents basement. He and his rascal friends would often snap the antennas from cars, use them as gun barrels, and test fire the one-shot weapons beneath a stack of newspapers to muffle the sound. If a zip gun survived the test, they would take it out at night and unleash hellish lead on the neighborhood streetlights. Now Stan felt impossibly far from those Boston nights.

He pushed the exploding, loose rounds from his mind, and focused on the real danger. His twelve-gauge shotgun was somewhere in the flames, and it was loaded. In hindsight, leaving a shell in the barrel seemed like a mistake; but how was he to know he would be starting a forest fire tonight?

In his mind, Stan could see the loaded gun standing there amidst the flames. It had likely already fallen from its place, and once the heat reached the right intensity, it would let loose. Which direction would the blast fly? It could be any one out of the three hundred and sixty degrees that circled the tent. Stan figured he had at least those odds of taking a round of buckshot somewhere on his body before he got the dogs free.

Cleetsa was next. A tiny, cream-colored dog, she was leader of Stans team. Her bark was more of a yelp compared to Skippers, and Stan got an earful of it. The giant popcorn bag in front of him kept cooking, and Stan felt a burning sensation on his knees that was more intense than the current norm. He looked down to see that the grass all around him had caught fire. Beneath it, hot embers had already formed. He unclasped the chain and Cleetsa bolted off, just as a one-two-three pop of bullets fired out of the tent.

Onward he rushed, through the burn. The fires updraft was so strong that it was pulling a breeze across Stans skin, and into the blaze. There were three more dogs. Minto, who was acquired from the village of the same name. Next there was Monk and Rocky. Both had been given to Stan in Tanana, along with Cleetsa. He ran to each of them, repeating the same process, one after another.

Once all the dogs were loose, Stan and Charlotte could only do one thing. They ran down the riverbank for cover and watched as everything they needed to survive was reduced to ash. Their dog sled had been leaning on the shack. The snowshoes that Stan had so painstakingly handcrafted before leaving Boston had been sitting on the roof. Their food and clothing had just been eliminated from the delicate equation of homesteading.

Are you ok? Stan didnt realize it until he spoke, but he was panting.

Ive had better nights, claimed Charlotte, and Stan took the joke to mean she hadnt been burned any worse than he had. The adrenaline of the moment was keeping them high, but once it wore off they would return to an unkind reality.

Stan looked over past the fire, to their future cabin. It was still only a home-in-progress. Though safe from the flames, at this point it was only three logs high, and more a giant picture frame than a place of shelter for the winter. Stan got the sense that the dream was dead before it had even started. He wondered how he would complete the cabin before winter without tools or food to fuel the process. Tired of the burning imagery, Stan and Charlotte turned to lie down on the bank. Stan was twenty-three, and Charlotte twenty-one. Alone in the wilderness, they listened to the exploding rounds like thunder of an approaching storm.