In 1978 and 1979, Alaskan patriots, angered at the Federal government's arrogant use of the Antiquities Act, engaged in a series of events that had the potential to change world affairs. President Reagan's election and appointment of James Watt as Interior Secretary eventually defused the situation and the Alaskan Patriot movement, but not before the following story occurred. Names have been changed to protect still-living Patriots-and forthcoming Homeland Security legislation will likely prohibit this story from ever being told if it isn't told today. So read what happened, from an Alaskan who was there during this crucial period in the State's history. Copyright 2003 Homer Kizer. All rights reserved. http://homerkizer.org/chinook.html ALASKAN LANDS PROTECTED Associated Press-Washington D.C.-President Carter today protected an additional 56 million acres of pristine Alaskan wilderness. Using the 1907 Antiquities Act, President Carter increased the size of the National Park and Monument systems by an area larger than the State of Idaho. December 2, 1978, Alaskan News Miner. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20One%20Chinook.pdf The air feels heavy-and Itzak wonders what would it be like living at double atmospheric pressure. Breathing would be easy. Sound would carry like nothing humanity has ever experienced. Boom-boxes would be weapons of war, and one artillery round would have a shock wave--he will have to work out the calculations, but the shock wave would, itself, be lethal, meaning that sound could be used to do work. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20Two%20Chinook.pdf We, the citizens of the Commonwealth of Alaska, believing that we have a God ordained right to govern ourselves-to be a free and sovereign people-no longer recognize the judicial claims of the Government in Washington, D.C., over the Territorial Lands of Alaska. Because the Government in Washington, D.C., has historically and consistently failed to fulfill its treaty and statehood obligations to the citizens of the Commonwealth of Alaska; and because the Government in Washington, D.C., has usurped authority not granted to it by the Constitution of the United States, the lawfully binding contract between it and its people whereby it derives its authority to govern; and because governments should not be changed for light or trival reasons, but only as a court-of-last-resort, we, the citizens of the Commonwealth of Alaska regretfully resolve to separate ourselves from the Government in Washington, D.C. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20Three%20Chinook.pdf A big man, a cautious man-perhaps, at times, too cautious-Jabe McCarver doesn't believe happenstance occurs twice. For him, the death of his brother and the sinking of the Freedom are too closely connected in time to believe either one accidental. He and the other known members of the Committee, operating on the assumption that there is a collaborator within their outer circle, have, like foxes, taken to ground, disappearing from public sight, leaving behind families and jobs, homes and most creature comforts. Their outer circle will continue to protest Federal intrusions into Alaska as well as gather converts, making disciples of those converts, while feeding and strengthening longtime patriots. But the Committee will proceed as iceworms with its rather simple plan to checkmate Washington, D.C. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20Four%20Chinook.pdf His flight from Jerusalem seemed endless, like that Aeroflot flight from Cairo to Moscow-the bitterness he once felt is gone. He feels as if he has no life within him, and he wonders if the emptiness he feels is caused by the lies he tells, or the lies he lives, or whether by the specks of plutonium deep inside his lungs. Pu239. He knows the designation of his death, that of the isotope residing within him, one speck of which will kill the whole body. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20five%20Chinook.pdf He must have dozed off. When he opens his eyes, nurses serve breakfast. The one who brings his tray is cheery, excessively so considering that he doesn't feel like eating or doing anything else. He waves the tray away without looking to see what it holds, but his hand seems too heavy for him to lift so the motion he makes is more a feeble attempt to throw his bed sheet off than a rejection of the tray. His hands are bandaged. An IV is attached to the inside of his left forearm. Probes are taped to his chest. His face feels like it would crack if he smiled. His feet stink, smell like sun-dried road killed rabbits and rats that sought the retained warmth of black asphalt, fearing oncoming cars less than they feared the cold night through which he seems to still stagger. And he wonders what horrible thing has he done that caused so much death. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20six%20Chinook.pdf When Caroline, accompanied by Dr. Grewe, walked into her pretend father's third floor room and found it empty and his dinner scattered across his bed, her first impulse was to flee straight to the airport and escape this land of frost where even the sun is reluctant to shine. Her second urge was to cry for she wanted this, her first field assignment, to be successful. Her appearance got her this assignment, but her looks haven't been enough to assure her success. