Border Station 1

The umiak was heavy with supplies even though the trip would only last two days.  Assuming everything went according to the plan.  Eastwood was skeptical.  He reminded me of survival rule number 10.  If you are not afraid, you are not paying attention.

And rule number 5.  You have to start with a good plan.  You need to know when to change it.

 

The plan was to leave Wales at five in the afternoon.  I should make it to Big Diomede Island in ten hours.  That would put all but the first two hours of the journey under the cover of darkness.  And give me some leeway if the trip took longer than expected.  The crucial point was arriving at the island while it was still dark.

 

I would land and hide the umiak.  Then find shelter and eat.  Next, relax and sleep through the daylight hours.  After dark on day two, I would make a visit to Border Station 1.  To take photographs and leave my gifts.  Then it would be time to return.

 

It was late spring, 1981.  I was a senior in high school.  In a few weeks, I would graduate.  One more summer of hanging out with Eastwood, then off to the University of Alaska.  I was going to major in engineering.  But all I had been thinking about for the past year was the vision quest.  My unauthorized trip to the USSR.

 

Although I had never set foot on Big Diomede Island, I felt quite familiar with it.  Just two miles away is Little Diomede Island.  US territory, and part of the state of Alaska.  The city of Diomede consists of about 30 buildings and reminds me of Wales.

 

Eastwood and I visited Little Diomede twice the previous summer.  We played the tourist angle to the hilt.  We hiked and took pictures all over the island.  No one noticed the ones we took, with the zoom lens, looking west toward Border Station 1.

 

It is ironic how things turn and twist.  In August of 1969, I was five, and an ordinary kid with a doting mother and father.  I remember going to the beach in San Diego.  A parent holding each hand as I ran into the surf.  I remember my father saying how much he wished Uncle Eddy was here.  Two years later, Eddy would tell me, “Evan, you might as well start calling me Eastwood now.”

 

I know the exact date of the beach visit because it happened the week of Woodstock.  While my family was at the beach, the radio DJs gave constant updates about the music festival that become a cultural phenomenon. 

 

When I went to live with Eastwood, I heard the Woodstock album often.  More than once, I saw my uncle cry when we listened to Jimi Hendrix play the Star Spangled Banner.

 

While we were on the beach in San Diego, Eastwood was dug into the side of a hill in Phuoc Tuy Province, Vietnam.  He didn’t know anything about Woodstock at the time.  He remembers the date because of Operation Camden.  The battle that ensued a few days later was primarily between Australian forces and the Viet Cong.  Eastwood’s company had been through the area before and was deployed in advance to do reconnaissance support. 

 

I was at the beach Sunday, August 17th, 1969.  Hendrix played at Woodstock the next morning at 9am. 

 

Halfway around the globe in Vietnam, a company of Viet Cong soldiers stumbled onto Eastwood’s position.  The Americans would have let the enemy soldiers pass without opening fire.  When you pull the trigger during a recon mission, your cover is blown and the mission is over.  But in war, s**t happens.  The Viet Cong decided to take a potty break while they were on the trail, below Eastwood’s men. 

 

One walked up the hill.  The Vietnamese man started to yell when he saw the soldier to Eastwood’s left.  The yell terminated when the bullet from Eastwood’s rifle entered his chest.  The rest of the recon squad had been watching and knew what to do next.  In a few brutal minutes, Eastwood and his mates killed 80 men. 

 

Eastwood had nightmares of that one-sided battle the rest of his life.  Later, when he learned about Woodstock, he would realize that Jimi Hendrix was playing the Star Spangled Banner at about the same time he was slaughtering people in Phuoc Tuy Province. 

 

Twelve years later, I shook hands with my uncle, then pushed the umiak into the cold, blue waters of the Bering Sea.  My vision quest had begun.  We had listened to Woodstock the evening before.  I thought of Stephen Stills.  “This is the second time we’ve ever played in front of people, man.  We’re scared shitless.”

 

But I was the one who chose to do this.  And while he wasn’t with me, I knew Eastwood had my back.  My uncle was adamant.  Success was optional, survival was mandatory.  I was to turn around, or use the emergency radio, if I got in over my head.  I kept telling himself, “As long as I’m afraid, I’ll be okay.”  That is what Eastwood would say if he were here.

 

After a while, I pushed the fear to the back of my mind.  Instead of letting it control me, I used it as energy.  My arms were on autopilot, constantly pulling the umiak closer to Big Diomede Island.  Some deep part of my brain kept the boat on target.  My conscious mind and my senses were focused on the water ahead of me.  And around me.  The open ocean is an unknown.  Danger lurks in the darkness.

 

I only stopped a few times, for water breaks and to take some deep breaths.  When I realized I was halfway there, I pulled the watch out of my pocket to check the time.  I was a little behind schedule, but there was leeway built into the plan.  So far so good.  I resumed paddling.

 

I knew I was going to make it when I rounded Little Diomede Island.  I could see the faint glow of the flood lights at Border Station 1.  I was only four miles from my target.  My arms had been numb for hours, but somehow I found renewed strength.  I paddled harder.

 

We had selected a landing spot a few hundred yards north of the Border Station.  Far enough away that no one at the station could see.  As well as we could see from the cliffs of Little Diomede Island, it looked like I could get the umiak up onto the rocks.  If not, I would have to turn around and head home.  Or make an emergency bailout across the bay.  I could easily climb out of the water at the boat dock on Little Diomede.

 

I had no intention of failing as I approached the coast.  But the fear returned, much worse than before.  The waves were crashing against the rocks.  One mistake and my boat will be smashed into bits.  I watched for a while and realized if I timed my approach with the crest of a wave, I might be able to get a rope around a rock outcropping.