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20seven%20Chinook.pdf Visiting Earthquake Park just to be doing something, Dr. Hans Grewe stands on the fault line at the base of the sheer where, since the quake on Good Friday 1964, the clay of the Inlet has already formed round pebbles. As an educated man, he seeks understanding. Of nature. The human mind. Individual men. There is much he doesn't know about the mind and about humanity, and he feels certain Jones will help him understand how the mind communicates with itself. He knows the root languages from which all spoken words are derived, and he wonders how close those languages are to how the brain communicates with itself. If he is able to demonstrate that Jones' mind was speaking in its own language while Jones was delirious and that Jones' mind was not translating its language into a known spoken language, he might begin to unravel the common vocabulary of all human minds: the brain's language is a pure language. If he can verbalize and transcribe that language, well, his place in history will be secure. Thus, he has asked the Tacoma U. for mid-term sabbatical leave, an unusual request but no more unusual than this case. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20eight%20Chinook.pdf Hastily gathered around the all-seeing walnut table that spends its days staring blindly about the windowless room, the thirteen members of the Taskforce on Alaskan Pipeline Terrorism (TAPT as it's come to be known since yesterday's meeting) stare blankly at each other. The table, itself, was also disfellowshipped from the Body of Christ by the good Master Edward Taylor. It eyes saw both good and evil in the affairs of men, but it only caused the consciences to good men to squirm when their good deeds were examined to determine their motives. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20nine%20Chinook.pdf He sees three leatherbound photo albums, and the two half-inch high folders holding what he has written about whatever. His thoughts. Maybe that's where they are, surgically removed from his head and left to dry out on paper as a restorer might dry the leaves of a flood-damaged book. In those folders are how he expressed himself before his memories were washed away. And as he sits on the edge of the cot, despite his overwhelming urge to sleep, he pulls one of the albums towards him. http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%20ten%20Chinook.pdf "I couldn't get the tape out, but I listened to it." Peggy looks across the parking lot. Ben has waited in the car for her to return from the TAPT's meeting inside the gray fortress, with its crown of thorns. "Will you promise me no killing?" She waits for him to answer, and when he doesn't she says, "No, you can't do that, can you?" http://homerkizer.org/Chapter%2011%20Chinook.pdf The god of the world into which she was born places women below men, then uses women to transform men into swine: she is a realist, living in a world run by men who can be seduced. It isn't a perfect world, nor is it getting any better, but it is the only one she lives in. So she gave up praying when her first marriage failed, when there wasn't enough money to even buy scratchy, grocery store pantyhose. She knows the god of this world for what he is, greedy. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2012.pdf He knows why he is here. Washington D.C. has violated its governing compact with the people of Alaska. Its administration of land policies has become oppressive. A miner cannot legally dip a bucket of water from a stream, then throw that water back into the stream. That act of throwing the water in has been ruled, by Federal administrators, pollution. The miner has to first remove all particulates before the water can be returned; the miner has to remove the glacial silt. So yes, his memory does function. He knows who he is, what he's done and what still needs to be done. The Feds have to be put back into the bag that contained the central government when it was created. The determination of what is law and lawful cannot remain with bureaucratic judges. The citizens have to take that power back. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2013.pdf The trapper escaped the Park Service's attention when the official list of in-holders was compiled for the newly created Becharof National Park. He wouldn't have come to statewide attention if Les Jones would have been considerate enough to have died at sea, or in the mountains. Struggling over one last ridge, the helicopter tips forward and descends through a serpentine pass between peaks. In a few more minutes, they are speeding over rolling hills, mostly snow covered. They pass over willows and moose, a pack of wolves crossing a beaver dam, more moose and willows and cottonwoods as they race across the immensity of the landscape. The helicopter with its beating rotor seems like a wasp above a field of white clover, unable itself to gather nectar, only able to prey upon the bees. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2014.pdf Less afraid of him than of the dying fire, the wolves work closer, their footsteps silent and soft. A pale green band of light stretches across the sky. It divides and swells, encircling the darkness, engulfing it, then spitting it back out as if the darkness tasted foul, tasted of death. Another pale band stretches, then suddenly shrinks back to become a staggering arrow, barbed and lethal, shot through the bear but missing the wolves that now snap at each other as they circle, hungry. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2015.pdf For some reason, Les again feels compelled to say, "You don't have to have a cyclotron to separate isotopes. Let me think a second." There's something at the edge of his memory that peeks over like the eyes of a periscope. It's not something he has thought before that he can recall, but something new that feels like old knowledge, like he has always known this but never thought it before. "If, say, you created a gas-metal compound, say reacted uranium with ferric chlorate, the chlorine atoms would pull the positive charge of the iron atom to one side, creating a weak negative charge on its other side, thereby letting the uranium to temporarily bond, then the iron atom could be pulled off with bromine, eventually leaving a U-chlorate. Then run that through an accelerator like a mass spectrometer. A magnetized field would deflect the energized compound. U-235 chlorate would be lighter and wouldn't travel as far as the U-238 chlorate. Both could be collected. Separate collectors. An organic solvent would then react off the chorine, and you'd have nearly hundred percent U-235. Wouldn't take a lot of equipment or space or time. And you only need a few pounds, five or so, I'd have to run the numbers to know how much for sure, might not even be anywhere near that much, to get enough critical mass to produce a megaton blast. With a mass spec type unit the size of," he points to one of the bookcases, "you could produce an ounce or more of U-235 a day. There'd be some shielding problems. Sterility, probably, for whoever was emptying the collector. Cancer down the line." http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2016.pdf Daylight sneaks in behind him, sits of the log beside him, and warms his back as he slumps drowsily. He hugs his .22. Finally, as if its fingers had grabbed his shoulder, daylight shakes him awake. Eddie bolts up straight, his ears alert. Not turning his head, he sits like his dad does when hunting. Eyes moving. Thumb on his rifle's safety. Finger alongside its trigger. Waiting. Watching and waiting. Ready to shoot whatever it was that woke him. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2017.pdf He arrived in Alaska without a weapon. Each year, airport security worldwide makes traveling with weapons more difficult. But he has a contact who will sometime today receive a package shipped by overnight express from New York. That package will contain his Uzi, silenced and modified to function with subsonic loads; and a couple of pistols, a military Eagle and a little Mauser in 9x17, the Mauser also modified for squib loads. So he doesn't want to meet Mr. Calkins until after that package arrives. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2018.pdf One helicopter after another lands within the compound, each delivering two or three manacled prisoners. Then, as if ashamed of what they have done, the stinging machines lift off, leaving guards and confusion flirting with the wind that ripples the untracked wilderness stretching as far south as can be seen. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2019.pdf When Peggy, rummy from driving all night, returned home a few minutes after nine, her worry was about being late for work. She never anticipated having her arms pinned against her front door, her legs spread apart, her body patted down, her hands cuffed, feet manacled, then being forced into a car and put on this plane. She never anticipated that her protests would get her electrical jolts from alligator clips attached to her, I can't even name the parts of me they touched. She never anticipated sitting in an otherwise empty first-class section for hours, chained like no one would chain even a dog, unable to use the bathroom or eat or get anything to drink. When she couldn't hold it any longer-she was hurrying home to use her bathroom-she really couldn't: her panties are soaked with urine as are her thighs, knees, legs all the way down to her ankles. She's raw where the clips were attached. They gave her enough jolts that she couldn't control her muscles, that she couldn't resist. She would've said anything just to get them to stop, to be able to clean herself up, to be human. She would say anything now, but she hasn't been asked any questions, hasn't been arrested, just handcuffed and chained and shocked, then ferreted away from the Capital. All of her importance meant nothing. Her human rights advocacy, her degrees, her job. Nobody asked who she was. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2020.pdf The valley stretches over the horizon where it flows into an even larger valley, and that valley merges with another as streams swell into a river. In the third valley downstream, three Athabaskan families trap during the cold months. After the river ice goes out, they move even farther downstream where they have two fishwheels. They sell salmon eggs to Japanese buyers, and dry the salmon carcasses for their dogs. And they return to their cabins in that third valley before the caribou migrate through. They homeschool seven children, with the first to have completed twelfth grade now attending University of Alaska Fairbanks where she studies Alaskan Native culture from a white man from the Lower Forty-Eight. She wants to write a paper about a wild man, a big-foot, who stole a rifle, but she doesn't think her story will be believed. She knows it's true, but her professor insists that she only write about those things he believes are true, like how much better off the People were before they got outboards and snow-goes, Coleman lanterns and Christ. She has already written about trapping martin and how to make a wheel-set for wolves and how to boil dinner in a caribou stomach, but those are things everybody knows. She wants to write about things unique to her valley, like the family of wild men that live in holes along the river, or the pack of white wolves that hunts them, those wolves much bigger than the dark wolves that follow the caribou herds. Once, she even saw a wild man, a woman with a baby clinging to her back, the baby's hands just like her own, pink and brown and without visible hair. The woman looked at her, then walked very fast towards their holes. She ran after the woman, but couldn't keep up. She never saw the woman again, and when she told her dad about the woman, her dad said he would pile brush over the wild men's hole and burn them all out if she ever went down there again. And she knew her dad would because her grandma told stories about the wild men being cannibals and about the old people killing them until there weren't many left, about how People were supposed to kill them whenever possible and not leave any of them alive. But they have a family, maybe several families in their valley. Her dad won't kill them as long as they stay near their holes, where the wolves stalk them, trying to catch them in the willows where they get water. But usually they aren't so far away from their holes that they can't escape from the wolves. That's why the one wild man stole a rifle, to kill the wolves, but he didn't know how to aim. Even her dad stayed away from the holes until they heard the wild man shoot the seventh shot. Her dad didn't want to be hit accidentally. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2021.pdf Anchorage lies to one side of Tower Three; dark mud flats and dirty floe ice lie to the west side. Mountains extend upwards on all sides, with Mt. Illiana across the Inlet steaming from near its summit. He notices the steam. Under the snow, the mountain brews rage. Galled by the continual drift of stumbling stones slipping westward toward tomorrow, the mountain's rage smelts gold and uranium, heating and melting, reheating and remelting the mingled lump received from Creation, each heating separating impurities from impurities, metal from metal, building pressure behind sealed vents until everything will erupt next week or next year or the year after. The gold will buy terrorist arms; the uranium will buy time, that most precious of all commodities. http://homerkizer.org/chinook%2022.pdf Picked up like a purse with a link-chain strap, Peggy is carried from the plane, set on damp asphalt in the cold darkness, left there until her mind loses all sense of time, then picked up again. One-handed, the fellow in camo fatigues slings her forward, careful that she doesn't touch his pants, his strength sufficient to hold her short armed, his elbow tucked into the hollow above his right hip. He tosses her onto the floor of a helicopter as he might, again, a purse. And she lies there on her back, her wrists and ankles feeling like they have been cut off. She lies there barely able to breath, smelling like she has died, whimpering. Dignity was lost hours ago. All that remains is fear of again being tortured. Finally taking the bar of soap from him, she begins to scrub herself, rolling off skin cells and filth. With her pantyhose still around one ankle, she scours her genitals, and the insides of her thighs. She's careful of where the clips were attached, but even there, she tries to scrub away what has been done to her. So from the front, she reaches behind her. He watches. Never having seen his wife bathe, not knowing what to expect, he is surprised by her vigor: she seems to be sanding away contamination, her task made all the more difficult by the soap's slipperiness. Her fingernails rake across her thighs, peeling away strips of whiteness, and still she doesn't stop. http://homerkizer.org/chinook23.pdf The agent in place, on her only ever assignment, let Les Jones crawl out of the hospital right under her nose, then proceeded in getting a marshal killed and two others wounded yesterday. Her assignment here, though, is indicative of these frostfaries' low national priority, a situation that changed last night when it was confirmed that Israel had sent a man to dicker for the raw ore being offered for a weapon. Now, the Calvary has been called in to clean up the mess-it seems like he goes from one mess to another, some riskier than others, most with all-professional casts. Truly, it's amateurs like the secretary assigned here that cause the most problems for everyone. http://homerkizer.org/chinook24.pdf Not wishing to farther press Ben about the murder of the agent, Caroline dials the inside number of the Federal fortress, uses her security PIN, and gets the watch commander. For the briefest of an instant, she thinks about turning Ben in. She knows what will happen to her if she does, but it isn't her fear of what will happen that stops her. She's sorry about the agent, but a nuclear bomb? The Israeli lookalike has to be stopped. She has to stop him. Ben has to. And she is more certain now than before that Ben will kill him as coldly as if he were slicing tomatoes. Same goes for her if she gets in his way. But he might need her as cover to get back out of the country, about her only chance. She understands that politically, he can't afford to be caught here in Alaska. He will need someone to take the blame or credit for killing the scientist, who, by becoming Les