 

On the first attempt, the umiak hit the rock hard.  Nothing broke but the last thing I needed was holes in the leather skin of the craft.  When the boat hit it knocked me off balance and the lasso missed its target.  I was more careful on the second approach, and secured the rope.  I climbed up, then pulled up the umiak.  I inspected the skin for damage.  A few small tears where I had hit the wall.  Nothing I couldn’t sew up and patch with tallow.  It took a while to get the boat up the rocks, beyond the high water mark.  And into a crevice where it could not be easily seen. 

 

I knelt down to rest after the umiak was secured, and it hit me.  For the past half hour, I had been trespassing on the soil of the Soviet Union.  If I were captured by the soldiers a few hundred yards away, they would assume I was a spy.  The sensation was terrifying, and exhilarating.  I felt like I was walking on the moon.

 

The fear of being caught was quickly replaced by the fear of freezing to death.  As long as I was paddling, I was generating body heat.  But I could feel the cold as soon as I stopped moving.  I was approaching the point of exhaustion and would be asleep soon, whether or not I was prepared for it.  I found a place where I could dig the dirt out between two rock ledges.  The shovel made a hole big enough for me.  I curled up in my sleeping bag and fell asleep.

 

I slept for eleven hours.  It was late in the day, but still light, when I woke up.  I ate crackers and beef jerky.  Drank a lot of water.  Every muscle in my body ached.  The return trip was going to be an ordeal.

 

I used the remaining daylight to sew and patch the tears in the umiak’s skin.  The sun went down as I was rubbing tallow into the seams.  I stowed the boat in its hiding place.  A short, meditative rest.  Then, I put the working part of my plan into action.  I balanced the heavy backpack on my shoulders, and began climbing up the steep slope. 

 

As dangerous as it is to paddle a small wooden boat across frigid water, it is no worse than climbing on a steep, wet slope, carrying a heavy backpack, at night.  My only advantage was the full moon.  We had chosen the date of the trip to gain that advantage.  There was no trail where I was climbing.  It is possible I am the first human to touch the rocks and soil on that slope.

 

An hour of climbing up, then another hour to carefully weave my way to the edge of the station.  I was on the sea side, enough downhill from the buildings that they could not see me.  I stayed low as I crawled as close as I dared. 

 

My hands were shaking, and almost numb from the cold.  Simply taking the camera out of its case was difficult.  I took slow, deep breaths.  I willed myself to be calm, and to have steady hands.  I raised up enough to focus the camera on the buildings in the compound.  I returned it to the backpack after the roll of film was exposed.

 

I pulled three boxes out of my pack.  Each was wrapped in festive Christmas paper.  A fourth box was filled with bows and labels.  I finished decorating the gifts.  I placed the boxes inside a clear plastic bag and sealed it.  I didn’t want the moisture of the sea air to damage my artwork.

 

One of the boxes was filled with chocolates.  Another held a Sony Walkman, several cassettes, and batteries.  The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who.  And of course, Woodstock.  The last was the heaviest.  It contained two half gallon bottles of vodka. 

 

Translated, the label on each gift said To My Russian Friends, From Evan.  I had spent a long time mastering the unusual characters required to write in Cyrillic.

 

But I wasn’t finished.  I wanted to make sure the soldiers found their gifts, soon.  I pulled the fireworks out of the backpack.  Everything was set off by long fuses.  That gave me time to get out of sight before the Whistler went off.  When the shrieking noise disrupted the Artic night, the Russian soldiers no doubt thought they were being attacked.  When the Whistler went silent, I could hear their confused voices.  They got quiet when the fireworks began streaming into the sky.

 

Granted, it was not much to brag about.  My show would not compare to any American city’s Fourth of July display.  But it was probably the best fireworks show in the history of Big Diomede Island.

 

By now the adrenalin was pumping through me in waves.  I had to force myself go slowly as I made my way back to the umiak.  I was not worried about the soldiers.  It was unlikely any of them had any tracking skills, and I had a head start.

 

Reality set in as I fell into the dull routine of paddling back to Alaska, to home.  I do not remember much of the return trip.  For the third time, Eastwood picked me up and carried me to the pickup truck.

 

I slept most of the next two days.  Eastwood called Mrs. Nagel and told her I would not be at school until I was over the flu.

 

Even though I was a shy kid who did not have many friends, I felt like I was on top of the world.  I would graduate from high school in another month.  That fall, I would be off to the University of Alaska.  Between Mrs.  Nagel’s last few classes, and college in Anchorage, would be one last summer of hiking, hunting, and fighting with Eastwood.

 

My Samozashchita Bez Oruzhiya lessons had gotten even more brutal in the last year, since I had finished my growth spurt.  I was an inch taller than Eastwood.  He still had me by fifteen pounds of muscle.  But he had to deal with the mileage that twenty years of hard military service had put on his body.  I learned that if I could endure the pain, I could outlast him. 

 

Mrs. Nagel had stopped asking about the bruises and cuts years ago.  I told her, “It’s not child abuse.  It’s only fair that he gets to fight back when I punch and kick him.”  When Eastwood and I were at the general store or the washateria in Wales, people referred to us as the Bruise Brothers.

 

A naïve kid, a few weeks away from his 18^th birthday, might think that the universe is constant.  It isn’t.  It was the end of May, a month after I had gone on my vision quest.  I came home from school, after the first day of final exams.  I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened the door.  Eastwood was in his chair.  But he wasn’t breathing.  His body was pale and cold.  Eastwood was dead.

 

The doctor said it was either a heart attack or a stroke.  The autopsy would tell.  It didn’t matter.  Knowing why would not bring him back.  My world imploded.