Jones, has made it easier for them to erase him without creating an international incident. http://homerkizer.org/chinook25.pdf Maybe Jabe is on the Kenai, holed up somewhere no one knows to look. He couldn't have gotten past the roadblocks on the Sterling Highway. If he escaped from the Kenai Peninsula, he will have flown north-or south-or west-or even east. It seems as if everyone of the frostfaeries have wings. They fly around the state without filing flight plans, or having pilot licenses, or having insurance. They fly planes that haven't been annualled in years, if ever. They fly rebuilt planes, mismarked planes. They fly in planes that have been groundlooped and had their props straightened, that have gray tape over tears in wing fabric, that have aluminum sauce pans hammered flat and pop-riveted over holes in fuselages. They seem to think the air as well as the land and water belong to them. They are utterly rebellious, and disrespectful to all authority. They couldn't organize a church potluck. Everyone does whatever he or she wants. And she knows what she's talking about concerning potlucks: she went to one. Everyone brought either a salmon dish or a dessert or both. She had salmon casserole prepared a dozen different ways, and peach pie made from canned fruit. She could have had any of a dozen varieties of cookies, lemon creme pie, chocolate cream pie, German chocolate cake (which actually looked good), or strawberry-rhubarb pie. But there were no vegetables, no salads, no spaghetti, no chili, no beef stew, no any of the other dishes she has come to expect at potlucks. Salmon and dessert. There has to be more to life than rice, fish, dill, hard boiled eggs, and pie crust, not that the combination isn't good. http://homerkizer.org/chinook26.pdf As if frozen, he stands among mixed spruce and birch saplings on the ridge as the helicopter circles low over the still-smoldering embers of the cabin, its propwash swirling snow and ashes, raising a cloud of whiteness that hides all but the shadow of the machine. He wants to wave, but his arms won't move. He wants to run down into the open, but his legs seem not to belong to him. So he stands watching as the helicopter circles twice, swings out over the lake, then returns for one more loop before disappearing as quickly as it had come. http://homerkizer.org/chinook27.pdf There remains his problem: tyranny aside, does he have the right to determine good and evil? Has that prerogative been given to him, or given to Lars? If he can answer yes-and he so wants to answer yes-then whatever must be done is justified. http://homerkizer.org/chinook28.pdf Feeling like he's flying, knowing that he's rapidly covering distance, knowing that he's traveling in a straight line, not knowing anything else except the severity of the pain, he hurries on as legs tire, cramp. A dark character in white space, driven by pain and revenge and the storm itself, he realizes that he hasn't felt her behind him for quite a while. Despite a desire to look, he doesn't turn his head. He hasn't the strength to go back for her if she isn't there, and he hasn't the heart to not return. So as long as he doesn't know for certain that she's not there, he can push ahead with sure knowledge that a helicopter will be sent after them as soon as the storm breaks. Maybe it will find her if she hasn't been able to keep up. http://homerkizer.org/chinook29.pdf The American founders wrestled with the question of whether it was morally right to rebel against the king. Were they not doing what Lucifer had done, determining for themselves right and wrong; were they not judging the king? And they answered their fears from the Apostle Paul: rulers appointed by God are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. When rulers become a terror to good conduct, they have usurped the authority of another. They need to be removed. So the judging isn't of the law or of the ruler, but a determination of whether the ruler has become a terror to good conduct, a terror to a person living morally upright before man and God, a terror to a person who lives within the laws of God. http://homerkizer.org/chinook30.pdf He doesn't how to answer her or even if he should so he lies there, unable to see anything, hidden as it were in a womb, fraternal twins who will, after passage through a watery canal, eventually emerge into a new white world. They will be born not from above but from rebellion and anger, each a new creation of that great land where nature has always been the determining base for a mortal superstructure. Each began as a separate egg impregnated by frozen sperm stored since Seward agreed that the Federal government would make a just and equitable settlement with the land's aboriginal inhabitants, that settlement delayed until Alaskan Native and native Alaskan became a mostly reversible description of everyone residing north of Seattle and west of Vancouver. But a common placenta nourishes them as sister and brother, and places between them the taboo of incest. He now pulls her close to him, the feel of her warm flesh the feel of his sister, his feelings protective of her and murderous towards anyone who would harm her. http://homerkizer.org/chinook31.pdf He looks at what's left of his half of the rabbit, looks at Wolf, then throws her more of his half that he hasn't eaten. He's really not hungry. That's not true. He's really hungry, but not for rabbit. Pancakes, maybe. Even oatmeal. Even white beans. But not rabbit. http://homerkizer.org/chinook32.pdf